To Aventine or NOT to Aventine?

[Count Zero]

I'm looking forward to the Aventine novel(s), too. I enjoyed their parts of the Destiny trilogy and I liked the crew.
I don't really understand the OP's problem. If you're not interested in a book or series, don't read it. There is so much Trek lit available that I doubt you'll run out of stuff to read.
And since the DS9-R seems to lag 4 years behind it would take time to bring it up to date with the time line of the other 24th century series. So, should all the other series be put on hiatus for years so that the DS9-R can catch up?

 

[Thrawn]

I see something in common, though, between the two posters in this thread that are worried about the Aventine novels - neither one of them liked the Aventine story in Destiny. HMMMM.

I personally do not enjoy the TOS novels as much as the rest; I like the excitement of not knowing how the characters will get through the story, if they'll be changed in some major way. And to me, it's not really possible to write stories like that using the core TOS characters anymore (Ex Machina being the obvious, and notable, exception) because we pretty much know where they end up. So I'm a little bummed by the fact that we're spending 1/3 of 2010 on them.

So why don't I make a thread called "To TOS or NOT to TOS?", in which I say "I know there haven't been a lot of TOS books in a while, but do we really have to do FOUR of them? Why not THREE? Every slot a TOS book takes up is one slot that they don't get to spend on their more ambitious, plot-heavy books which are CLEARLY better!" I mean, that's essentially the same point as the OP here, right?

Well, I realize that there are other fans that don't share my taste, that want other things out of their Treklit than I do. There are two posters in this thread that aren't interested in Aventine books, but there are a lot of posters that are QUITE interested in Aventine books. This tells me they should release one, regardless of whether or not that crew happens to grab me when I read Destiny - there's clearly a desire for it by a lot of people, even if I'm not one of them.

And just because you don't like the Aventine doesn't mean they're "taking one/two slots away from" anything at all; based on a few older series not getting published as often anymore (New Frontier, Gorkon, Stargazer, Lost Era, etc), my guess would be that despite Aventine we'll actually be getting MORE tv-show-based novels over the next two years than we have in a long time. And it's not because Aventine is taking slots away from them either; it's because interest, either from the author or readers, is waning a bit. Which is what you'd expect to happen in a universe this complex - stories come and go.

 

[Thrawn]

My point is that new characters *ARE* new stories.

I'm also not denying that. But perhaps the creators here should first look at what older characters don't work anymore, before inventing a whole new series instead of just replacing one character.

You mean, like Stargazer, The Lost Era, IKS Gorkon/Klingon Empire, and New Frontier, all of which are seeing very diminished or eliminated releases over the next couple years?

 

[Paris]

Also, we shouldn`t forget that some series come and go like Challenger and Stargazer. If Aventine books sell well, there will be more of them. If not, new ideas will be tried out.

I was a fan of both Stargazer and Challenger even though Challenger was only 2 books . Hopefully one day we'll get more of each of them, but until then, i'm all for Pocket trying new series and new ideas. Just think, if they didn't we would never have got Articles of the Federation or the upcoming A Singular Destiny.

 

[Ktrek]

I suppose I also have a problem with Ezri Dax as captain. I think David Mack did his best with her and the Aventine crew but to me it comes off a little forced and somewhat unbelievable. I am not so much opposed to the use of the Aventine ship and crew as secondary characters in other book series but I don't think she, or the ship, are strong enough to carry a series of their own. As I said in a previous post I think that Ezri and the Aventine were the weakest elements of the Destiny series, but having said that in no way diminishes how wonderful and fun Destiny is to read.

Good points have been raised by all and I appreciate everyone's input in this thread! Thanks!

Kevin

 

[Thrawn]

If you don't like the Aventine, that's another story; as I said, I personally don't like TOS much, and so I'm not too thrilled when we get a bunch of TOS on the release schedule. But that isn't what you said; you said that the editors were making a huge mistake even considering this. And on that, regardless of personal preference, you are 100% wrong. I hope that difference makes sense.

 

[Christopher]

I have read that Margaret Clark has said that an Aventine book (and possible series) is planned for 2010. Now I don't know about anyone else but I have read the Destiny series and although I enjoyed it the least enjoyable part to me was Ezri Dax and the Aventine. I have been a long long time collector of Star Trek books. I love them and I have enjoyed several of the book only series (Vanguard, Titan, New Frontier) but this is getting out of control in my opinion. To add another series onto the schedule means one, possibly two, more slots taken away from TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT. This to me is unacceptable.

What Margaret actually said was that the Aventine will "get" one or more novels in the 2010 metastory about the Typhon Pact. Since this series of books is a direct followup to the events of Destiny and A Singular Destiny, in which the Aventine was one of the main ships involved, it stands to reason that the same ship (or ships) might be involved in this metastory about the long-term aftermath of Destiny. Margaret didn't say anything about an ongoing Aventine series.

PS. I will be writing Simon and Schuster a personal letter about this too and other proposed directions they want to take.

You're welcome to, but you need to keep in mind that your tastes aren't necessarily representative of fandom as a whole. We're a business here, after all. And a business responds to the market. If a book doesn't sell as well as was hoped, as with, say, Ex Machina (boo hoo), then there's unlikely to be a sequel commissioned. But if a book sells really well, then sequels become much more likely. The fact that Pocket is doing more with the Aventine suggests that the audience as a whole must have responded strongly and positively to the Aventine in Destiny, and the publisher and editors have good reason to believe that people will want to see more. If the Aventine and Captain Dax were hugely unpopular, there wouldn't be more Aventine books in the works.

 

[JD]

I'm also looking forward to the Aventine book(s). I liked Ezri, and her crew in Destiny and I'm glad that we will be seeing more of them.
As for another series taking away spaces for other series, I won't have problem with it myself unless we get to a point where we have like 15 or 16 series. Baisically as long as we have enough room for at least one book in each series in 12 months, I will be perfectly happy.

 

[Ktrek]

Chris - How can they judge public response to the Aventine outside of sales of the Destiny series? And sales of it does not equate to approval of Aventine but more likely the gaining popularity of David Mack.

It is a shame that Ex Machina did not do well as that is probably one of my most favorite TOS books in recent memory.

Kevin

 

[The Grim Ghost]

When did Ezri Daz become one of Trek's major characters? She is a already one of the main characters in DS9, isn't that enough?

Even worse, now we know that nothing can happen to her in the DS9 books since she is still around for Destiny.

The idea of her being a major player in two different series..why? There are so many more interesting characters out there.

 

[Christopher]

Chris - How can they judge public response to the Aventine outside of sales of the Destiny series?

I'm not qualified to answer that question, but I gather from people who are qualified that they can and have done so. They do this kind of thing for a living, and have done it for many decades, so it stands to reason that they have ways of figuring these things out.

 

[William Leisner]

The fact that Pocket is doing more with the Aventine suggests that the audience as a whole must have responded strongly and positively to the Aventine in Destiny, and the publisher and editors have good reason to believe that people will want to see more. If the Aventine and Captain Dax were hugely unpopular, there wouldn't be more Aventine books in the works.

That's a bit of a broad blanket statement, that I'm not sure really applies in this particular case.

Prefacing this by saying I am not privy to Margaret's plans for the post-Destiny metastory beyond ASD and LTP... but the Aventine and the Enterprise are, at this point, two of the most prominent Starfleet ships left in Federation space. It simply makes sense that both those ships are going to be around during the post-war period and playing important roles. I'm not sure the Aventine's popularity with fandom, or lack thereof, is as key a factor in this particular case. IMHO.

 

[Claudia]

My point is that new characters *ARE* new stories.

I'm also not denying that. But perhaps the creators here should first look at what older characters don't work anymore, before inventing a whole new series instead of just replacing one character.

You mean, like Stargazer, The Lost Era, IKS Gorkon/Klingon Empire, and New Frontier, all of which are seeing very diminished or eliminated releases over the next couple years?

I don't quite get your point with your post. Would you please elaborate?

LE is a special case as that these books are only a series concept-wise, i.e. they're filling the gap between TOS and TNG, that's their common denominator - otherwise they are 7 stand-alone(ish) novels.

NF is the "baby" of one author who almost exclusively concentrated on that series for a decade now. There hasn't been a Stargazer or a Challenger book in years, so I assume the respective authors lost interest and there won't be other releases here.

But actually, unwittingly you're quite describing the problem I'm wary of. Even now series are and have been announced that either never become a series at all, or are later denied as a series - and others just die a secret and slow death. Granted, that's the way it goes in publishing I suppose - but then again, how about just announcing *one* book and see how that goes, instead of an entire series that, of course, would have to be the focus at least for a time to send it off properly.

It's not that I have a particular problem with Aventine - actually, I don't care about it in particular at all. Just that it's not a new concept (except for some characters and that propulsion system). It doesn't raise my interest at all - and I guess neither would any other ship-based story-line.

Then again, as Christopher said, this all might be much ado about nothing after all - it makes sense to have the Aventine appear in any immediate post-Destiny clean-up books... And I'm not opposed to that at all as long as it doesn't branch of to its own series, apart from post-Destiny.

 

[Marie1]

At first glance, I too don't like the Aventine idea because I'd rather books of the DS9R advance from where they are going now, and Dax irritates me on many levels. Well, not so much Dax as Ezri. And in the Aventine books, I have more problems with Bowers than I did before. But its not really up to me, TPTB will try it, and if it doesn't work, they'll drop it. After what happened in Destiny, they can't really leave Dax hanging there, and us wondering whatever happened to the ship either-not one with a drive like that. If I don't like them I won't read them. The same as anything else. For that matter, maybe something really terrible will come of the DS9R and I'll have to placate myself reading something else... -especially if they go explore the GQ, I guess I'd have to ignore Ezri and read Aventine.

But this isn't for another year... so no sweat.

 

[Thrawn]

I'm also not denying that. But perhaps the creators here should first look at what older characters don't work anymore, before inventing a whole new series instead of just replacing one character.

You mean, like Stargazer, The Lost Era, IKS Gorkon/Klingon Empire, and New Frontier, all of which are seeing very diminished or eliminated releases over the next couple years?

I don't quite get your point with your post. Would you please elaborate?

LE is a special case as that these books are only a series concept-wise, i.e. they're filling the gap between TOS and TNG, that's their common denominator - otherwise they are 7 stand-alone(ish) novels.

NF is the "baby" of one author who almost exclusively concentrated on that series for a decade now. There hasn't been a Stargazer or a Challenger book in years, so I assume the respective authors lost interest and there won't be other releases here.

But actually, unwittingly you're quite describing the problem I'm wary of. Even now series are and have been announced that either never become a series at all, or are later denied as a series - and others just die a secret and slow death. Granted, that's the way it goes in publishing I suppose - but then again, how about just announcing *one* book and see how that goes, instead of an entire series that, of course, would have to be the focus at least for a time to send it off properly.

It's not that I have a particular problem with Aventine - actually, I don't care about it in particular at all. Just that it's not a new concept (except for some characters and that propulsion system). It doesn't raise my interest at all - and I guess neither would any other ship-based story-line.

Then again, as Christopher said, this all might be much ado about nothing after all - it makes sense to have the Aventine appear in any immediate post-Destiny clean-up books... And I'm not opposed to that at all as long as it doesn't branch of to its own series, apart from post-Destiny.

My point was nothing more than the fact that there have always been a bunch of other books that have "taken slots away" from the more major series, and Aventine won't change that appreciably in either direction, even if it becomes an ongoing series. Series fade in and out, it's what they do. Some of those slots in the past were filled with the series I listed; in the future, they won't be. Aventine will be there, Vanguard will be there, etc. I'm glad there's such variety in the book line.

The fact that Aventine in particular doesn't raise your interest is entirely another discussion, and one I won't argue as I still haven't read the books in question.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Wow.

Talk about getting in before the rush.

 

[MichaelS]

Why not create a planet-based series for example? I'd say the post-Destiny universe features quite a few known planets that offer interesting stories.

I know I would love to read that; I'm not so sure about such a series' appeal to the general fan. You'd have to have a familiar character at the centre, I suppose, to generate a large enough interest to warrant such an experiment.

 

[KRAD]

I think KRAD had a list at some point of the proportions of Trek books released over the past few years, and I'm pretty sure almost a quarter were books that didn't fit into any particular ongoing series / crossovers / standalones / etc. And if that didn't bother you, I fail to see how one Aventine novel will.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=2236995#post2236995

Thanks for that, LS -- I really didn't wanna make another list.

For example, Sonek Pran from the coming “A Singular Destiny” sounds very promising indeed and although it is planned as a one-shot, who says that plans can`t change if the book is very successful?

Yeah, but I wouldn't count on that. (The book being successful, that is. Why start now? )

Chris - How can they judge public response to the Aventine outside of sales of the Destiny series? And sales of it does not equate to approval of Aventine but more likely the gaining popularity of David Mack.

Uh, no. All respect to Dave -- and everyone else -- but with media tie-ins, the name on the cover has very little (read: almost no) relationship to sales.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

^ Me too! Obviously I'm not a Dax fan. What bugs me about this is that there are just so many fascinating characters in the DS9 books and the one character that I can't stand seems to be the one that the writers/editors have chosen to focus on and give a lot of attention to. It isn't a huge deal and of course nobody is going to make me buy them..I just wish one of the other (and in my mind superior and far more interesting) characters from ds9 could have been given all of this attention.

 

[KRAD]

What bugs me about this is that there are just so many fascinating characters in the DS9 books and the one character that I can't stand seems to be the one that the writers/editors have chosen to focus on and give a lot of attention to. It isn't a huge deal and of course nobody is going to make me buy them..I just wish one of the other (and in my mind superior and far more interesting) characters from ds9 could have been given all of this attention.

Huh? Plenty of characters from DS9 have gotten significant attention. Dax is simply the one that Marco, Dave, and Margaret decided was the one whose fate four years out from the DS9 novels was the one that would be revealed in Destiny so that DS9 could be represented in Destiny without screwing with the storytelling of the DS9 books.