Tuesday 24 November 2015

Book bits: New covers, new ebooks, Legacies blurbs, and more

Lots of updates from the world of Star Trek prose today, including several dazzling new covers, news of a whole bunch of new ebooks, new blurbs from the 50th anniversary Legacies trilogy, and more! Continue below for everything, starting with new covers!

First up, StarTrek.com have premiered the covers for two novels. Due out in May is Elusive Salvation, Dayton Ward's sequel to the brilliant TOS/20th century book, From History's Shadow. This new cover, by Alan Dingman (as credited by the author), seems to feel both very modern and superbly retro, and quite atypical for Star Trek. I love it:


Here's a reminder of the blurb:
The Arctic Circle, 1845: Escaping the tyranny under which their people have lived for generations, aliens from a distant planet crash land on Earth’s inhospitable frozen wastes. Surviving the harsh conditions will pose a challenge, but over time the aliens will migrate to more populated areas, with decades passing as they work to conceal their presence from their former oppressors, who continue to hunt them at any cost.

San Francisco, 2283: When a mysterious craft is detected entering the solar system, Admiral James Kirk is dispatched by Starfleet to confront the vessel. He meets with an emissary from the Iramahl, a previously unknown alien race who have come in search of their brothers and sisters thought to have gone missing in this area of space centuries earlier. Having recently thrown off the last chains of subjugation by another species, the Ptaen, they now believe their lost people hold the key to saving their entire race from eventual extinction.

New York, 1970: Roberta Lincoln, young protégé of the mysterious agent Gary Seven, is shocked when she receives the oddest request for help—from the future…

Before that, April brings us the latest book in Christopher L. Bennett's Enterprise: Rise of the Federation series, Live by the Code, which has an action (and Klingon) packed cover, which the author has confirmed is a Doug Drexler creation:


There's a new blurb for this one too:
Admiral Jonathan Archer has barely settled in as Starfleet Chief of Staff when new crises demand his attention. The Starfleet task force commanded by Captain Malcolm Reed continues its fight against the deadly Ware technology, but one of the task force ships is captured, its Andorian crew imprisoned by an interstellar Partnership that depends on the Ware for its prosperity. Worse, the Partnership has allied with a renegade Klingon faction, providing it with Ware drone fleets to mount an insurrection against the Klingon Empire. Archer sends Captain T’Pol and Endeavour to assist Reed in his efforts to free the captured officers. But he must also keep his eye on the Klingon border, for factions within the Empire blame Starfleet for provoking the Ware threat and seek to take revenge. Even the skill and dedication of the captains under Archer’s command may not be enough to prevent the outbreak of the Federation’s first war.

Also recently revealed by StarTrek.com is the cover for Greg Cox's movie-era TOS ebook, Miasma, which is due out in February:

The Enterprise-A is transporting a party of diplomats when it picks up a mysterious alien signal emanating from a nearby world. The planet’s dense, impenetrable atmosphere makes it unclear if the beacon is a distress signal, an invitation--or a warning to stay away. Spock, Doctor McCoy, and Chekov are part of a team sent to investigate, but an unexpected catatrophe forces a crash landing. Now the landing party is stranded on a hostile world, and unable to communicate with the Enterprise. While Captain Kirk and Saavik race to find a way to locate the lost crew, a badly wounded Spock struggles to keep McCoy and the others alive until they can be rescued, even if that means making an unthinkable sacrifice.

Simon and Schuster have also recently added listings for two more 2016 ebooks, both of which ones we already knew about, but now we know when they're going to arrive. Due in July is Rules of AccusationPaula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann's next Quark focused DS9 story. Then in September we have Christopher L. Bennett's Department of Temporal Investigations novella, Time Lock. No blurbs for these just yet.


There are however new blurbs for all three books in the 50th anniversary Legacies series, revealing a lot more about this so far pretty mysterious series. Book one, Captain to Captain is another Greg Cox story, and will arrive in July:
An epic new trilogy begins—a tie-in for the milestone fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series—that stretches from the earliest voyages of the Starship Enterprise to Captain Kirk’s historic five-year-mission…and from one universe to another!

Hidden aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise is a secret that has been passed from captain to captain, from Robert April to Christopher Pike to James T. Kirk. Now the return of the enigmatic woman once known as Number One has brought that secret to light, and Kirk and his crew must risk everything to finish a mission that began with April so many years ago…

Nearly two decades earlier, April and his crew first visited the planet Usilde, where they found both tragedy and a thorny moral dilemma. Today, the legacy of that fateful occasion will compel Kirk to embark on a risky voyage back to that forbidden world—which is now deep in territory claimed by the Klingon Empire!

August brings the second book, David Mack's Best Defense:
Just in time for the milestone 50th Anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series, an epic new trilogy that stretches from the earliest voyages of the Starship Enterprise to Captain Kirk’s historic five-year-mission—and from one universe to another!

A debt of honor: One brave woman ventures alone into a parallel universe to save her old shipmates, exiled there decades earlier by a mysterious device called the Transfer Key. She soon learns the alternate universe harbors not just an alien invasion force, but a secret that underpins its very existence.

A mission of peace: A long-awaited Klingon-Federation peace conference convenes, led by Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan and Councillor Gorkon of Qo’noS. But both sides have enemies who would prefer the two great powers remain at war—and who will do anything to make certain hate wins the day.

An errand of justice: Captain Kirk and his crew seek the stolen Transfer Key that opens a door between universes, but their hunt is cut short by Ambassador Sarek’s plea for help. The Enterprise crew soon becomes targets in a deadly crossfire—one whose outcome will decide the fate of two universes.

And the trilogy concludes in September with Kevin Dilmore and Dayton Ward's Purgatory's Key:
The conclusion to the epic trilogy that stretches from the earliest voyages of the Starship Enterprise to Captain Kirk’s historic five-year-mission—and from one universe to another—just in time for the milestone 50th anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series!

Eighteen years ago, the Starship Enterprise thwarted an alien invasion from another universe, and Captain Robert April took possession of the interdimensional transfer device that made it possible. Since then, each captain of the Enterprise, from Christopher Pike to James T. Kirk, has guarded this secret with his life.

Now, Romulan agents have succeeded in stealing the device and using it to banish Ambassador Sarek and Councillor Gorkon to an unknown realm in the midst of their groundbreaking Federation-Klingon peace negotiations. With time running out as interstellar war looms in one universe—and alien forces marshal in another—will Captain Kirk and his crew preserve the tenuous peace and reclaim the key between the dimensions?

Another Ward and Dilmore book has just recently been released, Seekers 4: All That's Left. To mark the release, cover artist Rob Caswell posted the cover art, sans titles, on his DeviantART:


You can also hear the authors discussing this book in the latest episode of TrekFM's Literary Treks podcast.

Finally, a little bit of news slipped out via Cross Cult (who publish German language edition of Star Trek books) this week: When asked about them not having the novelisation of Star Trek Beyond on their schedule, they noted they had removed it, after having been informed there would be no novelisation. If that is the case, it would be the first Star Trek movie not to be adapted into a novel.

To keep track of all the latest releases, hit the books or prose buttons on my schedule pages. You'll find full listings for this year, 2016, and even 2017 already. You can also find series reading lists and author bibliographies on my dedicated Star Trek lists site.



3 comments:

Learn2Free said...

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Fox said...

I'm really looking forward to the next Rise of the Federation book. There's a lot of crap in TrekLit, but Bennet seems to be one of the small number of writers who is consistently good.

Speaking of crap, reading the summary for Elusive Salvation made me think, "Wow, that's a recipe of a bunch of my favorite Trek concepts, so I'll probably love the book!" And I got a bit excited.

Then I remembered thinking the exact same thing about another Trek book a few months ago, which had a fantastic premise and then did exactly nothing with it. Sure enough, a quick hop to Amazon reveals that the old, disappointing book... was also written by Dayton Ward (Armageddon's Arrow). So... there's that.

John Small said...

Regarding the Trek movie novelizations: Have there ever been paperback editions of the TNG movies Insurrection and Nemesis? I have all the novelizations dating all the way back to the Blish editions of the original TV series and really want these, but I prefer paperbacks since that's what all my other novelization editions are.

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