Are these any good? I'm particularly interested in the first 3 Peter David ones, since they have characters from New Frontier in them. Are they written for the kiddies, or are they similar to Star Wars YA books, in that they're written well enough that adults can enjoy them as well? And are there any besides the Peter David ones I should read?
I would put them at a middle grade reading level. I enjoyed Peter David’s for Worf and the New Frontier characters, and I haven’t read any of the others. The blog Deep Space Spines has reviews of most of them.
I remember enjoying them but they're very much for children. The bigger thing that hit me was that Peter David loves Soleta so much that she moves series.
I haven't read them in about 20 years (i.e. since the time I was the target audience for them), but I remember them being... varied. Some of them were pretty good, some were really quite rough. The TNG Starfleet Academy ones were better than the DS9 ones with Jake and Nog, largely. I do seem to remember the Peter David ones being pretty decent.
I had all of these and thought they were ok, I read the adult novels though at the same age (and younger) despite the fact that I was the target audience… they were too simple and short for my liking. A bit like reading teenage mutant ninja turtle books. I guess that they were to Star Trek back in the day what Prodigy is today? I used to prefer the Jake and Nog stories though.
Prodigy is great, though. Lol I bought the first one by PD. If I like it, I'll grab the second and third book, too.
The Worf Academy books get all the attention, but I'd say my favorites were the two Picard books by Brad and Barbara Strickland, Starfall and Nova Command. Starfall is particularly potent, since it gets heavily into the tense family drama of Maurice and Robert Picard objecting to Jean-Luc's desire to join Starfleet, so it's a lot more dramatic than most of the Academy books. The Stricklands also did a Spock-focused one, Crisis on Vulcan, that's fairly good, though it's about the experiences that lead Spock to decide to apply to the Academy and ends just before Spock tells Sarek, so it skips over the kind of father-son conflict that Starfall embraces. I found Diane Carey's Cadet Kirk kind of disappointing, since she contrives to put Cadet Kirk together with Ensigns Spock and McCoy on a shuttle mission, with no other characters beyond the villains they face. It's okay as a portrayal of their first meeting, but it feels like a missed opportunity, since most of the Academy books pair the familiar characters with new characters in new settings, allowing for different relationships and situations than we're used to seeing. Carey's book is just Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on a space mission, so it hardly feels different from an ordinary TOS story.
@Christopher my copy of Worf's First Adventure just arrived and I've read and enjoyed most of it so far, so I may just try the rest of the series. The Picard ones you mentioned sound good.
I just re-read Worf's First Adventure in this series and now I am in a bad way. THE REST ARE NOT AVAILABLE ON KINDLE! How could you do this to me, Paramount! Please-please re-release the rest! *weep* (Star Trek Lit Addiction - It's never pretty)
I was always kind of surprised that the Worf trilogy, at least, was not subsequently repackaged into a mass-market omnibus edition and promoted as a tie-in to New Frontier.
Given the Kindle edition is listed as being published in 2008, I don't think we're ever going to see its sequels. Edit: I also did a review of the first book here: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/whe...er-by-peter-david.309261/page-6#post-14317429