I’ve never read any of the Star Trek novels, and I’d like to. Does anyone have any that they prefer? My only request is that they be well-written. I picked up Peter David’s Imzadi from the library and I find myself not enjoying it very much…
Oh my. There are literally like 1,000s+ novels out there. And “well written” can vary by personal opinion.
What’s your favorite series? Characters? Do you want stand-alone stories or serialized?
I agree, “well-written” is a terrible stipulation considering everyone has different opinions on that, so I guess my new request is just not misogynistic. I was reading Imzadi and all I could think was that this book is either way too good at portraying Riker as an asshole regarding women, or the book itself is just… generally… awful at handling female characters. (this is just my opinion. I mean no offense if you enjoy this book)
My favorite series is DS9, but honestly I love them all. I like books that feature female characters, but I’ll gladly read others.
You might want to check out @startrekreviews. They haven’t covered every Star Trek book, but they’ve done a decent-sized chunk of them, and they itemize things which readers may find appealing/offensive. So this may help you drill down what you’re looking for, since the books themselves only hint at their content by the back cover synopsis and the characters depicted on the front.
I read a ton of TNG in high school, then I got sick of them once the novelty wore off. It seemed like a bunch of them kept using the trope of an away team getting stranded on a hostile planet while the Enterprise dealt with some B-plot. You’d probably want to avoid these, since they’re pretty Riker-heavy. Either he’s leading the away mission and roughing it without the ship to back him up, or he’s up on the ship brooding about how he shouldn’t have let Picard lead the away mission this time. Either scenario is a pain in the ass.
The two I would recommend are:
Metamorphosis by Jean Lorrah. Put simply, Data gets transmuted into a human. Worth checking out if you like Data and you want to see how that would go for him.
Vendetta by Peter David. This one’s about the Borg coming back after “Best of Both Worlds”, which was kind of a big deal at the time because “I, Borg” and “Star Trek: First Contact” were still a long ways off. It’s PAD, but it mostly focuses on Picard, Guinan, and Geordi, as I recall, and it’s a much different theme than what you get from Imzadi. On the other hand, this was one of the first TNG novels I ever read, maybe the first, so it probably isn’t as mind-blowing as I remember. Anyway, fourteen-year-old me thought it was pretty good, for whatever that’s worth.
Thanks for the shout out! We do try to cover both content and writing-quality, though like you mentioned, that can be a matter of taste (until you get into the early 80s misogyny-riddled ones anyway.) You also did describe about 75% of the TNG novels, especially the numbered ones.
I would also say that I usually enjoy Peter David’s books. In terms of “best writing,” I would nominate Diane Duane every time, but she’s more TOS. DS9 can definitely be a tricky one, since it focuses on heavier subject matter than the other series, and while some authors can use that for amazing depth, others delve straight into offensive issue mishandling. The DS9 books we’ve current reviewed are here, TNG here. My personal favourite DS9 novel is easily A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson , which centers around Garak, though it can be trickier than most to get your hands on.
-yeaka