f13.net

OK- I have decided to torture myself by reading some or all of the Star Wars books. I read Eps IV-VI and Splinter of a Mind's Eye when I was a wee lad. I am heading to the used book store at lunch (because FUCK paying full freight tiny shitty paperbacks). What I need to know is where do I start? Is there a logical chronological or publishing date I need to jump up from? What series/author should I look for?

We can fold this into the Book thread at a later date- I just need feedback SOON.

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Start with the first 3 Zhan books, set five years (I think) after Jedi.

This is NOT the Chronological way to do it (There's one set RIGHT AFTER Jedi) but it is the best.

Because, alas, the Zhan books are ok and the rest are just pure drivel.

Don't even get me started on the vuzzanahfhgang zghongonga North Korean force repelling aliens.

Fucking awful.

They're all pretty fucking awful. Personally I couldn't stand the Zahn books at all and then every trilogy after that had some superweapon du jour that had to be destroyed.  They were all pretty feeble. If you are intent on reading the novels then good luck. If you are willing to stretch to graphic novels then I'd suggest the Clone Wars series which imo were fucking awesome and were so much better than the prequel films.

Also, while not strictly speaking EU and more alternate universe, the Star Wars Tales were very good too.  They're just a series of one-offs by different writers/artist but are mostly entertaining enough.

Couldn't find Zahn. Ended up grabbing 4 Rogue Squadron books- I have read a few Stackpole books in the past and like some of them. Also, there is no way in hell I am reading all of them- I discovered RA Salvatore and Barbara Hambly have written SW books, and fuck that noise.

Anderson is the worst....

Only thing I'd recommend is tracking down the collections of the Tales of the Jedi comics.

No. Its Zahn or gtfo. Zahn is canon.

I'll echo the sentiment that you should pick up the Thrawn trilogy by Zahn and then pretty much forget the rest exist.

Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command

The other nine million Star Wars books tend to range from kinda okay to outright terrible, and it's generally not worth wading through them. Star By Star, for example, is a pretty good New Jedi Order book. But for most of it to make any sense (or come to a conclusion) you'd have to read a bunch of NJO books that are pretty awful. I tried, and gave up after one or two more.

Zahn or GTFO.

I've read quite a few of the SW books.  The only ones I could even stand were pretty much the ones written by Zahn, Stackpole, and Salvatore.

Zahn's books
(Thrawn Trilogy, Luke/Mara Duology)

Stackpole
(Rogue Squadron, I Jedi)

Allston
(Wraith Squadron)

Stover
(Traitor, Shatterpoint, Shadows of Mindor and even the Revenge of the Sith novelization)

Stover is the best out of all of them, with Zahn next, then Stackpole and Allston.  The rest are just there.

I couldn't even get through the third Zahn book.

And the Yuzhaan Vong bullshit? Really?

I've never read a Star Wars book, but....

There are quite a few relatively decent sff authors who write SW to pay the bills.  Stackpole and Stover are the big two who have a good output of non-SW books that just don't sell well. 

Really, Stover's "Caine" books are right up the alley of people around here.... if you like morally ambiguous, snarky, asshole protagonists who fuck shit up.  Stackpole's The Dark Glory War is a pretty good deconstruction of the stereotypical fantasy plot.

I read one when I was like 13. It was alright.

My friend is reading a whole boatload of the SW books right now, but he has some weird love of bad fantasy, such as Terry Goodkind and WoT shit.

The Republic Commando ones are supposed to be pretty good. I read and enjoyed the first one. They're more like war stories set in the star wars universe, though, than Star Wars books.

Can't stand Stackpole. He's a genuinely good guy, and he knows how to construct a big, splashy plot, but even when I was fourteen and reading his Battletech novels, I could tell his grasp of character was shit. Not as bad as Anderson, of course. I truly don't understand why people keep publishing him.

From when I read the SW books (a brief period in college, blame a girlfriend) my left-field pick would be Michael P Kube-McDowell's Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. They struck me as the best-written next to Zahn. The second book (IIRC) screwed the pooch by following each character for 1/3 of the book before moving on to follow the next. If you care enough, that was easily rectified by reading a chapter on the first character, a chapter on the second, a chapter on the third, and then cycling around again.

They've since been rendered non-canonical by the suck trilogy movies (there's a b-plot involving Luke and Leia's mom).

All of the Rogue and Wraith squadron books (Stackpole and Allston) are recommended.  They tend to be pretty funny, the characters are at least remotely interesting, and there is a lot of "Star Wars" taking place. 

The first three Zahn books are required reading if you are going to bother.  The rest of Zahns' stuff is okay at best.

Anything by Matt Stover...except Shadows of Mindor which is so bad that I swear there's no way he could have written it.

The Republic Commando series by Karen Traviss.  She shits all over the SW norms, but is in my opinion one of the best writers of the EU.  I look forward to each novel in this series more than just about any book in any series.

There are nuggets of decency in other places in the EU, but you probably have to subject yourself to too much drivel to find it.  James Luceno is a good example of this.  Which reminds me that "Dark Lord - the Rise of Darth Vader" is pretty decent.  Read it right after you read Stover's ROTS novel (which is actually quite good, IMO).

Oh, and ironically, given that I'm posting right after Stormwaltz...Drew Karpyshyn of KOTOR fame has written two Darth Bane novels.  I liked them quite a bit - he is making original canon, and isn't handcuffed to it.  Pretty good author. 

Yeah, I've read nearly all of them.

Yes to all of those. Except Allston, but only because I didn't read it. Zahn is mostly the best of the bunch because he was the one who kicked off major shifts in the post-Ep6 universe: Thrawn trilogy (begins with Heir to Empire) and Hand of Thrawn series that kicked off the New Jedi Order (Spectre of Past/Vision of Future) which ended with The Unifying Force (Zenoma Sekot ftw). You can basically ignore everything between Vision of Future and Unifying Force. Most of it is mindless publishing fulfillment of political stupidity and the same sort of constant inevitable outcome you expect in a Star Wars book.

The only other series I'd recommend is the Han Solo trilogy. Not because it's any sort of poetry, but just because the origin story is interesting. If for no other reason than to retcon what "flew the Kessel Run in 3.2 parsecs" statement  :grin:

I wouldn't personally recommend the Han Solo trilogy unless you're running thin on other stuff.  Pretty shit-tastic.

Allston's Wraith Squadron stuff is even better than Stackpole's Rogue Squadron, for the simple reason that Allston is pretty funny.  Some of his later stuff is okay, but is stuck in series that you'll probably otherwise want to avoid.

Aww that's the main reason I like Stackpole.  It could have been partly cuz I just loved the Battletech Universe at the time, but i never thought his writing was horrible.

Echoing Star by Star by Troy Denning -- my favorite piece of the SW EU and a rare piece of work that actually holds up on second reading. Most of that enjoyment, however, is derived from my personal familiarity with the Young Jedi Knights series, which was early teen schlock, but full of characters I came to know and inevitably to emphasize with as I was growing up. I picked up Star by Star as I was graduating from high school, starting into college, beginning to remove the blinders from my eyes. Star by Star proceeds to doom these characters, my childhood friends, to a series of terrible, gruesome fates, irrevocably shattering their delicate world views and changing them all for the worse -- forever.

You will not find this book nearly as engaging, but it is the only piece of Star Wars fiction I think that can claim some small role in shaping someone's mental development.

EDIT: For all that, I wouldn't recommend reading the EU. Most of it is crap, providing a ton of disappointment for every ounce of enjoyment or meaning you might scrape out.

I'd have to dig out my box to remember who I liked best but I remember wishing that Stackpole wasn't always given the pivotal story moments since he wrote most characters poorly compared to some of the other authors doing BT.  I also think I'm going to catch up on the new timeline books, I stopped around #26 (the Kurita assassin plotline) but this thread reminded me I could go for some fluffy scifi.

I never read the Star Wars tweener books, but taking all those "IDENTIFY WITH ME, KIDS!" junior Jedi characters they introduced years ago and just brutalizing the shit outta them with the horrors of war was a pretty awesome move. I can see how having been into the kiddie books back in the day would make Star by Star more... interesting.

Mind you I haven't read any of his stuff past the first Clan trilogy he wrote.  I actually like Pre-Clan Battletech more then after.

Completely with you on that.

I read the entire BT story, to the end of Fedcom civil war and all that.  I started off really disliking the clans but in the end they became less and less relevant after the truce and the clan on clan violence led to some good storylines.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? What would be a SW norm and how is she shitting on them?

For one, the entire RC series is centered around a bunch of elite clones and their Mando fathers/trainers/leaders.  She has a hard-on for military special forces, police work and Mandalorians, which is not traditional SW fare.  There are Jedi involved, but they are only important as far as how they relate to this clone and Mando family.  For the most part, Jedi are very specifically scorned, though there are one or two that manage to attach themselves to the clone family.  She does a fantastic job of making the clones, and all the other protagonists for that matter, very human.  She'll make you care about them.  Also, she is brutal and gutsy.  If it serves her purpose to have a key figure in the story, one you've gotten attached to, get brutally murdered or otherwise maimed, she'll do it.  Other authors pussy-foot around with that sort of thing, but Karen has no qualms about it.  As a result, you never know what's going to happen next, which isn't something you can say for most SW authors.  Last but not least, most of the characters she uses are of her own invention.  You've never heard of any of them, and as such she can take them whereever she wants.  They just happen to operate within the SW universe, but they don't have much influence on the outcome of major events.

Note:  some people get turned off by her hard-on for all things Mandalorian.  If you are not one of these people, or are even remotely interested in Mandos, this is the shit for you.  Karen Traviss is for all intents the leading expert on the subject.

That's one for the CV...

I enjoyed the Zahn and Allston stuff back when I was 14-15. If I find time I might give them another stab. The wraith squadron books were some of the best because they really just celebrated the stuff that made Star Wars what it is, without getting too over-creative with technology, situations, alien races and other wishful voodoo that taints most other books. They also didn't take themselves too seriously, and as Cyrrex says, they have a sense of humour.

I also recall enjoying "The Truce at Bakura", which I haven't seen mentioned. It's been years since I read any of this stuff though,

In her case, it actually is. 


Truce at Bakura is probably best left to your nostalgia.

If you want to read about how awesome Mandalorians are, and how everyone else in Star Wars sucks, and how Mandalorians can catch lightsabers in their hands and beat up Jedi because they're just that hardcore, and have the best armor, and best spaceships, and best culture, and best everything, and want to hear at length about their silly made-up language, and want to see an entire race elevated to the status of a giant Mary Sue, then by all means read Traviss. Personally, she's part of what makes me a "Movies only, well maybe the first three Zahn books too..." Star Wars nerd.

There was a noteworthy stink among certain segments of geekdom when one of her books and their incredibly realistic military bent made the entire army of the Galactic Republic smaller than armies that have been fielded by some real-world nations, followed by her flipping shit on the official forums when a bunch of said geeks pointed out that this was sort of ridiculous even for Star Wars. Rather than just go "Woops, okay, assume a couple of extra zeroes then you nerds!" she then started spinning this theory out of nowhere that the Clone Wars as such didn't really exist, and were just a bunch of "brushfire" skirmishes played up by the media at the behest of Palpatine, and that this was supposed to be able to fool even people actually fighting in said war because... shut up, that's why!

Bleh, this is all reminding me why I stay away from the EU.

That pretty much covers my feelings on Traviss.  It showed up in its worse form during the Legacy of The Force arc.  Every third book was by Traviss and every third book dropped most of the characters to focus on Boba Fett and His Awesome Mando Zoo Crew.  Denning and Allston at least tried to play together.

Wow, that's some serious nerdrage WUA.  You know an awful lot for someone who professes stay away from EU stuff. 

Also, I'm relatively certain that the small size of the GAR was not Karen's invention.

I will agree with the criticisms levelled at her other SW work, because it really was an exercise in Mando masturbation.  The RC series is still stellar, in my opinion.

I used to hang out on some forums where I was actually on the low-end of the local Star Wars geek scale, believe it or not. I know about this stuff the same way hanging around here has taught me all about the design flaws of online games I've never even considered playing.

Heh, yeah, I have been there too (I actually posted some snarky bits directly to Traviss...I seem to remember offending her somehow).  Only, that isn't the story I heard....which just goes to show you that you can't believe even the most hardcore of SW geeks.  We're still geeks, after all.

I could just be misremembering something or other, to be honest. It's been a number of years since I had even that sort of distant secondhand connection to the EU.

The Zahn books, the X-wing novels, and the Wraith Squadron novels.

The Zahn books because they're decent, and because the last pair are basically a big "FUCK YOU DUDE" to everything written between them. (Mostly Zahn saying "Jesus, make Luke a little fucking Godlike, didja? Fuck up a perfectly good Mara/Luke relationship for what bullshit now, really?").

X-wing because they're light reading and shit gets blown up.

Wraith squadron because it's funny light reading where shit gets blown up. I still remember the squadron motto: "Pretty. What do we blow up first?". And, of course, Lt. Kettch.

Plus, Allastan's Wraith books kill pilots off. Regularly. Even ones people like. Because fighter pilots don't have the best life expectancy in a fucking war. And I can applaud that.

Are people with Red Skin destined to be on the DarkSide, or does the DarkSide make your skin red?

You get a susceptibility to the Dark side, yes.

Also, smallpox.

The Dark Side doesn't make your skin red, silly.  But it will, of course, turn your eys yellow and red.   :uhrr:

So I guess it's only fair to postulate that red skin will in fact make you fall to the Dark Side.  So will speaking with a British accent, unless you are Obi or Qui Gon.

:awesome_for_real:

I am most of the way through the first Rogue Squadron book (I have had exactly dick for reading time the past week or so). It isn't anything earthshattering or anything, but it isn't making me want to tear my eyes out of my head either.

In case anyone is still paying attention to this subthread: Because he never damages a franchise, and never underperforms (if a typical installment in the franchise sells 10K, a Stackpole-authored entry will do at least that well).  In some cases, the very fact that his characters are weak is a *plus*, there's no chance his will overshadow those of the canon, while his plotting and world-painting is strong enough to carry them as standalone, even there he plays nice in the sandbox.

My father had several fairly good westerns rejected because his characters were too vivid, they were more memorable than the peripheral characters from the canon they stood in for.

--Dave