Reading Suggestions

[vess]

So, I've never read a Star Trek novel. A couple of comics, but no novels.

I'm looking for a couple of suggestions for things to read, i.e. post-Nemesis and post-Endgame. If at all possible, I would like to pick up both crews where the were last left onscreen.

Thanks in advance!

 

[F. King Daniel]

You want the two Homecoming books for the start of the Voyager relaunch, Death in Winter is the first post-Nemesis TNG novel (I haven't read it, I read the TNG books in reverse order and ended with Resistance which is the second) and Titan: Taking Wing for the launch of Riker's new ship (and book series). Oh, and Avatar 1+2 for DS9 and The Good That Men Do for Enterprise.

IMO the Enterprise relaunch is horrible, but others like it.

Be prepared for a Borg overload in the TNG books.

The TNG and Titan books crossover (and are joined by Captain Ezri Dax of the USS Aventine) in the epic Destiny trilogy which totally reshapes the Trek universe.

Memory Beta has lists of the books, but be careful to avoid spoilers.

Enjoy

 

[Thrawn]

Oh, it's been a while since we got this thread... time to roll it out again.

Essentially, vess, the whole 24th century post-Nemesis continuity crosses over in the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy which takes place about a year and a half after Nemesis. That's a good place to start, if you're not prepared to totally dive into obsessive insanity.

If you are, though, let me lay out all the pre-Destiny stuff by series:



TNG - Nemesis established that Riker goes off to captain the Titan. So, this splits into two series: The Next Generation and Titan. But Nemesis also had a bunch of random character changes in it (Worf back in starfleet, Wesley at the wedding, etc), so first there's a series ("A Time To...") that explains all that. The final A Time To book also establishes some more detail about Federation politics, which is followed up on in a book called Articles Of The Federation, which is like a year in the life of the Federation's president.

Here's all of that in a vague chronology / recommended reading order:

A Time To Be Born
A Time To Die
A Time To Sow
A Time To Harvest
A Time To Love
A Time To Hate
A Time To Kill
A Time To Heal
A Time For War, A Time For Peace
(Nemesis goes here)
TNG: Death In Winter
Titan: Taking Wing
Titan: The Red King
Articles Of The Federation
Titan: Orion's Hounds
TNG: Resistance
TNG: Q & A
TNG: Before Dishonor
Titan: Sword Of Damocles
TNG: Greater Than The Sum

Then comes Destiny.

(For the record, Titan and Articles are awesome, but opinions vary about the rest. In particular, few people would recommend reading the first 6 A Time To... books; the last three are the only really important ones. And in my opinion, you can pretty much skip all of them and jump straight in to Destiny. If you only want to read the best ones, do the four Titan books, Articles of the Federation, and Greater Than The Sum, which does a great job summarizing the other not-so-hot TNG stories.)



VOY - this is much quicker. Voyager had a short-lived relaunch that took place immediately after Endgame, but the author and editor responsible both left, and it stayed in limbo until Destiny came out. So pre-Destiny, you only have four books to worry about...and quite frankly, they're all pretty skippably bad.

Homecoming
The Farther Shore
Spirit Walk: Old Wounds
Spirit Walk: Enemy Of My Enemy



DS9 - DS9 ended two years before VOY, and well before Nemesis, so it had a chance to rack up quite an impressive number of books before Destiny. Unfortunately, many are out of print, and the narrative is so serialized that you won't want to skip any. After Destiny, the DS9 timeline is jumping ahead 5 years, so picking up the new DS9 novels after Destiny might be a better bet. They are, however, uniformly outstanding, and so if you go to the trouble of finding the old ones, you'll be happy you did. Ones in parenthesis are not part of the main sequence.

(A Stitch In Time - standalone about Garak)
Avatar, Book 1
Avatar, Book 2
Section 31: Abyss
Gateways: Demons Of Air & Darkness
"Horn & Ivory" from Gateways: What Lay Beyond (the first 5 are collected in an omnibus called Twist Of Faith)
Mission: Gamma 1: Twilight
Mission: Gamma 2: This Gray Spirit (these 2 are collected in an omnibus called These Haunted Seas)
Mission: Gamma 3: Cathedral
Mission: Gamma 4: Lesser Evil
Rising Son
(The Left Hand Of Darkness, Book 1)
(The Left Hand Of Darkness, Book 2 - standalones about Martok)
Unity
Worlds of Deep Space Nine 1: Cardassia / Andor
Worlds of Deep Space Nine 2: Trill / Bajor
Worlds of Deep Space Nine 3: Ferenginar / Dominion
Warpath
Fearful Symmetry
The Soul Key
(The Never-Ending Sacrifice - more about Cardassia)

All that, chronologically, only covers a period of 1 year, so then 4 years after that Destiny happens, and the next new DS9 book in January of next year will take place an additional year later after Destiny.



ENTERPRISE - post-finale Enterprise novels are progressing nicely. There's a plot thread from them that gets picked up on in Destiny as well (this is cooler than it sounds; it's not just simple time travel), but you don't need to read these books at all in order to understand it. Read them if you liked Enterprise; if you don't, don't.

The Good That Men Do
Kobayashi Maru
Romulan War: Beneath The Raptor's Wing

(The Destiny story picks up close to the end of that last book).



DESTINY & AFTERMATH - so then Destiny happens:

Destiny 1: Gods of Night
Destiny 2: Mere Mortals
Destiny 3: Lost Souls

This follows a sister-ship of the Enterprise NX-01 starting 200 years earlier, and in the 24th century it follows the TNG and Titan crews, as well as a new ship (the Aventine) captained by Ezri Dax (which also makes more sense than you'd think it would.) And Destiny has huge, huge effects on all kinds of stories. It's also my favorite TrekLit ever, of any kind; absolutely awesome.

After Destiny, the following tales have been published (in recommended reading order):

A Singular Destiny (Federation-wide tale of political realigning)
TNG: Losing The Peace
VOY: Full Circle (starts at the end of the prior VOY books 2 years earlier, and covers that crew through the events of Destiny & beyond)
VOY: Unworthy (follows from Full Circle)
Titan: Over A Torrent Sea
Titan: Synthesis

Late this year, a 4-part miniseries will come called the Typhon Pact, exploring the political landscape after Destiny (which I don't want to spoil too much).

Typhon Pact 1: Zero Sum Game (follows the Aventine)
Typhon Pact 2: Seize The Fire (follows Titan)
Typhon Pact 3: The Rough Beasts Of Empire (follows DS9, after the 5-year time jump)
Typhon Pact 4: Paths Of Disharmony (follows TNG)



Too much information?

To summarize: The fastest, most instantly awesome choice is to just grab Destiny.

The slightly less-fast, but possibly best approach is to read the first 4 Titan novels, Articles of the Federation, and TNG: Greater Than The Sum, and then read Destiny. That gives you the most relevant background, without you having to hunt down out of print books or spend months catching up. (EDIT: Actually, Articles is out of print. Oops! Well, you can skip that one too; it's great, but if you don't like hunting for old books, it's not critical.)

The slow, but totally obsessive approach is to buy a Kindle, so you don't have to hunt out-of-print books down, and then buy and read every book I just listed. Which is what I did.

Good luck

 

[F. King Daniel]

"Too much informantion?"

You may well have just scared him off

FWIW I didn't read a single "Time To..." book and I don't think I'm missing out on anything, depite coming acrosd a few vague references to bad things at a place called Tezwa.

 

[Thrawn]

I hope not

Yeah, the A Time To... books aren't essential, but technically they do begin the whole ongoing continuity, so I thought they were worth mentioning.

 

[tmclough]

(A Stitch In Time - standalone about Garak)
Avatar, Book 1
Avatar, Book 2
Section 31: Abyss
Gateways: Demons Of Air & Darkness
"Horn & Ivory" from Gateways: What Lay Beyond (the first 5 are collected in an omnibus called Twist Of Faith)
Mission: Gamma 1: Twilight
Mission: Gamma 2: This Gray Spirit (these 2 are collected in an omnibus called These Haunted Seas)
Mission: Gamma 3: Cathedral
Mission: Gamma 4: Lesser Evil
Rising Son
(The Left Hand Of Darkness, Book 1)
(The Left Hand Of Darkness, Book 2 - standalones about Martok)
Unity
Worlds of Deep Space Nine 1: Cardassia / Andor
Worlds of Deep Space Nine 2: Trill / Bajor
Worlds of Deep Space Nine 3: Ferenginar / Dominion
Warpath
Fearful Symmetry
The Soul Key
(The Never-Ending Sacrifice - more about Cardassia

Did you forget one? (The Lives of Dax?)

 

[Thrawn]

It was published 2 years before the Relaunch started, and was only rebranded with the new DS9 logo afterwards. But if I included A Stitch In Time, I probably could've mentioned it, yeah. Good catch.

 

[Judith Sisko]

To summarize: The fastest, most instantly awesome choice is to just grab Destiny.

The slightly less-fast, but possibly best approach is to read the first 4 Titan novels, Articles of the Federation, and TNG: Greater Than The Sum, and then read Destiny. That gives you the most relevant background, without you having to hunt down out of print books or spend months catching up. (EDIT: Actually, Articles is out of print. Oops! Well, you can skip that one too; it's great, but if you don't like hunting for old books, it's not critical.)

The slow, but totally obsessive approach is to buy a Kindle, so you don't have to hunt out-of-print books down, and then buy and read every book I just listed. Which is what I did.

Good luck

I concur.

If you don't want to invest in all four Titan books right away, Orion's Hounds is the best of the lot. You'd be introduced to the ship and its crew well enough to know who's who in the Destiny trilogy.

Not that I want to get the eBooks/paperback books debate going again, but since Thrawn mentioned it... While some of these books are out-of-print, they are available in digital format. Thrawn gets his at amazon.com for his Kindle; I get mine at bn.com for my nook. There is a Kindle app for an iPhone; there is a B&N eReader (nook) app for the BlackBerry as well as for the iPhone and the iPad. (I'm just sayin', in case you have difficulty finding some of them. I'm NOT saying that you shouldn't try to find them in a paperback if that's the format you prefer! I'm merely suggesting another option for finding and reading some of them.)

 

[ryan123450]

"Too much informantion?"

You may well have just scared him off

At least no one mentioned that that list is just the tip of the iceberg when you consider that all of that ties in to New Frontier, SCE, Klingon Empire, Vanguard, Stargazer, and the Lost Era, and that alot of that ties together with several dozen older TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT novels.

Ooops.

 

[vess]

First, thank you everyone for the responses. This is the first thread I've posted that has gotten really any response. So thank you in that regard.

Secondly, the general consensus is that if I want to follow the "modern" (TNG, DS9, VOY) crews, I should pick up the Destiny Trilogy?

KingDaniel, you mentioned the "Borg overload", I've read about this before on Memory-Beta. And actually have no interest in reading about the Borg. Does Destiny have this problem?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Destiny is the ultimate Borg invasion of the Federation, but there is much more to it than, say, Voyager's Borg battles. It's universe-reshaping stuff on an epic scale.

It is Borg-heavy (although it's much more about the rest of the galaxy reacting to the Borg), but there's also lots featuring a new alien race and the crew of the NX-02 Columbia that's Borg-free.

 

[JoeP]

Destiny is the ultimate Borg invasion of the Federation, but there is much more to it than, say, Voyager's Borg battles. It's universe-reshaping stuff on an epic scale.

It is Borg-heavy (although it's much more about the rest of the galaxy reacting to the Borg), but there's also lots featuring a new alien race and the crew of the NX-02 Columbia that's Borg-free.

Yeah, in fact, I can't recall any part of Destiny that takes place on a Borg ship, or in close quarters with any drones... And I loved that about the books. It was all about their effect on the others in the story.

 

[RandyS]

I have loved the Star Trek books for more than thirty years, and while I've read several bad ones, and forgettable ones, They're still Star Trek. I say, start at the beginning (if you can find them), and read them all. They don't have to be read in order, well, the alot of the older ones don't, but definately read them all.

Think of it like this: you have thirty years of fun ahead of you.

That said. Vanguard is good. I've only read the first one so far, but if the other four are as good as the first, then you're in for a good time.

 

[JD]

Oh, don't worry, they're better.

 

[ryan123450]

First, thank you everyone for the responses. This is the first thread I've posted that has gotten really any response. So thank you in that regard.

Secondly, the general consensus is that if I want to follow the "modern" (TNG, DS9, VOY) crews, I should pick up the Destiny Trilogy?

KingDaniel, you mentioned the "Borg overload", I've read about this before on Memory-Beta. And actually have no interest in reading about the Borg. Does Destiny have this problem?

My advice is...if you like the Borg: read Destiny.
If you don't like the Borg: read Destiny.

 

[Thrawn]

First, thank you everyone for the responses. This is the first thread I've posted that has gotten really any response. So thank you in that regard.

Secondly, the general consensus is that if I want to follow the "modern" (TNG, DS9, VOY) crews, I should pick up the Destiny Trilogy?

KingDaniel, you mentioned the "Borg overload", I've read about this before on Memory-Beta. And actually have no interest in reading about the Borg. Does Destiny have this problem?

Destiny is about the Borg in the same way that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was about clouds.

(Or, to put it another way, they instigate the story but they are not the story; the second book doesn't actually feature any Borg at all, for instance, until the very last scene, and my favorite part of the trilogy has nothing to do with them. It's three pretty long books; there's a lot in them.)

 

[Rosalind]

Destiny is about the Borg in the same way that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was about clouds.

(Or, to put it another way, they instigate the story but they are not the story; the second book doesn't actually feature any Borg at all, for instance, until the very last scene, and my favorite part of the trilogy has nothing to do with them. It's three pretty long books; there's a lot in them.)

Or to put it another way, the Borg in Destiny is like Sauron in Lord of the Rings, you feel their presence through the whole trilogy, but you don't see them much. (I know you Sauron never appeared in LOTR, but you do see the eye, besides, it's the first example I can think of)

 

[RonG]

Destiny is about the Borg in the same way that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was about clouds.

(Or, to put it another way, they instigate the story but they are not the story; the second book doesn't actually feature any Borg at all, for instance, until the very last scene, and my favorite part of the trilogy has nothing to do with them. It's three pretty long books; there's a lot in them.)

Or to put it another way, the Borg in Destiny is like Sauron in Lord of the Rings, you feel their presence through the whole trilogy, but you don't see them much. (I know you Sauron never appeared in LOTR, but you do see the eye, besides, it's the first example I can think of)

This.

I think this is the second or tird time Destiny is compared to LOTR, to which I certainly say

 

[JD]

I've actually heard the comparison quite a few times, and I have agreed with it each time.

 

[Thrawn]

All this talk of Destiny makes me think it's about time I got around to re-reading this. Been over a year, after all...