Not quite a review: on Guide to Series Books: Movie & TV Tie-ins from Star Wars to Star Trek by G.P. Jonas December 26, 2015

So this book is listed as an ebook or print edition on Amazon. Obviously it’s the kind of thing that would catch my eye, what with me spending years on the old Complete Starfleet Library website and collecting books from a number of other series. Fortunately, Amazon has a Look Inside for this one, and I saved a couple of dollars.

There are dozens of series in this book. For each one, there’s a simple list, like this:

Astonishing Gallop of Hester and Jane

1. Hell is a Bicycle (1974) by Grant Floon
2. When Flagons Belch (1974) by Flora Sackville-East

In some cases with more complex publishing history you may get something like this:

Invasion of the Spoonbenders (movie novelizations)

1. Invasion of the Spoonbenders: Beware: Spork! (1988) by Flounder Walsh […]

Invasion of the Spoonbenders (TV series non-canon books)

1. The Currency of Bile (1995) by Keiko Sardini, Jr […]

Invasion of the Spoonbenders (canon sequel series)

1. The True Bending (2004) by Leah Fraught and Wes Grumbler […]

Personally, I’d like to see publisher information, at the very least. A little more clarity on whether the books are novelizations or original tie-in novels or something else. The numbers are just sequential and not necessarily taken from the books. Considering the number of series included, it’s not surprising they aren’t including more information, but maybe it would have been better to take on a smaller job and provide more data.

There are also, inevitably, some omissions. The Blake’s 7 section omits Tony Attwood’s Afterlife and Paul Darrow’s Avon: A Terrible Aspect, though it does have the old adaptations and most of the new Big Finish books. (It’s missing one of the hardcovers and includes an ebook-only story, though there’s no format information.)

And mistaken inclusions: the Blade Runner section has Beyond Orion and Eye and Talon as books 3 and 4. Nothing under the former title was ever published; it may have been an alternate title for Eye and Talon.

So, yeah… too big a job, possibly too quickly done. This may be the kind of thing that should exist as a website, except there are a number of those already. I’d rather see something with more detailed information for more targeted sets of books. This one has SF, soaps, westerns, cop shows… why not break it down into a few volumes by genre, with each one overseen by someone who loves that particular genre enough to spot some of the mistakes and omissions without having to look at a bookshelf or googling?