Rank the TNG relaunch novels (with respect)

[Elemental]

I'd hope no authors who post here would be offended if we did this but with five novels in the TNG "relaunch" now, I was curious how most people would rank them. I myself usually have a hard time picking favorites in any type of series. I got genuine enjoyment out of each of them despite the occasional quirks. So of the five stories: Death in Winter, Resistance, Q & A, Before Dishonor, and Greater Than the Sum, which were your favorites?

 

[RonG]

My picks would be:

1. Q&A - beating GTTS just barely...
2. Greater than the Sum
3. Before Dishonor
4. Death in Winter
5. Resistance

 

[captcalhoun]

Q&A
Before Dishonor
GTTS
Resistance

can't rate DiW, not read it.

 

[Defcon]

1. Q&A
2. Before Dishonor
3. Resistance
4. Death in Winter
5. ( by a huge margin) Greater than the Sum

 

[HappyDayRiot]

Greater Than the Sum (great character work, interesting battles, good explanations for the different Borg variations we've seen onscreen)
Q & A (a delightful romp)
Before Dishonor (utterly ludricious but enjoyable in the main. What mutiny?)
Resistance (strange choices, over-the-top portrayals of Janeway and Picard)
Death in Winter (the Geordi/Worf stuff really weighs it down)

 

[Paris]

1. Q&A
2. Before Dishonor
3. Resistance
4. Death in Winter
5. ( by a huge margin) Greater than the Sum

GTTS is 5th ??? If you don't mind me asking...why?..with respect

 

[LightningStorm]

Usually I'd have some difficulty rating a series like this and on any given day a few books might suddenly switch places. Not with this series however.

1. Greater Than the Sum
2. Q&A
3. Death in Winter
4. Resistance
.
.
.
9000. Before Dishonor

 

[Defcon]

1. Q&A
2. Before Dishonor
3. Resistance
4. Death in Winter
5. ( by a huge margin) Greater than the Sum

GTTS is 5th ??? If you don't mind me asking...why?..with respect

Hope it helps when I just link to my review.

Usually I'd have some difficulty rating a series like this and on any given day a few books might suddenly switch places. Not with this series however.

1. Greater Than the Sum
2. Q&A
3. Death in Winter
4. Resistance
.
.
.
9000. Before Dishonor

Funny, I was pondering to use the same trick (just with GttS as the bottom) but then I thought this would violate the "with respect" stipulation.

 

[Ktrek]

1. Q&A - (Loved this book! One of my all time faves!)
2. Greater than the Sum - (Not much happened here but I enjoyed the character development)
3.Death in Winter - (Not my favorite MJF story but I enjoyed the Tuvok parts)
4.Before Dishonor - (PAD has written way better books and I think he should have stayed more on tract with what other authors were contributing but not so bad I didn't enjoy it)
5. Resistance - (I had to force myself to get through this book. Not a good sign!)

Kevin

 

[LightningStorm]

Funny, I was pondering to use the same trick (just with GttS as the bottom) but then I thought this would violate the "with respect" stipulation.

Long as we're talking about the books and not the authors, it's not a problem.

 

[Brendan Moody]

1. Q & A (the only completely successful entry so far)
2. Greater than the Sum (it's trying to fix some of the series' problems, and it has some good ideas, but it's too short for its scope, some of the fixes are as implausible as the original problems, and there's an excessive interest in continuity for its own sake)
3. Death in Winter (nothing exactly wrong with it, apart from a Worf/Geordi subplot that's the definition of pointless, but it fails to sell its big character changes and the plot is shallow)
4. Resistance (reads like a first draft outline for a sequel-to-cum-remake-of First Contact rather than an original novel)
5. Before Dishonor (a mess, both on its own and as part of a series)

 

[Csalem]

Greater Than The Sum
Q&A
Before Dishonour
Resistance
Death in Winter

 

[Turbo]

Greater Than the Sum
Q&A
Resistance
Death in Winter
Before Dishonor

 

[8of5]

1) Q & A
2) Greater Than the Sum
3) Before Dishonor
4) Resistance
5) Death in Winter

 

[Thrawn]

Ignoring the inconsistencies / overall arc, and just looking at them as standalone novels:

1) Before Dishonor
2) Q&A
3) Greater Than The Sum
4) Death In Winter
5) Resistance

Taking things like consistency / wider-universe into account:

1) Greater Than The Sum
2) Q&A
3) Death In Winter
4) Before Dishonor
5) Resistance

Which is to say, either way you look at it, Resistance is crap; GTTS did a lot of necessary clean-up work very well but didn't really stand on its own merits; and Before Dishonor was a hell of an entertaining romp that's obviously totally stupid considering all the prior books / arcs of just about everyone.

 

[Trent Roman]

1. Q & A (the only completely successful entry so far)
2. Greater than the Sum (it's trying to fix some of the series' problems, and it has some good ideas, but it's too short for its scope, some of the fixes are as implausible as the original problems, and there's an excessive interest in continuity for its own sake)
3. Death in Winter (nothing exactly wrong with it, apart from a Worf/Geordi subplot that's the definition of pointless, but it fails to sell its big character changes and the plot is shallow)
4. Resistance (reads like a first draft outline for a sequel-to-cum-remake-of First Contact rather than an original novel)
5. Before Dishonor (a mess, both on its own and as part of a series)

Get out of my mind! (Which is to say, this is my list too, and for much of the same reasons, except I'd add "huge chunks of infodumping" to the reasons that ballast GTTS down to second.)

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[ronny]

hard for me to do for various reasons but here goes.

1) Death In Winter - I guess I just liked this a whole lot more than everyone else. And the competition was lacking so it's at the top.
2) Q & A - A big favorite in this list but probably my least favorite of KRADs ST books in the last couple of years. I can't point to anything wrong, just not sure it spoke to me.
3) Greater than the Sum - 2nd half was really good, first half was too much recap for me. Way too much. Really brought it down.
4) Before Dishonor - Some good stuff but things I liked were outweighed by things I didn't like. When I first heard about this I was expecting something as good as Vendetta and that didn't happen.
5) Resistance - This is at the bottom because I can't remember anything about it other than Picard got assimilated for some reason.

I think the thing all of these books have in common is every single author above has written books that I enjoyed a lot more.

 

[LutherSloan]

1. Greater than the Sum
2. Q&A
3. Death in Winter

and WAY behind those three:

4. Before Dishonor
5. Resistance

 

[Christopher]

To those saying that GTTS suffers from an excess of recap or infodump:

You're right. It does.

But I deemed that necessary due to the nature of the beast. GTTS had to be a couple of things. It had to work as a resolution to the arc of the previous novels, and that meant filling in some gaps and resolving some apparent discrepancies in order to show how the arc formed a cohesive whole. It also had to work as a lead-in to Destiny, something that could effectively bring people up to speed even if they hadn't read what came before. Also, because of what was happening to the Borg in Destiny, GTTS was probably the last chance to revisit and resolve some lingering threads and mysteries surrounding the Borg. Each one of those individually created a need for exposition and recap, and I'm afraid that cumulatively it ended up being a bit much. Maybe I could've trimmed it a bit more, but overall, I think the only way to avoid having it be an exposition-heavy book would've been to sacrifice one or more of those goals, to leave some questions perpetually unanswered.

I think Thrawn had an interesting insight about it. Of all my books, GTTS is probably the one that's least successful as a standalone volume -- but that's because it wasn't conceived or written as a purely standalone volume. It was meant to be a piece in a greater whole.

 

[captcalhoun]

and it's greater than the sum of its parts


oh, yes, i went there!