indianatrekker26 said:
if you're looking for more material covering that time period, you should check out the New Earth series.
While I enjoyed
Wagon Train to The Stars, I felt that the NE series fell flat afterwards and I stopped reading the series after book #3. That being said, I really don't think the books are representative of the TMP era and it's obvious that Carey is more in tune with Meyer's version of Trek than the first movie. In fact, Carey doesn't seem to be a fan of that era. WTtTS contains a scene in which the TMP uniforms are denounced and the coming of the TWOK uniforms is celebrated. I do, however, enjoy Carey's take on Trek only because she, like Meyer, brings out the Horatio Hornblower aspect of it.
Ex Machina is the only book that I feel is in tone and scope of TMP, and carries that into a new story with similar themes. It also explores many of the concepts brought up in TMP, including a multi-species crew, Spock's acceptance of his emotions and the idea of what
exactly is sentience. I would very much like to see another book that follows the crew shortly after these events and into another rip-roaring adventure, especially if it is written by Christopher.
Also, the Crucible series shows a bit of the post-TMP era. In those books, separate from the continuity of the other Trek novels, the
Enterprise is on a seven-year mission not a second five-year to map a previous unexplored region of space. There's a really cool encounter with a really cool alien species.