Spoilers NO SPOILERS FOR CODA - A Lit-verse Grand Finale...What We Know (Spoilers for Entire Lit-verse)

Any of the Coda authors should be able to answer that question.

 

But we won't. Not yet, anyway.

 

It seems you won't get a specific answer . But usually the books are written in such a way where it's not absolutely necessary to read all the preceding novels. Usually I find in the stories there's usually enough info there to catch you up on anything pertitent to that story.

I would say it does sound like some events of Voyager: To Lose the Earth play a role in what's going on, that'd probably be a good one to take a look at.

Most of TNG's major loose ends seemed to have been tied up in Collateral Damage, so I'm not sure if it will be crucial to read that novel to get up to speed with Coda.

DS9 has a number of loose ends to tie up, but without more information there's no way to know if Coda tackles any of those.

So, long story short, it sounds like with the limited information we have thus far that To Lose the Earth may be the one story if you're not caught up on everything to take a look at for right now. There were definite hints by Kirsten Beyer that some things that happened there might be important to the future of the relaunch novels. Beyond that there's no way to know.

Kind of ironic in a way. Voyager sort of went it's own direction among the relaunches and was even a few years behind the other series (though they were still part of the same relaunch continuity overall). Yet it looks like that may be the one book series that sets up at least part of the stage for what we think is the grand finale.

Beyond that though, well it's anyone's guess. Luckily I'm all caught up so I'm ready to go

 

I have never heard anyone say that a Dayton Ward book did not bring the reader up to speed on what is needed to understand the plot and characters. In fact, it has sometimes been the opposite case. Enjoy the trilogy whenever you want to read it, and I am 100% confident that it will all make sense by the end of the third book.

 

It's always a balancing act. I still remember getting two completely opposite responses to one of my 4400 novels.

Reader A praised me for making the book accessible and easy-to-understand even for someone who had only seen a few episodes of the tv show.

Reader B liked the book, but complained that I spent too much time recapping stuff the reader already knew from the show.

You can't win.

 

My favorite was Brian Lumley's Necromancer series (those Eggleton covers!), where in every book not only would he recap what had gone before, he'd pretty much do it verbatim. At length. By 10 books deep there were some paragraphs that many readers had probably inadvertently committed to memory.

 

Recapping stuff from previous novels written years apart makes sense. Recapping stuff from episodes that are readily available through streaming services in this day and age and take ~40 minutes to watch, not so much. I'd say it's only valuable when the details are extremely pertinent. Like, if for some reason Sisko got thrown in a box, he might mentally note that time from "Paradise", but no need for a paragraph of explaining how he and O'Brien were stuck on a planet with an anti-technology cultist who had an anti-power power box and how at the end all the people stayed there with one dude making the decision for everyone at the spur of the moment.

 

Your holographic avatar does not fool me, Control. You cannot stop us from discovering the truth!

 

On the other hand, I'm inclined to think that the average reader shouldn't have to do "homework" just to enjoy a Trek novel, and I never want to assume that every reader has perfect recall of every single Star Trek episode and movie made in the last fifty-plus years. So, yes, if I bring back Gary Seven or Lenore Karidian or Kevin Reilly or whomever, I'm going to want to refresh readers' memories rather than expect them to go out and rewatch the original TV episodes on my behalf.

Granted, a lot depends on just how well-known a plot element is. At this late date, it's hardly necessary to explain what a Vulcan or a Klingon is in every book, but I always try to keep one eye on the casual reader who may or may not have memorized every episode. Again, you shouldn't have to do research just to kick back with a Trek book on a long plane flight or whatever.

In the case of THE 4400, I deliberately erred on the side of exposition simply because THE 4400 was more obscure than STAR TREK and wasn't exactly common knowledge. Conversely, I don't feel obliged to recap Batman's origin every time I write a Batman book since surely we all know about that shooting in Crime Alley by now?

 

I think growing up on the Animorphs books helped inure me to recaps - the general recap to explain the premise happened in just about every book, and they could almost copy/paste that recap across each book. So at least the recaps in Trek novels shake up the style and references.

 

That's why, when I recap information from an episode or movie, I try to approach it from a fresh angle, to fill in other parts of the story while also working in the relevant bits, rather than just doing a direct summary of the episode. Like, I might tell it from the alien's point of view, or from the perspective of a civilian who was peripherally involved. That way, readers familiar with the story still get something new out of it, and hopefully that keeps them from being bored by the exposition.

 

I could see Control playing a part in this.

 

You grew up on those books too? They were great, and I still have my entire series - long live Jake, Tobias, Cassie, Marco, and Ax (and RIP Rachel).

As for the recaps, I remember that when I got myself caught up in preparation for Collateral Damage in 2019 by rereading the previous four or five TNG novels, I felt that when you read them spaced out like that (oh yeah, that happened, thanks for the reminder), those recaps are very helpful, but if you read them all back to back to back it got repetitive (c'mon, man, I just read this yesterday/last week, I don't need this much exposition).

 

I seem to recall that the old DOC SAVAGE novels had some stock paragraphs that tended to pop up every book, explaining basic bits of lore, like the fact that Doc emitted this odd trilling whistle whenever he was deep in thought. Included, no doubt, on the assumption that every book could be somebody's first DOC SAVAGE adventure and you didn't want to lose new readers by leaving them in the dark.

And, honestly, there's something to be said for that approach. Ideally, I want my Trek books to be accessible to both hardcore fans who know this stuff by heart AND to casual fans who might see one of my books on sale in an airport and remember enjoying TOS back in the day, or having seen some if not all of the movies, and, on impulse, feel like revisiting Kirk, Spock, and McCoy for the afternoon . . . . .

 

Ah, but which Control?

 

Personally, I'm hoping for Robert Lansing.

 

If it's the Control from the novelverse, I'm all for it.

Damn well better not be the one from DSC. That version should remain dead.

Speaking of which, I'd actually like to hear an explanation as to how the novelverse Control could tolerate the existence of the DSC version...

 

It didn't, which is why it manipulated Pike, Spock and the crew of the USS Discovery into destroying it.

 

I'm down with that.

 

The novelVerse Control is the true Control. Not whatever that was in Discovery