Star Wars

Intentional.

Good to know. I'm still reading through the Legends books. I've run out of shelf space so I'll have to get more shelves before I buy more books.

Threepio composes and performs a pop song about how awesome Han Solo is.

So yes, one of the funniest books.

I think it was also the book which really cemented Luke's Chick Magnet status?

It's the one where Tenel Ka's single-at-the-time mom bashed Luke on the head so she could carry him home to be married.

I assume this is not a story Luke told much at the Jedi Academy ?

He's just lucky she turned her attentions elsewhere.

Though in the long run Teneniel and Luke might have worked out better than what actually happened to her.

I look forward to reading that. I've reversed my old "Only reading Canon" policy. If I can snag the shelf space, I'll spend years hunting down both E Us and have fun reading them all.

That said: Jorus C'Baoth could only have existed to show how corrupt the Jedi Order of the movies era had become. Let's see . . . in any sane, non-corrupt Order following the ideals of the Jedi: If a Padawan gets emotionally invested in a project to the point where s/he won't shut up about it, and will harass everyone s/he can to make sure it gets done, said Padawan's Master would rebuke him or her heavily and teach him or her a lesson. If a Master gets that invested, the Order would seriously consider stripping him or her of his or her title and give counseling until they're sure the Master isn't falling to the Dark Side.

C'Baoth gets that invested, and the only thing the Order does is send Obi Wan and Anakin along for PART of the ride before pulling them to deal with other crises. C'baoth is allowed to leave Known Space with 17 other Jedi and spout off Sith bullshit about the Jedi being the Ultimate beings, allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, and fully willing to kill anyone who stands in their way. Even his former Padawan is alarmed at this seditious talk.

'old "Only reading Canon" policy'

I've found a much better policy is "don't read shite'. :) It's working so far with GW novels. Canon or otherwise doesn't matter, as long as the book is good. The reason so much tie-in fiction is woeful is because the publishers know fans will buy any old crap as long as it has the logo on the front.

GW?

And that no shit policy is hit or miss. If good novels refer extensively to shitty ones, it sometimes helps to wade through the dreck to understand the good.

And I think I just read the Legends-verse's take on a crossguard saber, because Darth Chratis in Fatal Alliance carries a staff that splits apart on one side and forms crossguards for his saber. It's not little sabers coming out of the sides, just a pair of crosspieces built out of the same material as the saber handle.

Games Workshop. I found Black Library's output much more enjoyable when I stopped reading crap books just to "keep up with the setting". Contrarily, I'm not going to stop reading Space Marine, Inquisitor or the old Warhammer novels just because they're "not canon". It's a pointless distinction that has little to no correlation with the skill of the author.

Same with Star Wars, although I never got that far into the Yuuzan Vong books and everything after that. I read a couple, and any references to ones that I missed, well, so be it. If I really need to know what was happening, that's what Wikipedia's for. :)

edited 12th Feb '15 7:33:07 AM by AndrewGPaul

I haven't reached the Vong, other than the small references in Tim Zahn's books, which don't go very far in depth. I like how his books all refer to each other and set up small plot lines that run throughout the bigger picture.

I also recall the bit from Courtship where the Hapan Queen Mother tries seducing Luke as well, and he brushes her off quite obliquely.

Ta'Chume is horrifying. Just, like, in every conceivable way.

Y'know, looking at all the Legends stuff in chronological order... there's some pretty big gaps in there, particularly in the Republic's "middle" period. Specifically, there's a gap of around 600 unaccounted-for years between the Old Republic MMO and the next thing in the timeline, which is all Lost Tribe stuff, and then nearly 2000 years between that and Darth Bane's generation with only a single installment in the fiction. The Wiki records at least four Big Bad-caliber villains therein - Darth Ruin, the Underlord, Darth Rivan, and Belia Darzu, all from the manual; I wonder why their stories were never told? Ruin and the Underlord in particular seem interesting.

edited 19th Feb '15 5:16:33 PM by HamburgerTime

Rivan I always found very interesting. He seems to have atypical wisdom for a sith especially in his dealings with the darkstaff.

So, while I know the last novels of Legends were kinda... not very good, anyone else find the whole "Allana Solo will become God" thing interesting? Does sort of muck with Legacy, but Troy Denning has apparently stated he considers that to be only a "possible" future so I guess in his mind, Allana did become God.

Eh, I doubt anything relevant changed. The various laws of Physics are pretty strict and you can't change much without throwing the Universe out of whack. It would be the ending of the narrative, since once you've seen a character become a God it's kind of hard to care about much else after that. You've seen the highest position there is.

Imo Troy Denning tends to forget he's writing a shared universe and too focused on "his" vision.

Which is especially vexing when you have another story going on in the same universe that is set canonically later.

Denning pushing Allana as the semi-Messiah while Legacy showed what the future would bring felt kinda eh to me.

In general, the latter half of Legacy of the Force felt to like a deliberate drag towards more High Fantasy which, for me, felt not really fitting.

edited 28th Feb '15 7:06:03 AM by 3of4

Troy Denning was an ass. He's the reason the post-ROTJ EU turned to shit. The Dark Nest Trilogy was atrocious, and while all the authors chose pet characters to pimp in their books in LOTF, Denning gave us way too much Saba, who is fucking boring.

I think a more general problem with the Del Rey years was that the authors they retained were more or less horrible. We had book after book written by Troy Denning, James Luceno, and Karen Traviss, but too few from Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, and Matthew Stover.

edited 28th Feb '15 7:17:56 AM by CrimsonZephyr

I know his books are, for lack of a better term, ridiculously dark, too, with a lot more sex and violence than you usually see in SW. I know even some people who disliked the reboot were happy to see his additions to canon go.

By "ass" do you mean as a person, or just a cruddy writer? I don't know much about the man himself.

I hope those last three get new contracts for Star Wars books and come back to writing. Maybe we can have a Thrawn who walks the line between good and evil so well that his Imperial Remnant manages to avoid being an enemy of the New Republic and becomes a vitrolic ally against the less reputable Grand Moffs.

At least in Zahn's case, he hasn't heard from Disney about further SW work according to a post he made on Facebook a few weeks ago, so unless that changes it's unlikely he'll be doing any more SW writing.

That's sad. He was one of the best they had. If he doesn't come back, I'd certainly like them to find someone of equal skill, at least. I don't mind authors pimping their characters as long as there's enough authors doing different things that I can jump around rather than having to look at the same characters all the time.

I actually like Matthew Stover and James Luceno pretty equally. Stover's novelization of Revenge of the Sith is easily better than the movie itself.

edited 4th Apr '15 10:20:58 PM by higherbrainpattern