Best and Worst Trek novel you have read?

[Christopher]

Not quite sure Death's Angel is precisely a Mary-Sue.

I'd say that book's Elizabeth Schaefer is the most textbook example of a Mary Sue I've ever seen in professionally published Trek fiction, rivalled only by Triangle's Sola Thane.

 

[KimMH]

I loved the Vulcan's Soul trilogy; and too many others to mention. The older lit has some real chestnuts that I may love simply because of the long association with them - some of the newer stuff is very satisfying and really excellent work.

I must say the only Treklit I was unable to finish was co-authored by Shatner himself. It was heinous awful. Sorry.

 

[JWolf]

Another pretty bad Trek novel is Spock Must Die by James Blish. The premise was ok. But the execution was so wrong. And the characterizations were way off the mark.

 

[Christopher]

Another pretty bad Trek novel is Spock Must Die by James Blish. The premise was ok. But the execution was so wrong. And the characterizations were way off the mark.

In retrospect, it seems that way, but it was par for the course for its time. They didn't have home video and the Internet then, so books based on TV shows weren't expected to be exactly faithful, but were more like the authors' own interpretations of the basic concepts.

 

[Reanok]

I really like the Vulcan's soul trilogy it's been one of my favorite series of Tos books the last few years.Besides the special Tos anthology Mere Anarchy.Also troubled Minds and several other novels from the differntseries. I really like the Enterprise relaunch novels.

 

[jgdst]

I've still got a pile of 25 or so modern Trek novels to plough through, so my choices are subject to change, but my favourites include New Frontier 1-4, A Stitch in Time, the first three Vanguard books, Avatar I and II and Section 31: Abyss.

Honourable mention to The Left Hand of Destiny and the novelisation of DS9's Emissary.

For the worst, I feel a bit bad for saying it, but most of the Dean Wesley Smith/Kristine Kathryn Rusch books. By The Book and Section 31: Shadow stood out as particularly painful to me.

Having tried a number of times as a wee teenager to read Warped and seeing it appear a number of times as 'worst novel' entry, I'm not feeling too hopeful for the next time I tackle it

 

[Therin of Andor]

Dean Wesley Smith/Kristine Kathryn Rusch books. By The Book and Section 31: Shadow stood out as particularly painful to me.

I have to say, I really enjoyed "By the Book". I thought it cleverly avoided the problems that beset early original novels such as "TNG: Ghost Ship" by concentrating on a few likeable crewmembers who may or may not have become semi-regulars.

Knowing that Dean Wesley Smith was the coordinator of the annual "Strange New Worlds" contest, I found it a bit tricky that I didn't really enjoy his ST writing much. The first book I read of theirs would have been "The Big Game", the one they wrote as "Sandy Schofield" (to save putting six author names on the cover). Ultimately forgettable, but okay.

Their contributions to the "New Earth" mini-series seemed to be the more annoyingly repetitive, inconsistent ones, IIRC. (I loved the concept of "New Earth", but it really seemed to fall down due to the saga-written-by-many problem. Maybe these sweeping sagas need more lead time, with the authors given more time to read each others' drafts?)

But one of the most disappointing DWS books was one with one of my favourite pieces of cover art: "A Hard Rain", the Dixon Hill whodunnit. Originally announced as the second serialized novel (it was going to be one chapter at a time, over twelve monthly books, like "Starfleet: Year One"), I was very pleased to see it re-announced as a single novel instead. But where "Starfleet: Year One" had worked much better in its expanded, omnibus form (due, for me, to all the new characters being introduced into the serial, then seemingly forgotten in the next instalment), this lightweight Dixon Hill story would have been a lot of fun as twelve separate bits staggered over a year. Together, they kind of became repetitive, fluffy mush.

 

[jgdst]

Dean Wesley Smith/Kristine Kathryn Rusch books. By The Book and Section 31: Shadow stood out as particularly painful to me.

I have to say, I really enjoyed "By the Book". I thought it cleverly avoided the problems that beset early original novels such as "TNG: Ghost Ship" by concentrating on a few likeable crewmembers who may or may not have become semi-regulars.

Knowing that Dean Wesley Smith was the coordinator of the annual "Strange New Worlds" contest, I found it a bit tricky that I didn't really enjoy his ST writing much. The first book I read of theirs would have been "The Big Game", the one they wrote as "Sandy Schofield" (to save putting six author names on the cover). Ultimately forgettable, but okay.

Their contributions to the "New Earth" mini-series seemed to be the more annoyingly repetitive, inconsistent ones, IIRC. (I loved the concept of "New Earth", but it really seemed to fall down due to the saga-written-by-many problem. Maybe these sweeping sagas need more lead time, with the authors given more time to read each others' drafts?)

But one of the most disappointing DWS books was one with one of my favourite pieces of cover art: "A Hard Rain", the Dixon Hill whodunnit. Originally announced as the second serialized novel (it was going to be one chapter at a time, over twelve monthly books, like "Starfleet: Year One"), I was very pleased to see it re-announced as a single novel instead. But where "Starfleet: Year One" had worked much better in its expanded, omnibus form (due, for me, to all the new characters being introduced into the serial, then seemingly forgotten in the next instalment), this lightweight Dixon Hill story would have been a lot of fun as twelve separate bits staggered over a year. Together, they kind of became repetitive, fluffy mush.

I couldn't comment on A Hard Rain or Starfleet: Year One (with respect to format at least), as they've never made it onto my list of things to read. It was my intention to dive into the New Earth series at some point after starting the first novel but never finishing it a few years ago, but as you can imagine, I'm a little wary.

I will admit that I did enjoy The Big Game the first time I read it, well over 10 years ago now. And I hope I'll enjoy it again next time I read it. Of the DS9 books I'd read up to that point, that one seemed to get the feel of the series pretty well as I recall.

With regards to By the Book, I didn't really have any problem with the use of minor characters, and I understand why they took that path. It was a pretty tall order to write the first original novel considering how new the series was then (had Broken Bow even aired when they put pen to paper?). My major gripe with it was that the whole "Enterprise-ness" of it, for want of a better word, became somewhat secondary to the ongoing role-playing game that occupied entire chapters, and a lot of repetition of setting things down on tables and people looking round every time they rolled the dice. And didn't T'Pol and Archer just spend a lot of the time throwing the words protocol and structure back and forth?

I probably am being a bit harsh, truth be told. As a novel on its own, it kept me interested enough to read through to the end, but as an Enterprise novel, it left me wanting a lot more. Then again, I don't feel the Enterprise novels really hit their stride or took advantage of the series' universe until Last Full Measure.

Shadow I just didn't enjoy at all. It didn't make logical sense in the first place regarding the escape ship being built for 800 million rather than a convoy of ships, the extremely tenuous link to Section 31, the totally irrelevant B-plot regarding the mother and daughter and B'Elanna's apparent cultural insensitivity of not being able to take someone seriously because they were purple .

Their biggest pitfalls for me were their characterisations not always being totally accurate (in my opinion, at least) and a lot of repetition of words or phrases, which ruin the pace a little bit for me.

It's been so long since I read Echoes, I can't remember it properly. I do remember getting totally confused at times by the universe hopping, but I put that down more to me being about 14 at the time rather than a failing on their part.

Having said all that, I thought DWS did a pretty good job of starting the SCE series and establishing the main characters, despite my feeling it was the weakest of the first collection of stories. (Wasn't that the one with the angry space wasps?)

I feel a bit bad for being such a harsh critic of their work in particular and singling them out, but I am always open to having my mind changed. Unfortuntaely, I think it'll be a while until I've worked through my backlog of books before I make the effort to pick up one of their novels again.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Oh and my apologies if I've derailed the thread at all.

 

[Christopher]

With regards to By the Book, I didn't really have any problem with the use of minor characters, and I understand why they took that path. It was a pretty tall order to write the first original novel considering how new the series was then (had Broken Bow even aired when they put pen to paper?).

I'm sure it hadn't. Most of the early novels based on new Trek series -- sometimes even as many as the first eight or nine books in a given series -- were written before any of the series had aired, often based only on the writers' bible and the early scripts. After all, it takes a year or more to make a book, unless you go to the considerable trouble and expense of accelerating the process, so if you want tie-ins to come out in a timely fashion, a headstart is essential.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The writers of By the Book had the scripts for the first three episodes and the 20-second TV ad for the pilot to go on, according to Voyages of Imagination. Dean Wesley Smith said they had "no idea how the characters were going to act or talk".

I agree with them that they did pretty well!

 

[Reanok]

I recently re-read By the book and I liked it.I also liked Hard rain.