There's only the one novel out so far, the first volume of CotS; by comparison to the rather condensed CotS manga, it only covers two out of seven chapters. I don't recall offhand how closely the manga's allocation of narrative maps onto the CotS OVA, but the general arc is the same-- by way of introductory preface, Jinto's dad surrenders their planet to Abh dominion in exchange for noble status and Jinto gets sent offworld for his early education; the story proper begins when Lafiel scoops him up to join the fleet. This novel ends while they're stalled at a petty noble's asteroid belt, so they're not yet stuck on the later planet which iirc dreadfully bored you.
Is it worthwhile? I dunno, I guess it depends on how much more you want to learn about Abh society and culture. The OVAs seem to've been an extremely good adaptation, in that I don't think I'm picking up much added character/plot depth from the novel that hadn't already been clear in the anime. The anime is also easier to follow because the subtitles translated a lot of the Abh-language jargon into English-- does it really make a difference, culturally speaking, whether chopsticks are referred to as "grei" instead? How do you feel about wading through paragraphs like "To the outside observer, a Flasath lookeds like a single rotating particle. Noktaf and Skobrotaf described the direction of a Flasath's revolution. Every Sazoiirl needed to know that in order to enroll"?
(A "flasath" is a space-time bubble. "Noktaf" = "state of movement within Fath" and "skobrotaf" = "stopped state within Fath"; "fath" = plane-space. Yes, there's a glossary in the back. I wish they'd formatted the Abh words in italics instead of capitalizing them.)
Based on some of the discussions I saw on TokyoPop's site, the translator has English as a first language but also studied Japanese long enough to gain a very good degree of fluency; she also consulted with existing fansites about maintaining as much faithfulness to the original as possible, other than the phonetic transliterations. However, in some cases her English prose ends up being weirdly clunky; I'm not sure whether it's because she's trying to preserve a little bit too much from the original Japanese, or whether her independent choice of English diction just doesn't feel quite right-- there's a specific example that I can't find now, but if you remember the little mini-swords which the Abh ship captains wear at their belts, at one point the translator describes it as a "rod" or similar, where "baton" would've felt like a more English-idiomatic choice to me without being substantially different in meaning.
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Is it worthwhile? I dunno, I guess it depends on how much more you want to learn about Abh society and culture. The OVAs seem to've been an extremely good adaptation, in that I don't think I'm picking up much added character/plot depth from the novel that hadn't already been clear in the anime. The anime is also easier to follow because the subtitles translated a lot of the Abh-language jargon into English-- does it really make a difference, culturally speaking, whether chopsticks are referred to as "grei" instead? How do you feel about wading through paragraphs like "To the outside observer, a Flasath lookeds like a single rotating particle. Noktaf and Skobrotaf described the direction of a Flasath's revolution. Every Sazoiirl needed to know that in order to enroll"?
(A "flasath" is a space-time bubble. "Noktaf" = "state of movement within Fath" and "skobrotaf" = "stopped state within Fath"; "fath" = plane-space. Yes, there's a glossary in the back. I wish they'd formatted the Abh words in italics instead of capitalizing them.)
Based on some of the discussions I saw on TokyoPop's site, the translator has English as a first language but also studied Japanese long enough to gain a very good degree of fluency; she also consulted with existing fansites about maintaining as much faithfulness to the original as possible, other than the phonetic transliterations. However, in some cases her English prose ends up being weirdly clunky; I'm not sure whether it's because she's trying to preserve a little bit too much from the original Japanese, or whether her independent choice of English diction just doesn't feel quite right-- there's a specific example that I can't find now, but if you remember the little mini-swords which the Abh ship captains wear at their belts, at one point the translator describes it as a "rod" or similar, where "baton" would've felt like a more English-idiomatic choice to me without being substantially different in meaning.