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crystal star and planet of twilight are the easy winners of worst book award for the bantam era. post-bantam has plenty of contenders too tho like the bug orgy books
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May 10, 2024 20:50
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fartknocker posted:It's very much in the discussion. I did a huge reread of old EU a few years back (Which ended up being 50~ books and comic collections and took a long rear end time), basically the stuff from the 90s Bantam era leading through the NJO, and Crystal Star was the first one that was so utterly awful I gave up and skipped it after about 60~ pages. It's just predictable and crappy in every possible way and I wanted to get back to cool stuff (Which took a while, because I went chronologically so the stuff that follows it is the Black Fleet crisis books lol). While they're not even on the same level as Planet of Twilight, Crystal Star or even New Rebellion for pure cringe, The Black Fleet Crisis deserves special mention for the insane level of wasted opportunities they represent. You got a dark fleet of top tier imperial capital ships lost due to a rounding error that just fell into the hands of a bunch of already pretty armed and dangerous colonialist xenophobes You got the 5th Fleet, made up of brand new ultra high tech new republic kit sent out to root them out You got Han fuckin Solo brevet pinned as Commodore to lead the drat thing in a nod to his success in rooting out warlords with super star destroyers post-Endor And they managed to make it a total loving snooze.
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May 11, 2024 02:24
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don't forget the inexplicable subplot of lando hanging out with lobot and c-3po for the entire trilogy because that was the book the author actually wanted to write
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May 11, 2024 02:42
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Jazerus posted:don't forget the inexplicable subplot of lando hanging out with lobot and c-3po for the entire trilogy because that was the book the author actually wanted to write let her write the cloud city buddy comedy
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May 12, 2024 00:42
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Jazerus posted:don't forget the inexplicable subplot of lando hanging out with lobot and c-3po for the entire trilogy because that was the book the author actually wanted to write subplot? that's the only part of that fuckin thing I remember at all. Han was in it?
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May 12, 2024 21:39
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shame on an IGA posted:subplot? that's the only part of that fuckin thing I remember at all. Han was in it? The Black Fleet Crisis trilogy basically is three stories that are almost entirely unconnected except vaguely in their beginning in the first book and sorta, clearly forced together at the very end of the third book, plus a few smaller side things here and there. The titular Black Fleet and the xenophobic Yevetha is one third. That's mostly dealt with by Leia being Chief of State of the New Republic. Han is mildly involved in the first book, somewhere in the second he's sent to take command of the New Republic Fifth Fleet that's being deployed against them, but gets captured and spends most of the third book held captive by the Yevetha. I think in the third Chewbacca leads a Wookie rescue mission at one point? I remember that being a good part. The stuff with the fleet deployments and whatnot is kinda interesting at times, talking about strategic stuff that most Star Wars books don't, but ultimately doesn't really go anywhere. The stuff with Lando, Lobot, and the droids investigating and being trapped in the Vagabond ship is one third of the trilogy. It's a slow, overly bloated concept that horribly drags down the second book. The first and third books essentially alternate chapters between the main plot stuff, but the second book instead puts all of Lando's stuff in the first third, and all of the Black Fleet stuff in the last third, rather than going back and forth, and it makes that book a slog along cause the whole mysterious ship thing is a drag (I think literally at points). It's an that probably would have been best as a novella or short story, rather than essentially a single novel-length idea that's split across three. The final main story that makes up about a third of the trilogy is Luke being contacted by a woman named Akanah, who was part of a Force sensitive cult named the Fallanassi. She claimed she had been taught by a woman named Nashira, who was Luke's mother, and then spend three books seemingly tracking down information about her and teaching Luke some new Force abilities that basically don't show up ever again like how to change his appearance, before ultimately she reveals the stuff about Luke's mother was a lie she told Luke so he'd help her with some other crap that's barely memorable. This whole plot thread was bad even when the books were first published in the mid-90s and aged like milk left in the sun once the prequels came out. There's also some minor plots with New Republic intelligence, some internal Yevetha stuff, a guy who survives one of the planets they attack that then gets helped by Admiral Ackbar to become a fighter pilot and then dies off screen in battle later on, and a few other things that aren't memorable at all. And in the end, what happens to the highly militant and belligerent Yevetha with their massive fleet? They spend a decade or so isolated in the Koornacht Cluster, and eventually get practically exterminated by the Yuuzhan Vong and their home planet gets glassed entirely off screen, with the New Republic stumbling into the aftermath. All that said, Planet of Twilight was worse. I'll say Crystal Star too, since I couldn't even get into it enough to stick with it.
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May 13, 2024 00:04
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It's almost like someone shopped someone else the idea for a single novel, and at some point either Lucasfilm or the publisher got the mistaken impression that it was going to be another trilogy (as these were pretty common in the Bantam/Del Rey era all told). The author found out and said "oh yeah sure..." and then had to rapidly smash out 3 books worth of content when he'd storyboarded one.
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May 13, 2024 10:55
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Abysswalker posted:Jizz was first mentioned in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi junior novelization, authored by Ryder Windham and released in 2017. In an interview with The Big Event podcast, Alden Ehrenreich talked about research for his role as Han Solo, and mentioned that he read articles on Wookieepedia, taking note of Jizz among others.[2] Is there hot jizz and cool jizz I have read claims that the name for jazz music actually does have the same origin, it was originally "jasm", then "jass", and finally "jazz", with the first two being words that were considered at best impolite to say in front of ladies and children
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May 13, 2024 23:56
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fartknocker posted:And in the end, what happens to the highly militant and belligerent Yevetha with their massive fleet? They spend a decade or so isolated in the Koornacht Cluster, and eventually get practically exterminated by the Yuuzhan Vong and their home planet gets glassed entirely off screen, with the New Republic stumbling into the aftermath. So that's two civilizations they basically used the Vong to wipe out?
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May 25, 2024 16:25
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Dawgstar posted:So that's two civilizations they basically used the Vong to wipe out? the vong killed everyone and everything which was inconvenient to the then-current vision of what canon should look like, including a surprising number of random bit characters from bad bantam novels that for some reason needed to be explicitly killed off instead of just unceremoniously forgotten
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May 25, 2024 17:04
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Jazerus posted:the vong killed everyone and everything which was inconvenient to the then-current vision of what canon should look like, including a surprising number of random bit characters from bad bantam novels that for some reason needed to be explicitly killed off instead of just unceremoniously forgotten This is not true. Some of them were killed by Darth Jacen instead
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May 25, 2024 17:28
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Dawgstar posted:So that's two civilizations they basically used the Vong to wipe out? I’m blanking on who the other you’re thinking of is. The Yevetha are pretty much gone, but they weren’t heavily involved anyway. Ithor gets set on fire but they people aren’t totally wiped out. Obviously a whole bunch of other planets and systems get hosed up since a few hundred trillion beings are killed.
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May 25, 2024 17:29
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fartknocker posted:I’m blanking on who the other you’re thinking of is. The Yevetha are pretty much gone, but they weren’t heavily involved anyway. Ithor gets set on fire but they people aren’t totally wiped out. Obviously a whole bunch of other planets and systems get hosed up since a few hundred trillion beings are killed. The lizard folk from Truce at Bakura, the ones so terrified of dying off-world that it's a wonder they went off-world at all even considering they used other races strapped into drones or however it worked. My timeline is probably wrong but I remember being really big on the original Zahn trilogy that I then read the original Han Solo trilogy and liked it (I genuinely don't know if this would be true on a re-read but I was like 10) and then came Truce which even for my fantastically low standards and Star Wars fanboy nature of the time I thought "This isn't great. Oh, well, I'm sure it'll be a rare miss!"
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May 25, 2024 19:45
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Oh yeah, the Ssi-Ruu. They come up again late in the NJO, I think the Force Heretic trilogy. IIRC, their leadership got wiped out, some subservient species revolted somewhat, the Vong hosed with them but they weren’t totally wiped out but nobody wanted to go into their little corner of space by that point to see what was actually going on.
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May 25, 2024 20:30
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Dawgstar posted:The lizard folk from Truce at Bakura, the ones so terrified of dying off-world that it's a wonder they went off-world at all even considering they used other races strapped into drones or however it worked. My timeline is probably wrong but I remember being really big on the original Zahn trilogy that I then read the original Han Solo trilogy and liked it (I genuinely don't know if this would be true on a re-read but I was like 10) and then came Truce which even for my fantastically low standards and Star Wars fanboy nature of the time I thought "This isn't great. Oh, well, I'm sure it'll be a rare miss!" The original Han Solo Adventures are fun. They're really early in Star Wars so the writer describes poo poo instead of just saying "It's a K-Wing. You know, from Star Wars? The famous K-Wing?" And it's basically just Han and Chewie busting heads and getting rich then going broke in time for the next book. Anyway Kevin J Anderson wrote the worst Star Wars books. Maybe the plot isn't as bad as some but the prose is the absolute worst poo poo you've ever read.
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May 29, 2024 00:29
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No, the plot is somehow actually the worst part of most if not all of them.
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May 29, 2024 07:27
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The only way Kevin J Anderson is the worst is if you ignore is if you ignore about 10 other books released around the same time period, set in roughly the same point of the EU (Post-Jedi Academy trilogy, pre-Hand of Thrawn). Children of the Jedi, Planet of Twilight, The Crystal Star, the bulk of the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy, The New Rebellion, and the Corellia trilogy are all much more poorly written with far, far worse plots than anything KJA did. His worst book, Darksaber, is the middle part of a trilogy of those first two, and the difference in how much more readable it is than them is stunning.
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May 29, 2024 13:26
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Darksaber is not that bad a book by EU standards. It’s bad, but definitely better than the rest of its trilogy, and the whole plot with the Hutt guy and the repeatedly resurrected engineer trying to build a cut rate poo poo show Death Star is legitimately one of the best things in the Bantam era. It reads like Anderson unintentionally satirizing his own (and everyone else in the EU’s) need for increasingly absurd super weapons to raise the stakes.
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May 29, 2024 13:41
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I loved Darksaber until the giant wet fart ending
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May 29, 2024 14:28
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skasion posted:Darksaber is not that bad a book by EU standards. It’s bad, but definitely better than the rest of its trilogy, and the whole plot with the Hutt guy and the repeatedly resurrected engineer trying to build a cut rate poo poo show Death Star is legitimately one of the best things in the Bantam era. It reads like Anderson unintentionally satirizing his own (and everyone else in the EU’s) need for increasingly absurd super weapons to raise the stakes. 
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May 29, 2024 15:16
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fartknocker posted:The only way Kevin J Anderson is the worst is if you ignore is if you ignore about 10 other books released around the same time period, set in roughly the same point of the EU (Post-Jedi Academy trilogy, pre-Hand of Thrawn). i think it's more that he was so prolific and kicked off a period of just terrible novels with the Jedi Academy trilogy, contrasted with some basically-passable trial balloons in the years before. It's easier to forget the abject failures written by people who were less memorable.
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May 29, 2024 15:43
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KJA had IG 88 possess the second Death Star immediately before it exploded and it was pretty funny
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May 29, 2024 16:50
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KJA wasn't bad on the X-Wing comic but I think he had a co-writer. Which is not always an out for a bad writer, mind, as I have heard of his Dune prequels.
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May 29, 2024 23:03
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It’d be easy to give KJA credit for setting up the Luke Yavin Jedi Academy timeline that was pivotal for the EU, until you realize that was obviously where the post-RotJ story was going to, and then you start to wonder how KJA got chosen to write it over everyone else.
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May 29, 2024 23:09
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Just learned that KJA worked at the Livermore labs during the Reagan era. Which tbh makes Darksaber make a lot more sense.
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May 29, 2024 23:35
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Must admit the concept of Palpatine having Bevel Lemelisk repeatedly murdered for his failures and then cloned/resurrected and put back to work again is kinda hilarious.
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May 30, 2024 05:37
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Don Dongington posted:Must admit the concept of Palpatine having Bevel Lemelisk repeatedly murdered for his failures and then cloned/resurrected and put back to work again is kinda hilarious. It's kind of a bit stolen from God Emperor of Dune, which is at least consistent with SW in general
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May 30, 2024 09:07
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Dawgstar posted:KJA wasn't bad on the X-Wing comic but I think he had a co-writer. wasn't that stackpole? Hazo posted:It’d be easy to give KJA credit for setting up the Luke Yavin Jedi Academy timeline that was pivotal for the EU, until you realize that was obviously where the post-RotJ story was going to, and then you start to wonder how KJA got chosen to write it over everyone else. same answer as every hack nobody likes: he hits deadlines. he slammed out those jedi academy books all for release in the same year
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May 30, 2024 15:33
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Cease to Hope posted:wasn't that stackpole? Yes. Anderson wasn’t involved in anything X-wing related AFAIK. He did some comic stuff, but not those. Cease to Hope posted:same answer as every hack nobody likes: he hits deadlines. he slammed out those jedi academy books all for release in the same year Aside from that, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that other authors said he was good to work with, so that may count for something. I still think the Jedi Academy trilogy are solid B-/C+ level books overall. They flow along pretty well as easy reads, and have enough moments in them to make them reasonably entertaining. Compared to a lot of EU stuff that came out in the 5~ years after them, that counts for something to me.
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May 30, 2024 15:45
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pilepillars
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May 30, 2024 16:08
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balancecylinders
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May 30, 2024 17:49
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Are you having a stroke
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May 30, 2024 18:13
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Hazo posted:Are you having a stroke stackpole is a funny name
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May 30, 2024 18:25
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Cease to Hope posted:stackpole is a funny name loadpenis
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May 31, 2024 09:15
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:loadpenis Columncock
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May 31, 2024 13:33
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Hazo posted:It’d be easy to give KJA credit for setting up the Luke Yavin Jedi Academy timeline that was pivotal for the EU, until you realize that was obviously where the post-RotJ story was going to, and then you start to wonder how KJA got chosen to write it over everyone else. KJA produces books quickly. Very quickly. Turned in well before deadline and of "acceptable" quality. He's extremely easy to deal with, not a drama queen, and has an affable and jolly public persona. Compare and contrast with someone like Harlan Ellison, an undoubtedly higher quality writer, but who is also a complete gently caress-up, egotist, serial harasser, and is famously known for escaping out of his office window to avoid writing the Star Trek episode the studio paid him to write. You can easily imagine which one the editors and publishers would rather work with
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May 31, 2024 15:12
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shame on an IGA posted:I loved Darksaber until the giant wet fart ending the ending is actually perfect for the seeming parody that it is. It was built shoddily. Everyone dies. No moral.
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May 31, 2024 17:39
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Cease to Hope posted:wasn't that stackpole? Yeah, my mistake. He worked on Tales of the Jedi with somebody else.
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Jun 2, 2024 05:12
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