My own reading Marathon, Fall through Coda

[NStephenH]

Revelation and Dust
In-Universe: 2385 (with some flashbacks to the previous 2 years)
Published: August 27, 2013

This story is two in one, with the main piece of the story being set around the opening of the New Deep Space Nine. It feels almost like Nintendo is naming these stations, what happened to -A. Same with the Defiant and the end of DS9, but I digress. The second story is Kira's visions while in the wormhole since Raise The Dawn. Speaking of Novellas, I feel like that it almost could have been separated out into its own if not for the crossover at the end. I'll start with my thoughts on this subplot. It was fine, and makes more sense for Kira to envision her time in the wormhole as part of Bajor's past than as Kay Eaton. I feel like a story in the gateways arc was similar to this, describing the early history of Bajor, but I read that 2+ years ago, and it was written 10+ before this one. It's an interesting look into a period of time we know nothing about, but nothing particularly stood out about it, and I felt like it had to do a lot of worldbuilding. I was unclear on the technology level till about halfway through, as early on they mention wooden swords, but it's a while before it's revealed that they are to avoid metal detectors. It's most tense bit was the escape of the teenage girl, but part of me felt like it was going over my head as a metaphor. I feel like going through the cave in the mountain and being trapped in it for a short period was a metaphor, but if it was, it wasn't one that correlated a lot with anything.
Switching back and forth is often a tonal shift with the main story, which I'll get to now. Perhaps that was to put a bit more action in the early bits of the story, but it felt annoying to keep switching instead of going through one story and then the other.

The DS9 dedication arc is sorrowful but hopeful, as the leaders of multiple civilizations, including the Gorn and Romulan dialogue continuing (from cold equations book 2). It felt like a good way to catch new readers up if they were to start reading here, something that I understand to be a necessary evil in these works, while also giving us some catch-up on DS9 events that may have happened offscreen. The groundwork is laid for some dissent on Cardassia.
We also get some of Bacco grieving from, but adjusting to, the loss of Esperanza Pinero, her chief of staff.
At the event itself, after all other leader's speeches have been given, the president is assassinated. There's an easily found clear suspect, the Bajoran First Minister's Chief of staff, but I think it's pretty obvious to the reader that she didn't do it, while it takes a while for DS9 security to find out. The end reveal is that she was effectively drugged with a chip of Tzenkethi design and was framed, and then we get a fakeout of Kira returning from the wormhole, only to be revealed that it's one of the characters from back in Bajor's history from the Kira half of the novel.

I have to say, I'm saddened and disappointed with the death of President Bacco. I could say everything I said about Pinero's death from my previous review, about how it's meant to make us feel sad, but that still doesn't change the fact that she was a compelling and relatable character and I'm sad to see her gone.

Next up is the next "Fall" novel, "The Crimson Shadow" by Una McCormack. I think the only thing I've read from her is her worlds of DS9 book, which I don't remember, and Brinkmanship, which I enjoyed.

 

[JD]

Yeah, it's a real shame that Pocket has moved on from the eBook-exclusive format (for a second time) in 2017 (the most recent one was a Deep Space Nine adventure IIRC). It's also a disappointment that none of the post-2011 eBooks got collected in dead tree format like many of the SCE eBooks and the Mere Anarchy miniseries were. Something like Paul Block & Terry Erdmann's 3 DS9 eBooks or the 3 Department of Temporal Investigations stories would have naturally lent themselves to being collected in a standard paperback together.

A lot of the series I follow put the novellas at the end of a novel in that series after they've been out for a while, I've been surprised they haven't done that with the Trek novellas.

 

[NStephenH]

The Crimson Shadow
In-Universe Date: 2385
Publish Date: September 24, 2013
Writer: Una McCormack
Love me some Elim Garak.

This book deals with political strife on Cardassia as the federation prepares to withdraw, with three smaller, convening arcs of a Cardassian Constable (apparently it's an official role in Cardassian policing, and that's where Odo gets his title?), someone joining up with the right-wing mob, and discussion of the withdraw of the federation/allied reconstruction forces.

This is one of those star trek books that deals with some real-world adjacent politics and leaves one wishing the real world could end up as positively as the book does. The right-wing political movement is discredited by Garak's persuasive debate on learning lessons from our past, as well as the current leader who people have lost faith in stepping down. There's, of course, a lot of fallout of the Bacco assassination here, and the president-pro-tempore is Bajoran and makes the strife a bit work by considering delaying the withdrawal.

I'm having a hard time (as I always do) putting my thoughts into paragraphs, particularly with the number of things going on in this book, so lets just go for a bullet list of things that stood out to me:

• I really enjoyed how we get some fleshing out of some non-show bridge in this book. The "joining up with the right-wing mob" character is actually Glinn Dygan, our cardassian-on-loan-to-the-enterprise. He unfortunately is a little bit traumatized by things he had to do to maintain his cover. I hope he gets an opportunity to talk to a councilor in between books. I don't think the other characters necessarily make light of his trauma, but there's a lot going on at the end of the book, and he's told by Garak to not confess to any crimes in front of our constable. I also was a bit confused by who was who in the middle scenes before it was revealed who he was, as there were a lot of Cardassian names I didn't recognize.
• We also get a little arc for Šmrhová, as the main on-the-enterprise character dealing with security issues at the federation compound. As is somewhat stated by her last scene with Dygan, she learned to loosen up when it's the right thing to do, as Picard gives her the ambiguous order of "keep Cardassians out, within the grounds of compassion" and she lets Dygan, the Constable, and the witness in while they are fleeing for their lives from the mob.
• I'm a little unclear exactly what evidence the key witness (a Cardassian girl) witnessed, I don't think she *saw* the murder, I think she just saw the criminal (who turns out to be another constable) previously extorting the victim. So still pretty damning evidence, but I was a bit confused.
• Elim has a "friend" here, and seems like this is his new boyfriend. We get a decent amount of LGBTQ characters but that's never really been front and center, I feel like everyone who's been in a same-sex relationship at this point in the lit-verse has a dead partner (the Romulan praetor, and Ranul Keru namely). Perhaps it was just a bit too far for the publisher to make it front-and-center at the time, or perhaps it's not allowed with an on-screen character, or maybe I'm just reading into it too much.
• There's an interesting literary analysis scene between Picard, Crusher, Garak and his boyfriend about a Cardassian novel, which I quite enjoyed. There's also references to "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" which I had to look up, and the end Picard gives Garak "The Master and Margarita" which I feel like I may need to read.

All-in-all, I quite enjoyed this book. I was worried that it was going to kill off Garak after our string of lit-verse character deaths, but he has licensed-work-original character immunity. I would say this book, (somewhat like the last) stands on its own while slightly advancing the "Fall" plot by shifting the blame for Bacco's murder from a Tzenkethi to "unspecified Cardassian from The True Way". It doesn't go into a ton of detail there, other than that it was likely someone from the Castellan's party. From previous typhon pact novels, we've seen The True Way working with the Tzenkethi before, so that makes sense to me.

I'm curious where the next book goes, and how stand-alone or connected it'll be. I've been reading stevil's thread up to where the next book I'm about to read is after reading my next review, so I know the last book was divisive and a lot of it may not be followed up on until we get out of the fall arc. I know DS9's on the cover of the next one though, so it'll be interesting to see what's going on there! David Mack tends to be more action-y which isn't always my favorite kind of story, but I won't judge a book by it's author.

As a bit of a tangent, I will say I am a bit confused by the pricing of the e-books of the series. 3 of the books are 9.99, but two are 13.99 and 14.99. Do Dayton Ward and David Mack merit a higher price? It doesn't correlate to word count, pages, or release date as far as I can see.

 

[JD]

Other than the sales, I think the e-book prices are mostly based on the current paperback price. I don't know if they still are but I think for a while they were releasing some Trek books in a more expensive print on demand trade paperback format, so pushed those books e-books up to the TPB price instead of the original mass market paperback price.

 

[NStephenH]

The Fall: A Ceremony of Losses By David Mack
In-Universe Date: 2385

Publish Date: October 29, 2013

This was the final resolution to the Andorian reproductive crisis arc, and was quite action packed, with numerous firefights and escapes.

Shar covertly contacts Bashir to get help solving the genetics crisis, because the party in power has been withholding data from the metagenome (from the vanguard arc?) for their own political gain. This also annoys the Tzenkethi, who gave Andor the data to try to drive them out of the federation and into the typhon pact.

The new president pro tem, established in the last book, is bullheaded, arrogant, and stubborn. He does not think the federation should attempt to help Andor , since that would reward their leaving and set a precedent, which I vaguely get where he's coming from but does not match the federation's general humanitarian stance. We've seen setup of this in the last book with his attitude to the Cardassians, where he just makes things worse. Early on in this book, we see Ezri and her first officer (Bowers) debate how the blockade of Andor is wrong, but that they need to continue to follow orders.

Bashir gets the data through Sarina Douglas's section 31 contacts (there's been an ongoing plot about trying to recruit him into section 31) and he, along with Doctor Pulaski and other federation geneticists, find a cure. The second half of the book is basically Bashir fleeing to Andorian with help from Douglas, but then has multiple setbacks. He almost makes it there but then is freed by rouge Andorians, then is caught, then helped escape by Doctor Tarses, then nearly killed, then has the data but can't send it due to political maneuvering and starfleet interference.

The main theme of the book is when you should disobey orders because it's the right thing to do, which Ezri eventually does by helping protect Bashir from a President-ordered tac-ops mission and by distributing the data. They both get arrested at the end of the novel, so we'll see if/how they are restored to duty. Admiral Akaar said he wanted someone he could trust "and knew just the man for the job" but that doesn't say anything about Dax/The Aventine.

The end of the book has Andor quickly rejoining the federation, and an Andor will be running for the office of president. So hopefully new president soon.

Other Notes:

• The fact that this new cure is made so quickly and doesn't have any testing doesn't feel like good science to me. I think the book does lampshade that a bit, Julian just "knows it will work".
• I'm not entirely sure if the cover art is supposed to be the new ds9 and is just in a really weird lighting to make it intentionally look like the old station, or if it's the old station. It does get the vibe across of what happens, but not quite literally, as I don't think the defiant gets to catch up to Julian's runabout or it gets near DS9.
• There's a pinky and the brain reference in one of the earlier chapters, that I wasn't expecting and gave me a chuckle. "So... what are we doing today, Professor?" "The same thing we do every day, Shar." "Trying to save the world."
• Bowers threatens a civilian freighter captain who they don't have jurisdiction with early on. Essentially "Get out of my sight before I get frustrated and start shooting" which left a bad taste in my mouth. Feels like an abuse of power. The previous scene, Bowers is the one complaining about the blockade.
• I'm still not sure what's falling in "The Fall"

Other than the sales, I think the e-book prices are mostly based on the current paperback price. I don't know if they still are but I think for a while they were releasing some Trek books in a more expensive print on demand trade paperback format, so pushed those books e-books up to the TPB price instead of the original mass market paperback price.

That makes a ton of sense. I could see why this one might be one that got reprinted, as it follows up on a lot of DS9 arcs.

The next book has the Titan on the cover, so I'm excited! I do know from looking at some of the flow charts, that upcoming is the "Admiral William Riker" era. Perhaps that's who Akaar was referring to.

 

[David cgc]

I'm not entirely sure if the cover art is supposed to be the new ds9 and is just in a really weird lighting to make it intentionally look like the old station, or if it's the old station. It does get the vibe across of what happens, but not quite literally, as I don't think the defiant gets to catch up to Julian's runabout or it gets near DS9.

It's the new one. Doug Drexler has an album on his Facebook with more renders and drawings so you can get a better sense of how it looks overall.

Facebook

www.facebook.com

 

[JD]

Admiral Akaar

I've been doing a lot of Star Wars stuff lately, so I accidently read this as Ackbar the first time. And now I'm picture Ackbar in a Starfleet uniform, on Starfleet ship's bridge, standing in front of a Romulan Warbird on the viewscreen, and saying "It's a trap!".

That makes a ton of sense. I could see why this one might be one that got reprinted, as it follows up on a lot of DS9 arcs.

Yeah, which books got the print on demand reprints did seem kind of random.

 

[NStephenH]

It's the new one. Doug Drexler has an album on his Facebook with more renders and drawings so you can get a better sense of how it looks overall.

Facebook

www.facebook.com

Thank you! That's great to look through, though definitely confirms that the colors on that cover were messed with. Here's the photo from the cover. The phaser blast was also added:

 

[NStephenH]

The Poisoned Chalice By James Swallow
In-Universe Date: Between September 20 and October 12, 2385
Publish Date: November 26, 2013

A return back to the crew of the titan, as we unravel that the new President Pro Tem Ishan Anjar and his chief of staff might not just be incompetent, but maliciously engineering events in some way to drive them towards war.

Akaar summons back Riker for an impromptu promotion to Admiral, and doesn't really tell him anything in an attempt to get him to start investigating on his own. We see scenes of domestic surveillance of Troi and Riker, and meanwhile Tuvok is called away for a starfleet intelligence operation. He meets up with the assembled team, to find it is composed of Nog, Thomas "Transporter-Clone" Riker, and new characters.
Tovok and Nog sent on a covert mission to track down Bacco's killers, who are suspected to be Tzenkethi (but we know from the other books they are Cardassian, as the characters learn quickly discover this). Throughout their plotline they discover they are wary of the fact that this is not a mission that went through the standard chain of command and they are breaking many standard regulations. This comes to a head when they drop the cardassian prisoners at a klingon interrigation blacksite. They attempt to rescue the Cardassians and flee, only to become captured themselves, to be killed to clean up loose ends.

Troi meets with an ambassador friend, a denobulan we've never met before, so I had a bit of the same feeling I had with Kolb in "The stuff of dreams", but with much less "screen" time. Someone can correct me if there's another book they appear in. We see a scene of president Ishan's eulogy for Bacco, with a lot of political posturing and at the same time, the Andorians are not welcome at the reception. Her main plotline focuses on opening dialog with the Andorians, and eventually converges with Vale.

We cut from the president's speech to Vale watching it, who agrees with a lot of the presidents rhetoric here. Vale is the only non-screen character we get a lot of time with in this book, as she's elevated to one of the main Titan cast. The main theme of the book (and most of the fall, it seems) is about when orders become unmoral and how characters work around that. I think it's interesting that they show the propaganda "working" on her, but once she knows more information later in the story she works against the abuses of power.

Vale is given temporary comission of a Nova-Class ship, the lionheart, by Riker to figure out what is being covered up by the administration. Vale meets with Dax in prison to get more detail about what exactly happened with bashir, then goes to Bashir's maximum security prison to talk to him. The person running the prison is named "Chessmen" which I at first thought was a codename but is just his name. She talks to Bashir, who explains what he did and why. Vale talks to Troi and she and the Andorians come and claim asylum for him (which was very muddy at the end of the last book), and he is freed. He doesn't want to testify about what happened though, because the other doctors and Sarina are threatened by the Chief of Staff.

Meanwhile, Riker does more digging into all the covert messages going throughout earth, and they capture a holomatrix containing instructions for the covert team leader. They consider ways to break through it, and determine that since all holograms are a bit sentient, they can elevate it to full sentience, and with a conscious, it may decide to tell them the information. They use the comatose body of white-blue for this, and I thought it was an interesting explanation of holographic sentience. I enjoy this type of exploration. I do now have to decide if SecondGen White-Blue Iteration Two-Point-Zero is a new character, as he seems to have archived memories of the first iteration. In looking up the exact name used here, I find this interaction which I found quite funny:

"{This is} Commander Deanna Troi."

“The daughter of the notorious Lwaxana Troi?” {Nog} bowed slightly. “An honor to meet you, Commander.”

“Notorious?” asked Vale, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean famous?”

“No,” said Deanna wryly, “he doesn’t.”

Riker's crew use the information from the intercepted message to catch up to the strike team just as Tuvok, Nog, and Tom are making their escape. They are unable to save any of the Cardassians, and all the evidence is destroyed by the Klingons. This is the climax of the book, and things resolve quickly from there.

The chief of staff then admits to abuses of power, though I don't think the specifics or Cardassian involvement are revealed to the public. This effectively covers for the president. We get a tense scene between Riker and the President about how Riker does think that the president is still in the wrong and guiding the federation to war, and the President pushes back saying that he thinks by projecting strength, it will prevent other powers from attacking.


All in all, I enjoyed this one. It had a bit of action, and a lot of diplomacy and negotiations. We got a little bit from most of the main Titan characters as well, and a good side plot of entirely vale. Excited to see how "The Fall" wraps up. I'd say that what's "Falling" are the ideals of the Federation.

 

[miracle_worker]

The return of the Titan gang in The Fall marks a very interesting change for the future of the Titan books. Before The Fall in 2013, the Titan series had last been seen with Seize the Fire and Fallen Gods, both by Michael A. Martin (sans his former writing Andy Mangels), both of which received less than stellar reception. While The Poisoned Chalice was only released around a year after Fallen Gods, in-universe it was set around three years later.
While I like a lot of the post-The Fall Titan stories, it feels like we were only getting periodic glimpses into the characters lives and a lot of time in each novel had to be spent playing catch-up. This is more so the result of book scheduling rather than poor writing, but it's a bummer that the Titan books never really captured the momentum they had from Taking Wing until Synthesis.
As well, many of the hanging threads from Fallen Gods never got picked up on again, which may have been for the best, but leads to a weird feeling of discontinuity with the later Titan books, where we were getting pretty regular updates on the Titan's adventures from 2379 to 2382, but then we get sort of a mystery dead zone from 2382 to 2385. Again, I enjoy the Admiral Riker/Captain Vale-era adventures a lot, but it's a shame that we only got two full non-crossover novels (Sight Unseen and Fortune of War, both of which I enjoyed) set during this period.

 

[JD]

Vale is the only non-screen character we get a lot of time with in this book, as she's elevated to one of the main Titan cast.

I had always thought of Vale as one of Titan's "main cast" right from the start with Taking Wing. She was one of only a handful of characters who were pretty consistently featured in every Titan book, with a lot of other characters appearing less consistently as the different authors chose to focus on a supporting characters in their books.

The return of the Titan gang in The Fall marks a very interesting change for the future of the Titan books. Before The Fall in 2013, the Titan series had last been seen with Seize the Fire and Fallen Gods, both by Michael A. Martin (sans his former writing Andy Mangels), both of which received less than stellar reception. While The Poisoned Chalice was only released around a year after Fallen Gods, in-universe it was set around three years later.
While I like a lot of the post-The Fall Titan stories, it feels like we were only getting periodic glimpses into the characters lives and a lot of time in each novel had to be spent playing catch-up. This is more so the result of book scheduling rather than poor writing, but it's a bummer that the Titan books never really captured the momentum they had from Taking Wing until Synthesis.
As well, many of the hanging threads from Fallen Gods never got picked up on again, which may have been for the best, but leads to a weird feeling of discontinuity with the later Titan books, where we were getting pretty regular updates on the Titan's adventures from 2379 to 2382, but then we get sort of a mystery dead zone from 2382 to 2385. Again, I enjoy the Admiral Riker/Captain Vale-era adventures a lot, but it's a shame that we only got two full non-crossover novels (Sight Unseen and Fortune of War, both of which I enjoyed) set during this period.

Yeah, I noticed this too. And I thought it was true of the TNG books too, while we did get more of them, we seemed to be getting a lot bigger time jumps between books compared to the era from the A Time to... books up to The Fall. In the earlier books we seemed to only get gaps of a weeks or months, but once we got to The Fall we were suddenly jumping ahead a year or more between books.

 

[miracle_worker]

Yeah, I noticed this too. And I thought it was true of the TNG books too, while we did get more of them, we seemed to be getting a lot bigger time jumps between books compared to the era from the A Time to... books up to The Fall. In the earlier books we seemed to only get gaps of a weeks or months, but once we got to The Fall we were suddenly jumping ahead a year or more between books.

This trend was already a bit of a thing during the Typhon Pact era. Compare how closely-plotted the Beyer's Voyager stuff was with how over a year in-universe passed between TNG: Losing the Peace and the next TNG story, Paths of Disharmony. Even more broadly, the lit-verse years c. 2379 - 2381 and c. 2385 - 2386 seem to be pretty densely populated, while c. 2382 - 2384 have comparatively few stories. I wonder if 2383 and 2384 were relatively rushed through to get to the opening of the new DS9 in The Fall.

 

[James Swallow]

I do now have to decide if SecondGen White-Blue Iteration Two-Point-Zero is a new character, as he seems to have archived memories of the first iteration.

Thanks for your thoughts on my book, I'm glad you enjoyed it; FYI, White-Blue first appears (and joins the crew) in the Star Trek: Titan novel Synthesis.

 

[NStephenH]

Thanks for your thoughts on my book, I'm glad you enjoyed it; FYI, White-Blue first appears (and joins the crew) in the Star Trek: Titan novel Synthesis.

Yes, but is white blue with the holographic metric incorporated the same character as white blue before that?

I suppose one could ask the same question of data (and I briefly did) but I think the question is more open ended with white blue.

 

[James Swallow]

Yes, but is white blue with the holographic metric incorporated the same character as white blue before that?

I suppose one could ask the same question of data (and I briefly did) but I think the question is more open ended with white blue.

That *is* a good question! Depending on your point of view, White-Blue Iteration Two-Point-Zero can be considered a new incarnation of the original character. W-B 2.0's consciousness is based on software taken from archived backup files of an earlier version of them.

 

[NStephenH]

The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms by Dayton Ward
In-Universe Date: October 13 through October 27, 2385. Epilogue November 1, 2385. Various flashbacks to the Cardassian occupation of Bajor circa 2369
Publish Date: December 31, 2013

The fall, or as the epilogue implies diegetically, the "stumble", concludes the narrative of the federations near fall from it's ideals. It's narrative largely revolves around a friend of Crusher's unearthing important evidence, and crusher being covertly sent to uncover that evidence. We discover President Ishan was, in the past, a Bajoran resistance member that was actually an informant for the Cardassians, playing both sides in some ways, but mostly looking out for himself. It's revealed that the real Ishan is dead and the president is "Baras Rodirya", and took the identity of Ishan to have a lower profile. Meanwhile, there are more special ops teams sent by President Ishan to collect the evidence and destroy it.

There's a lot going in in this book, and I don't think I need to summarize all of the connected plots between Crusher, Picard and the Enterprise, and Riker/Akaar and the Titan. Suffice to say the president and those who believe in his cause do many illegal actions. We do get a little bit of Ishan's perspective, where he does believe he's doing the right thing, but also that he's a chosen one and that he'll do anything the strength of the federation and his own power.

After the action-movie conclusion of the collection of evidence, we time skip to the Federation attorney general accusing Ishan of their crimes. The foremost of those crimes is violating the office by purposely misrepresenting himself (the aforementioned assumed identity), but among them listed are "usurping of Starfleet Command’s proper authority, the misuse of Starfleet personnel and resources, and the murder or attempted murder of Starfleet officers and Federation citizens in order to cover up your complicity for President Bacco’s assassination." Something I think the book does well here is that it doesn't outright state that Ishan is only stopped because of the Enterprise crew. The long list of crimes is also surely enough for conviction or at least to derail public perception (and I wish that all want-to-be autocrats only had to serve out 60 day pro tem terms.) It obviously centers the main plot, but I think it (and other examples we have in this book, like the first officer of a ship sent to interfere with the Enterprise relieving the captain of duty when ordered to fire on the Enterprise) do give us hope that even if the enterprise had failed, there's enough moral character in the federation for ideals to prevail.

We also get a final glimpse of insight as to what the ex-president thinks, that the federation will be to weak without his policies, and fall. He actively wishes it to be so to prove he was right. The new president, an andorian zhen, Kellessar zh’Tarash, in the epilogue talks about serving out the remainder of Bacco's term with her ideas and ideals in mind, and that gives us hope for the future. We also see Picards new orders are to explore again (thus giving us a new status-quo, at least until the next event).

The "past friend" character in this book feels much more flushed out than the ones I've mentioned in previous novels, partly due to more on-screen time, but also due to numerous flashbacks. They are much more integral to the story than the others though, and I realize there are constraints on what others can do.

While reading this book, I saw this article from NPR and it somewhat parallels this novel. After I write each of these posts, I generally go read Stevil2001's and think they articulated things much more than I did. He had some well-written thoughts about nationalism and Una McCormick's The Crimson Shadow, and speculative fiction predicting what's to come. I don't know that I can articulate any thoughts more clearly than that, at least not without spiraling into depression.


Next Up:
Before me is a decision as to what to read next, since the typhon pact and fall were quite linear and we're branching a lot from here. The lit-verse flow chart shows the three next options without any overlap to be The Light Fantastic, Absent Enemies, and the New Station Era Lust's latinum lost and found.

Stevil's "Phase 7" was

Phase Seven: 2385 (continued)
31. Prometheus: Fire with Fire by Bernd Perplies and Christian Humberg
32. Titan: Absent Enemies by John Jackson Miller
33. The Next Generation: The Light Fantastic by Jeffrey Lang
34. Deep Space Nine: Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found) by Paula M. Block & Terry J. Erdmann
35. Prometheus: The Root of All Rage by Bernd Perplies and Christian Humberg

The litverse simple-post-nemeiss reading order gives lust's latinum next.
The star trek reading order website has sacramets of fire before lust's latinum, but has had some issues in the past.

I'd generally prefer to read arcs together, ie read prometheus all at once, but perhaps it's better to weave things together. I know voyager is all on its own for a bit, and it looks like there's some crossing over between DS9 and TNG but once things are established it seems like there's basically just 4 arcs until we get closer to the end.

I'm thinking The Light Fantastic as it's fairly isolated, and my wife and I just watched "The Offspring". We're also continuing to read Avatar book 1 before bed. I've also yet to read Blind Man's Bluff or The Returned to finish out New Frontier.

I am very much open for suggestions as to where to go next from The Light Fantastic, and if people would recommend a more intertwined order or just read in chunks.

 

[Stevil2001]

You can and should read Prometheus in a single chunk; I don't know why the authors set it interspersed among other novels, because it doesn't make any sense. (Basically you have to assume the characters in all the non-Prometheus novels are just not mentioning a major galactic crisis!) I think I would read the whole trilogy after Takedown.

The Light Fantastic is totally its own thing.

The Titan and TNG novels overlap enough that I would sequence them together: Absent Enemies, Takedown, Armageddon's Arrow, Sight Unseen, Prey.

The order for DS9 goes: Lust's Latinum Lost, The Missing, Rules of Accusation,* Sacraments of Fire, Ascendance, Force and Motion. It basically doesn't intersect with the other series again until Enigma Tales, which should be read after the two Section 31 books.

* Rules takes place between parts 1 and 2 of Sacraments, but I would read it first.

 

[Smiley]

You've just had a galaxy-shaking series. My recommendation is to go for the Ferengi novella after The Light Fantastic.

 

[JD]

After The Fall, I read the TNG and Titan books in release order, and that worked well for me. I haven't read the DS9 books yet, I've been working on some of older books first. I did read the Post-Destiny Voyagers book though, but as far as I remember, they don't really connect back to the other series, so you can read them whenever you want.

 

[NStephenH]

The Light Fantastic
In-Universe: 2385 (with some flashbacks to the previous 2 years)
Publish Date: June 24, 2014

A follow-up to The Immortal Coil and the Cold Equations trilogy, this details a bit about what Data and Lal have been up to during/before the fall, before Data coming home one day to find her kidnapped by Moriarty.

I enjoyed the majority of this book, I felt the characters (old and new) were engaging, and there is more exploration of what Data is willing to do to protect Lal. Geordi tags along and Data states something along the lines that he is there to help him remain grounded/ being his conscience.

The end of the book, however, disappointed me. Moriarty is looking for a body, and the restoration of two daughters from his holographic reality that were lost when the enterprise D crashed. Data tricks him into thinking he's going to be given Data's body, but in reality he just gets trapped. There's a line from Geordi about how, if Moriarty knew some of the things that data did earlier in the book, it probably wouldn't have worked. After that we get an epilogue where Moriarty has been able to get a body and restore his daughters, with no real explanation. I found the entire thing handwavy.

And then there's Alice. Alice is introduced as Lal's companion, and revealed through the story that she is one of the androids from when Mudd is seen in his last non-animated appearance, I, Mudd. I didn't really remember this episode, but there are a large number of androids on the planet tending to Mudd, but also not allowing him to leave. From context in this book, they also have to listen to him.
Alice is one of these, who helps him escape and then eventually leaves him to become her own person. She's kidnapped along with Lal, and when it's revealed that data had contacted Mudd for technology that could help Moriarty, she has a breakdown and attempts to take the ship and get as far away as possible. It's revealed that they brought Mudd with them, and she tries to kill herself before she's told to freeze by Mudd and must obey. She gets sent home with Mudd in the end, and none of the main characters try to stop this. In the epilogue, Data asks Lal about Alice, and she says "We didn't talk about alice, I didn't ask and they didn't tell."

I really, really disliked this. I feel like someone should have done something for Alice, either taken her away from Mudd, or worked to resolve her conditioning to have to obey him.

There's a lot of alluding to other AIs/Androids and the Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence throughout the story, and guest appearances from Vic Fontaine and The Doctor.

The epilogue also indicates that there may be some greater mystery/threat that the Mudd Androids know about, and they are from outside the galaxy (again, I really do not remember this episode). Not sure if that's going to get a chance to be followed up on, but if it does, I hope there's some chance of saving Alice.

I think I'm going to jump into the DS9 arc next, with Lust's Latinum Lost. I'm not going to bother reading Rise Like Lions before the Missing, since I'm not a big fan of the mirror universe stuff.