I'm doing a read through of the post-series DS9 books starting with Avatar Book 1. Is it necessary to read the other Section 31 and Gateways books, or do does each DS9 book stand well on their own to just continue the DS9 story?
Post-series DS9 book question
- Thread starter indianatrekker26
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The Section 31 books are all standalones, you don't have to read any of the others. The Gateways novels, in an ill-regarded marketing move, had the concluding chapters of each story put together in a separate volume. IIRC, the tentpole of the main Gateways plot is the TNG novel, but I think you'd only need to read the concluding short story to understand how it's resolved.
Great. I did have a little interest in reading the Gateways series. But I may put the other books off for later. I really want to read everything between Avatar to Collateral Damage. Should take me about oh, four years lol.
Does anyone know where the TNG/DS9 Divided We Fall comic mini from Wildstorm takes place in the early post-series DS9 books?
I have it down as between the first and second sections of Mission: Gamma -- Twilight.
Oh, it is TOTALLY worth it. The awesome-to-dud ratio is remarkably good. You're in for a real treat.
If you'd like any other advice, just ask! (And if you haven't seen it, check out the flowchart in my signature...)
Oh yeah, I've checked that flowchart out quite a bit. It will be a huge help.
Thanks, Christopher.
Oh very nice source of information.
The books that were published between April 2001 (Avatar’s publication) to November 2003 (Unity) make up DS9’s Season 8 and have numerous plot lines running through all the books, such as Bajor’s entrance into the Federation, the Defiant’s Gamma Quadrant survey, the Andorian reproduction crisis, etc. The majority of the plot lines are wrapped up in “Unity”, but there are others, like the Andorian plot line that continue beyond “Unity” (the Andorian plot line eventually gets tied up with the Julien Bashir plot line in the Section 31 books).
Also, “Left Hand of Destiny” & “The Lives of Dax” Prologue/Epilogue stories take place before “Avatar”, as they are right after “What You Leave Behind”. “A Stitch In Time” (DS9 #27) is set right after WYLB, but also sets up a lot of plot lines that will come into play regarding the Cardassians.
That is not an official designation, merely something some fans imposed on it. Editor Marco Palmieri never wanted to mimic a "TV season" model at all; he wanted to embrace what books could do differently from TV, and as I recall, he wasn't happy about fans' efforts to pretend the books were a "season" of TV episodes.
And really, if there were a season structure imposed, then by Trek's usual one-year-per-season format, Unity would be the May sweeps 2-parter and Warpath would be the season finale cliffhanger. But of course there was no actual attempt to follow a "season" model in any way, so that's just as artificial as the pretense that Unity is the "season finale."
I always viewed the DS9 novels as the feature films the series sadly never got.
The Audrid and Joran stories in The Lives of Dax also set up some stuff that comes into play in the Relaunch books. I've read the Audrid one, and it ties into some stuff that comes into play in the Mission Gamma books and Unity, but it could be kind of spoilery, so you might want to wait until after you read at least the 4th Mission Gamma book. I haven't read the Joran story, so I'm not sure how it relates to the Relaunch, I've just seen references to it also tying into it.
If anything, The Lives of Dax was the prologue to the DS9 Relaunch. It was the first work of post-finale DS9 fiction (due to its framing sequence) that Pocket published, and I'm pretty sure it was the first work of DS9 fiction that Marco Palmieri edited. And it's retroactively counted as the first book in the post-finale series.
Sorry, but “Warpath” as the Season finale? I would see “Warpath” as the November ratings sweep 2-parter for Season 9, after the “Worlds of Deep Space Nine” opening. Whereas “Unity” has that finality that would be in a Season Finale/Season Opener 2-parter, or just a 2-part Season Finale, of wrapping up the major plot threads.
Chronologically, yes, because it's set at the end of the calendar year and ends with a cliffhanger, as with most Trek season finales of that era.
But the point is that either "season" model is equally arbitrary and an equally poor fit to what the novels actually were, because Marco wanted the books to be books, not just copies of TV shows. His whole goal was to embrace the ways that DS9 in novels could be different from DS9 on TV. Which is why I detest the whole "Season 8" nonsense, because I think it disrespects what Marco was trying to achieve.
The Lives of Dax was first published in 1999 and republished in 2003 for the 10th Anniversary of DS9.
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