It's hard to believe, but this year is the 10th anniversary of the release of the Destiny trilogy, the first 2 Myriad Universe books, and the Terok Nor trilogy. The Destiny books were released in September (Gods of Night), October (Mere Mortals), and November (Lost Souls). The Myriad Universes books were released in July (Infinity's Prism), and August (Echoes and Refractions). The Terok Nor books came out in March (Day of the Vipers), April (Night of The Wolves), and May (Dawn of the Eagles). Even 10 years later, I think is still Destiny one of the best things in the franchise, and it's still continued to have an impact. I loved the way that David Mack was able to work in elements of the different series, even Enterprise, in a way that made sense, and came together for one hell of an epic story. The way the trilogy gave us both the end of the Borg and their origin and tied the two together was pretty good. I loved the Myriad Universes novellas, alternate universes have always been a favorite of mine, and these were all good to amazing. The highlights for me were A Less Perfect Union, Places of Exile, The Chimes At Midnight, and A Gutted World. While the second two weren't quite a good, Day of the Vipers, the first Terok Nor book is amazing. After so many stories about the Occupation of Bajor it was great to finally get to see how it all started. That one really cemented James Swallow's place as one of my favorite Trek writers. The second two books also did a pretty good job of giving us some of the bits and pieces of the Occupation that we heard about over the years.
I liked book 2 and 3 of the Terok Nor novels better than the first one. Doesn't mean that Day of the Vipers is bad. Quite the contrary. Just a bit too long and reading it in Englisch was a bit difficult for me. I remember I had tears in my eyes when I finished book one.... It's the second best novel by James Swallow (Cast No Shadow is my favorite). Destiny is was translated into German and I really have to re-read it one day. Terok Nor won't be translated anytime soon which is a shame. At the moment I'm busy with Shattered Light. With the second story involving Hikaru and Demora Sulu. It's been a while since I've read the other stories, though.
Yeah, Myriad Universes and the Mirror Universe books are the only Star Trek books I can recall that I've ever re-read within a year of the last time reading. I love alternate universe stories. 'What if' stories are my favourite.
Coincidentally, the Destiny trilogy is what got me hooked on Trek Lit last year, and tonight I am about to finish reading the Terok Nor trilogy (I'm up to the Liberated Bajor chapter). Even though I didn't have a clue about some of the characters in Destiny, it was still phenomenal. I only ordered the first book to stick my toe in the water and I was blown away. It was a long wait for the second and third books to arrive in the mail. So far I have also really enjoyed Terok Nor. One really interesting bit in Day of the Vipers was the welcoming feast the Bjorans threw for the Cardassians. The scene where Dukat feels disgust at how "wasteful" the Bojorans are with all their blessings was a really interesting character moment, I think. The second and third novels have also been good, but I would have been lost without the list of characters in the back of the book. I wish there had been a fourth book so there would have been room to flesh out some of the characters more. I haven't read the Myriad Universes stuff yet, unfortunately.
Books two and three of Terok Nor are great, I especially liked how the Oralian Way's resurgence was depicted.
The Terok Nor novels were DS9 history at its best. I liked reading more about Damar, Kira, Ro and Odo and Bajor. I hope there will be other The Lost Era novels involving DS9 characters eventually.
I remember getting the Terok Nor trilogy when it came out, and while I read the first book, I still haven't read the last two books. And I found that I was struggling with Book 1; I really didn't find it that interesting. Of course, the Terok Nor trilogy was the second trilogy to focus on the Bajoran Occupation; Rebels was the first, and funnily enough, both trilogies were not the best.
I found it interesting for several reasons, but chief among them would be because we got to see just how the Cardassians took over the planet gradually. I had always assumed that they had just come in guns blazing and conquered a less technologically advanced world. Instead we see that they used much more insidious methods; using the Bajoran's caste system to divide them, using their religious leaders to pacify them, using their business men and politicians to betray them through their greed, and finally "protecting" them from a non existent alien threat. We also got to see an earlier not entirely evil Dukat. Well, he probably was evil even then, but his self deluded and self serving rationalizations that he is helping the Bajorans (or that he's doing things for the greater good of Cardassia or for his family etc) seem almost plausible. Almost. He's a complicated character and I think he was written as well in this book as in the best episodes of DS9. I also liked Darrah Mace. I was hoping to see more of him in the following novels, but with all of the other characters he just seemed to get squeezed out. Which is a shame because I think that if he had more of a presence in the later books you could have had a much more poignant scene at the end of Dawn of the Eagles with Keeve Falor and Mace's son.
I liked writing him too! His legacy lives on, though - Mace's grandson Hayn appears as a serving Starfleet officer aboard the USS Lionheart in The Poisoned Chalice...
I really like the Myriad Universe books and the Terok Nor trilogy. I really enjoyed reading those books.
I hadn't looked at the Myriad Universes before, but the other day I found one collection that had The Chimes of Midnight. I was flipping through it and locked on Chimes as something that seemed to emphasize Saavik and David; and what looked like escalation with Genesis technology. Being fascinated by the whole Genesis thing that runs through the second and third TOS movies, and wishing randomly that there were more stories featuring Saavik and David who continue on together as an adventuring pair (even though it's impossible), I went ahead and bought it out of curiosity. I love the look and feel of the movie era, particularly for TWOK/TSFS/TVH.
I too, love the Mirror and Myriad series. Nothing would thrill me more than to see some more volumes added to either or both series. I've never gotten around to reading the Terok Nor trilogy, mainly because, for several years, I was so focused on catching up on several years worth of post-finale novels to work my way up to Destiny. Then it was keeping caught up with everything that was newly published and still working in all of the non-Trek reading I wanted to do. Maybe, since there's such a lull in Trek publishing at the moment, I'll go back and read some of the novels I've had on my "to read" list forever, like Terok Nor, Klingon Empire, etc.
TCAM was one of the best novellas in the MyrU series. I've always loved "The Trilogy" and Chimes is a fascinating look at how things could have turned out.
I think the only thing that tended to get to me about MyrU was that while most if not all of the stories were pretty great reads, IIRC they tended to be implicitly unsettling if not openly depressing. Like, maybe the Prime timeline really was the best of all possible worlds after all.
Yeah, I had the same thought, as great as it was The Chimes At Midnight was easily one of the most depressing, along with A Gutted World. Reading those two back to back was pretty brutal.