Most of the novels seem to just have O'Brien in the standard role of chief engineer. I recall in Proud Helios that he was kidnapped but that's the nearest I can think of to the trope.
Did the 'O'Brien must suffer' trope make it into novels?
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It seemed like Prynn Tenmei took on that mantle when O'Brien left. Relationship problems with Vaughn. Her assimilated mother being killed, losing her relationship with Shar, being kidnapped by Taran'atar, losing her father after the Borg invasion, being injured, when she had to sabotage the Defiant to help Bashir escape.
Prynn took that mantle and then some. I already found her sort-of break up with Shar to be one of the great ST love tragedies, but then she went all hold my beer with future suffering.
O'Brien has like a reverse-curse in the litverse as nothing interesting happens to him ever again. Even when the DS9 books were good, he was just always sort of around. Maybe there wasn't enough to O'Brien's character that wasconceptually interesting when you don't have the actor to make up the difference. Even in books that focus on him he is just...kind of there.
He certainly did in the Mirror Universe stories, from Obsidian Alliances, "Saturn's Children" through the end of "Rise Like Lions."
He had an alternate universe doppelganger that had it rough in the DC TNG comics (issues 47 - 50).
I seem to recall O'Brien doesn't have a great time of it in Trial by Error. Isn't he left in Ops when Klingons take over the station?
I can't remember how much he went through in Force and Motion (when he visited Maxwell 20 years after The Wounded), but think he got trapped in space without much oxygen at one point? Or was that Nog?
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