Destiny Series

[TrekTot]

Any thoughts on this series. Fist read "A Singular Destiny" and then started from the beginning. Finishing up the first and moving on to the second. My question is, should I keep going? While the first book is very good, it is also hard to push through. I really like the way Kieth Candido (?) laid out a singular destiny and was hoping it would present itself in the first, even though the author is different. However it was less complex and more geared towards story building and character emergence and also new characters. Anyhow, any thoughts? or comments? characters you liked or didn't? Situations that seemed to build upon the whole story or take away?

Also, if there is another thread, lead me to it and I will attempt to erase this one. Thanks!

 

[WarsTrek1993]

Keep reading and you'll get the most epic Star Trek adventure out there! And there are a few novels that set up the trilogy: namely Taking Wing, Resistance, and Before Dishonor.

 

[DigificWriter]

The three books in the Destiny trilogy are, technically, separate things from the novel A Singular Destiny, and actually precede it chronologically. ASD is itself a lead-in to the Typhon Pact novels.

Other novels with connections to the Destiny trilogy itself, beyond those already mentioned by the poster above, are the Voyager novels Full Circle and Unworthy, and the DS9/Typhon Pact novel Rough Beasts of Empire (Parts of both FC and RBoE overlap the Destiny trilogy, and the books also deal with events that take pace in the wake of the trilogy's events as well as, in the case of RBoE, the events of ASD). The Titan novel Over a Torrent Sea also makes direct reference to the events of the Destiny trilogy and features s Prologue that takes place during both the aftermath of its events as well as in the wake of the events of ASD.

 

[Thrawn]

Or: Just look at the flowchart in my signature

 

[DigificWriter]

Or: Just look at the flowchart in my signature

Not to derail the thread, but I'm curious as to why you put the Typhon Pact novels in publishing order instead of in chronological order. It would seem to make more sense, given the purpose of the chart, to have done the latter rather than the former.

The same thing applies across the board for every series, BTW, although the TP novel thing was the first one I noticed, which is why I'm mentioning it specifically.

 

[Thrawn]

That was just personal preference on my part; I really enjoyed having Zero Sum Game set up some big questions about the backstory that RBOE then answered. I don't think it matters much either way. (The list is about reading order, not chronological order; I don't think it necessarily always makes the most sense to read things in chronological order.)

As for the others - the authors told us that Declassified should be read where it was published, and the Mirror Universe stories individually were so complex that to save space I just put the collections in publication order. Parts of Forgotten History are going to take place after Watching The Clock in a framing story (iirc). The Worlds of DS9 stories, we were also told, make more sense in publication order.

A few places, I did go chronologically rather than publication order; Left Hand of Destiny was released before Unity, but I put that at the beginning of the relaunch, and it also was released after some of the Klingon Empire books, which I put it before. Cast No Shadow is placed chronologically in the Lost Era books that connect to DS9. Death In Winter has an arrow placing it before Taking Wing, even though iirc it came out after.

I suppose any list like that is going to provoke some disagreement, but I don't think anyone reading it for the first time in exactly my order will be upset by anything.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ Okay. This is definitely a case of 'To each their own', then. I was just genuinely curious.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm curious as to why you put the Typhon Pact novels in publishing order instead of in chronological order.

Yeah, foreshadowing of unrevealed events is often deliberate, and can be lost when fans insist on reading chronologically. Publication order is how Pocket's editors assume you'll get access to them.

 

[Thrawn]

^ More or less. There are a few cases of things being shuffled around or postponed and eventually released, etc, that end up making more sense in not quite publication order.

As another example that I didn't list above, Ezri's arc makes more sense if you finish it in The Soul Key before picking up Destiny, partially because that's originally how it was intended to go before The Soul Key got split off and delayed another year.

 

[Daddy Todd]

And speaking of Destiny, which we haven't been for a while: Amazon notified me today that the omnibus is on its way, and should arrive on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to it!

Also got notified that Tim Powers's new one, Hide Me Among the Graves, is en route and should arrive tomorrow. SWEET!

 

[David Mack]

^ And autographed copies of the trilogy are now also available from my website's online store. Just sayin'.

 

[Destructor]

Thrawn: Amazing, and bravo. That flowchart should be the last page of every Star Trek novel as far as I am concerned.

 

[Thrawn]

Thrawn: Amazing, and bravo. That flowchart should be the last page of every Star Trek novel as far as I am concerned.

Thanks

And I know, right? Star Trek books really could make it easier to jump in.

 

[Christopher]

Except the risk is that it could make people think they have to read all those books to keep up, and that could scare them off. That's one reason they stopped publishing the backlist in the novels -- not only was it taking up a ridiculous number of pages, but it was scaring off potential new readers.

 

[Thrawn]

EDITOR'S NOTE:

All Star Trek novels are commissioned and written so that they can stand alone; any novel can be a starting point in your explorations of Star Trek literature. But if you'd like to know what to read next, this chart gives a quick summary of the plot threads that the Trek authors and editors have connected together over the years.

[chart]

 

[Christopher]

^I don't know if casual browsers in a bookstore would stop to read the fine print. The kind of people who'd be scared off by a big, complicated-looking chart would be more likely to just glance at it, do the mental equivalent of TL;DR, and put the book back on the shelf.

Besides, this is why we have the Internet. Well, this and cat videos.

 

[Thrawn]

I mean, it's a fair argument. But even Star Wars books, now, at least the ebooks anyway, have a "Did you know about [x]" where [x] is a bunch of cool stuff from the EU, and then a little thing listing all the eras and good books to start with in each one. And Trek is WAY more complicated than Star Wars.

 

[cdgodin]

Well, for the physical Star Wars books, and they've had this since half-way through the New Jedi Order series, they have a timeline in the front that lists all of the books, and some eBooks, in chronological order. However, in some tricky areas (ala The Clone Wars), they just list the books that take place in that era.

 

[ReedEnterprise]

I am reading the last book in the trilogy, I loved the previous 2. I know I loved how they got characters from TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT (though not the crew I would have liked) all in it and it makes sense! Love it.

And as far as my reading goes, I just pick a series and read. I do some work looking to see if I need to read something first but for the most part I don't read in any particular order. Maybe that's not the right way but that's how I do it.

 

[Christopher]

^There's no "right" way to read a series except the one that feels right to you. Fiction is supposed to inspire your imagination, not hold it hostage.