Diane Duane Trek Reading Order

[JD]

I know that Diane Duane's Trek books, both the Rihansuu series and the standalones, all kind of tie into each other to varying degrees, so I was just wondering what the best order to read them in would be? I already read Spock's World, and I own but have not read Bloodwing Voyages, the omnibus collecting the first 4 Rihansuu books, The Empty Chair, and The Wounded Sky. I don't own Doctor's Orders yet, but I do plan on reading it, and will get it whenever I reach that point in the reading order.
I don't know if they tie in other than the character appearances, but I have also read her DCTOS series 1 issues.

 

[Christopher]

The best order for the connected ones would be publication order -- The Wounded Sky; My Enemy, My Ally; The Romulan Way; Spock's World; Swordhunt; The Empty Chair. As for Doctor's Orders, it came out after Spock's World, but that was during the period when inter-novel continuity was verboten, so it pretty much stands alone without any overt links to the others.

 

[JD]

Thanks, I wasn't sure about publication order since some of the older book did tend to jump around a bit in the timeline.

 

[Christopher]

Thanks, I wasn't sure about publication order since some of the older book did tend to jump around a bit in the timeline.

Well, the '80s novels had a loose continuity at best, and far from an all-inclusive one, but any single author's novels were usually in continuity with each other and in chronological order. Really, the '80s continuity, such as it was, was mainly a bunch of single-author continuities that occasionally borrowed or alluded to ideas from each other.

In the '80s, it's only in the giant and hardcover novels that you get authors jumping backward in the timeline -- for instance, Vonda McIntyre going from The Entropy Effect in the 5-year mission to the movie novelizations and then back to Enterprise: The First Adventure, or Diane Carey going from her late-5YM Piper novels to the pre-TOS Final Frontier. But sometimes they were in sequence with the author's earlier works, like Spock's World (discussed above) and The Lost Years (which picked up on supporting-character threads from J.M. Dillard's previous three TOS novels). Other than that, it isn't until the no-continuity era in the '90s that you saw authors jumping backward in the timeline, like Peter David going from the movie-era The Rift to the TV-era The Disinherited, or V.E. Mitchell going from the movie-era Enemy Unseen to the TV-era Windows on a Lost World.

 

[JD]

Oh, good to know. I don't know much about the pre-relaunch era books.

 

[Desert Kris]

I've started with Diane Duane's books in publication order. There's a couple of ST books I've picked up in the past, The Lost Years, Spock's World, and Enterprise: The First Adventure, that I struggled with and ended up not getting very far into them because of unfamiliarity with ST continuity in general, and each author's own returning characters and situations. So I've found myself tracing author's back to their first ST novels, to be followed on in publication order. I've only read The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally; but there was a nice small payoff progessing that way. And I'm glad that I read Wounded Sky rather than skip it.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Personally, I'd move Spock's World out in front. And I might even squeeze in Intellivore (yes, even though there are people on this board who hate it) right after The Romulan Way, since it's a sequel of sorts to an incident mentioned therein. But otherwise, what Christopher said.

 

[Christopher]

Personally, I'd move Spock's World out in front.

Why? It has to come some time after The Wounded Sky, because of a certain guest character whom the crew met for the first time in TWS and who returns as a familiar friend in SW. Also, in terms of reading experience, I feel it works better as a followup to The Romulan Way, because it gives a fuller accounting of events from Vulcan history that were first alluded to in TRW.

There's also the fact that, in the original editions, the first three Duane novels were set pre-TMP while SW is explicitly post-TMP, although the omnibus reprints of ME,MA and TRW retconned them to post-TMP to better fit the chronological references therein -- even though TWS, which explicitly takes place only a month before ME,MA, was not updated and still gives Uhura and Chekov their TOS ranks.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Chronology of the flashbacks, rather than of the frames.

 

[Christopher]

Chronology of the flashbacks, rather than of the frames.

That still doesn't make sense as a reading order if you're reading them for the first time, because you're going to get K's't'lk's appearances out of sequence and that'll be confusing. Reading flashbacks in their intended sequence won't be confusing, because the story was designed to set them up and present them clearly in that order.

Besides, you just said you'd put Intellivore, a TNG novel, between The Romulan Way and Swordhunt, both TOS novels set nearly a century earlier. So clearly you're not married to chronological order.

 

[Stevil2001]

Intellivore is great. I'd heartily recommend it as a coda to the whole experience.

 

[ATimson]

There's also the fact that, in the original editions, the first three Duane novels were set pre-TMP while SW is explicitly post-TMP, although the omnibus reprints of ME,MA and TRW retconned them to post-TMP to better fit the chronological references therein -- even though TWS, which explicitly takes place only a month before ME,MA, was not updated and still gives Uhura and Chekov their TOS ranks.

Well, the omnibus tried to update them, but it was a pretty superficial job. Off the top of my head:

• Chekov's still at navigation with someone else as security chief.
• There's at least one reference to the primary-colored uniforms (in MEMA).
• There's references to the Intrepid that imply pretty strongly that the Enterprise hasn't undergone it's refit yet.
• I believe that references to Chapel being away from the ship while working on her doctorate survived.

Yes, they changed the ranks, but the rest of the details in MEMA and SH/HB arguably fit better with a TOS placement. (Right now I think my preference is to split the difference - put MEMA pre-TMP, and the other books post-TMP. You still have some awkwardness around Chekov's post on the bridge, but the bulk of the problematic references are in MEMA.)

 

[Christopher]

Yes, they changed the ranks, but the rest of the details in MEMA and SH/HB arguably fit better with a TOS placement. (Right now I think my preference is to split the difference - put MEMA pre-TMP, and the other books post-TMP. You still have some awkwardness around Chekov's post on the bridge, but the bulk of the problematic references are in MEMA.)

The problem there is that The Romulan Way is explicitly one year after My Enemy, My Ally -- although it's also 8 years after "The Enterprise Incident," which is why it ended up getting revised as post-TMP. Duane was implicitly assuming that the "5-year mission" lasted considerably longer than 5 years, or that there was a second mission between TOS and TMP.

Essentially, there's no way to perfectly reconcile the "Duaneverse" with canonical chronology. I prefer to just treat it as its own alternate take, to accept it on its own terms rather than trying to alter it to fit conventional expectations. That's why I prefer the original editions to the omnibus versions -- although I prefer the omnibus version of Swordhunt, since as a post-Spock's World tale, it should be post-TMP instead of pre-TMP as the original version presented it.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

That still doesn't make sense as a reading order if you're reading them for the first time, because you're going to get K's't'lk's appearances out of sequence and that'll be confusing.

It's unlikely that either of us will change the other's mind, but hopefully our discussion has given others something to think about.

 

[JD]

Why? It has to come some time after The Wounded Sky, because of a certain guest character whom the crew met for the first time in TWS and who returns as a familiar friend in SW. Also, in terms of reading experience, I feel it works better as a followup to The Romulan Way, because it gives a fuller accounting of events from Vulcan history that were first alluded to in TRW.

There's also the fact that, in the original editions, the first three Duane novels were set pre-TMP while SW is explicitly post-TMP, although the omnibus reprints of ME,MA and TRW retconned them to post-TMP to better fit the chronological references therein -- even though TWS, which explicitly takes place only a month before ME,MA, was not updated and still gives Uhura and Chekov their TOS ranks.

Chronology of the flashbacks, rather than of the frames.

With stories like this with a frame and flashbacks, I also go by the frame since I tend to think of that as the real story, while the flashbacks are a secondary part of that story.

 

[Christopher]

With stories like this with a frame and flashbacks, I also go by the frame since I tend to think of that as the real story, while the flashbacks are a secondary part of that story.

I'm not sure I'd call the flashbacks in Spock's World secondary, but I'd agree that they're presented in the order they're meant to be read in. Without the frame story, they'd just be infodumps. The present-day story is what gives them context and purpose.

I'm reminded of what I considered one of the main problems with the Suicide Squad movie. It devoted so much of its first act to an endless chain of origin flashbacks... before it bothered to get around to establishing a plot for the movie, a defining conflict that would give the story stakes. Sure, there was a frame story of Waller explaining why she wanted to create the team, but without a specific threat established yet, it felt academic. Without any stakes established to create tension or context, the chain of infodumps wasn't moving the story in any particular direction; it was just treading water. It was an illustration of how important a story's structure is. Things have a reason for being presented in a certain order. Frontloading the exposition just because it happens first isn't always the best way to go.

 

[JD]

Yeah, I guess the historical stuff Spock's World, would be more of a parallel story, or collection of stories since they were more a bunch of little semi-independent sequences than one continuous story.

 

[Leto_II]

I remember too that the audiobook version of Spock's World completely jettisons the Vulcan-history flashbacks, simply concentrating entirely upon the "present day" TMP-era storyline involving the crew. Was a different way to get the tale, but agreed with Christopher that the absence of one or the other also robs the narrative of a certain richness and context.

 

[JD]

That kind of defeats the whole point of the book if you ask me. The Kirk and Spock era story was good, but to me the historical sections were the main draw of the book.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Destroying the integrity of the author's original work, while purporting NOT to be something completely and utterly different from it.

A major difference between consumer audiobooks and unabridged books-on-tape intended for the blind.

Probably my biggest single reason to buy original audio plays only, and NO AUDIOBOOKS.