Faceman Reads Star Trek Books

I think one of the few Star Trek books I really liked was an early DS9 novel called "Fallen Heroes."

The Left Hand of Destiny Book 2 (DS9) 2375

Finished LHOD book 2. Really liked it. Maybe because it was so different? It was all about Klingons but not hit over your head tropes of WARRIOR! HONOR! DEATH! It was more of a legend told with Klingons.

The Lives of Dax (DS9) 2375

Read the framing story for Lives of Dax but not interested in the rest of the book. It was fine...

I, Q (TNG) 2375 Teaser

Next up...maybe, I,Q...

From wikipedia:

Wait, what? Fuck this. Didn't I just review that story when it was called "Q Continuum"? No.

Oh but Peter David (below) helped John De Lancie write it...



oh but this is the fat fuck who wrote Imzadi II: Triangle, which I also reviewed.

Decision to skip it coming soon...

I, Q (TNG) 2375

I read a bit and realized that I don't like Q when the story is about Q. His VOY appearances were proof of that. And these Q books are about Q.

How entertaining can an omnipotent being be? They have to abandon that fact just to create drama. And it's a more omnipotent being that comes into play. Watching gods throw shit at each other is boring.

Moving on.

Gemworld Books 1 and 2 (TNG) 2375

Gemworld books one and two. Another money grab by pocket books. Does the audience want two book about

• A world that is made out of crystals and has no gravity
• Melora Pazlar from the DS9 episode "melora"
• Rey Barclay infatuation with Pazlar

I don't think it does. Plus reg shouldn't be on the enterprise at the time this novel takes place. Not done with it yet but I miss the last batch of stories I read that were properly serialized and had more political intrigue. This book is alien forehead of the week quality.

Q isn't supposed to be a full character, he's a device to snark at how boring TNG was.
He was the Roman chorus.
That's why he made exactly one appearance on Ds9, and basically realized he wasn't needed, DS9 was cool.

Me too
http://www.inpayne.com/trekfanfic/wolfx.html

Yes. He is not the plot. He is the commenter to liven up the gas giant exploration of the week.

And in JJTrek 4 will be played by Patrick Stewart.

Jeez, I missed this completely!

I've never been signed for a duology or a trilogy, so I don't know what the deal is with those, though I suspect it's a mutual agreement between the editors and those writers who can deliver on tight deadlines and pitch a story arc that can fill two or more volumes.

What I can say is that industry standard (across publishers and genres) defines a novel as "between 75,000-100,000 words." That's everything from a skinny little romance to a Michener-sized tome. Obviously you can go over, but <75,000 is redefined as a "novella," and does not fulfill the terms of the contract.

I tend to run around 100K just naturally. The only time I was asked to go to 125K was for Strangers from the Sky. As these were to be a new (for the 1980s) "Giant" concept, with a higher cover price, they were expected to be substantial.

I have to say what killed my momentum on this project were the duologies. Not only were they too long, they were bad stories. Maybe the duology causes them to be bad. But finish up one bad book only to be faced with a second bad book in order to finish the story? That's quite a demotivator (which I am told is not a real word).

If you go into a bookstore you can pull any novel off the shelf, open it to the start of chapter 1 and use a pen to write "Meanwhile, on the Holodeck..." and then put it on the shelf with the Star Trek books to confuse people.

The DS9 relaunch books were pretty good - Left Hand of Destiny, Unity, and ... pretty sure there was another I'd read. But can't remember off the top of my head. Dayton Ward and David Mack wrote a series about a space station on the edge of the Klingon border that takes place between the TOS pilot and the first episode of TOS with Kirk and crew. Read the first one. It was interesting. Haven't gotten back to them tho.

Immortal Coil is a good look at Data and artificial life in general. The recent "sequel" set post-Nemesis (Cold Equations) is also very good but does kind need you to have followed some of the developments in the other novels (crew relationships, the astropolitical situation, etc) to get the most out of it. The former is out of print IIRC but e-versions are available.

It seemed to me that the longer the multi novel stories were the worse and worse they got overall.

I remember the "New Earth" series.

Crapper.

Strangers from the Sky wasn't bad.

IIRC I gave it a good review on Amazon.

Or maybe that was another Trek novel.

E versions are always available

Truly a lawyer thou art.

Time to start this thing back up!

Vanguard series. Arguably the best that Star Trek fiction has to offer.

Finally in front of a computer. Time to update.

A Stitch In Time (DS9) 2376

Pretty good read. Garak's back story mixed with his future plans on Cardassia. Almost makes you sympathize with the Cardassians for their plight. I thought his fall from grace (getting caught assassinating someone he was assigned to assassinate anyway). He was sent to Terok Nor and then left there when the pull out occurred overnight. I was hoping for a bit more there. Otherwise, very good.

Avatar 1 and 2 (DS9) 2376

These are the first two books of the DS9 relaunch, officially. They set up new characters but lack a cohesive story. Because of this, it suffers from duology padding. I get why they wanted it to act as a "pilot" episode but to split it into two books was a poor choice and a money grab. The books introduce new members of DS9, and we meet a Jem'Hadar who says he's good but turns out bad and then we meet one who is good. And they stuck in Ro, a 100 year old human commander, an andorian, and countless others. The book suffers from bloat but does set up some good stuff going forward.

Abyss (Section 31) (DS9) 2376

Although more of a stand-alone in the relaunch, this features Bashir being sent on a section 31 mission to capture a genetically enhanced individual building new Jem'Hadar in the badlands. It's a predictable read that adds little to the relaunch but if you're going to make a Section 31 miniseries, you have to make one with Bashir.

Gateways Crisis: Doors Into Chaos (TNG) 2376

This is part of a seven book money grab that involved six stories with six different crews and a seventh book of short stories tying up each of the six previous books. For instance, book 4 (this book) involved TNG's crew who are investigating iconian gateways cropping up everywhere. While there is a good mystery, the book is wasted in the first third following the TNG crew gathering up a fleet to engage the aliens who want to sell the technology (claiming to be Iconians). They gather something like 30 ships which is pathetic since they tapped every alpha quadrant power and all the powers had serious concerns about the gateways causing havoc. The rest of the book is better, but interspersed are pages upon pages of random aliens meeting other random aliens through the gateways to negative results. None of those side stories have any bearing on the actual plot. Then the story ends with Picard going through a gateway to see "what lays beyond"…To be continued. WTF.

Gateways Crisis: Demons of Air and Darkness (DS9) 2376

This is the DS9 entry, and follows the relaunch. You can tell the author did a good job continuing the character story from Avatar and Abyss and didn't just waste this book. Kira has long interactions with the new Jem'Hadar resident while trying to evacuate a colony ravaged by the gateways. Quark helps negotiate the purchase of the gateway technology with Ro (who he has a crush on) and meets Trier, a character in the later novels. Nog and the andorian, Shar, bond. DS9 sets up a new gamma quadrant relay station for their upcoming missions. We meet Shar's mom who is a powerful federation councilmember and is angry with Shar for shirking his obligations to Andor. The DS9 crew evacuate a threatened world with the help of newcomer Gul Macet. Taranatar battles with a Hirogen on the other side of a gateway and then Kira walks through a gateway…To be continued.

Gateways What Lays Beyond (All) 2376

The book of short stories has Picard figure out how to shut down the gateways permanently while walking around ancient ruins. Kira goes back in time and finds the courage she needs to lead DS9 despite mounting personal adversity. The end.

Mission Gamma 1 Twilight (DS9) 2376

Super long book first setting up the character plots and the mission to explore the GQ for three months. About a third in, they are underway to the GQ, with Ezri as first officer, ancient commander Vaughn as CO, and Bashir, Nog, and Shar along for the ride too. This leaves Kira on the station with Taranatar, Quark, and Ro, along with Shar's mom and three "bond mates" (a four gendered species). Kira must deal with pending admission to the Federation while the Defiant encounters some weird anomaly sending shock waves through the galaxy. The shockwaves blow up a moon at a first contact sight and Defiant agrees to help the threatened aliens. Vaughn mends his relationship with his daughter, the flight officer Prynn, in the process.

Mission Gamma 2 This Gray Spirit (DS9) 2376

The next book has Defiant meeting an amphibious species with a caste system. Ezri has the balls to assume she negotiate an end to the caste system (she can't) while some of the aliens work to feed information to their enemies in order for a chance to procreate (banned for the lower caste). The Cardasian urge Bajor to make peace but it seems Shakaar isn't very interested in peace.

Mission Gamma 3 Cathedral (DS9) 2376

Dax, Bashir, and Nog, go through a rift in space and come back out rejecting their genetic enhancements - Bashir's Kahn-ness, Nog's fake leg, and Dax's symbiont. They must negotiate their way back to the floating cathedral to be made whole. Dax's vision within alludes to a Trill conspiracy back home. While talks have stalled between Bajor and Cardassia, an up and coming dick of a Vedek moves for peace on his own with Macet and meets Garak briefly. One of Shar's bondmates kills herself because she's nuts and the other two keep her body in Shar's quarters on DS9 until he returns from the GQ months away. On DS9, cardassia returns four orbs in a peace gesture. As the admission papers to the Federation are about to be signed, a Trill kills Shakaar and beams out

Mission Gamma 4 Lesser Evil (DS9) 2376

On Defiant, Vaughn finds his dead wife who his daughter had blamed him for killing. In fact she's now a comatose Borg. (The Borg on DS9! WTF.) Vaughn tries to bring her back to life but ends of putting her down because she's too far gone. Which Prynn is mad about. Kira and Ro search for the Trill, who Ro does find and begins interrogating. Shakaar had been possessed by the parasites from TNG's conspiracy who Trills know quite a bit about. Kira infiltrates a Federation starship under control of a parasite on its course to Trill which plans to fire on Trill. She succeeds. When Defiant reaches the wormhole they notice a star system has been moved three light years closer to the wormhole. Weyoun contacts them and transports Jake, Opaka, and someone else to Defiant while Defiant drops off a lost Founder. This was the weakest of the four Mission Gamma's because it lazily ended the Prynn's mom story. That story seemed shoehorned in. There was no need to kill the drone.

Updated rankings at the top of the thread

I was hoping they'd follow up the Vaughn/Prynn story a while later, when Voyager contacts Starfleet and tells them that it's actually pretty easy to bring back fully assimilated Borg drones. That would have been a real kick in the teeth.

I assumed he stunned the mom until two chapters later when it's revealed he set it to kill. With stasis technology and their imminent return to DS9 I saw that as unnecessary.

Rising Son (DS9) 2376

At times compelling and at times, I just don't give that big of a fuck about Jake Sisko's adventures around the Gamma Quadrant, Rising Son takes place simultaneous with the Mission Gamma series of novels. What to say...I read it, skimmed some, appreciated the relationship between Jake and the pirate ship's captain, but also missed the relevance to the continuation story. You read four books leading up to something...big?...and then you have to wade through this. It felt like a bit of a chore to get back to the main story. Which is...

Unity (DS9) 2376

Mission Gamma is over, Bajor is in a crisis due to the parasites from Conspiracy, and it is questionable if Bajor enters the Federation now. Naturally, they do, Ben Sisko returns from the wormhole while Kira uses the orbs to send the queen parasite into the wormhole. Somewhat anticlimactic to the whole thing. The fall out from the parasite crisis - the Trill relation - is far more interesting which leads to.

Worlds of DS9 Volume 1 (DS9) 2376

This is some bizarre shit. A three volume anthology, each with two books in it focusing on a DS9 world, published out of chronological order. And the publisher admits it in Volume 3 and says there's a reason - but there's not.

Volume 1 focuses on Andor and Cardassia, both well told stories. Andor focuses on Shar going to his "wife's" funeral while with Prynn who he dumps at the end to hook up again with his other two remaining bondmates and a third who also was without a bond. You really get a good feel for Andorian society in this book. Same with Cardassia, which focuses on the O'Brien's and Garak who are working to rebuild the barren wastelands left behind during the Dominion withdrawal. The author had written for Garak and Cardassians and it's really well done.

Worlds of DS9 Volume 2 (DS9) 2376

Taking place before the first book, this one focuses on Trill and Bajor. On Trill, Dax and Bashir break up because it was creepy to begin with and they finally realized it. It portrays Bashir as a dick the whole time, though, as if to justify the break up. But he's not really that much of a dick so it was a bit out of character. It was a thread that build through the entire relaunch series. The conspiracy stuff on Trill is good - an ancient relation to the parasites - technically they created them years ago on another planet and when they got out of control, the rest of the Trill destroyed most of them. The revenge tale will have implications, I assume, as 90% of the symbiots were killed in an attack during the book.

Bajor was almost game of thrones style writing, with each chapter focusing on the character it was about and told very nonlinearly. There's a not at the front that tells you which days each random chapter takes place on. That was too burdensome to pay attention to and was probably a bad idea except when you realize the first half of the book would have been Jake meeting Rena (his future wife) and the last half of the book taking place in one day and not relating to the Jake plot. Otherwise, it was good. Bit of a cliffhanger. There was a unidentified bad guy in the book that gets away. I assume we'll get back to that, but he/she was obsessed with the wormhole and possible other exits.

Only about a quarter through the last novel, which chronologically is also last. That one focuses on Feringinar and the Dominion and, like most Ferengi episodes, the book is a bit tough to get through so far.

Rankings updated in post 2.

Not to hijack your thread, but I just read The Autobiography of James T. Kirk and found it quite compelling, even if it rather quickly glosses over everything after the first five year mission.

Hijack away!

Where did we leave off…


World of DS9 Volume 3 (DS9) 2376

Like I said the first half is a Feringi episode and boy is it that. The good and the bad and it was followed up by a dark dreary Odo episode. The last part focused on the Dominion - Odo on the founder's planet. Weyoun 9 on Odo's starship. Tarantar with Kira going to visit the female changeling in her prison. The great link cannot reproduce and the beast that can help them is, at the end, found dead near a nova star, killed by the Ascendants, a race that is in a holy war with worshipers of the wormhole aliens in the GQ. Meanwhile Taranatar is acting super strange and after a less than uplifting visit with the female changeling, imprisoned for life, he goes back to DS9, destroys his quarters, and seriously injures Ro and stabs Kira through her heart. The end. To be continued. Seriously


Warpath (DS9) 2376-2377

Warpath is a plot less adventure wherein the DS9 crew pursues Taranatar as he escapes on a runabout, kills a bunch of people, and then almost kills Vaughn and Prynn before transporting to the alternate universe. We meet the mirror Iliana Ghemor, the Cardassian that on our side was supposed to take Kira's place in the resistance as a spy, but disappeared instead. Weakest part is when they see that Tarantar had downloaded a ton of information in his quarters and some of it was on the mirror universe and the city on Bajor that was destroyed in Worlds Volume 2. They make the connection/leap that the intendant is controlling him. And that's it…

Fearful Symmetry (DS9) 2377

Kira survives. Fake heart. First half of the book follows DS9's investigation into Ghemor and Taranatar. At the end of the first half, Kira an Vaughn transport to the mirror universe to track down this side's Ghemor who looks like Kira still. The second half shows this side's Ghemor's story since 20 years earlier. Why she joined the Order. How she got imprisoned by Dukat for 15 years simply so he could be a dick and rape her every now and then. How she got out of prison when the Dominion turned on the Cardassians. How she took control of Taranatar and then escaped to the mirror universe…waste of time…

The Soul Key (DS9) 2377

This basically tells what happens when all the parties converge in the mirror universe. That's right, these three books have been a giant mirror universe fangasm that is pretty dull. In the end, mirror universe's Ghemor is the emissary and opens the wormhole. Our side's Ghemor is the emissary of the Ascendants. And everyone else goes home. Can't remember what happened to Taranatar to be honest. Maybe he went home too.

Before I go on, I read a bit about the relaunch. The Soul Key takes place in early 2377 (the relaunch starts in April 2376, four months after the end of DS9). But the book was published in 2009 by which time TNG and VOY and Titan (Riker's crew post-Nemeshit) had all started relaunches. But TNG's relaunch starts in 2380 (published 2007), VOY in 2378 (published 2003), and TTN in 2380 (published 2005). So by 2009, DS9 is stuck in the past. The next time you see DS9ers will be years later meaning that the cliffhanger regarding Ghemor and the Ascendants will just sit there. For years. Clearly something happened but what? This isn't the worst thing in the world. This mirror universe crap was pretty dull. If only something could redeem it…

The Never Ending Sacrifice (DS9) 2370-2378

Read this one. It follows Rugal Pa'dar, the Cardassian teen from the season 2 episode Cardassians who lived on Bajor but Sisko sent home to live with his Cardassian dad who didn't know he was alive. The book is dense and follows Rugal from then until 2378. He witnesses the fall of the Central Command to be replaced by an ineffective and undemocratic citizen's council. He's an outsider the whole time. Then the Dominion come in and Dukat drafts him to serve in the military. Rugal does it so that reprisals do not come down on his Cardassian father who he generally does not like as he was ripped away from his adoptive Bajoran parents. He fights in the war, becomes estranged from his love, and then when the Dominion turns on them in the end he looks for her for two years before settling in the DMZ where he is not exactly welcome. He takes in a human child who has suffered like he had and eventually visits Cardassia again. It ends on a happy note in the middle of a destroyed civilization. You could strip away the DS9 from this book and would still have a solid novel. DS9 is in it for about ten pages (beginning and then during the taking during season 6). DS9 characters also are in for ten pages (mentions at the beginning, O'Brien and Garak toward the end, Dukat occassionally.) This was the same author who wrote Hollow Men and the Lotus Flower, both tales of Cardassian civilization.

And that's all of DS9 for now. Next up…shudder…Voyager relaunch which begins in 2378.

It's a Greek chorus, BTW

But basically, this

Also @Faceman, have you come across the TNG Mirror Universe books by chance? I'm too lazy to look that up right now for the title, but after watching Enterprise's MU episodes a couple nights ago, I realized what a waste it was that this squeaky clean Boy Scout crew of Picard's never got that treatment on screen (the closest was maybe "Yesterday's Enterprise," which was more a vehicle to help Denise Crosby get paid when her jump to Hollywood failed like Eddie Murphy's singing career).

Apparently there is a sequel to the goings on in the MU after Soul Key. Rise Like Lions.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Rise_Like_Lions

Picard is on the cover so I assume he is in it.

In fact the MU novel chronology is here. It's short story focused to get to all the regular universe characters.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Mirror_Universe

And no I won't be spending more time in the MU unless forced to by my project.

To me the Mirror Universe gets worse and worse the more often it is featured in Star Trek. Part of it was the late Michael Pillers criminal decision on DS9 to have the contrast between the prime universe and mirror universe to be “shades of gray instead of a stark good and evil”.

To me, ironically the best treatment of the Mirror Universe was in the fan episode of Star Trek Continues “Fairest of Them All” which shows what happens after Mirror Kirk returns to the Mirror Universe.


It features one of the creepiest moments in Star Trek when Mirror McCoy is giving a dangerous drug to a crewman to force him to tell the truth. He says to Kirk

“I’ve never given this high a dosage before” and for a moment you think the compassionate McCoy we’ve all known and loved is shining through.

Then he has a subtle but creepy smirk as he says
“Wonder what it will do?”

Yeah I agree. Instead of opposites the DS9ers were just in random positions. Kira was evil yes but everyone else was in a rebellion...except the Cardassians. They were evil on both sides.