Novel news: New Coda cover and blurb, and Shadows Have Offended excerpts

The next cover for the Coda trilogy has been revealed, along with a new blurb for the series. Continue below to check out those updates, plus excerpts from the recently released TNG novel Shadows Have Offended.

This autumn the Coda trilogy(ad) will bring together the heroes of the Star Trek novel continuity from the last couple of decades, in a "Temporal Apocalypse", which is presumably their final adventure, as their timeline has been shunted into an alternate timeline by the events of Picard painting a very different future for the prime timeline. The second book in that trilogy is James Swallow's The Ashes of Tomorrow(ad), and the cover has now been revealed for that, which has a bit of a DS9 focus, with the new Starfleet-built replacement Deep Space 9, and Captain Dax's slipstream-ship the USS Aventine.

This middle book in the trilogy will be out in October. There's just a minimal blurb for this book so far:

The crews of Jean-Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko, Ezri Dax, and William Riker unite to prevent a cosmic-level apocalypse—only to find that some fates really are inevitable.

THE FUTURE IS AT WAR WITH THE PAST.

The epic Star Trek: Coda trilogy continues as friends become foes, the Temporal Apocalypse accelerates, and the catastrophe’s true cause is revealed.

Combined with the first book's cover, we can start to see a nice triptych forming, featuring all the hero ships of the Star Trek novels timeline (assuming the USS Titan arrives on the final cover):

In another update from the series, the back cover for the first book, Dayton Ward's Moments Asunder(ad), has now been released too, and this features a new expanded blurb which tells us a lot more about the series:

If you struggle reading from an image, here's that blurb in text form:

STARFLEET's FINEST FACES A CHALLENGE UNLIKE ANY OTHER

TOMORROW IS DOOMED

Time is coming apart. Countless alternate and parallel realities are under attack, weakening and collapsing from relentless onslaught. If left unchecked, the universe faces an unstoppable descent toward entropy.

WANDER, ORACLE, ALLY

Scarred and broken after decades spent tracking this escalating temporal disaster, while battling the nameless entity responsible for it, an old friend seeks assistance from Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise. The apocalypse may originate from their future, but might the cause lie in their past?

EVERYTHING WILL BE

Identifying their adversary is but one step toward defeating them, but early triumphs come with dreadful costs. What will the price be to achieve final victory, and how will that success be measured in futures as yet undefined?

Sounds cool, and complicated! 

Before all that, a more straightforward adventure for the TNG crew is the latest release. This month brought us Shadows Have Offended(ad), the first novel set within the TV-era for years, brought to us by new Trek author Cassandra Rose Clarke.

As usual the book was also offered as an audiobook(ad), and Simon and Schuster have released both a straight audio excerpt, and a video of the narrator Robert Petkoff reading a section:

If you prefer to read an excerpt, you can flip through the start of the book via the Kindle preview:

If you've read the book already, you can get a glimpse behind the scenes with the author Cassandra Rose Clarke who recently joined Positively Treks podcast to discuss the book in detail.

Support The Trek Collective, via order links for mentioned books:

Coda, Book 1: Moments Asunder, by Dayton Ward.

Bookshop(ad), Amazon(ad), Book Depository(ad)

Coda, Book 2: The Ashes of Tomorrow, by James Swallow.

Bookshop(ad), Amazon(ad), Book Depository(ad)

Coda, Book 3: Oblivion's Gate, by David Mack.

Bookshop(ad), Amazon(ad), Book Depository(ad)

TNG: Shadows Have Offended, by Cassandra Rose Clarke.

Bookshop(ad), Amazon(ad), Book Depository(ad). 

To keep track of all the latest releases, have a look back through my prose and/or books tags, or hit the books button on my 2021 schedule page. To get up to speed on the Star Trek novel continuity Coda will be a part of, check the Litverse Reading Order Flow Chart. You can also find series reading lists and author bibliographies on my dedicated Star Trek lists site.