Hello fellow Trekster!! So, I haven't posted in a few months, as life had gotten a bit too busy for my liking between work and a recent purchase of a new home. In any event, during these last 2 months, I read through the Prey Trilogy and LOVED it! Indeed, this is/was an odd place to start my endeavor into the Trek Lit Universe, but JJM's writing roped me in with his Star Wars titles such as Kenobi and A New Dawn. So, my question is; where do I go now ?, chronology speaking if I were to stay within the TNG/DS9 Universes ? Do I continue down the Prey Trilogy-->Headlong Flight ? (TNG route) or can I 'backtrack' in a sense, within either or both of these Trek Lit universes ? As you could assume, I'm a bit overwhelmed as to where to go now due to the sheer volume of titles within these two universes, not that that's necessarily a bad thing lol! Thanks in advance!!
I believe Headlong Flight is the only book that takes place after Prey that has been released so far. As for going back, what are you interested in? Are there particular series you want to read, or characters you want to see more of? Are there any specific events related to Prey you want to see? Do you want to stick purely to stuff related to Prey, or expand out into the wider Trek Universe?
I think I said this before, but the original DS9 relaunch should definitely be on your "backtrack" list. @ryan123450 did a great job at compiling lists for both DS9 and TNG (and all the other Trek series) that should make reading through TrekLit easier. Basically read everything that's dark blue and start at a good jumping-on-point (or at the Master jumping-on-point for all major 24th century series). Story time: In 2014 after I watched the Guardians of the Galaxy movie I decided to get into comics and purchased something called "Guardians of the Galaxy by Abnett & Lanning: The Complete Collection Vol. 1" When I started reading I was completely lost. Everyone mentioned the "Annihilation Wave" and the "Phalanx Invasion" and I had no idea what that was and I had no clue who all these weird team members like Phyla-Vell or Warlock were. So I started traveling the internet for an explanation and found a guide for Marvel cosmic that started with Annihilaton and went all the way through The Thanos Imperate. I bought the first Annihilation trade and started reading that. First I only considered it as "reading important backstory" for what really interested me: Guardians of the Galaxy". But after a couple of issues I noticed that I actually got really invested in the story line, I went on to read Annihilation: Conquest and started with Nova and now his helmet is on my profil pic. What I'm trying to say is that there is no need to think of what happened previously as "backtracking". It's a "the journey is the destination" kind of thing.
I'm a sucker for a nice political thriller. Where should I go if that'd be my first choice for my next read ? The Romulan War duology ? I know it didn't necessarily get the best reviews, but it seems like it would fit that genre. Would this be a good choice or is there a better political thriller route I could go ?
The Cold Equations trilogy has a good political thriller as its second entry. Arguably, the entire Star Trek: Vanguard series would fit that bill, as well, and it is SO GOOD.
Hi Thrawn--Firstly, thank you for both your reply's. Jinn Thank you too! I do have a question about your exquisite flowchart. I guess it would make the most sense if I preface the question with, as compared to Ryan's list/lit organizer, your chart is very in depth and specific (Which is absolutely amazing!!), but is it due to this, that you probably only include 30-40% of ALL Trek Novels ? Prior to asking this question my immediate thought was that within your flowchart, you've only including that which you found most applicable or appropriate for a 'proper' 'Canon' flow. Or potentially only included the 'Re-Launch' novels ? and if is the case, what are your thoughts on the other 50-60% of ALL trek novels you in fact have not included within your flowchart ? Either way, it's above impressive and if this question has already been asked and answered ad naseum, my apologizes.
I definitely agree with that. When are we all supposed to find time to do nerdy stuffand read Star Trek books? I really enjoy when people make these kinds of posts. There used to be a constant stream of them, but in the last several years with all the resources like the ones you've already seen in this thread, these types of "what now" questions are alot rarer, but still just as much fun. I especially love that you are interested in doing things chronologically, at least potentially. If I were in your shoes, I would go both routes and continue after Prey and also go back and read threw some older Litverse books. It sounds like you can get threw several novels a month which, if you were just trying to keep pace with TNG/Titan/Aventine/DS9 novels as they are released, would leave plenty of time to get threw some of your back catalog as well. I will echo Jinn's suggestion to pick whatever jumping on point you want with DS9, depending on how far back you want to go. The earliest run of post-series books is amazing, and the ones which pick up after Destiny are great too, though I suspect you will enjoy them all even more if you read that first stretch to start out with. It just depends on how big of a "to read" pile you want to commit to. But keep in mind ALOT has happened over the dozen years since DS9 ended. The farther ahead you jump the more you'll be skipping over. TNG you can be more flexible with where you start at, though you absolutely don't want to miss Destiny. We all really consider that a must read for everyone. If politics is interesting to you though, I would consider starting way back at the A Time To... series, or at least the final three books. And don't miss Articles of the Federation. Just want to point out that there are WAY more Trek stories than that. The 200 or so on Thrawns awesome flowchart are only about 10% of all the Trek stories ever published in books and comics. Even if you toss out the comics and just count the prose it would be only like 20%. You can see my tally here: https://startreklitverse.yolasite.com/story-count.php At any rate happy reading, and I'm glad you came here for pointers!
No need to apologize! This community is great with questions like this, ask away! After DS9 went off the air, the Pocket Books editors at the time decided to set novels after the TV shows in a much more serialized, continuing narrative like the TV shows themselves, instead of just writing standalone novels that could have happened between episodes. The DS9 novels that did this began with Avatar in 2001. As Voyager ended, and the TNG movies ended, and some other projects (Titan, Vanguard) were written with longer storylines, this whole interconnected set of long-form stories became something much larger and more ambitious than the usual tie-in fare. Those books all fit together (98% anyway) and we call them the LitVerse. The books that aren't in the flowchart are the books that don't connect with this post-2001 interconnected narrative. Some earlier standout Trek novels are referenced, and so those are on the flowchart, and some novels since 2001 that just don't connect with the rest are left off the flowchart, even though they're recent. So this has nothing to do with the quality, in theory - just whether or not they form a part of the interconnected universe that so many of the books are building. That said, in my opinion, the interconnected LitVerse has absolutely the best Trek novels in it. The standalones are forced to be more limited in ambition; the LitVerse is where you get epic, spanning narratives full of great stories. If you want to see the best of what the LitVerse has to offer, read Destiny or Vanguard. If you want to start at the beginning, read Avatar. (If you start with Avatar, get the Twist of Faith omnibus - it includes the first 4 DS9 Relaunch novels + 1 novella.) You won't be disappointed either way - there are maybe 8 books on the whole flowchart that I didn't enjoy, and a startlingly large number of them are stone cold incredible.
I grabbed the Destiny trilogy and also for some reason, The Cold Equations trilogy looks quite intriguing, maybe I have a soft spot for not only JJM's writing, but for Mr. Mack's' as well.
If you're interested in Trek politics I would also highly recommend The Lost Era: Serpents Among the Ruins and TLE: The Art of The Impossible. The Lost Era was a series of standalone novels that all took place between the prologue of Generations and the start of TNG. They tended to combine elements of TOS and the later shows, and gave detailed accounts of some events that happened during that era. Serpents focuses on the Enterprise-B crew and is about the Tomed Incident, which was referred to in the TNG episode The Neutral Zone as an event which drove the Romulans behind their borders for decades. The Art of The Impossible spreads it's focus a bit more, and explores the Betreka Nebula Incident, an event referred to in the DS9 episodes the Way of The Warrior as a 18 year long conflict between the Klingons and Cardassians. It features appearances by Worf's parents (both human and Klingon), Deanna Troi's parents, Sarek, and Elias Vaughn, who is probably one of the Novelverse's (what some of us call the big interconnected book continuity) most prominent original characters.
As I recall, Serpents also gives us the reason for the Treaty Of Algeron and why Starfleet can not use cloaking technology, as mentioned in "The Pegasus", and why the Romulans put restrictions on the Defiant's cloaking ability in "The Search".
The Destiny Trilogy is a great starting point. The best Star Trek novels ever written, in my humble opinion.
As an update, I did acquire the CE Trilogy as well. In terms of the Section 31 titles, can/should they be read in an actual chronological order ? And if so, what would that order specifically look like ? Finally, as a general consensus, if the titles are better understood within their respective era's, are any of the titles MUST READS ? and which if any, are below average/mediocre (3/5 or 2/5 stars or less) ? Regards! Cheers!
Assuming you mean the 2001 crossover tetralogy and not the recent David Mack titles, the chronological order would be TOS: Cloak (2268), TNG: Rogue (2373), VGR: Shadow (2375), and DS9: Abyss (2376). But no, there's no requirement to read them in that order, because they aren't a continuing narrative, just four separate standalone stories connected only by the involvement of Section 31.
Abyss (the DS9 installment) is excellent, one of my favorite relaunch novels. The other ones are all okay, with Rogue (the TNG installment) probably the strongest.