Best and Worst Trek novel you have read?

[Thrawn]

I've considered Losing the peace but the description fron the cover makes it sound a but much on the blasted worlds that I'm avoiding.

"But her homeworld, Deneva, one of the planets targeted in the massive Borg invasion, has not. The entire surface has been wiped clean of everything, killing anyone who did not evacuate and rendering the planet uninhabitable. Choudhury is left to wonder whether her family was one of the displaced. Or are they all gone forever?"

Sorry, this just doesn't look like something I'm in the mood for.

Greater than the Sum sounds like it would be more interesting with more on the carbon planets and less (i.e. none) of the Borg.

I'll bet you that if you read them you'll like both of them.

Losing The Peace is no more depressing than TNG was at times (Maquis stuff especially), and is much warmer than you'd think. All three of the front page amazon reviews remark on the sense of optimism there that has been lacking from prior TNG entries; I'm not just making it up.

And I would say the Borg are obviously present but not the focus of GTTS, and it has a lot of the same big-idea sci-fi that Bennett puts in his other books.

That said, I'm telling you, if you want balls-out optimistic let's-go-find-new-shit Star Trek, Voyager is where you should be looking these days. They're remarkably good.



But to the larger point here, I think A Singular Destiny, Losing The Peace, Full Circle, and Unworthy have been head-on attempts to address, work through, or otherwise resolve the very complaints you're bringing up. And you may dislike their methods, though you'd be hard pressed to find a large number of people that disliked any of those four, but your posts were suggesting you thought this was some Big Unresolved Issue with the Trek line, and it really isn't. They knew what they were doing with Destiny, and they immediately jumped into balancing out the obvious imbalances it created.

Really, I think the darkest book published last year was Synthesis. If you enjoyed that, I don't think you'd have much of a complaint about the rest.

 

[kkozoriz1]

I'll take a look at the Voyager books and Losing the peace. I looked at GTTS at Amazon and was turned off by the time I got to the Historians note at the beginning. I've just gotten the taste of Before Dishonor out of my mouth. As much as I like Christopher's work I'd rather not be reminded about any part of BD. I'd rank it right down there with Marshak & Culbreth and that's saying something. BD is the book that got me to stop reading Peter David.

 

[William Leisner]

I've considered Losing the peace but the description fron the cover makes it sound a but much on the blasted worlds that I'm avoiding.

Ignore the backcover copy of Losing the Peace. Please. I don't know who wrote it, but it was never presented to me for comment or approval, and had it been, I would have insisted the entire mess be shit-canned and rewritten from word one.

 

[Starbreaker]

I've considered Losing the peace but the description fron the cover makes it sound a but much on the blasted worlds that I'm avoiding.

Ignore the backcover copy of Losing the Peace. Please. I don't know who wrote it, but it was never presented to me for comment or approval, and had it been, I would have insisted the entire mess be shit-canned and rewritten from word one.

I agree... the book has a much lighter tone than "destroy all worlds."

 

[kkozoriz1]

I've considered Losing the peace but the description fron the cover makes it sound a but much on the blasted worlds that I'm avoiding.

Ignore the backcover copy of Losing the Peace. Please. I don't know who wrote it, but it was never presented to me for comment or approval, and had it been, I would have insisted the entire mess be shit-canned and rewritten from word one.

OK, I'll let you make your case. What would you have written?

 

[ICW]

Best:
TOS Mirro Universe: The Sorrows Empire by David Mack
Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers by James Swallow
TNG: Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett
DS9: The Big Game by Sandy Schofield
DS9: The Never-Ending Sacrifice
DS9: Fallen Heroes by Dafydd Ab Hugh
TNG: Kahless by Michael Jan Friedman
NF: Once Burned
NF: Restoration
DS9: Mission Gamma (all four)
DS9: Rising Son
Destiny trilogy
Singular Destiny

Worst:
TNG: Ancient Blood
Shat: Avenger
Shat: Collision Course

 

[JD]

I've considered Losing the peace but the description fron the cover makes it sound a but much on the blasted worlds that I'm avoiding.

"But her homeworld, Deneva, one of the planets targeted in the massive Borg invasion, has not. The entire surface has been wiped clean of everything, killing anyone who did not evacuate and rendering the planet uninhabitable. Choudhury is left to wonder whether her family was one of the displaced. Or are they all gone forever?"

Sorry, this just doesn't look like something I'm in the mood for.

Greater than the Sum sounds like it would be more interesting with more on the carbon planets and less (i.e. none) of the Borg.

I'll bet you that if you read them you'll like both of them.

Losing The Peace is no more depressing than TNG was at times (Maquis stuff especially), and is much warmer than you'd think. All three of the front page amazon reviews remark on the sense of optimism there that has been lacking from prior TNG entries; I'm not just making it up.

And I would say the Borg are obviously present but not the focus of GTTS, and it has a lot of the same big-idea sci-fi that Bennett puts in his other books.

That said, I'm telling you, if you want balls-out optimistic let's-go-find-new-shit Star Trek, Voyager is where you should be looking these days. They're remarkably good.



But to the larger point here, I think A Singular Destiny, Losing The Peace, Full Circle, and Unworthy have been head-on attempts to address, work through, or otherwise resolve the very complaints you're bringing up. And you may dislike their methods, though you'd be hard pressed to find a large number of people that disliked any of those four, but your posts were suggesting you thought this was some Big Unresolved Issue with the Trek line, and it really isn't. They knew what they were doing with Destiny, and they immediately jumped into balancing out the obvious imbalances it created.

Really, I think the darkest book published last year was Synthesis. If you enjoyed that, I don't think you'd have much of a complaint about the rest.

I just wanted to say that I agree wholeheartedly with everything Thrawn has said since this discussion started. Trust me, you should give the books a try, you might be pleasantly suprised.

 

[Arpy]

Devil's advocate:

I understand the objection to "genocide-chic". I can't say the novels use it, but using genocide as the latest sensationalist device for cheap thrills gives me pause. What spent whores or stupid gluttons are we to need dance with such destruction to get our jollies?

I'm still not sure what to make of the loss of Vulcan and Romulus in the last Trek movie. Spock was emotionally compromised? Why not everyone? Three thousand people died on September 11th, 2001 and I don't know how many on these boards had lost it, spewing nations should be nuked.

Shouldn't the test of one's humanity, of a good writer, to be how powerful they make the loss of a single person? In which case, a proper representation of a single genocide should make a book very difficult for most readers to even finish let alone squeal and rave about.

 

[Thrawn]

I think David Mack made the losses of a lot of single people, and whole planets, pretty powerful. But by the same token, Trek books are not and have never been the kind of medium in which the point is to make atrocities as hard to read as possible.

I mean, this is the universe that in addition to the Borg has given us the Planet Killer, the Genesis Device, Thalaron Radiation, Praxis, V'Ger, a failed planetary bombardment of the Founders' homeworld, the practically successful planetary bombardment of the Cardassian homeworld, the destruction of Romulus and Vulcan in the new movie, and then in the books the Genesis Wave, the hatching Great Bird of the Galaxy, a vivid description of the Borg eviscerating a whole world (Vendetta), the fire-bombing of Coridan (The Good That Men Do), etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Even disregarding the Borg, existential threats to entire planetary populations are as common in Star Trek as technobabble, and the Borg was the biggest and scariest of ALL of them. I think it's fitting for their invasion to be the biggest and scariest invasion that we've ever experienced.

And I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that the genocides in Destiny were LESS powerful than any of the other examples I mentioned.

 

[David cgc]

How often did DS9 cross over with any of the other series?

Pretty much every episode for the last four years of the show. Plus the pilot, that one with Riker, "Caretaker," and a couple TNG episodes.

 

[JD]

Don't forget about Doctor Bashir, I Presume, Blood Oath, The Sword of Kahless, and Once More Until the Breach.

 

[kkozoriz1]

I'd hardly call any episode with Worf a crossover. If you're going for that then the whole thing was a cross over since O'Brien was originally from TNG.

 

[William Leisner]

I've considered Losing the peace but the description fron the cover makes it sound a but much on the blasted worlds that I'm avoiding.

Ignore the backcover copy of Losing the Peace. Please. I don't know who wrote it, but it was never presented to me for comment or approval, and had it been, I would have insisted the entire mess be shit-canned and rewritten from word one.

OK, I'll let you make your case. What would you have written?

Y'know, kkozoriz1, I'm not particularly interested in playing some game where I write a new blurb, only to have you come back and say, "I don't like that blurb, either; I'm still not buying your dumb book." If you don't want to read it, fine -- it's not a bright, breezy story, and you won't be rewarded with a lollipop when you finish it. But just don't come here talking about what's wrong with the post-Destiny books when you're not willing to take the risk of reading them.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Y'know, kkozoriz1, I'm not particularly interested in playing some game where I write a new blurb, only to have you come back and say, "I don't like that blurb, either; I'm still not buying your dumb book." If you don't want to read it, fine -- it's not a bright, breezy story, and you won't be rewarded with a lollipop when you finish it. But just don't come here talking about what's wrong with the post-Destiny books when you're not willing to take the risk of reading them.

I'm just asking for a thumbnail description of the book from the author who said "I don't know who wrote it, but it was never presented to me for comment or approval, and had it been, I would have insisted the entire mess be shit-canned and rewritten from word one".

I live in a rural area, no bookstores within 30 miles and the one that does has a small (and shrinking) Trek section. Back cover copy as listed on Amazon, Chapters, etc. is pretty much what I have to go on in regards to the book. As much as I appreciate the words of the fans here simply saying :It's great, you should read it" doesn't help me too much.

It's your book, you totally refute the back cover copy, in a sentence or two, sell me on the book. Or not. It's up to you.

When the cover copy makes it sound like just the sort of thing I say I'm NOT looking for am I supposed to buy it anyway? It's not like books come with a money back guarantee.

After the lackluster TNG books of pre-Destiny, I'm a little gun shy. There's lots of other stuff to read out there.

I don't mean to come across as snarky. I said what I didn't find appealing about the latest round of books. I included Losing the Peace based on the cover image and the back cover text. You say that the text is totally wrong but won't give me an idea of that it should say.

 

[Steve Roby]

Another reason to read the official Star Trek magazine: reviews and novel excerpts.

 

[Defcon]

Here are some reviews of Losing the Peace I found within moments on Google which should give you an idea about the book:

http://scifichick.com/2009/05/06/star-trek-the-next-generation-losing-the-peace/

http://trekmovie.com/2009/06/18/lib...g-losing-the-peace-preview-of-next-ds9-books/

http://jonpolk.blogspot.com/2009/07/losing-peace-by-william-leisner.html

And here you can find my pre-release interview (from September 2009) with William, where he talked about the novel.

 

[kkozoriz1]

This one line goes a long way to making me interested in picking it up:

"it's kind of like Family following The Best of Both Worlds."

I can't say that the bit about the Enterprise being needed close to home fills me with joy. New Words, new civilization, boldly going where no one has gone before, etc, etc. But, if it's a temporary move I can see it. Hopefully the Enterprise can leave the refugee crisis in the hands of others and get back out there where it belongs.

 

[JD]

This is not directed straight at you kkozoriz1, but I've never understood why people focus so much on the strange new worlds thing with TNG, sure they said it in the credits, but the majority of the episodes really had nothing to do with strange new worlds or civilisations. Personally, with the way the series are being set up right now, I'm kinda hoping that it doesn't. I'd really like to see one of the series focus on stuff at home and IMO TNG would be best for that. We already have Voy an TTN for exploration.

 

[Greg Cox]

This is not directed straight at you kkozoriz1, but I've never understood why people focus so much on the strange new worlds thing with TNG, sure they said it in the credits, but the majority of the episodes really had nothing to do with strange new worlds or civilisations. Personally, with the way the series are being set up right now, I'm kinda hoping that it doesn't. I'd really like to see one of the series focus on stuff at home and IMO TNG would be best for that. We already have Voy an TTN for exploration.

Indeed. Even on TOS, at least a third of the episodes seemed to involve them checking in on some remote colony, ferrying alien diplomats from place to place, trying to get a dilithium-mining treaty signed, or engaging in cat-and-mouse games with the Klingons and Romulans. STAR TREK has never been just about beaming down onto unexplored worlds or scanning mysterious alien nebulas . . .

 

[kkozoriz1]

Having a series based within the Federation would be cool. I mostly am thinking of Picard's line "Do you remember when we were exploreers?". Perhaps a series like SCE that would be dealing with putting things back together.