Do any of you folks who think about these things have any theories as to when The Unsettling Stars and More Beautiful than Death are set relative to IDW's Kelvin timeline comics?
Matter of fact, I totally do. Back in May 2020, I posted my analysis of The Unsettling Stars' placement in the Kelvin Timeline's chronology to the Facebook Timeliners-group -- basically, it covers two different time periods; the first one very early in the new Enterprise crew's mission following the events of the 2009 film, and the second period some four months later: Regarding David Mack's novel More Beautiful Than Death, the flashback to the destruction of Vulcan (during pp. 268-271) obviously takes place during Mid-February, 2258, during the events of the 2009 movie. The bulk of the novel's narrative (Chapters 2-26, 28-32, and the first half or so of Chapter 27, along with that chapter's final paragraph) then occur vaguely during the later spring of 2258 (it's mentioned in the book that Kirk's last cadet physical-exam took place "seven months ago," meaning that September would be the absolute latest that these chapters could take place), and that it's also been "months" since T'Pring's scheme began. Finally, the events of Chapter 1 and Chapters 33-35 of the novel carry themselves out shortly afterwards, in an overlapping fashion. At the novel's end, the starship is assigned to a long-distance exploratory mission, which I then have immediately preceding the very first issue of the 2011 IDW monthly series (the J.J.-verse adaptation of TOS: "Where No Man Has Gone Before"), allowing enough time for the ship to take on brand-new crew, including Gary Mitchell and Lee Kelso. (Also, Scotty and Keenser's opening repair-work upon the Enterprise engine room in issue #1 the IDW ongoing Kelvin-series could very well have been caused by the concluding events of More Beautiful Than Death, which works out quite nicely.)
^ Thanks, Stevil! Also, I meant to mention earlier that those notes for The Unsettling Stars were actually written before David Mack's novel was released this past summer, but I think Mack's book slots quite nicely into the chronology without any difficulties that I can see.
I knew @Leto_II would come thru on this. He has the most extensive knowledge of the Kelvin chronology of probably anyone on earth.
It is, yes -- David Mack's novel takes place approximately two years prior to the "After Darkness"-storyline (Spring 2258 vs. mid-May, 2260), and also Spock's pon farr has yet to take place during the events of the novel (it gets brought up several times, in the context of T'Pring/"L'Nel" wanting to take Spock on as her new mate when the process does eventually begin, following the death of Kelvin-Stonn in Nero's destruction of Vulcan).