i too am reading New Frontier

As my username might suggest I have read some of the New Frontier books. I am about half way (?) through the series. I will try to give a review of those books that I have read thus far from memory. But first here are some reasons I picked up the series:

1. regular tie-in novels are constrained by the fact they might happen between episodes. even if they are not, you couldn't just write a book killing off Riker for example. Or if you did, it wouldn't really have much of an impact as it wouldn't have to stay that way. Additionally, a series of books that progresses like a TV show, rather than a book here and there pressed between canon events is much more appealing. That's why a series that is completely free to do whatever and has complete freedom over original characters seemed perfect.
2. The return of minor characters like Selar and Leffler was intruiging
3. A nonbinary/intersex character from the 90s with neopronouns seemed very interesting

New Frontier omnibus

I will admit while I was into it at first, Calhouns backstory soon became kind of boring to me. I even found him very annoying for the first few books and I had to actually force myself through House of Cards, but I stayed at it because I wanted to give the series a fair chance. There are some returns of famous characters, which isn't really my favourite thing to happen but I get it and I don't think it was too much, especially since the Picard thing was explained in a way where it actually made sense for him to be there, I guess.
I remember thinking that this is all ok but I don't personally need there to be such a focus on sex. I don't remember very much else about it, did the Selar/Burgoyne thing start here already? I don't love their thing they have. Burgoyne should just like chill and let the poor woman be tbh. Anyway, I remember being very sceptic up to the very end.
The Great Bird of the Galaxy really sold the books to me. Most concerns I had had about the series were blown away by the sheer power of stupid silly shit. I love silly shit. I wil forever be a defender of the great bird of the galaxy plot because it made me kind of fall in love with the series. Incredible.

Martyr/Fire on High

Right, as I said I am very much working from memory here. These set up Morgan Primus, right? I didn't like her at first. The general plot of the two books did leave an impression on me I thought it was quite cool and clever. I don't remember many specific, I thought the woman and her genocide machine "lover" was pretty cool and very nicely described. The "time travel"-esque elements were also cool. It felt a lot like a Star Trek episode that I could imagine well being done with dark rooms and outdated 90s CGI. Nothing I can really say I didn't like about the plot itself, maybe some minor character stuff I didn't like too much (such as Morgan, at first, and the thing between Burgoyne and Selar is dicey) but most of it was fine. It's been about a year since I've read this so forgive me that this review kind of sucks. I liked it

Once Burned

Man, I won't lie I dreaded reading this because I am not a big fan of Calhoun but I am so so so glad I did because I actually grew to like him in this. Finally explaining his POV instead of just reciting his warrior cool icon macho guy past to me helped me so much in appreciating this character. I loved the way in which his central theme about revenge and following the rules was examined here, I'm sorry once again I don't remember very many details but I remember really liking it. Character driven books are the best!

Double Time
I don't remember much of what happened in this comic, I think it was just a short way of explaining a time gap and had something to do with the Redeemers so I don't have any opinions on it except that I made no bitches Soleta:


Double Helix: Double or Nothing

I didn't read the other Double Helix stories (sorry) and instead read the summaries but I expected something very different. The plot was ok but I'm going to be honest this book was very much that post about Male writers writing female characters to me. I would say I have a high tolerance for stuff like that but what does "all hormones in his body reacted at once" even mean. That doesn't even make biological sense. If I wanted to read about women wearing nothing but body paint I would read porn. This was very hard to read and the plot was not worth reading all those horny passages. I don't wanna be mean but I have to be, the portrayal of the female character made this almost unreadable. Treat orion women better, Star Trek.

The Quiet Place

This book focused a lot on the two new characters and didn't involve the regulars enough so it was a little bit boring. But I still thing the new characters were interesting and I liked them. I don't think the Quiet Place made a lot of sense to me? I did really like that at the end Xyon left his heroism behind because he was so scared. That gave the character a kid of depth he didn't have before, like he is a heroic guy but he still has depth I guess? I also like his ship. It was okay

Dark Allies

This book was really solid I think, especially compared to The Quiet Place. I really liked the beginning of a sort of alternate universe if this whole planet hadn't been destroyed, it had something of Douglas Adams in my opinion; I really go for this sort of dark humour, if you would agree to call it that. The plot itself was kind of cool, it felt a lot like a TV episode I really liked it. The relationship between Xyon and Kalinda was interestingly done, I think the inaccurate views everyone had of eachother were done very well and Kalinda seemed to be very intelligent; everyone just kept assuming what she wanted and she seems to be the only one who understood this but neither her brother nor her lover seemed to be listening. I think this was well done.

Excalibur: Requiem

The beginning of this book was so funny. "I can't believe the ship blew up". I loved the fact it was so character driven. The opening chapter already shows you much more of the charactres personalities than you got in more plot driven books, I think. I may be very biased because, as you may have guessed by my username I am a big Soleta enjoyer. Additionally, McHenry is my second favourite character. So with this book focusing on them I was either going to hate it or love it. I love it!
It has such a good balance of genuinely dark events and funny and silly events, maybe somewhat in the category of dark humour. It was great. I absolutely loved Soletas plotline and I liked more glimpses into McHenry's mind, which I somewhat relate to. Also he was just very funny, in the beginning for example, though no one appreciated his dark humour. Kebron also had some zingers. I am unsure how I feel about Kebrons sort of epiphany that he might need love and romance after all, as someone who finds romance not very necessary; but as I said before I have a high tolerence for plotlines I disagree with and try to see these things as they are meant to be seen.
All in all this is my new favourite bok of the series, with Once Burned on second place. I will be thinking about it a lot

 

I've made the mistake of embedding fandom.com images with the time stamp.. Is there a way to edit posts

 

When I made the post I simply copied the images with a right click, I didn't ven think about this. Fandom.com images often don't work because of the way the links are formatted (if the link ends in a /redirect/latest?somedate), I have this problem a lot when I forget to delete that part. I hope it is fine to keep the post as it is until I can edit it once i am released from newbie prison, I will correct this as soon as I am able, sorry. Thank you for your response

 

Excalibur: Renaissance
Where to start. I don't think I am going to be very controversial if I say that I'm not a fan of Burgoyne/Selar as a pairing. I actually like both characters conceptually, but they are both in a relationship that makes each of them worse and the way their relationship develops is also bad, just like, from a reading it perspective. A relationship that makes both parties worse can be interesting, but I don't think it's done in a way that makes it interesting enough. It's a real shame since both characters have a lot of potential in my opinion and they might have had a better development if another route had been taken (either a different way to approach the relationship or no relationship at all). To be quite honest there's a sort of.. lack of agency in Selar's plotline that kind of disturbs me and it isn't fun to read.

Anyway! The good part of this book is the Risa plotline. After their relationship became a lot less hostile I actually grew to like Morgan. Scotty makes a return in this book to recognize her as Christine, where Riker and Picard had previously recognized her as Lwaxana. I think her whole "being every Majel Barrett character" thing is really stupid and makes no sense and it makes some people really mad, which means that I love it and think it's very funny.
Robin is a very dramatic person. I don't think there is a single thing that ever happened to her that she reacted normally to and that's great. Drama queen approaches her whole life like she is in a teen movie. Good for her.
I liked the Risa storyline, it gave all characters involved time to shine, including Scotty i guess.

Going into the book I thought "ah, the Si Cwan and Kalinda thing will just continue in this book" but I had completely forgotten about it very soon until they show up at the very end. I think that was very well done and a solid reveal. Additionally I am glad that the Double Helix book was relevant because it means I didn't read all that for (double or) nothing, which would've annoyed me a bit for reasons previously stated. I'm excited to see how the series continues!

 

Excalibur: Restoration
I listened to the audiobook of this novel, which is why I was done so quickly. It was alright. Calhouns story had big Kirk vibes for me, like idk, falling in love with that woman was such a Kirk story-of-the week thing to do. I think this book was weaker than the others in the trilogy, character-exploration wise but it makes sense because Calhoun has been plenty explored already. It was nice and cute, I suppose, and had a nice little happy ending of him and Shelby finally getting their shit together and marrying and it was, like, very average which isn't bad nor extraordinary. Cute little book.

 

I don't see Calhoun as Kirk-like at all. Maybe as a caricatured exaggeration of the pop culture myths about Kirk, but not the actual character on TOS.

One of the things that bugged me about New Frontier -- and I did like it for a few books -- is that his versions of the characters who originated on TNG as TV characters have no relation whatsoever to the TV versions. It's as if his editor said, hey, it'll help people get into this if we have some semi-familiar characters like Lefler, Selar, and Shelby, and PAD decided, well, I'll use the names but I couldn't care less about how these female characters were portrayed on TV, I'm just going to ignore their established characterizations and go nuts.

 

I agree with everything you said! I don't think that in general Calhoun and Kirk are alike at all. People like to make Kirk into this macho follow-no-rules guy but he is much deeper than that and it goes in a completely different direction than Calhoun's character does. I really just said this because going to a planet and immediately falling in love with a woman in trouble is such a Kirk thing to do.

I also agree with your second point. It's a real shame because Selar was so cool on TV and I held out for her to become more like that again after she got through her… medical issue but nope. Completely different person. In the other two cases it is less drastic but I think you are right still.