I mean watching Errand of Mercy we were confronted with a race with an honor system totally different (and in my opinion more exciting to watch!) and Fred Ford’s novel I think capitalized on that with an exciting cultural landscape and background to explain that.

I hope the TOS Klingons return as opposed to the TNG version. Alternatively if they have Romulans, I hope we get the TOS Romulans back.

You don’t need to have read either “Death in Winter” or “Resistance” to follow “Q & A.” Really, you don’t. The first scene with Picard and Crusher tells you everything you need to know about the former, and I filled in what you needed to know from “Resistance.”

For all that TNG was standalone, the character arcs still moved forward to some extent: Troi’s growth into command roles, Data’s exploration of the human condition (particularly the activation of his dream program), Worf’s ongoing crises of faith and difficulties with the Klingon Empire, and so on.

But the books do stand on their own. Yes, “Before Dishonor” picks up on themes from “Resistance,” but that’s no different from the way “The Best of Both Worlds” picked up from “Q Who.”

And stop hiding in the mountains. There’s nothing to forgive. We’re just talkin’ here. *grin*

#30: So you don’t read any DS9 or VOY novels, then? *grin*

I think you’re either underestimating the amount of work that is being put into exposition–and I understand that’s a balancing act, because most of your readers know what’s going on and find the exposition excruciating–or overestimating my intelligence, which I grant is entirely possible. I struggled with the first third of Q&A because I had skipped Resistance (and The Buried Age). Unity would have been incomprehensible without having read every single book of the agonizing Mission Gamma (and the rather pleasant Rising Son). I haven’t attempted Before Dishonor as yet, but, given my distaste for all things New Frontier-y (another point on which I am cognizant of being an -extreme- minority), I think I’ll skip that, too, and we’ll see how dizzy I am when I try to jump into “Greater Than The Sum.”

Now, this heavy linking of novels made some sense for the relaunch of DS9, which, as we all know, was a highly serialized series. But the fact that I have to wade through stories like “Death In Winter” to understand what’s happening later on on the TNG Relaunch, when TNG was -always- a show based on standalone episodes… it’s irritating. -Really- irritating.

Now, I could go off and read Titan, Gorkon, Vanguard, SNW, AotF, etc., and this is, in fact, exactly what I do (*weeps for SNW*)–all of those stories are far enough set off from novel continuity events that I have no problem with any of them (even, surprisingly enough, AotF, which you would think would kill you with continuity but didn’t). But the reason I started reading Trek books is so I could enjoy my favorite characters from the TV series in a different setting. Having to invest more and more time into books I would have, ten years ago, put down after fifty pages in order to have that experience is really, really annoying. At the very least, I would like to see S&S return to their long-ago posted writer’s guidelines and give us a few stories set between “All Good Things…” and Generations for at least a few novels a year. (See also The Sky’s The Limit.)

As for liking or hating the relaunch stories… I suppose it’s a matter of taste. Obviously I wouldn’t have any problems at all with ubercontinuity if I didn’t dislike most of the recent storylines so much. But having made my thoughts known, I shall retire to my mountain hideaway and hope you one day forgive me, KRAD, for pretty much only liking Trek novels written by you.

I’ll see ya’ll around the TrekBBS.

Also: honor is a luxury you can afford when you know where your next meal is coming from.

That’s why I enjoyed this book so much. All that was there, but it was definately tempered…

(POSSIBLE SPOILER – DEPENDING ON YOUR POV)
In reading the sequences set in Krennla, I had the feeling of walking through a dying residential community in my own home town. The auto industry has moved out of that community, and people are leaving in droves. A once vibrant community has become a borderline slum… and even going back makes me want to just droop my shoulders and sigh.

KRAD was able to make the story real to me precisely because he was able to bring this new spin on the Empire into it… it wasn’t just one pathetic person in the midst of heroic warriors… it was a community on the brink or totally beyond it, again, depending on your POV.

Rob+

i don’t ever get tired of klingons. if any species in trek was ever overused, it was the borg….

anyway – i quit reading trek novels sometime in the mid-nineties, and it’s exactly THIS kind of novel that’s pulling me back in. i like the fact that the novels now have an internal consistency, and i REALLY like the fact that the writers are taking some major chances with what they’re doing, a la trip’s resurrection.

i haven’t yet yet “a burning house,” – just ordered it, though. sounds fantastic.

“I am increasingly hating the fact that I have to read five books in order to appreciate the one good one in the sequence.”

That is categorically not true. You don’t “have” to read everything. You don’t =have= to read the entire “A Time to…” miniseries to read “Titan” or “Articles of the Federation,” for all that they both pick up threads from that miniseries. Us writer-types fill you in on what you need to know. It’s not like every book is heavily serialized, just some of the individual series (and even they aren’t =that= heavily serialized).

Rob+