Star Wars

That's not a very difficult task.

Eh, I seem to be in a minority of one in not liking Stover's version that much. Yes I like how it fills in a few of the more obvious gaps and it certainly makes Anakin's fall seem more organic than 'OHMYGOD, Mace is dead! What have I done?... welp, time to go kill some preteen kids whilst smirking evilly' but I'd expect that from any half competent writer (the aforementioned Luceno could have done a decent job for example.)

Problem I have is Stover's prose is just a little TOO purple and flowery for me. I know people dig it and fair play to them but for me I cannot get into the story in the slightest with such over-elaborate writing. YMMV I guess.

I also find Stover's Obi-Wan to be a little too pure and good (he's the BEST JEDI EVER to hear him described in the novel) and also Dooku has become basically a Space Nazi, and also a sociopath. If we went by Stover's version he was basically evil all along. Dark Rendezvous does a much better job of describing how he went from genuinely idealistic to an evil Sith Lord without papering over the fact that yeah, he's bad now and has done some truly bad things

Luceno's version of Dooku gelled more with Stover's, that he had deep disaffection with the Jedi way that inclined him to support the concept of enlightened dictatorship.

It may have been a while before he went full evil, but always had the conceit that he and those who thought like him could do a better job of running things without getting the rabble involved.

So what series was it where Daala becomes Head of State?

Because that's...that's something alright.

You know, I only really know Daala from the Jedi Academy Trilogy but I think I encountered her in one other book. In that book she kinda just comes on board a ship with Luke or Han or someone and they're like "hey." Or maybe she was actually just a normal passenger on a ship or something?

I can't even remember any more, it's been too long. I just remember there being an entirely too...indifferent reaction to her presence.

And it looks like, from what I'm reading elsewhere, that this attitude prevails throughout the series. Writers seem to forget with alarming frequency just who she is.

edited 30th Apr '15 2:22:21 PM by Nikkolas

Fate Of The Jedi has her as Chief of State while she becomes it at the very end of Legacy Of The Force.

The book your thinking of is probably Planet of Twilight in the Callista Trilogoy, she meets with them in that one and helps them out IIRC.

So is Fate of the Jedi even worse than Legacy of the Force?

I stopped reading the main books after New Jedi Order. And I liked NJO! It just dragged on too long.

But with Dark Nest and LOTF it seemed like the everything was going really downhill in terms of writing.

And yes Planet of Twilight sounds like it could be it. I haven't read an SW book in a long time (not counting comics) but I do remember the name of every book I've read.

edited 30th Apr '15 2:30:51 PM by Nikkolas

I considered both of them to be alright.

Are Heir to the Jedi and Tarkin good? Since they started the expanded universe over I'm considering picking up some of the new novels.

Going through A New Dawn audiobook right now and enjoying it, especially Marc Thompson's performance as Skelly. I do find it interesting that they decided to introduce Kanan and Hera in a book that is aimed at older Star Wars fans rather than kids.

I've read a few books of Legacy of the Force but haven't gotten to all of them. What's the problem that most people have with them? They seemed alright to me.

Also anyone here read the Darth Plagueis novel? That one's an awesome one.

edited 1st May '15 7:14:59 AM by theLibrarian

Karen Travis wrote three of the legacy books and hers were terrible and filled with Mando wank and filler.

edited 1st May '15 7:24:23 AM by doineedaname

Eh, I like the Mandalorians. Though yes, Karen Traviss does like to inflate their importance and how awesome they are and how much everyone else supposedly sucks.

But aside from her books is there any reason?

I've only read a bit of LOTF, but the core problem for me was that characters' actions don't make sense.

Jacen's fall to the dark side is pretty obvious, but nobody really picks up on it aside from a few vague suspicions. The concerns Luke does have about Jacen's actions don't lead him to keep a closer eye on Jacen have Ben train with a different person - despite the fact that Luke has been having very obvious visions that a male member of his family will go dark, which narrows things down to Jacen or Ben. This makes Luke look like an idiot.

Jacen's rationale for "needing" to turn Sith is terrible, and his misinterpretation (in virtually the first scene of the first book of LOTF) of "Jedi don't kill in anger" as "it's fine for the Jedi to kill a bunch of people, without looking for non-lethal ways to defeat them, as long as they feel bad about it and don't get angry" is an incredibly stupid misinterpretation of Jedi doctrine (and also, so far as I remember, pretty much the opposite of some things he learned from Vergere). Yes, Luke and the other Jedi have killed people, but Jacen's in a fairly simple situation where creativity would offer any number of options for non-lethal ways to win the fight.

Tahiri's an incredibly weak character absorbed with still mourning Anakin Solo, even though she's had several arcs in previous series where she moves past that.

The Galactic Alliance is stupid enough to elect Daala president even though she's been nothing but incompentent in all her previous appearances.

Those are just the problems I remember from reading the first book in the series, and bits and pieces of some of the other books, several years ago.

edited 1st May '15 9:31:55 AM by Galadriel

NJO seems to be a base-breaker, but the fandom seems to agree that it jumped the shark at some point after that.

Planet of Twilight was just weird, one of the ones where they went off on a sci-fi gimmick that ate away at the rest of the plot (i mean, new gimmicks were part of it from the beginning, with Zahn and the ysalamiri, but they were tools and not plot points in and of themselves). I barely remember Planet of Twilight, but it seemed to be about some sort of sentient-disease thing that had been festering on the titular planet and wanted a way to spread across the galaxy. And there was a Hutt-ex-Jedi, and Daala turned neutral (i always have to wonder what makes a woman turn neutral. Money, lust for men?). It wasn't even the strangest of the Bantam Books EU novels. No, that distinction belongs to the dimension-hopping The Crystal Star.

I'm interested in reading NJO mostly for the story of the Yuuzhan Vong War. But how did it jump the shark after that?

Finished A New Dawn. Farewell Skelly, you badass yet crazy old coot.

edited 2nd May '15 8:25:09 PM by DS9guy

I think Galadriel's post just above yours sums up a lot of the salient points regarding the post-NJO EU, at least as concerns LOTF. It's ultimately due to weak and inconsistent characterization, both in relation to previous series (the transition from Jacen in NJO to Jacen in LOTF is not handled well, for instance), and within a series itself. Having three writers with different visions of the universe managing the same series does not make for successful storytelling. It's the ultimate reason why Karen Traviss is so reviled: her view of the Jedi and of the Mandalorians is clearly at odds with Allston's and Denning's, and the three end up undermining each other as a result.

Basically: Allston wanted to write Star Wars like he always did (and generally did well), Traviss wanted the Mandos to be the Protagonists and Denning wanted his myth-arc to be written.

Its basically Idiot Plot: The Series.

The fact that at least 2 very loved characters got offed (and both by Traviss) did not help at all.

Who, Jacen and Mara Jade?

Mara and Pellaeon.

Those.

Ah.

Denning had a weird liking for teenage Grimdark. Most of the squickiest parts of LOTF were written by him, like when Tahiri inexplicably becomes a pederast when she turns Sith, and tries to sex up Ben. Forget "this doesn't belong in a Star Wars book," I don't want to read something so pointlessly gross in any literature, to be honest. It's also sexist—you never see male Sith getting rapey with people. Also, he is the author most lacking in creative vision. His stories are the most like the movies, to the point of being outright copies.

Allston has Crippling Overspecialization. When he's writing Wedge and Rogue Squadron, he's totally on point. When he writes literally anything else, he's not really bad, but totally forgettable.

Really, the guy I miss most from the EU's old days is Stackpole. Guy wrote Star Wars like nobody's business.

edited 6th May '15 5:43:25 AM by CrimsonZephyr

Indeed. Him and Zahn are some of the best along with Luceno and Stover.

My fave Star Wars writers are Zahn and Alan Dean Foster. Most of the newer writers never appealed to me.