Month: October 2020

Excluding 1-3 hour abridged adaptation, there are still several decent looking TOS Star Trek audiobooks on Audible.com. Currently there are 12 full-length (8-12 hours) TOS audiobooks on Audible.com, plus another scheduled for 11/10/20.

There were 3 Original Series novels that had accompanying audiobooks scheduled to release in 2020:

I just finished listening to the audiobook Agents of Influence by Dayton Ward, narrated by Robert Petkoff which I bought off of Audible.

This is the best Star Trek novel I’ve run across in quite a while! The story kept the action moving, and gave you some diverse environments: an asteroid belt, EVA combat, and of course the classical, naval ship-to-ship combat. The ideas were fresh, and characters besides the normal Enterprise bridge crew came into play, heightening the suspense. We all figured Kirk and Spock would live through the novel, but what about these other folks? I thought it would be heavy on the espionage given the book description, but although that drama was there, all the normal Star Trek tropes were in full action.

I can’t say enough good things about the narrator. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura, Scotty — the narrator gave each their distinct voice and accents and really brought the story alive.

I highly recommend this book and look forward to whatever Dayton Ward has next in store!

In addition to the Taurus Reach novel series, the following 25 books are rated by DeepSpaceSpines.com as some of the best novels among the vast inventory of published TOS era books.

The Taurus Reach is a nicely documented sector which has enough novels to provide a rich reading experience as a background for roleplaying settings. It also is a largely unexplored region which makes it ideal for many roleplaying campaigns which feature exploration.

As of this writing, there are 15 TOS era novels set in the Taurus Reach region. These novels collectively do a great picture of describing the politics, key starships, space station, and history of the sector.

• Distant Early Warning prequel (1 book)
• Star Trek: Vanguard series (9 books)
• Star Trek: Seekers sequel series (4 books)
• Agents of Influence sequel (1 book)