Having just finished this, I would say it should be one you read. Good Stuff.
Recommend a good standalone novel
- Thread starter Captaindemotion
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Having just finished this, I would say it should be one you read. Good Stuff.
I'd like to pitch in a few:
Serpents Among The Ruins. It's part of a series, but self-contained enough that you could probably understand it well.
It's a page-turner. lol.
Excelsior: Forged In Fire.
A good look into the pre-TUC era, and also explains how Sulu took command of the Excelsior.
TNG: Crossover.
The movie that Generations could have been. It's about a rescue mission for Ambassador Spock. Very good read!
Serpents Among The Ruins. It's part of a series, but self-contained enough that you could probably understand it well.
It's a page-turner. lol.
Excelsior: Forged In Fire.
A good look into the pre-TUC era, and also explains how Sulu took command of the Excelsior.
TNG: Crossover.
The movie that Generations could have been. It's about a rescue mission for Ambassador Spock. Very good read!
The Lost Era is a series in only a very loose sense. It's a set of self-contained novels whose only unifying element is that they all take place between 2293 and 2363. Serpents does have some loose connections to the subsequent volume, The Art of the Impossible, but more in the sense that, say, World War I had connections to World War II.
I honestly have to say, despite it being continuity heavy, that you really want to pick up the Destiny trilogy. If you haven't been around much lately, you've been missing a lot of absolutely incredible large-scale developments, and the Destiny trilogy will show you what I mean by that. It features four crews, of which two and a half are brand new for the trilogy; it may seem at first like you're missing a lot of backstory, but the trilogy starts in the middle of the action on purpose. You absolutely don't need to read anything before Destiny, and all of your questions will be filled in as the trilogy progresses. (And, actually, since you've read Articles and some of the Titan books, you'll recognize a bunch of them, too.)
And if you like Destiny, there's a ton of amazing follow-ups from there. (Especially the Voyager re-relaunch, if you'll believe it. They've been the highlight of the Trek line, the last three years. But time for that later.)
If you insist on standalone, though, Crucible, SCE: Wildfire, The Never-Ending Sacrifice, and Myriad Universes are all pretty great.
But seriously: Destiny is where it's at.
And if you like Destiny, there's a ton of amazing follow-ups from there. (Especially the Voyager re-relaunch, if you'll believe it. They've been the highlight of the Trek line, the last three years. But time for that later.)
If you insist on standalone, though, Crucible, SCE: Wildfire, The Never-Ending Sacrifice, and Myriad Universes are all pretty great.
But seriously: Destiny is where it's at.
Don't you mean one and a half? The Columbia crew (except for Hernandez, who's from canon) and the members of the Aventine crew who aren't imports from the DS9 books? The other two, TNG and Titan, were established in previous books.
I exaggerated a little. I assume he'd recognize the TNG people that were, like, on the TV show, so I was just thinking the new TNG crew, and those were created by you and Mack together. Destiny is just as good an introduction to them as GTTS was, except for Trys, who isn't that important in Destiny anyway.
I figure Hernandez is an obscure enough canon character not to count, and Ezri being a captain is new, and the remaining DS9 people are also all pretty obscure...so that leaves (roughly) two brand new crews, and the new half of TNG, all of which Destiny is designed to introduce.
But yes, I could have been clearer. Either way, the overall point is the same: it may seem when you start the trilogy like you've missed a lot, but most of that backstory is covered by the trilogy anyway. Like I remember someone posting "I just started Destiny and Ezri is a captain?! When did that happen! I want to read that book first!" I was trying to avoid that feeling.
I figure Hernandez is an obscure enough canon character not to count, and Ezri being a captain is new, and the remaining DS9 people are also all pretty obscure...so that leaves (roughly) two brand new crews, and the new half of TNG, all of which Destiny is designed to introduce.
But yes, I could have been clearer. Either way, the overall point is the same: it may seem when you start the trilogy like you've missed a lot, but most of that backstory is covered by the trilogy anyway. Like I remember someone posting "I just started Destiny and Ezri is a captain?! When did that happen! I want to read that book first!" I was trying to avoid that feeling.
Oh, yeah, another Voyager that I would recommend is actually a novelization: Flashback by Diane Carey. I read Flashback before seeing the episode and I thought that the episode would be a three-part episode because of the book. Flashback was Voyager's 30th anniversary nod to TOS and it focuses on what Captain Sulu and the Excelsior crew were doing during Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Yeah, Flashback is a novelization that significantly improves upon the episode it adapts. Not only does it add a couple of new subplots to flesh the episode out to novel length, but it adds new layers to the climax that make it far more engaging and meaningful than the pure-technobabble climax of the original.
I second the recommendation of Carey's "Flashback".
I'd also like to recommend Christopher's "Watching The Clock", which was a brilliant take on the DTI.
I'd also like to recommend Christopher's "Watching The Clock", which was a brilliant take on the DTI.
Surprised no one has mentioned "Uhura's Song", "The Entropy Effect" or "Strangers from the Sky", although maybe they were way back in the early days of the thread?
^ Thanks. While the title of the thread doesn't really say so, my original post was really meant to convey that I meant more recent stuff, as I've read most old Trek novels and have just gotten out of the way of it over the last few years.
Just wanted to thank folks for the kind words said about my Trek work in this here thread. It's appreciated.
And deserved. Of course, given how little Trek stuff you've written since I slowed down on Treklit, I'm surpisingly up to date on your stuff, as far as I remember!
The first book that sprang to mind for me was Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock by Christopher L. Bennett. Easily the best Trek book I've read in years & very much a stand alone work.
And if you liked that one, look - there's more! My local SF bookshop, Galaxy in Sydney, emailed me yesterday:
The first one is still "standalone", and I would image so is this, but together they make... more fun!
Yup. I tried to write it so that it could be accessible to TOS fans who are unfamiliar with DTI (or even with 24th-century Trek in general). Hopefully it can work as one's first DTI book as well as it can as one's second.
^ I does like me a good time travel story, so those ones and Greg's Rings of Time are on the shortlist.
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