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SeanBeansShako posted:The easily excitable gullible idiot massacare of 7 ABY. Never forget. 4 ABY 
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Sep 20, 2010 21:35
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Diacritical Mark posted:http://www.karentraviss.com/html/mando.htm In spite of what she claims, it isn't a real language (not the way something like Klingon is).
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Sep 24, 2010 19:13
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Can anyone who has read the Traviss books vouch for my theory that she wrote Daala as herself? She seemed to be caught up on that whole Jedi being Nazis thing and low and behold a beautiful woman achieves the most powerful position in the galazy out of nowhere and exacts vengeance on them for "crimes". I can vouch for it. But then again, Traviss is guilty of using any character she chooses as a mouthpiece for her thoughts, whether it is consistent with the characterisation or not.
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Oct 5, 2010 00:07
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SeanBeansShako posted:A novel? of the game? This was how the first game's novel played out. It was really terrible. I'm hoping they learned some lessons though. Sean Williams is a decent author - I really enjoyed his TOR tie-in book. I'll give it a try because I'm a slut for everything Star Wars, but my expectations will be naturally modest. When they did the Shadows of the Empire project they worked it really well. The book followed the main characters, the game followed Dash Rendar, and the comics followed the bounty hunters. So there was overlap but one was never an adaptation of the other. I've read they did this with TFUII comic, so maybe the novelisation will go off on its own route a bit also.
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Oct 11, 2010 12:05
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Poor Darth 
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Oct 11, 2010 13:53
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Milky Moor posted:The Senate is kind of messed up though, although it's probably completely unintentional. The cone-headed Jedi dude damningly deems Count Dooku, leader of the Seperatist movement, probably the number one threat to the Republic, as a heinous 'political idealist'. Being described like that is usually a good thing, a way to make a character seem 'good'. I know I've said this before but it just demonstrates how badly written that film was. Isn't he downplaying Dooku by basically saying he's harmless and couldn't have been behind the attempted assassination of Senator Padme? I.e. that he's basically harmless (which turns out to be false, because the Jedi in the PT are portrayed as high-functioning retards).
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Nov 10, 2010 14:17
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Mad Hamish posted:Ew, no. She's obsessed with MANDALORIANS and looks like a horse. Are you aware that she used Daala to basically write herself into the SW universe in LOTF? Right down to the insinuated affair with Boba Fett, iirc.
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Nov 22, 2010 13:18
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ZeeToo posted:And yet they need new ship designs every in-universe few years. Not really. Consider Incom developed the Y-Wing bomber during the clone wars, but it was still used well into the later stages of the GCW, some 30+ years later. The X-Wing is still around (with a few upgrades) 40+ years ABY, and the Tie Fighter line is still used by the Empire in the Legacy era. As for why there are new designs every few years? Put that down to fashion and a very big galaxy (so there's a few ship designers out there). Also regarding the KOTOR tech, remember there's a breakdown of galactic civilisation c. 1,000 years before the film. That'd explain a tech breakdown in the same way you can't plot a straight technological advancement from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome to the modern day.
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Nov 27, 2010 12:15
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Leovinus posted:"You see, kids, C3P0 and R2D2 are outside the Force because they are soulless and an abomination. They can't do anything and when they die nothing will happen and they'll just be thrown away like the junk they are." Sounds a lot like Preadamism
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Dec 2, 2010 13:08
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Andorian Blues posted:Merry Life Day everyone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXcb7VPw59s
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Dec 25, 2010 19:50
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Wampus42 posted:Which of course led to this thing of beauty: Actually that's from the Classic Star Wars series set between ANH and ESB, published first as a newspaper strip and later by Dark Horse Comics. Those are Admirals, not Moffs, and they're rebelling against the construction of Vader's Super Star Destroyer the Executor, which they try to help the Rebellion sabotage. It turns out to be a trap though - Admiral Griff the ringleader is working with Vader to weed out traitors. Sorry for the nerdy correction. I actually think the post you're replying to is thinking about this rather than the destruction of the Tarkin, which is in the Marvel series.
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Jan 12, 2011 16:35
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Dave Syndrome posted:He was in the comic book adaption, at least: He survived.
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Feb 3, 2011 10:38
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Chairman Capone posted:I just realized something. At the start of A New Hope after the blockade runner is captured, stromtroopers march off a bunch of prisoners from the crew. Is there anything in the EU that mentions them in any way? I'm kind of amused by the thought that several weeks after the Battle of Yavin, Leia suddenly remembers all the other prisoners from her ship she forgot to escape with before inadvertently having them blown up. Wookiepedia says the entire crew was killed. I think I remember in the ANH radio drama Vader orders them to be liquidated, so I don't even think it was EU: quote:Unable to find the plans on board the Tantive IV, Darth Vader ordered a team of stormtroopers to sweep the planet below to find them. Afterward, the corvette was destroyed and the entire crew was killed. Imperial propaganda, including a falsified report by the survey vessel Wide-Eyed, would later proclaim that an asteroid storm caused the destruction of the Tantive IV.
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May 5, 2011 11:46
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Torael_7 posted:To be fair, Dark Nest is definitely the latest low point. That's not to say that Legacy and Fate are good series, just that they're not quite as bad. But Dark Nest doesn't hurt the EU the way LOTF did. That series has made a number of irreversible events that has left the established character pool smaller, and was demonstrably gimmicky and poorly thought-out, with Denning admitting on TFN forums that the entire series was planned on a "what if Jacen......" without any kind of critical thinking as to whether it'd be a believable character progression or if it'd make for a good, 9-part story (it wasn't, and it didn't). Dark Nest you can literally ignore. LOTF you have to read and it hurt all the way through. Ok that's not strictly true: it started out promising and then progressively the bad feeling built in the pit of my stomach. At least FOTJ hasn't disappointed me - ,mainly because I entered it with rock-bottom expectations. Yep, still bitter.
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Aug 5, 2011 00:59
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RagnarokAngel posted:They hold up pretty well, though maybe not the original Dark Forces game I played through this earlier this year via Steam (£1.99 iirc) and I was surprised how well it held up. It's possibly the most atmospheric of all the DF/JK series, and the stormtroopers (whose shooting animation was a very recognisable stock photo) felt much more stormtroopery than those in DF2:JK and MOTS. Sound effects were awesome so every battle with Imperials felt right out of the original trilogy. I think my favourite level is probably level 2 when you're going through a Rebel base that's been wiped out by a Dark Trooper. Given the limited amount of sprites that could be used they really conveyed a massacre.
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Aug 28, 2011 09:53
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bitterandtwisted posted:Third, there's apparently no imperial presence on any of those planets because no one's breaking up the street parties with heavy blaster fire. I guess the rebellion was another War with No Consequences. The EU (back when it was in good hands) dealt with this in two different sources. Mara Jade: By the Emperor's Hand (comic) - Ysanne Isard has the people who set off fireworks shot by a firing squad. X-Wing Iron Fist - One of the members of Wraith Squadron describes the carnage in one of the plazas on Coruscant as stormtroopers started firing indiscriminately into the crowd, and felt super guilty because he was the one who hacked into all the video screens and broadcast the DSII exploding.
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Sep 17, 2011 23:08
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Read Shatterpoint, the RotS novelization, then close them all and tell yourself it all stops there. If you're going to read those two you might as well read Stover's other non-NJO novel, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. They work as a kind of loose trilogy, with epilogues to Shatterpoint's characters, plus parallels between Luke and his dad (and why Luke is best). Also, any excuse to showcase young Jedi Luke is pretty worthwhile.
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Sep 20, 2011 12:56
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Douche Bag posted:If they had just condensed the series down to 3 books it would be pretty drat good. And gotten rid of that Boba Fett sub-plot. Hell, nixed all the Mandalorian parts. Oh and portrayed the Jedi Council/Luke as competent instead of inept buffoons. The writing was really inconsistent between the books as well. If they had let Aaron Allston write the entire trilogy then it might have been a good series. I kind of think the SW EU became irredeemably stunted the day Lucas decided to keep the Jedi philosophy indefinitely stunted in the simpleminded, binary morality crap of the prequels. After NJO (which personally I thought was superb) the EU had a chance to evolve the conflict in Star Wars beyond light and dark, Jedi and Sith, binary good and evil and so on. But then all of a sudden they had to portray that interpretation as "evil", retcon Vergere as a Sith, and transplant the Jedi vs. Sith battle to multiple different time-settings and milk the cash cow forever.
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Sep 20, 2011 21:27
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Denning does deserve plenty of the blame though. Star by Star was okay - hardly the best of the NJO but better than Balance Point at least. But all his contributions since are simply rank awful, and I've no idea how he managed to be project lead on two big projects. He did a Q&A on theforce.net where he basically admitted they came up with the plot for LOTF on a whim as a gimmick ("Hey what would happen if Jacen went bad") rather than think it through as a natural extrapolation for his characer. This I found extremely annoying since not only is it a profligate sacrifice of the most fleshed-out character of all the next generation of characters, but his journey in NJO has him conquer all the things that would drive an individual to evil and emerge shining bright at the end. He was the last person you would expert to turn evil. Jacen in LOTF (and DNT) is portrayed as a moral compromiser (as is Vergere), and in NJO he's anything but. LOTF Jacen is all ends-justify-the-means and gotta-crack-some-eggs-to-make-an-omlette, but for NJO Jacen, and Vergere (in Traitor and in TUF, at least) what matter is your actions and what you do. Jace was the direct opposite of a moral compromiser. His characterisation basically turns 180-degrees in order to suit the storyline, which is so lazy it's unbelievable. There's a really good essay called Jacen, Vergere and the Force or Jacen and the Two Vergeres that expresses this very well. Stover's transformation of Jacen is actually clever. Walter Jon Williams gets it wrong in Destiny's Way but I can forgive that because the book would have been written concurrently, and it's still an enjoyable romp. Then Luceno gets it right for TUF. But after that, and in full knowledge of the books that went before, Denning and LOTF steps in and twists everything for his gimmicky storyline that ran out of steam less than half way through the series. I still collect and read them all, but for half of me the SW EU ended at TUF.
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Sep 20, 2011 22:39
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On a happier note: Ikea finally delivered the book shelves that allowed me to transport my Star Wars collection from my parents' home to my own: Apart from a few young readers and lovely Clone Wars novels, that's just about the whole EU published in novel or comic book form since 1990 (all of the left-hand unit, and the top 1 1/2 shelves of the second) with some non-apocryphal Marvel thrown in here and there, and some old EU (Lando Calrissian adventures, Splinter of the Mind's Eye and of course Brian Daley's Han Solo Triology) All in chronological order as best as I can manage it - between ANH and ESB it gets very hazy since the Classic Star Wars series depicts the Rebel base going pretty much directly from Yavin to Hoth only after the latter has been discovered, when all other literature depicts the Yavin evacuation being (naturally) almost immediately after ANH, but settling on Hoth appears to have happened - based on the movies - only months before ESB. So I assume that in-between the Rebels breaking the blockade around Yavin and arriving at Hoth, they secretly gently caress around for two years, which is where Dark Horse's excellent Empire/Rebellion series comes in. Then there's the original Clone Wars continuity, and the new one that accomodates the CGI series. I deal with this by going gently caress the CGI series.
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Sep 20, 2011 22:59
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movax posted:Maybe I'm blind, but I looked for a bit, where are the X-Wing books arioch posted:Well I saw Courtship of Princess Leia and Tatooine Ghost, so the small row of paperbacks immediately before ought to be the X-Wing books. But at this resolution/graininess I can't tell. Did they give the X-Wing books new paperback covers or something? movax posted:Same here; maybe they aren't the American covers? Correct. Sorry, forgot to say I'm UK-based and a lot of our covers were different. The X-Wing novels are mostly on the third shelf from the bottom - the 7 books after the Dark Forces novellas, and before Courtship and Tatooine Ghost. Admiral Goodenough posted:Billy supremacy I think I've read the Thrawn trilogy through at least three times, X-Wing series twice. Some of the others I've read twice here and there. I did re-reads of the NJO and Clone Wars EU a couple of years back. There are even a few in there I've never tackled - I'm yet to read Tatooine Ghost (it just striks me as a redunant story to tell), and I stopped reading the awful Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy halfway through the first one (but still bought the next two). On top of that I have unabridged versions of the Thrawn Trilogy I've listened to on the move a couple of times, along with the excellent audio production of Stover's ROTS novelisation. I re-read the comics a lot more than I do the novels. DougieFFC fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Sep 21, 2011 |
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Sep 21, 2011 15:57
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If anyone wants to get in on the ground floor of a train wreck, someone has started a thread on TFN with the following opening post:quote:So I get the feeling that Karen Traviss's contributions to continuity are generally disliked in the community here, and I wanted some clarification on that. These always remain civil.
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Nov 29, 2011 16:43
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arioch posted:BFC was utterly terrible. Read the Let's Read thread posts on it. I'm always tempted to leap in to defend series/novels I enjoyed. Then I remember I was 13 or 14 when I read them so really that isn't a judge of anything. See also: The New Rebellion. Incidentally, the only Star Wars books I could never bring myself to finish are Planet of Twilight and the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy. I have them all sitting in my bookshelf along with Tatooine Ghost, which I just don't have the motivation to begin because its position in the timeline makes it utterly unnecessary, and Troy Denning is not a good author.
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Dec 4, 2011 22:05
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Pope Mobile posted:I've seen it said before that It's not actually Revan but an imposter. I could be wrong, though. I heard this too but taking into account the video of you freeing him in a light-side quest I don't see how this could be.
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Dec 5, 2011 18:13
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Carnaticum posted:I was actually kind of excited for Death Troopers. That's probably because of the excitement and hype they generated around it. I mean, they really promoted it heavily: SWG tie-in content, I think the author toured the country, lots of crap on TFN etc. It's kind of worrying how pro-gimmick the SW arm of Del Rey appear to be at the moment. "Hey what if Jacen goes Sith?" "Hey what if we have Luke and his son go on a big tour of the old Bantam-era EU planets whilst battling Cthulhu?" "Hey what if we do Star Wars horror"? The only saving grace is you still have competent authors like Zahn, John Jackson Miller, Stover, and Luceno who have their own stories and ideas and independence to tell them.
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Dec 9, 2011 20:19
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I think the best thing that can be said about FOTJ is that it is benign. It may be poor EU, but unlike LOTF it isn't inflicting negative permanent changes, meaning it can be more or less brushed over like other bad EU (Black Fleet Crisis, Corellian trilogy, Bounty Hunter wars, etc. etc.). It might even be beneficial in the long term if it unfixes the stupidity with which its predecessor ended, and grows a few characters for future authors with less quota-meeting targets to use. I found Conviction so tedious that I was stuck reading it for months and only found the motivation to finish it by listening to the audio book. I'm treating myself to Choices of One before I tackle Ascension. DougieFFC fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Dec 9, 2011 |
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Dec 9, 2011 21:39
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Big Mean Jerk posted:At the very least, FOTJ seems to be setting things up for a torch passing. I wouldn't be surprised if the next series jumps forward a few decades and kills off the big three without mentioning how they died. I'd read a series starring Ben, Jaina, Jagged, Vestara, etc. They don't have to kill them off. Just move it forward five years and stick the OT characters in the background or behind the scenes like 70+ people should be in wartime. Luke Skywalker can still make the occasional cameo rear end-kicking, Leia can be a senator and Han can be in charge of a smuggling consortium a la Talon Karrde or something. This is how it should have been after NJO anyway. DougieFFC fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Dec 11, 2011 |
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Dec 11, 2011 01:06
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So I finally made my way through to the end of the Fate of the Jedi series. I can't work out whether or not it was worse that LOTF. On one hand, I think the plot (whilst I massively disagree with the direction) and writing was better in LOTF, FOTJ had far fewer aspects of the plot that had long-term, damaging effects on the overall EU. What a dreadful 7 or so years it has been for the Del Rey licence. I'm one of those who loved the NJO for being daring, suitably epic, actually evolving the characters and giving the movies' protagonists a suitable sign-off. The 22 "ongoing series" books that have gone since have been at the best of times unimaginative and dull, at the worst of times destructive and/or ridiculous. And still featuring the same, tired characters, who are now pushing 70 years old.
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Oct 4, 2012 13:31
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jivjov posted:The core business model they've settled on is "milk Han, Luke, and Leia for all their worth" because they are the only characters from the classic trilogy era that they can bank on non-fans to know about. I recognise this, but the solution could always to be to fill in the gaps elsewhere in the timeline. 10-20 years post-ROTJ, for instance, is very sparse, and there still seems to be space in the 3 years between ANH and ESB as we've seen with Zahn's recent novels. Similarly, between ROTJ and 4 years post-ROTJ there is very little featuring the main protagonists. The issue, of course, is that Del Rey came up with this 9 book, 3-authors-writing-simultaneously-so-we-can-push-books-out-quicker, "epic" series format, that requires a big space and lots of freedom to play around in. But my point is that if you want to tell stories featuring familiar characters in order to sell to more casual fans, you can do it without featuring them as geriatrics. Fortunately they are starting to realise this, but they should have fixed it after the abortion that was LOTF, and spared us the tedious affair that was FOTJ. I'm actually pretty happy with the output from Del Rey outside the "epic" series in recent years - I thought Darth Plagueis is one of the best SW novels there has ever been, Zahn's novels have been decent, and the other stuff (Kemp's novels, SWTOR tie-ins) has been okay. I just want to pretend like everything after NJO never happened. Edit: I've been so bogged down by FOTJ that I haven't read Mercy Kill yet - is it any good?
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Oct 4, 2012 18:32
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"Or the lucky Wookie."
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Oct 15, 2012 11:22
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Metal Loaf posted:If I recall correctly, most of the Clone Wars books were released concurrently with the publication of the NJO; some of them were fairly good. Yoda: Dark Rendezvous is severely underrated in my opinion. Well written glimpse at Yoda being the Grand Master / wise teacher guy and really enjoyable interaction between him and Dooku. Shatterpoint was excellent (Stover, Apocalypse Now in Clone Wars), Cestus Deception was enjoyable, Jedi Trial was crap. Labrynth of Evil was great if you can call it a CW novel, Republic Commando series started excellent and quickly went psycho and poo poo. Also Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader (Luceno) is a good epilogue to ROTS. And yes, Ostrander's comics are definitely one of the better EU creations.
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Oct 23, 2012 22:25
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ecureuilmatrix posted:We must save Horse Pilot! It's going to be an interesting game of probabilities to speculate over in the next couple of years, in terms of how much of the EU will survive Episode 7. It's not going to be an EU adaptation. Considering the age of the original cast, the films either won't feature them, or will set it decades after ROTJ in order to accommodate them. If the former, the may set it even further in the future. Either way, I think it's probable that the Bantam era (0-15 years post-Endor) is pretty safe. I think the only thing that's at risk is the Solo kids and whether Luke marries Mara. So in summary, I am confident that Horse Pilot is safe. I think there will have to be a new antagonist that is not the Galactic Empire, because frankly films set around "rebuilding the Republic" or any potential Empire mopping-up operation would be a bit mundane. I'm hopeful it won't be Sith because of Lucas' the-Emperor-dying-is-the-end-of-the-Sith vision. I think either they will either: * Deliberately set things several centuries after ROTJ thereby avoiding any damage to the EU * Set things several decades after ROTJ, saving the EU except for the DHC Legacy series (which I wouldn't miss: it was decent enough but I dislike the idea that the good work of the films' protagonists is undone so quickly) * Set things a few decades after ROTJ as per GL's vague comments on sequel trilogies, thereby invalidating everything from NJO onwards. My favourite scenario would be to invalidate anything after TUF, because I really enjoyed the NJO and hate what has followed. That failing, I'd like to see a centuries jump. Thinking wishfully for a moment, I don't think any film would suffer creatively or in terms of marketability doing a centuries jump. Just maybe, those taking on the franchise recognise the fan-base of the EU is not insignificant. I'm not half as protective of it as I was maybe seven years ago, but I still think it would be a dick move to completely invalidate it. Its main attraction, to me at least, is that it's been a unified, single-continuity, continuation of the story of the films in some sort of official canon capacity (even if it isn't "G-canon"). To turn around and say "never happened" would be a bit of a cock punch. DougieFFC fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Nov 1, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 14:05
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I don't know, I think they'll want to tell epic stories on the same scale as the existing movies. Should also say: this could be a good thing for the EU. It's stagnated because Del Rey have lacked the balls to let go of the big 3 as leading characters whilst not developing the next generation sufficiently. Featuring an entirely new set of characters and having them in a sequel rather than prequel context ought to be the catalyst to put them to bed. So I guess best scenario for EU: no significant trampling on existing continuity, new characters Worst case: Complete trampling/reboot.
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Nov 1, 2012 14:32
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Chairman Capone posted:I think they're absolutely going to invalidate the EU. They may say something like "we appreciate the extensive universe and contributions of its talented artists blah blah blah" but ultimately no one at Lucasfilm (the actual film-making part) or Disney will give a poo poo about anything in the EU. I agree but it can't be overlooked that the EU probably has a turnover of tens of millions of dollars every year. That isn't an insignificant trade. Edit: According to this site, the total revenue from the books stands at $1.82bn. quote:I also think it's not going to be set centuries in the future. One of the few things that Lucas has always been consistent about is that if there were any sequels they would be the same distance after the OT that the OT is from the PT. Plus setting it centuries in the future with no connection to the current movies would alienate the casual viewers they most want to cash in on. If it doesn't feature the characters of the OT, and it doesn't feature the Empire as the antagonist, what does it matter whether they set it 20 years after vs. 200 years? If KOTOR and TOR taught us one thing, it's that you can tell a popular SW story a long way removed from the OT era. Okay, TOR has sort of flopped, but that is based on the game itself (the initial uptake was huge). You can still have a connection with the current movies, you just do it in a different way. I'm wishful thinking here but I do think a case can be made for continuing the EU. Star Wars is a multimedia franchise and the best way to milk it is to deliver across the multiple formats they are at the moment. Tearing up the last 20 years of that will weaken this position. DougieFFC fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Nov 1, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 16:17
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SirPhoebos posted:That may be the case, but on the other hand, the movies alone made more than three times that amount. When you take the ratio of revenue to individual releases, the movies blow the books right out of the water. That's false binary though. It's not make a great movie or sustain the EU. The best business sense, clearly, is to try to make a great movie (the larger revenue source) with minimum harm to the smaller, billion-dollar cash cow. quote:At this point Disney has one of two options: This assumes that the existing continuity in any way contradicts the story they decide they want to tell. We don't know to what extent that is or will be the case. Let's say, for example, they want to stick the next movie 20 years after ROTJ and feature an antagonist that isn't the Empire. Why step on canon up to that point if they have to (most likely, things to do with whether Luke, I honestly think they will try to appease the existing canon up to the point where it constrains their creative vision, because there's no reason not to. Keeping everyone happy may require only superficial revisions to existing concepts (like with Coruscant in the PT), and if they can accomodate that, I think they will. On the fans, I would expect there to be fallout regardless of the quality of the new output. Yes, the last seven years have been a sluice of turd, and there's been some daft poo poo even before that, but there are a lot of people who spend money on the books because they are recognised as more than glorified fan fiction. You don't poo poo on your fan-base like that if you can avoid it. If their vision involved the continuing adventures of the big 3 in the aftermath of ROTJ I think yes, the EU would be pretty hosed all over; but I bet that won't be the plan.
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Nov 1, 2012 20:10
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Srice posted:EU canon is a hosed up, horribly tangled mess. Yes it's a mess, and I think it could benefit from pruning. I don't think many would shed a tear if bug-orgy onwards was given its own canon and effectively pruned. I think a lot of people would be unhappy to lose NJO if it was pruned but would accept it for the greater health of the franchise. I think there would be a far greater backlash if the stepped on the existing EU further. I.e. say episode VII opens and we find Luke is a celibate grand master of the Jedi, Han and Leia never married or had children, and there is heavy exposition that explains the Empire surrendered immediately after losing the Emperor. I think that would rub a lot of people the wrong way, justifiably (these are the stories that re-ignited the fan-base in the first place), and would also be completely unnecessary.
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Nov 1, 2012 21:29
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Chairman Capone posted:I mean, if there's a passage that should convince anyone of what Traviss was up to, that should be it. The classic one for me is her novelization of the Clone Wars 'movie'. If you've watched it, they have a droid that turns out to be a Confederacy spy. When he realises he is busted, the droid has his bodyguards open fire on Anakin and Ahsoka, who dispatch them before decapitating the droid. In the novel she changes it to a hot-blooded murder of an unarmed, surrendered opponent who had the gall to question the moral superiority of the Jedi and their cause. Her narrative is to shine a light on the hypocrisy of the Jedi and does so by attacking a straw man, i.e. behaviour that only happens in her novels. Other authors actually tackle the moral ambiguity of the Jedi much, much better than she does, and the EU is better off without her. It'd be bad enough if she had just wrote peripheral novels, but she also shat on the main continuity line too.
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Aug 12, 2013 19:18
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Minnesota Manatee posted:So, what am I missing? I'm mostly interested in the Rise of the Empire, Rebellion and New Republic eras. Seconding Crispin's Han Solo trilogy. Good fun. It seems you aren't interested in the Clone Wars, which is fair enough, but there are some good novels set in that period: Shatterpoint by Stover (Apocalypse Now with Mace Windu), the Cestus Deception by Steven Barnes (my favourite clone-realises-there's-more-to-life story), Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart (Yoda warm and wise reaches out to Dooku to bring him home), Labyrinth of Evil by James Luceno (immediately before ROTS) and then the ROTS novelisation by Stover is IMO one of the best SW novels there is. Rise of the Empire: Dark Lord; The Rise of Darth Vader takes whiney-bitch Vader from the end of ROTS and turns him into the badass we love. Labyrinth of Evil, ROTS, and Dark Lord make a pretty good informal trilogy. Rebellion era: you might enjoy Death Star by Steve Perry. A bunch of normal people wind up in jobs on the station and slowly learn that it's a big evil genocide machine. New Republic: Matthew Stover's Luke Skywalker and the Shadown of Mindor is a cool "and that's why I resigned from the military" story. With Shatterpoint and ROTS it's a pretty cool very loose thematic trilogy about why Luke is more awesome than his dad ever was. quote:The five Tales books, Mos Eisley Cantina, Bounty Hunters, Jabba's Palace, Empire and New Republic. Looking forward to getting around to these short stories. Let us know what you make of IG-88's story. quote:Ambush at Corellia, Assault At Selonia and Shadowdown at Centerpoint, how are these? I don't have high hopes. Should I read them before Specter of the Past? They're bad and you don't miss anything by not reading them at all. quote:Splinter of the Mind's Eye, this will be the next novel I read after some comics. Looks like a quick read after that Thrawn trilogy, whether it's any good or not. I enjoyed it. Bear in mind it's from 1978 (and written by the guy who ghost-wrote the ANH novelisation). quote:I, Jedi. I read this and reread Shadows of the Empire when I was in high school (25 now). I thought that Shadows of the Empire was poo poo but was really impressed by I, Jedi. I'm looking forward to reading this more than anything else. I plan on reading it after book 5 of the X-Wing series, going by order of release rather than in-universe chronology. You might enjoy Shadows more now IMO. I, Jedi I loved at the time because it was partly a fix of the KJA novels, but also suffered a bit from Stackpole being a weird author who loves monologues and dramatic chapter endings too much. You should also read Darth Plagueis by James Luceno. It's a love letter to both Palpatine as a character and the EU as a whole (just crammed full of refereces). Also I notice you mention lots of Zahn books but not Outbound Flight - that's one of my favourites of his. Specter/Vision are up there with his original trilogy too IMO.
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Aug 12, 2013 19:41
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Ursine Asylum posted:To be frank, thinking over this, I'm actually looking forward to the Disney retcon-- good or bad, Disney's pretty good about enforcing consistency in their IP. And as long they don't bring Travis and Denning back in it can only be better. I agree with this but also find it sad because I used to be a huge fan of the EU. I have every novel and comic book arranged in continuity order on my bookshelves. But everything has just been so horrible since they gave Denning the keys to the ongoing series projects. My ideal world would be to see Disney apply the scalple at the end of TUF, because I personally loved the NJO. But I would take peeling it back to the end of the GCW (i.e. Vision of the Future) if it meant we could assign LOTF and FOTJ to apocrypha. The latter I see as a realistic possibility because a) their possible wanting to use original cast members for cameos puts any such sequels after the events of the GCW and b) none of the events of the NR-era novels rock the boat in any way: the Empire eventually surrenders, Han & Leia marry and have kids, Luke rebuilds the Jedi. The only issue would be his marriage to Mara, which clashes with the prequels' celibate-monk picture of the Jedi. Hopefull they will ignore GL or else GL, now that he's re-married, will be happy to return to the love-conquers-evil theme of the OT, rather than the love-destroys-the-galaxy theme of the prequels.
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Aug 12, 2013 19:49
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