Another vote here for the ST books written by Diane Duane or Peter David.
PD also wrote a TNG I liked called A Rock and A Hard Place.
Adding “The Final Reflection” by the aforementioned John Ford. Excellent.
“Dreadnought”, “Battlestations”, and “The Great Starship Race” by Diane Carey. (“Battlestations” is a continuation of “Dreadnought”)
Tenthing the “X-Wing” series.
Eleventhing the X-Wing books. They are so damn good because they introduce, breathe life into, and even kill brand new, interesting characters. And they answer a lot of questions about what happens to the Empire and how the New Republic comes to be.
Anything by Zhan. Anything.
I, Jedi, is about my all-time favorite SW character, and is amazing in all ways. First book I ever liked that was written in the first person.
Shadows of the Empire, the first SW novel that wasn’t actually about the films themselves, is a masterpiece.
I’m rather enjoying the New Jedi Order books. They’re kind of depressing, but the neat theings the characters are doing makes up for it. And you gotta love to hate the bad guys.
As for StarTrak … I really don’t care for them at all. However, I hear Imzadi is highly praised.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t disagree with you more stringently if you had told me that the Scottish people originally came from the Moon. I own a copy of “Spock Must Die”, which I bought and read when I was about 14 years old. I was left with a very strong impression that James Blish had never actually seen an episode of Star Trek, but rather had had a couple of episodes described to him and been handed a list of characters he could use. It’s bad. Really bad.
Nobody mentioned this but I thought Id add that Ive read some of Q-Space by Greg Cox (first in the Q continuum trilogy). Its very cool IMO.
My favorite Star Trek novel is Uhura’s Song by Janet Kagan.
I’ll third How Much For Just The Planet but man, it’s weird. Maybe drink some Mountain Dew before you start.