Big event books (*spoilers*)

[F. King Daniel]

With the release of the new Voyager novel, it's gotten me thinking about how The Eternal Tide seemed like a big event, not just the next monthly Trek novel. Janeway comes back from the dead and the entire multiverse is in peril!

What other novels felt like a big event? The Destiny trilogy, certainly. Shatner's The Return was probably the first Trek novel I read where I thought "This is HUGE" (although IMO it hasn't stood the test of time). The final Rihannsu novel was so long coming that to see the story conclude was worthy of celebration. The DS9 Millennium trilogy felt like a big deal when I first read it.

Some more recent stuff, like the destruction of DS9, didn't seem as huge to me as they should have. Before Dishonor was fun but Janeway's demise was anticlimatic. The Body Electric's insanely OTT mass destruction was meaningless to me, but Data's return two books earlier in The Persistence of Memory seemed epic and important.

What say you, Trek BBS? What huge epic novelverse happenings stand out for you, and which fell flat?

 

[Thrawn]

Well, most recently, I think The Fall fell flat as an "epic novelverse happening", despite spawning some great small-scale stories in the middle.

My favorite big epics lately were Plagues of Night / Raise the Dawn and Eternal Tide, though I think probably the things I liked about Plagues/Dawn were the epic things, and the things I liked most about Eternal Tide were the small things.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Well, most recently, I think The Fall fell flat as an "epic novelverse happening", despite spawning some great small-scale stories in the middle.

I think the real "happening" in The Fall was the climax and resolution of the Andorian arc. A Ceremony of Losses was the highlight of the five books (the series' quality, while in my opinion generally high, does indeed form a rather neat arch chronologically). Having invested in that story arc over an entire decade, it was rewarding to have it reach a true conclusion, and the confrontation over Andor, with so many people placed in so many difficult situations and a major Trek civilization truly hanging in the balance, felt incredibly engaging and meaningful. This had been building since Avatar, and as someone who likes his fiction heavy in continuity and long-term arc-building, it was a truly satisfying payoff. High stakes that had been built over multiple books covering multiple series; a real triumph of this integrated approach to Trek storytelling. As icing on the cake, The Poisoned Chalice served as a nice post-climax cool-down period (things aren't resolved that quickly, after all) and Peaceable Kingdoms gave us the satisfying epilogue.

The Andorian meta-arc (AKA That's Why They Call It The Blues) was one of the novel verse's long-running and most interesting plot arcs, and it got its epic climax and satisfying denouement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXTa8taaNvI

 

[Markonian]

Novels with epic scope where TNG Q&A (multiverse hangs in the balance as well) and VOY Echoes (300 billion dead by the fourth chapter or so).

 

[tomswift2002]

A number of the 1980's TOS Trek novels tended to have the "galaxy" or "history" at the brink of destruction, unless Kirk and crew somehow managed to avert the disaster. (Strangers From The Sky, The Wounded Sky)

 

[JD]

Obviously Destiny was big and epic.
I haven't finished The Eternal Tide yet, but it definitely feels like an event, with Janeway's return and the anomaly threatening reality.
The third Vanguard book, Reap the Whirlwind, had some pretty epic sequences.
Rise Like Lions was another one that really felt epic in scope. Gee, I'm seeing a trend here.
Those are the ones that really stick in my mind a big epic stories.