TNG and DS9 numbered novels recommendations

[tomswift2002]

• #18: Q-in-Law by Peter David - Lwaxana meets Q, hilarity ensues

Forget about reading the book. Just find the audio book for this one. Sure the book itself is funny, but the audio book is hilarious with both Majel Barret and John de Lancie reading the story. And its the only time that you have TNG's two comedic guest stars together.

 

[Stevil2001]

But also written before the series premiered, so its take on the TNG era is pretty... alternate... compared to what we got. Its 24th-century Starfleet seems somewhat more aggressive, and there are some other discrepancies here and there. I tend to assume it's in an alternate timeline where the pivotal historical event that drives the novel's narrative caused the Federation to adopt a more militaristic mindset.

To be honest, it's been a long time, so those details are kind of forgotten. The main thing I remember is the emphasis on how the alien ships smell!

Another good one that doesn't quite fit with later continuity. Its version of Tasha's homeworld is tricky to reconcile with "Legacy," though not impossible; maybe New Paris was the name of the main colony on Turkana IV, say. But the bigger discrepancy is in its portrayal of Data. TNG didn't explicitly establish Data as emotionless until the start of the third season, in "The Ensigns of Command." Originally, the intention was that he did have the potential for emotion, just in an underdeveloped and subtle way, and that's the assumption that drives his characterization in both Survivors and its sequel Metamorphosis. Both books were consistent with canon at the time they came out, but overwritten by the retcons about Data's emotionlessness. (Which I never liked -- the idea that AIs can't have emotion was already a hackneyed sci-fi cliche at the time, and it makes no sense anyway, since emotion is a far simpler mental process than conscious thought and thus would be much easier to program.)

I've actually never seen "Legacy"! So if you want to talk "head canon," for me Survivors is and always will be Tasha's backstory. Lorrah writes an excellent Data.

Now, that one was just weird, and contradicts TOS. In B&C, the planet was explicitly physically distinct from Earth -- it had similar conditions, but had differently shaped land masses and was the fourth planet of its star instead of the third. Bizarrely, the Dvorkins make it a "Miri"-like exact duplicate of Earth, with a precisely parallel history up until Sejanus's coup against Tiberius -- which is an in-joke, because Patrick Stewart played Sejanus in I, Claudius. I also thought it was really implausible that a planet that was at a 20th-century tech level and still had slavery and tyranny in the 2260s would be advanced enough to be a Federation member in the 2360s. The contrivances necessary to make the story happen never worked for me.

All of these things are legitimate, but for me do not outweigh the awesomeness of a STARSHIP FULL OF SPACE ROMANS.

 

[marlboro]

• The Children of Hamlin

Just read this one today. A mixed bag, but considering how difficult it must be to write a novel based on a show that hasn't even aired yet, I am more than willing to cut the author some slack

Positives:

- I appreciate that the author tried to give the entire cast something to do. Well, except for Worf. Some of the characters were actually better served here than they were in the first season of TNG: Troi seemed somewhat useful, Wesley was likable, Beverly was more assertive - there was even a bit of sexual tension between her and Picard. Data, on the other hand, was pretty much comic relief: every scene with him was basically a rehashing of the "Data takes everything literally" joke.

- As Christopher wrote above, this is a tiny bit darker than typical season 1 TNG. There isn't as much of the Roddenberry Utopian quirkiness and the character Andrew Deelor seemed like he wandered in from from a David Mack novel.

- The Choraii are an interesting new species. The need for small quantities of refined metal seemed kind of silly to me however. I wish more time had been spent expanding on their story. Which leads me to the...


Negatives:

- The Farmers. Their society wasn't nearly interesting enough to make up for how annoying most of their sect was. I wish they had just used "normal" Federation colonists so they could devote more time to the Choraii, Deelor, and Ruthe.

- The children. I watch a lot of old westerns and there are a great number of shows that deal with whites who have been kidnapped and raised by Indians or vice versa. The episodes invariably center around whether the children are better off where they are or whether they should be returned to their "own kind." It's an old chestnut, but these stories always work because their moral quandaries are so compelling. I wish there had been more of an exploration about what the lives of the kidnapped children were like on the Choraii ships and I wish there had been more debate about how to handle a tough decision among the crew.

- The Title. It's a silly title. I never would have bought this book if it hadn't been recommended here so often. Give Ruthe a nice singing voice or a vuvuzela or anything besides a flute and the Pied Piper will not spring to the mind of a single reader. It feels like the author had a story about kidnapped children and a flutist and panicked to the point they felt like they had to say "Yeah, yeah I know - it's the Pied Piper Part Deux" and goes to the extreme of naming the destroyed colony Hamlin. Way too on the nose.


Negatives aside, this was still a fairly entertaining read. Better than most of the numbered books that I have read.