Stargate Novels

[hysilvinia]

Woo I finished Hostile Ground and I understand now! This series is going to be awesome!

I was so excited I made a review post on my blog here if anyone is interested. Contains spoilers.

[hedwig]

I ordered a paperback copy of "Hostile Ground" and it came today. I've also got it on my eReader. I decided it might be fun to have copies of both.

[losernerdfriend]

I just got a Kindle and I really want to download some SG-1 ebooks. Do you guys have a top five/read first set y'all can recommend? I really want to start reading some but it looks like there are so many on the Kindle store and I don't know where to start. >.<

[hedwig]

I just got a Kindle and I really want to download some SG-1 ebooks. Do you guys have a top five/read first set y'all can recommend? I really want to start reading some but it looks like there are so many on the Kindle store and I don't know where to start. >.<

I personally would recommend:

A Matter of Honor
The Cost of Honor
Roswell
City of the Gods
Survival of the Fittest

There are other good ones, but those are ones I would recommend. I would list more, but said only five.

[losernerdfriend]

Thanks Hedwig! I'm sure I'll be going to you for more recs soon enough but I think five us plenty to start with. Haha.

[GermanAstra]

I personally would recommend:

A Matter of Honor
The Cost of Honor
Roswell
City of the Gods
Survival of the Fittest

There are other good ones, but those are ones I would recommend. I would list more, but said only five.

I agree with three of your five, but personally I would not recommend "City of the Gods". It had way too much dry information for me and felt like a show off on all the research the author did on this particular subject, while forgetting how to tell a story. For the same reason I did not enjoy "Roswell" as much as I had wanted to, although she got a co-author there which helped a bit. Still the characterization was a bit off and this book has a lot of misspellings and if I (as a German) even notice them, they are really bad. Words that sound alike, but mean something entirely different and it throws you out of the story trying to figure out which word they actually meant.

So, I would replace those two with:

"The Barque of Heaven" (my all time favourite) and
"Alliances"

"Sacrafice of the Moon" was actually also quite good, their first adventure where everything was still fresh and new.

If anything, stay away from "Valhalla". Everyone agrees that this is the worst of the whole series. You don't want to read that. Trust me.

[hedwig]

I agree with three of your five, but personally I would not recommend "City of the Gods". It had way too much dry information for me and felt like a show off on all the research the author did on this particular subject, while forgetting how to tell a story. For the same reason I did not enjoy "Roswell" as much as I had wanted to, although she got a co-author there which helped a bit. Still the characterization was a bit off and this book has a lot of misspellings and if I (as a German) even notice them, they are really bad. Words that sound alike, but mean something entirely different and it throws you out of the story trying to figure out which word they actually meant.

So, I would replace those two with:

"The Barque of Heaven" (my all time favourite) and
"Alliances"

"Sacrafice of the Moon" was actually also quite good, their first adventure where everything was still fresh and new.

If anything, stay away from "Valhalla". Everyone agrees that this is the worst of the whole series. You don't want to read that. Trust me.

I agree with "Valhalla". I would also say stay away from "Power Behind the Throne", for the same reasons. He got a lot of stuff about the SGC wrong, and stuff about SG1 wrong, as well. I don't think I ever came across a good review of it, though one or two people here on GW thought it was ok. It had originally been going to be a trilogy, but apparently Fandemonium didn't think highly enough of it to continue the series. SG1 was barely in the story at all; they were shoved into the background, while the society the author created was the main subject of the book.

I would say when recommending books, that it's fine to say you really like certain books, but should let the reader decide whether they liked the book or not. I really liked "Transitions", but a lot of folks didn't, for various reasons, but I would still recommend reading it for a nice adventure story. As to saying "don't read" something, I just won't recommend them. The reader can make up their own mind.

[DancerChick1982]

I agree with three of your five, but personally I would not recommend "City of the Gods". It had way too much dry information for me and felt like a show off on all the research the author did on this particular subject, while forgetting how to tell a story. For the same reason I did not enjoy "Roswell" as much as I had wanted to, although she got a co-author there which helped a bit. Still the characterization was a bit off and this book has a lot of misspellings and if I (as a German) even notice them, they are really bad. Words that sound alike, but mean something entirely different and it throws you out of the story trying to figure out which word they actually meant.

So, I would replace those two with:

"The Barque of Heaven" (my all time favourite) and
"Alliances"

"Sacrafice of the Moon" was actually also quite good, their first adventure where everything was still fresh and new.

If anything, stay away from "Valhalla". Everyone agrees that this is the worst of the whole series. You don't want to read that. Trust me.

LOVE LOVE LOVE Barque of Heaven, it's easily my favorite, next to Do No Harm, which was my first Stargate novel (and you never forget your first, lol).

I didn't mind Roswell, just couldn't stand the typos. From my non-professional writer/proofreader mentality, that book was a headache with all of the typos!!

I've recommended "The Drift" and "Four Dragons" to my boyfriend back when we first started dating, and he liked both. I liked City of the Gods because it followed up "Crystal Skull." And naturally, Matter and Cost of Honor - I will recommend those to anyone - they were amazing.

And I liked "Alliances," the only reason it took me longer to read than all of the other ones (about a month as opposed to two weeks) was that I took my time with it.

[GermanAstra]

I would say when recommending books, that it's fine to say you really like certain books, but should let the reader decide whether they liked the book or not. I really liked "Transitions", but a lot of folks didn't, for various reasons, but I would still recommend reading it for a nice adventure story. As to saying "don't read" something, I just won't recommend them. The reader can make up their own mind.

I liked "Transitions" as well. A good old team story. As long as they have Jack in a main role I am happy
After reading I went to Amazon and read all the reviews. There was one that listed all the things that apparently were wrong in the Stargate universe, time-wise or whatever. She might be even right with that, but it's been so long that I have seen those later episodes, I didn't care whether it was all perfectly right or not.

I just wanted to prevent that someone who is new to the novels might start with "Valhalla", thinking how crap it is and never trying another one again, and therefore missing all the good ones. BTW, "Relativity" is also one of those I wish I had not bought.

Another one I could at first not get into but then really started to like is "Siren Song". It brings back Aris Boch.

If my recommendations are all from the older books that is only because I have been out of the fandom in the recent years and need to catch up with the last five books yet.

[losernerdfriend]

Thanks for your recs GermanAstra and DancerChick1982! I plan on reading as many as possible. Can I ask why Valhalla is a def no-no?

[hysilvinia]

Of the ones I've read recently, I would highly recommend Moebius Squared as a fun read.

Off the top of my head, I think Hydra was the one I liked least so far.

[hedwig]

A good way of finding out whether you would like any of these novels is to go to amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com and read the reviews for each of the books. Both sites have good and bad reviews. So you can get an idea of whether you would like to read any of the novels.

[DancerChick1982]

Thanks for your recs GermanAstra and DancerChick1982! I plan on reading as many as possible. Can I ask why Valhalla is a def no-no?

You are most welcome. I've actually never read Valhalla, so I couldn't tell you why or why not. The one I liked the least was "The Power Behind the Throne," due to the abrupt ending. It really felt like an SG-1 story secondary, much as has been said about it. If it wasn't an SG-1 story, it would have actually been decent... and having a definite ending would have helped. :-)

[hedwig]

Thanks for your recs GermanAstra and DancerChick1982! I plan on reading as many as possible. Can I ask why Valhalla is a def no-no?

I wouldn't recommend it, but I would not say "never read it". It was a disappointing story. SG1 is all together in the first part of the story. Then it breaks off and we go to a completely secondary story that involved Jonas Quinn on his planet, needing assistance. So Jack and Teal'c go off to help Jonas, while Sam and Daniel stay where they are. It would have been much better to have one continuous story instead of breaking off like that. Jonas' story would have been better as a separate book (maybe), but as part of this one it really didn't make much sense.

I haven't read the book in a long time, but I just went to amazon.com and read the reviews and one of the big complaints is all the typos and grammatical and punctuation errors throughout the book. Also, that the author apparently did not know his subject matter very well, because he misspelled character names or even changed their names occasionally. Apparently, this book was not proofread before it was published.

I really like Jonas Quinn and would have been happier if this had been a separate book or even short story included with a bunch of other short stories.

[GermanAstra]

Thanks for your recs GermanAstra and DancerChick1982! I plan on reading as many as possible. Can I ask why Valhalla is a def no-no?

It's been a long while since I read it, and actually I have to say I started to skip parts because they did not interest me. I guess it's my fault that the Northern Mythology in general does not interest me, but my main beef was with the characterization and style of writing. The SG-1 scenes are all completely written from Sam's POV, with I think one chapter by Teal'c thrown in. I love in books to get POV of all the people, but we don't get a single chapter with Daniel's or Jack's thoughts, feelings, musings. And other than doing a funny line here and there, Jack had not much to do at all. I hate when he is not shown as the leader, as the soldier that he is. It's as if the writers don't watch the series and that is all they know about him.

I did like Jonas Quinn in the series as well, I was not one of those Daniel-lovers-Jonas-haters. But he should have been better included indeed. Him sitting doing research on a table on some topic is hardly interesting to read, especially when you fail to see the connection. Sadly, this seems to be the only attempt so far to include him in the books. Why not do a book that is set in season 6 where he is a regular member of the team?

When Hedwig says he gets joined later with Jack and Teal'c, that must be something I have completely forgotten about it. I actually shall have a look again. It is possiblet hat I never even finished it. And that alone is telling, as I usually read every book.

I bet if you have a look at ebay you can get lots of copies for very cheap If you want to see for yourself. Why not?

A lot of books do the actual splitting up of the team. We had this discussion before and wondered about the need. In TV, they often do it to save money, as two teams can film at the same time. In a book, there is no need for this. I like it better when they are all together and each bring their own expertise to the problem. They work so well together.