OP wants to read another Deep Space Nine Novel

I think I can fiiiiinally say in no uncertain terms there will never be a DS9 movie. It’s been 10 years, I think that ship has sailed. :frowning:

Having just finished going through the syndiaction of DS9 on Space (for the 6th time or so), I decided to get an e-book copy of Andrew Robinson’s A Stitch in Time. Robinson, who played Elim Garak, offers a backstory to his character, and an epilogue as to what happened on a war ravaged Cardassia.

Last summer I read every Sherlock Holmes mystery. This summer was supposed to be Jules Verne, but I gave up on the Lost Island when someone (partly) ruined the ending for me…:frowning:

Anyway, I thought Stitch in Time was a surprisingly enjoyable read. Having never read any Star Trek extended universe, I was expecting something that read like the service manual to a hadrion collider, and was pleasantly surprised (ETA: that it wasn’t! haha). I remember reading a few Star Wars extended universe novels when I was in elementary school, but I can barely remember the plots, ledalone whether they were good or not.

Can anyone recommend a book set in the DS9 universe for me? Preferably storylines involving the characters from the show, not one where the focal point are these dozen new characters the author created that I’ve never had any vested interest in. That’s not a dealbreaker, it just seems that if I’m going to read a book about a TV show, it may as well focus on the TV characters I can actually put a face and voice behind. My imagination is about on par with my attention span…:frowning:

Thanks in advance!

DS9 did not have a very long novel series during its run and since the end of the show has gone into a “relaunch” featuring many new characters who were never seen on the show. So while the relaunch is good, it’s probably not what you’re looking for.

“The Siege” by Peter David is great but was written before the show aired so the characterizations are weird. It’s about a serial killer on the station who has a connection to Odo.

“Fallen Heroes” by Daffyd Ab Hugh is another good one. Very action packed. Angry aliens come through the wormhole and start kicking ass.

Those ones are the best that I can recall. The other good ones are either relaunch novels or event novels that don’t focus on the main cast (like The Left Hand of Destiny- a post-finale Martok duology).

What’s a relaunch?

antonio, the relaunch is the DS9 novel series set after the last ep of the show. It’s a relaunch because most of the characters are new, the set of characters from the show no longer being on the station, mostly.

The problem with DS9 novels is that the series pretty much wrapped up just about everything quite neatly, not leaving a lot of loose ends to tie into an extension novel. That’s probably why the relaunch novels have so many new characters…the old ones were all tied up in a neat bow at the end of the show.

Here are some DS9 novels that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, all featuring original characters:

*The 34th Rule *by Armin Shimerman and David R. George III
*Time’s Enemy *by L.A. Graf (this is one of four novels that span the TV series, but it stands alone)
*Dark Passions *by Susan Wright (this is a two-volume series set in the Mirror Universe, and draws from all of the TV shows, but has a large presence of DS9 characters)

Have fun!

Ok, I’m warming up to the idea of these so called “relaunch” titles. The more I think about it, I’m equally excited by the setting and the context as I am by the individual characters. I’ll puruse the suggestions made here!

jayjay, I thought there were plenty of loose ends. Like “A Stitch in Time” goes through, Cardassia was basically bombed into oblivion. As well, losing the first ever war in their 10,000 year history might make the Dominion an equally unstable place to be (though I guess they still have an enormous Gamma quadrant army that the wormhole aliens just forbade).

Oh, and I have to believe “falling into the pits of hell” as Sisko did is the least permanent way to die in Star Trek. He doesn’t even need to reincarnate inside of McCoy, I figured he was just going to be a corporeal being travelling through non-linear time with his prophet buddies!

At any rate, I’m going to give it the old college try, and see if I can stomach it or not!

The relaunch novels are serialized, so if you read those you’ll want to do them in order. Here is the list. You can safely ignore the Gateways stuff which is a multi-series crossover and not worth it.

The Lives of Dax is not technically part of the relaunch but is good nonetheless, so read that as well.

The rest of it you can read in order. IMHO, they get better later on. The Mission Gamma books are kinda meh, Rising Son is terrible (it stars DS9’s least interesting character, guess who) but the ones after that, starting with Left Hand of Destiny are very good.

Whatever you do, avoid reading the epically horrible three-volume Millennium at all costs. I wanted to throw it across the room, but that would have broken my Nook.

Yikes! Thanks for the warning.

I bought Avatar, Part one. I’ll let you all know how that goes. Thanks everyone for the help! :slight_smile:

Ok, so I’m 45% of the way into “Avatar,” according to my kobo. And I gotta say, I’m not really impressed.

Every other paragraph begins with a line of Italics, describing a character’s thoughts in painful details.

"If only my butt didn’t itch, then I could concentrate on these forward deflecters. He punched in some buttons to do some thing.

Yes! That thing I thought about doing worked! He got up and grabbed a can of beer from the replimat."

I’m trying desperately to give this a chance, but this trope in particular is really souring me on the experience. Having not really read any Star Trek extended universe books before, is piss poor writing quality something I can come to expect from the rest of these books, as well? :eek:

Second, the recommendation for “Fallen Heroes” - I’ve often wondered about one aspect of the book that appears to be the remnant of a dropped plotline ( moderately significant spoiler) In the future scenes, there is some indication that Odo’s apparent disappearance led to suspicions that he was allied with the attackers, but in the past scenes, nothing like this happens

Also recommend the Millennium trilogy by Reeves-Stevens - it crosses over TNG with DS9 in an apocalyptic time-travel prophecy kind of thing.

I don’t know about the Millennium books… the OP described not wanting to read anything overly technical and I recall the Millennium books having large sections devoted to minutia only the hardest of hardcore Trekkies would ever care about. Like the two full pages devoted to explaining the mechanisms by which stardates work, for example (The real world explanation is the best- they’re arbitrary and sometimes contradictory.). Also, you have to be in the mood for that kind of story- the sudden betrayals, the unstoppable bad guys, Mexican standoffs, etc. If you like the twisty-turny plots of 24, you’ll love the work of J+G R-S. If not, they might put you off DS9 books altogether. (Same for the first hardcover, Warped. I thought it was a very creepy and effective story. Most fans actively disliked it.)

I found the S.D. Perry novels of the relaunch (Avatar I and II, Rising Son, Unity) weren’t the best and I think it is indeed the writing style. And the ongoing Kira plot (religious-themed, I won’t spoil it further) is annoying. Never-ending annoying. Same with Elias Vaughn and his angsty daughter, a plot which is carried through far too many books. I also didn’t like the Bashir and Ezri plot but Ezri is redeemed fully in the Destiny trilogy, which I would also highly recommend. Don’t worry too much about pre-requisites as the novel continuity has become incredibly intricate since Trek went off the air. This way you don’t end up saying “Ok, I want to read Destiny, so I have to read the TNG relaunch… but the TNG relaunch is also tied in with the e-book format SCE stories… and that goes back to the Vanguard series… and I can’t miss The Lost Era because that establishes characters that show up in TNG and DS9 novels… and then I’ve got to read Articles of the Federation but if I read that I’ll need to read the TNG “A Time To…” series, which is another nine books and so on.”

However, if you’re going to do the DS9 relaunch, don’t skip the Gateways book “Demons of Air and Darkness”. True, there are a whole bunch of novels in that series and you might feel you’re missing out by not reading the whole thing. That is precisely what the marketing department at Pocket Books would like you to feel. But the story is a standalone by one of Trek Lit’s best (Keith R.A. DeCandido, aka KRAD) and it has an awesome fight in it, which would be spoiled just by telling you who takes part.

The same applies to the Section 31 novel. Each of the stories were standalones with the over-arching theme being Section 31. But the DS9 novel was an excellent Bashir story and shouldn’t be missed.

I don’t mind technical. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s not a deal breaker. No, the deal breaker I described is when you take this universe I’ve come to love on the small screen, add in ensign Whogivesafuck, and make him central to all of your plots and story twists. If you wanted to create your own sub-par characters, why did you need a Star Trek backdrop for it? Laziness?

And I’m glad I’m not the only one with issues surrounding Perry’s writing. This reads like a creative writing project out of the learning annex, and it’s annoying. You don’t need to spell out for me in italics what every character is thinking. Part of the fun is leaving something for me to decipher myself! </rant>

Anyways, back to “Avatar” I go. :slight_smile:

Ah, in that case avoid a couple of Diane Carey TOS novels, specifically “Dreadnought!” and “Battlestations!” These can accurately be retitled “The Adventures of Ensign Mary Sue.” But there’s not much of this in modern Trek; the editors are well aware of when a character is getting too Mary Sue and they ensure to add some epic fail from time to time. The latest Vanguard book (TOS era but all new characters, a very good story from start to finish and much more hardcore than regular Trek) had a plot in which the hero characters just failed over and over again and had to be rescued by reinforcements (who were unable to complete the original mission). I won’t spoil it from there but I can tell you the author David Mack is known as Mack the Knife for a good reason…

But as for new characters to modern TrekLit, I don’t find most of them superfluous. Vaughn, T’Prynn and Christine Vale (TNG) are all good characters without being too good. They have plenty of conflicts and problems and they fall flat on their faces enough to make it compelling.

Hmmm. It’s been a long time but I recall Valhalla and Saratoga as being pretty good. The Siege too, but as said the characterization is a little odd.

I would highly recommend Day of the Vipers by James Swallow. It is a prequel that covers the Cardassian take over of Bajor. I was expecting Independence Day and got something a great deal better and more interesting (Think V)

I don’t recall them being overly technical, but it’s been a while; I just liked the twisty time-travel plot aspects.

Well, I finished the Avatar duology. It got better as it went along. I’m going to skip the section 31 books and move one to the next one in this narrative strain, see if another author’s spin will make the books more readable.

The characters introduced were great, the story line was acceptable (I didn’t mind Kira’s religious reflections as much as some), but I thought the writing style of the author was piss poor. I’m hoping the rest of them will be as promising!

The Section 31 novel Abyss picks up where Avatar left off so I’d recommend it. The other Section 31 stories (TOS, TNG and VOY) are standalones and have no impact on this one’s plot. Plus, Abyss is a great Bashir story and sets something up that gets paid off way later in the series.

Cool! I actually realized my mistake after I had posted, and that was the next ebook I bought. Thanks! :slight_smile:

Abyss was a good read, but I’m curious to solider on and see what this payoff is later on in the series!

Oh, and whoever wrote this book was a lot better than the one writing “Avatar.” The fact that I didn’t notice any obnoxious overuse of italics pleased me greatly. :slight_smile: