As always it is great to hear your perspective, Kirsten. I'm glad you never want Voyager to turn out the way Deep Space Nine did, leaving us hanging to this day.
It was answered for the most part, but you're response put it all in perspective. Thank you so much for your insight. It's definitely a bummer that VOY wasn't able to be involved in The Fall, but I'm glad that you're able to develop your stories at the pace you feel is necessary. It's funny, one of my favorite parts of your VOY novels is how well we get to know not only Voyager's crew, but the other members of the fleet. Yet, it never occurred to me that such excellent character development wouldn't be possible if large areas of time were skipped. Thank you again for your response (and your novels), Kirsten
I was thinking about this more after my last post, and the thing that bugs me isn't so much the time skip, like I said before, a lot of non-tie-in books do that, but it's the sudden change. We went from DS9 Relaunch, SCE, ect. and the books leading up to Destiny and immediately after it all taking place fairly close together, to there suddenly being a lot bigger gaps between books. I think if they had always jumped a head a year or so each book from the beginning of post-Nemesis stuff it wouldn't be as much of an issue. EDIT: I was just looking through the timeline on Memory Beta, and the gaps really aren't as big as I was thinking they were. 2381: Destiny Losing the Peace Some of Watching the Clock A Singular Destiny Over a Torrent Sea 2382: Rough Beasts of Empire Zero Sum Game More Watching the Clock Paths of Disharmony (not sure the exact placement, this one is not on the timeline) Some of Plagues of Night 2383: Present day Forgotten History More Plagues of Night Raise the Dawn Brinkmanship 2384: All of Cold Equations The Stuff of Dreams 2385: The Fall This is the farthset we've made it so far.
This is definitely the big problem from where I'm sitting. The issue is in the way that the Alpha Quadrant stories are barreling forward in the timeline - I feel like we've only done these brief 'check-ins' with the characters involved, as they relate to the plot, rather than focusing on the crew, the characters. The senior staff of both the Enterprise and DS9 are at a point that I really am not certain who's who and who goes where. I feel like there's a desperate NEED for there to be stories set pre-The Fall for these characters. The only characters who've stood out on the Enterprise for me are Trys and Dygan, and I know Smrhova (did I spell that right?), but I really can't say I know much about her character. And I'm not even about to attempt to try and list the non-series crew on DS9 who weren't introduced in the ongoing post-finale DS9 novels (so, basically, anyone beyond Ro and Prynn, plus Bashir and Sarina). It's felt almost like the novels that are set in the Alpha Quadrant have been plot-driven over character driven. And the plot sent events forward by two or three years, while the characters were still set where they were - that was definitely the feeling I had with 'The Poisoned Chalice.' It felt like two weeks or so had passed since 'Fallen Gods' for the characters, not around two years. Frankly, I'd love it if, for at least a couple of years, the novels that come out that are set in the 24th century Alpha Quadrant were set pre-The Fall, just to make it so that we can get to know these characters (and I am STILL desperately desiring an anthology about the DS9 years between 'The Soul Key' and 'Destiny, which could incorporate at least a few of the new faces on DS9'). It's what I've come to really love about the Voyager novels, that so far, they HAVE been slower in the plot shake-ups and heavy on the characters. Things happen, and then the next book picks up on those things and focuses on them. And while I get that it has to do with the fact that the Voyager novels have only one writer while the others have been various others, I still think it's something that they could pick up on in some ways. If nothing else, I'm game for like loose duologies written by the same author in each series, to introduce plot points and let them grow and evolve for two books before reaching a resolution. Just something to allow more of a character-based focus, instead of a plot-based one.
You've forgotten to list all the VOY novels, Synthesis, Seize the Fire, Fallen Gods, Indistinguishable From Magic, and Absent Enemies. Also, The Light Fantastic, The Collectors, Disavowed, Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found), The Missing, and Armageddon's Arrow can probably be reasonably predicted in the timeline.
Yah, I completely agree with the sentiment, although I think going back and filling in the gaps of anything but DS9 seems silly, since - according to what has been published in the other series - nothing really happened to the Titan & TNG characters that really changed them (although with Titan it could be major characterisation could be added to the characters not focused on in 'The Poisoned Chalice'). But damn, maybe slowing down and focusing on the characters would be good. Yet you can still have excellent character pieces focused on characters we don't really check in with very often and which are far chronologically since a prior novel - Brinkmanship, The Crimson Shadow - and these feel weighty and important and right, irrespective of how long it's been since we saw Garak or Beverly's POV. But I do miss the slow narrative of the DS9 Relaunch in DS9 - and Kirsten really is the only person pursuing that kind of 'what happens next after the last story' narrative. Thank you very much, your writing is wonderful for this focus. these characters feel like they are growing, breathing, changing. Very lovely.
I'm not particularly asking for things to change the characters. I want to just be able to say something like 'this is [character], and these are characteristics I associate with them: [x, y, and z]' in regards to the current cast of characters who aren't from the shows. At the moment, the current roster on the Enterprise and DS9 are more just names to me, not characters. But even then, since the crews' recent appearances have been more plot-focused over the focus on the characters, I think there is room to increase the characterization of both the new and old crew, because they haven't been in a position to express any changes. They've been reacting to the events that are happening around them, and I don't expect any of the characters to go through something that utterly changes the core of the characters. But I would like to see, say, the Enterprise-E crew dealing with the emotional consequences from the events that took place in the Cold Equations trilogy. There were bits and pieces of what took place in each previous book in the trilogy, but The Fall didn't really give any attention to that fallout for the characters because of its focus on telling the tale it was paying attention to. So there's room to interpret the emotional journeys of the familiar characters while growing the new characters at the same time in material set between earlier stories and The Fall. No matter what, though, I would willingly take an Enterprise mission-of-the-week novel that gets the novel-exclusive characters a chance to really shine over some grand new 'event' storyline right now.