9. The Romulan Way - Diane Duane & Peter Morwood (1987)
Much like the TV series which spawned them, early novels were very much episodic. Each had to be resolved in a way that reset the status quo ready for the next, allowing the audience to dip in and out of adventures as they pleased. While it is fair to acknowledge that there are some novels that followed on specifically from episodes (Yesterday's Son is a great example, which has been written about
here), it is also fair to say that all novels were doing this to some extent. The Rihannsu saga took an even bigger step however, and is the first instance of connected novels that together told one longer story, outside of the episodes' narratives. As the first book of the first series it could be argued that My Enemy, My Ally should hold the place of being the milestone, but instead it is the second volume, The Romulan Way, that takes this honour; it was the first novel to look back and continue from what was originally written as a single novel. Even today this is something that still continues, with the TNG Cold Equations trilogy following on heavily from Immortal Coil, for example. The connection between these two Rihannsu novels was the original character of Ael t'Rllaillieu, who stood up against her native Romulan Empire and worked alongside the Enterprise in My Enemy, My Ally. In The Romulan Way she again works side by side with Starfleet's flagship crew, this time in rescuing Dr. McCoy from Romulus itself. Diane Duanne teamed up with her husband Peter Morwood when writing the continuation of her original story (allegedly on their honeymoon!), which was published three years earlier in 1984. Not content with just two connected books however, she has since written another three Rihannsu volumes, the last of which was published in 2006.