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Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


fartknocker posted:

Traviss' first Republic Commando book, Hard Contact, is pretty short and solid. However, reading it after all the insanity came out, it's kinda clear where she'd take a bunch of the Mandalorian worship insanity in later works.
Yeah, I haven't read Hard Contact in a while, but I did reread it after Traviss's writing started becoming...well, more Traviss-y, and at the time I thought it still held up. It even had a Mandalorian as its main villain, which would be unthinkable in her later writing.

Say one thing for her, though, she wrote a gay Mandalorian couple into her books intentionally knowing it would piss off some of her more conservative fans. I was on the Jedi Council Forums at the time, and boy were there some unhappy people in her fan group there when that happened.

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Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


One of the only things I remember in Invincible is the final fight where Jaina cuts off Jacen's arm, and then at one point Jacen falls face first into a bunch of hypodermic needles or something and has them sticking out of his face for the rest of the fight.

I actually liked Betrayal at the time I read it (although it retrospect it kind of shitted on all the major interesting developments of the NJO and Jacen), but boy did that series go downhill quickly.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Xenomrph posted:

I dunno, on the whole I liked the NJO. My EU headcanon timeline ends with that, though.
:same: It's not quite like anything else Star Wars did or has done since, and I think it was a real shot in the arm that the post-ROTJ EU needed.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


I kinda see a parallel between how Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi dealt with the NJO with how Rise of Skywalker treated The Last Jedi. Sorry we did something interesting, it won't happen again. :ohdear:

(Obviously this comparison depends on how you feel about the NJO and TLJ, not trying to spark a sequelchat argument.)

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


I sure am glad we didn't get an Episode IX that featured Snoke clones and clumsy retcons of TLJ! :sweatdrop:

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


My single favorite line from that thing is "But the real battle is between him and Snoke. Or rather, Snokes." There's something about pluralizing Snoke that's just hilarious.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


I don't think the existence of midichlorians stands in opposition to the mystical idea of the Force (either in or out of universe). Qui-Gon sees Anakin as being created by the Force for a special destiny, regardless of how that was accomplished. The midichlorian count he does is to confirm his suspicions and provide evidence to the Council; he already suspects Anakin is special and strong with the Force before it happens.

I view it as kind of like how many religious people approach science, where scientific explanations don't remove God from the equation for them, they're just seen as how he accomplishes his will.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


There was some neat Rogue Squadron stuff planned that never saw the light of day, like The Reenlistment of Baron Fel. And one of the things sadly lost in the collapse of WEG was the Rogue Squadron Sourcebook.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


I enjoy the Thrawn trilogy as much as the next person, but the whole "they should be the sequel trilogy" thing has never quite sat right with me. I think they present a very different vision of Star Wars than the movies, less of the operatics and mysticism and capital-D Destiny stuff and more of a nuts and bolts mil sci-fi focus. You can definitely see the RPG roots of it, and in particular, the way that Zahn handles the Force feels very much like something built around game mechanics, with very clearly defined limitations and counters to Force usage. And like to be clear, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, and I very much enjoy that you have all these different takes on Star Wars, just that Zahn's stuff (and Stackpole and Allston as well, to an extent) always felt to me like their own direction on SW than a direct extension of the movies. As opposed to say, something like Dark Empire that feels like it's using a lot of the same themes and tone as the original trilogy.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Mulaney Power Move posted:

there's just too much star wars media out there. i don't even know if chewbacca is alive or dead anymore, let alone itchy, lumpy, and mala.
Ironically, Chewbacca is one of the last OT main characters who isn't dead in the new canon.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


I started reading the first Thrawn Ascendancy book, and I like how it refers back to the events of Outbound Flight without getting too much into specifics. That book is so steeped in Legends lore that I assumed it wouldn't be canonized as a whole, and this is a nice little compromise; if you want to treat them as part of the same continuity there's nothing really to get in the way of that, and it just adds to the backstory. Basically the same thing Zahn does in the original Thrawn book, where it's set in the new canon but clearly written to fit into Legends continuity as much as possible.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


fartknocker posted:

Or just bask in its full, completed glory


I'm just so tired of these Bounty Hunter Wars.

Finished the first Thrawn Ascendancy book and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Having a Star Wars book with pretty much no connection to the rest of the universe actually worked out really well, and lets Zahn create basically a whole new setting. I've always enjoyed the Chiss and the idea that you have this whole separate polity hanging out past the edge of the galaxy and doing its own thing while the rest of the universe occasionally stumbles into it, and that's pretty much the whole premise of this book. The sense of the unknown, and the dynamic of a bunch of smaller powers all competing with each other are things you don't get a lot of in stories set in the main part of the galaxy, and I like the feel they add to it.

The story itself wasn't anything crazy revolutionary, but I still liked it: Thrawn up against an enemy who might be his match (but of course isn't). It allows for a more uncertain Thrawn who can make mistakes, although I feel Zahn hits the point that Thrawn doesn't get politics a bit too hard, like he has to say "See? He does have flaws!" The side characters were all enjoyable and I like that they all get their moments to shine outside of Thrawn, and the sequel hook is interesting enough that I'm curious to see where this goes.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


The Shame Boy posted:

Going from the X-Wing/Thrawn era to so much later in the Legends timeline also leaves me a bit confused since i don't know who this Kyp Durron dude is or when or what this weird disease Mara suddenly has is. It reminds me of going from book 8 to Book 9 of the X-Wing series and being confused as to who this Thrawn guy they kept talking about was way back when i first read these things in high school :v:
Mara's disease is a new plot point for the NJO, so you're not missing anything there from the previous books.

I will say that in regards to your first point, Vong culture and society does get fleshed out a lot more in the later books. The pain thing is still a big part, but there's more than just that. I do agree that they are meant to feel like something entirely alien to Star Wars, and for me that's one of the series' stronger points (though also something that turns a lot of people off).

The Shame Boy posted:

Knowing that HE is suppose to be the angsty self insert and not Jacen is interesting since Jacen himself seems the very definition of rebellious ansty teen Jedi that doesn't want any higher authority MAAAAAAAN fits the bill better.
Like Mara (and really most of the characters), the Kyp of the NJO has skipped a few years of offscreen development, so the angsty kid stuff is largely in the past when Vector Prime starts.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Age aside, part of Kyp's status and the overall dynamic of the Jedi is also that he's one of the first generation of Jedi trained by Luke. You've basically got Luke at the top as the elder statesman (well, in his forties), the first generation including Kyp, Corran Horn, Mara, and a few others, and the new generation including the Solo kids, Ganner, Wurth Skidder, Miko Reglia, etc.

Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jul 15, 2021

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Edge of Victory is the Grey Keyes duology focusing on Anakin and the younger Jedi. The Allston books are Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand. I really liked both of them, and that whole run from Edge of Victory to Destiny's Way is extremely solid.

One of the nice things about the way the NJO is structured is that all the authors have a chance to each give their own unique takes on the series, focusing on different characters or parts of the universe or even doing different genres, and then move on before anything can outstay its welcome. The continual addition of new blood and new ideas makes a nineteen book series feel surprisingly fresh throughout. And if you don't like a particular author or subject, it's usually gone in a book or two at most. Among the many other problems of Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi, you never really get that same sense of change; you're always going to get Allston, Traviss/Golden, and Denning in that order, so if you don't like any of them you're stuck with them, and the whole thing just feels like it's going through the same beats again and again.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


I've only read the first Ascendancy book, but enjoyed it quite a bit.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


So I've been rereading the NJO with the intent to actually finish it this time (got stuck on Force Heretic last time). Just finished Balance Point, and a few assorted thoughts so far:

- Dark Tide kinda feels like where the real NJO begins. Vector Prime is sort of a little pilot episode/prologue, kinda limited in scope and even wrapping up with a sort of Pyrrhic victory. But DT is where you start getting those repeated losses that define the early NJO, as the scale of the war broadens and the whole EU to this point starts getting pulled in. Luceno's going to start making that his whole thing in the next two, but Stackpole's throwing around references left and right here. He also goes really hard on the Vong sadomasochism thing, and I can see why the series gets a reputation as being edgier than it turns out to be; it is kinda funny that the next couple books establish that Shedao Shai is just really the Vong equivalent of born-again, and even other Vong think he's kind of a weirdo.
- Agents of Chaos is a series that I've really been underrating. Not that I've really thought it was bad, I mostly just remember it as being fun but also kinda just there. But on this go through I enjoyed the hell out of it, particularly the first book. The second book loses some points from feeling kinda directionless, just mostly consisting a bunch of separate plots that happen to intersect at the end, but Hero's Trial is a fun little spy thriller and really a highlight of the early NJO. And I never noticed just how much I like Luceno's Han; Han in a lot of EU books just feels like a Han-shaped bundle of movie references (He's annoyed by Threepio! He doesn't want to be told the odds!), but this feels a very authentic extension of Han's character from the OT without just aping it. And I like that Luceno lets Han be kind of an rear end in a top hat, because he really can be sometimes in the movies, and it helps the portrayal feel more well-rounded. The Daley callbacks are fun, if a bit gratuitous sometimes, and Luceno immediately establishes himself as the reference guy; pretty sure the whole Bantam EU gets a reference at some point in these two books.
- Balance Point is strange. One of the NJO's five hardcovers, and therefore presumably one of the tentpole books of the series, is a character-focused slow burn mostly set on a single planet. The very first time I tried reading the NJO I got stuck here, and the second time I still wasn't impressed, but I think it's improved somewhat in reread. I like how Tyers writes Mara and Leia, the latter of which in particular I don't often find portrayals that click with me. And I like her Luke/Mara, which is a pairing I was honestly never that big a fan of, but actually feel like a real couple that work here. Jacen is also a highlight of this book, even if a lot of it is spent wanting to yell at him to figure out his poo poo. As to the pacing, it's still pretty slow and the writing gets oddly bogged down in detail at points, but it lends it a sort of traditional science fictiony feel that I ended up enjoying. An interesting experiment.

It is kind of amazing how much I still remember in the 15 or so years it's been since I last read these. There's so many iconic little moments and scenes, even in these early books before the real drama kicks off. I have fond memories of the next stretch of 8 books, so I'm looking forward to rereading them; particularly wondering how Star By Star has aged, given Denning's later output.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Rochallor posted:

Several of the books seemed like they were riffing on earlier Bantam-era stuff, and I always wondered if that was a specific mandate, wanting to keep continuity with Bantam after the Del Rey acquisition, authors just playing with their pet characters, or some combination thereof. Dark Tide is riffing on some X-Wing stuff and stars Stackpole's Very Favorite Character; Agents of Chaos calls back to the very original Han Solo books; and Edge of Victory and Star By Star systematically kill off all the major characters from the children's books.
I think it's definitely an author-by-author thing. Like if anything, Vector Prime feels like there was the exact opposite mandate, like it's written specifically to be accessible to people not familiar with the older EU. Stackpole focuses largely on his own characters, and Luceno uses so much Daley material because he and Daley were good friends and he's doing a deliberate homage. Balance Point is back to being relatively self-contained, though Tyers throws in a fair number of smaller references, to both her work and others.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Also just finished Edge of Victory in my reread. Definitely a highlight of the series, although like most of the NJO's duologies, it's stronger and more focused in the first half. Rebirth is still enjoyable, although it made me notice just how much Keyes relies on end of chapter cliffhangers. Conquest, however, is probably one of the top five of the series. Just a fun adventure story that really helps to flesh out both the Vong and Anakin's character. Anakin's obviously the big highlight of these two, and it's really the point that turns him into the hero he needs to be for Star by Star to have the impact it does.

Keyes feels like an old hand at Star Wars, just getting the setting and characters right off the bat, and it's a shame he didn't come back after the NJO (although since never actually got as far The Final Prophecy before, I still have one more of his left unread).

Now the part I've been looking forward to going back to for a while. Will Star by Star hold up? Will it feel like a warning of Denning novels to come? Some combination of the two? I will say (though I'm reading these on Kindle), it looks good on the shelf stacked up next to rest of the Star Wars collection, this purple behemoth in the middle of a bunch of books half its size.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Rad Valtar posted:

I mean the ship wasn't even called Slave 1 until around the time of the prequels right? So it's not like it has some legacy that dates back to the original movies. Also who cares get over it chuds.
The original 1981 Kenner toy of it calls it Slave I, so it definitely goes back to the timeframe of the original movies. Not that that changes the larger point of whether it matters.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Arc Hammer posted:

I was having a discussion with my brother earlier today about the differences between Disney battle of endor and Legends battle of Endor.

So in Canon Rae Sloane rallies what's left of the fleet and withdraws from the battle. Simple enough.

In Legends the Imperial flag shifted twice in rapid order, first after Executor was sunk and then again after Pride of Tarlandia was destroyed. What surprised me was that the flag was moved down from a battlecruiser to the ISD Chimaera. Was Piett the only Admiral present at Endor? It's strange that once the dreadnought and battlecruiser were gone that Pellaeon ended up in charge. Dude was a capable officer, but the order of battle therefore puts him at 4th in line for overall command after Palpatine, Piett and Tarlandia's CO.

Was there really nobody else down the chain of command, or did Pellaeon assume command of the fleet proactively to salvage the situation as best he could?
There was actually one Grand Admiral still fighting, so Pellaeon was probably acting well above his authority.

Also not relevant to the post-battle, but there was another Grand Admiral, Declann, who blew up with the Death Star.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


The Shame Boy posted:

Why is Traitor so much more expensive and harder to find online? I must always have a backlog of 2 books to be waiting for me as i'm currently reading one! :ohdear:
What country/platform are you looking at? In the US, and I'm seeing new copies on Amazon for $8 or Kindle for $9, and on eBay used copies seem to run about $3-4.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


So, Star by Star. I was wondering whether this would hold up, or whether after reading the rest of Denning's output it would feel like a prelude of things to come. It turns out kind of both, but mostly the former. It's still very Denning-y - the first chapter features both disguises and unnecessary descriptions of gore - but for the most part the worst excesses that will come to define his later work aren't quite there yet, or are at least muted. It is kind of noticeable just how much of his later work comes out of and refers back to the events of this book, from the entire plot of Dark Nest to all the terrible things that will happen with Tahiri. And of course, Anakin.

I was never really a big fan of Anakin. Not that I disliked him, just literally I wasn't a big fan, I liked the character just fine and that was it. I think a big part of it is that I got into the NJO knowing what would happen to him and never really having read anything with him beforehand (except technically Dark Empire, where he's a baby). So when I did finally get to the NJO, I kind of just saw him as a dead man walking, and focused more on characters like Jacen who had a future. But this read has really shown me the appeal of the character and why his death hit so hard, and Denning plays no small part in that. I'm thinking in particular of the scene where they decide to launch the mission to Myrkr, where we see through Han and Leia's eyes how he's become an adult and a natural leader of his peer group. One of the real strengths of the NJO as a whole is in how we watch the Solo kids mature over it, and seeing that potential cut short actually does hit this time.

Aside from that, Denning's other main strengths here are capturing the epic scale of the events - even the non-action setpieces like Nom Anor addressing the Senate feel imbued with an appropriate amount of grandeur, and the Battle of Coruscant is practically a novel in itself - and his Han and Leia. His Luke has always felt a bit off, and it's the same here too; there's one bit in particular where he's like "Alema's obviously going to fall to the dark side, it's just a question of when and for how long", and it's like, isn't that kind of your job to stop that?

Also I don't remember if I ever noticed this before, but is Denning just kinda bad at action sequences? I kept getting confused at the geography of a lot of scenes and where characters were in relation to each other, and I don't think it was me just suddenly forgetting how to read. Especially all the scenes in the worldship, where the unfamiliar environments just didn't feel like they were very well explained, so it often wasn't even clear what the setting looked like, much less what everyone was doing in it.

Dark Journey up next, and finally at the halfway point!

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Even well into Legacy of the Force there were still a small handful of people expecting Anakin to return, though by that point it was less "he never died" than that he did die, but would be cloned because he died in a cloning facility. I remember a couple people were even thinking he would be Darth Krayt from the Legacy comics.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


jivjov posted:

There was a big ol huge schism at the Wook regarding listing gender identity for characters, and the head guy in charge was a big chud and fought it so hard that the greater Fandom hosting network got involved and kicked a couple people out. The official Twitter account for wookiepedia was compromised for a bit when one of the ousted mods changed the password, but they got that back too
It was actually worse, it was an a real life author who transitioned after they were published, and asked that their deadname be changed on their Wookieepedia page; the admins in question first refused, and then tried to put it to a community vote before Fandom stepped in.

I used to be heavily involved in Wookieepedia back in its early years, and left because it started being taken over by some extremely toxic people, so it was one of the least surprising things to learn that the admin mainly behind the deadnaming business was one of the same ones from back then.

I don't think TFN quite deserves that rep, though, although again I'm not exactly unbiased as I used to be a mod there as well. It had its circle of lovely right wing people, but they weren't really dominant and often got called out. One in particular ended up leaving because he was really into Mandalorians and got mad when Traviss made some of them gay.

e:fb on Wookieepedia.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Casimir Radon posted:

Am I correct in assuming there was a push to clean up people’s dumb theory crafting at some point? I remember way back when people were just throwing their personal theories about canon inconsistencies into articles like it was going out of style.
Yeah, it was pretty freeform at the start, and in the first few years a lot of rules started being formalized like "no fan theories". Unfortunately I think that kind of set it on the road to what it became, as rules started piling up and the admins started become extreme sticklers about them, even when it didn't make sense by the spirit of them. Ostensibly, that's what the deadnaming incident was about - the rules said authors had to be listed by the name they were credited as, and by gum, they had to stick to them, because that's The Rules. Obviously that was just an excuse, but I think that the previous codifying of so many rules and procedures helped make excuses like that possible.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Arc Hammer posted:

I thought I recognized your username, Hydronium. I used to be on TFN as well. Place turned into a shitshow around the time season 2 of The Clone Wars started airing and I ended up blowing off from the TV forum with a few others thanks to the flame wars between EU readers and show watchers. But even then I'd say the Lit forum was the worst spot. Felt like there was a lot of bad blood already there from the fights Traviss would get into with members that was still festering pretty hard when I signed up so the forum always felt tense and waiting to explode.
Yeah, never really ventured into the TV forums so I can't speak much for them; I was in the movie forums a lot while the prequels were going on and then mostly switched to Lit after they ended, and I wouldn't say it was all that bad. There were certainly a lot of hot button topics (Traviss, LOTF, Vergere, Jacen, the size of Super Star Destroyers...you know, important stuff), and the era when Traviss was posting on there was probably one of the more contentious ones, but I had a lot of good conversations on there too, talking about the newest Legacy or KOTOR issue or speculating on who was going to die in the books or whatever. Around the middle of Fate of the Jedi was when I kind of dropped off both there and Star Wars in general, until mostly Rogue One brought me back.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Arc Hammer posted:

I'm surprised you even made it into Fate of the Jedi. I was so disgusted by Invincible and after Imperial Commando 501st was a resounding "meh" I dropped the EU entirely. I read a review of one of the FOTJ books where a jedi did a Kano heart rip fatality with the Force, saw it was a Troy Denning novel and concluded I'd made the right decision.

The EU between 2008 and 2012 was such a wounded beast of bad novels, mediocre LucasArts games and way, way too much cynicism. For every Shadows of Mindor you had nine miserable Crucibles.
After the bad reception to the end of LOTF I was hoping FOTJ would course correct, and the idea of having an eldritch horror as a villain seemed cool, but I only stuck it out three books (to the first Denning one, as it happens) before giving up and following the plot of the rest from summaries posted on the forums. That's also kind of the dividing line between when I bought most Star Wars books that came out and only the ones that really interested me; looking at a list of release dates, it's basically just Crosscurrent, Knight Errant, Deceived, and Darth Plagueis after that, the latter of which was the last Star Wars book I bought until the reboot (also I was surprised to learn how late that one came out). I also later went back and read Kenobi, which was also released in that late Legends timeframe. At some point I'd like to read Mercy Kill too, since I love the Wraith Squadron books, but knowing it's Allston's last book is kinda tough.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Battle meditation actually goes back to Tales of the Jedi; it was Nomi Sunrider's special skill, and a few others as well. That's where KOTOR got it from, and possibly Walter Jon Williams did too.

e: That said, someone at Bioware definitely read the NJO or at least knew of it, since Canderous tells that one story about meeting what's almost certainly a Vong ship.

Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Sep 25, 2021

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Both the Knight Errant comics and novel were great. Definitely one of the highlights of the late Legends EU, and outside of the Bane era the only real look we got into the New Sith Wars.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Force Heretic was where I bailed the last time I tried reading through the whole NJO. Almost done with Remnant on this read, so everything from here on out is new to me, and I'm looking forward to finally finishing the series this time. I'm enjoying Remnant more this go around; I'm interested in seeing where Tahiri's story goes, Nom Anor continues to be a fun character, and getting another rare glimpse into the Empire after the peace treaty is neat. It is extremely slow though, and two more books of this feels like it's going to be way too padded, especially for the end of the series.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Yep, the Yevetha thing is in Remnant.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Finally finished Force Heretic: Refugee, and of all the books in the NJO, this is definitely one of them.

Like it's not particularly bad as these things go; most of it is generally fine on its own terms, with a few highlights and a few really corny things (so many exclamation points in the narration!). It's just the most filler book so far in the whole series, and everything feels like it's spinning its wheels for the whole book. The Bakura plot is fine, if predictable, and the idea of checking in on the old Bantam plot lines might be interesting in theory, but it really doesn't need to be a whole book and feels miles away from the rest of the series up to this point. The Unknown Regions plot is a little more interesting; I always like checking in on the Chiss, and the idea of Zonoma Sekot as a wandering legendary planet that just appears in a system for a few years and then vanishes is genuinely cool, but most of that plot is basically about looking through a library, and those neat moments are spread very thin across it. Nom Anor's plot is the best of the three, because Nom Anor is great, but again nothing particularly happens until the very end.

Overall this feels like a book that was written to meet a publishing quota, like they reached the end and realized they didn't have enough books to fill all the spots on their schedule. And the timing of it in the series just makes it worse; two books ago we were getting some epic space opera in Destiny's Way and the series felt like it was launching its way into the endgame, and now everyone's just puttering around to kill time. I'm interested in seeing where these plots go, and of course looking forward to The Final Prophecy and especially The Unifying Force, but this is really the point when the series should be building momentum and in this book, at least, it just isn't.

Also why is it called Refugee? Were there even any refugees in it?

Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Nov 3, 2021

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


The Shame Boy posted:

My favorite part is when they get to the library and everybody is SHOCKED and HORRIFIED to learn that everything is actually in BOOKS!!! It's gonna take forever to find anything and you have a chuckle because it's kind of funny, but then it's not funny when that plot line just grinds to a halt as they very slowly look through books. Meanwhile things are still slow on Bakura and oh geez there's how many pages left with no chapter breaks?
Even better/worse, the whole plot on Csilla takes less than two days real time. That's a lot of padding to stretch it over the rest of the book, and they still have to add a whole new subplot of a Chiss attack to make it.

The Shame Boy posted:

Because Nom Anor is starting to lead a bunch of Refugees? Or he is a Refugee of the higher Vong class himself? It's hard to say.
That makes as much sense as any other explanation I can think of, so let's go with that.

Casimir Radon posted:

The books thing is the only thing I really remember about how it showed Chiss society. How does it track with what Zahn has been showing in his Ascendancy Trilogy?
I'm bad at remembering all the details from Ascendancy, but there is the fact that when Luke and company are on Csilla they spend a lot of time in abandoned ice tunnels and don't actually visit any population centers, and we later learn in Ascendancy that Csilla is a decoy and mostly unpopulated, so that's a nice bit that matches up, intentionally or otherwise. The NJO really didn't seem to have fully figured out Chiss naming conventions, though; throughout the series we get a mix of Chiss with first and last names and others with the usual three-part apostrophe style.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Now that I think about it, The Crystal Star is one of the few Bantam books that doesn't get a major callback in the NJO. New Rebellion, too, I think. At least so far, maybe Luceno does in TUF, it would fit his style.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Casimir Radon posted:

It’s bad enough that they wanted to memory hole it. I don’t recall Planet of Twilight getting a mention either, though I haven’t read the NJO in about 15 years. FOTJ felt the need to dredge it out though.
Nim Drovis appears briefly in Luceno's first Agents of Chaos book, and there's a bunch of references to it in that section. Definitely among the less-referred novels in the NJO, but there is some because Luceno.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


I'm so glad to see the back of Force Heretic. There's a decent book buried across the trilogy, but it's so stretched out that even the interesting stuff just drags. Pretty much the entire last book consists of just a handful of scenes somehow extended over 400 pages; and unlike, say, Traitor, there's not even any particularly interesting characterization or ideas being explored to fill that space. Half the story is about exploring the mysterious Unknown Regions to find a living planet and convince it to join the war, you'd think that would be much cooler and provide the opportunity for some great science fiction.

Fortunately now I'm onto The Final Prophecy, and only a few chapters in it's already significantly better. Finally on the home stretch!

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Thanks! Yeah, I did Traitor on this read through (and had read it before), I just didn't post about it or any of the others between Dark Journey and Destiny's Way because I got lazy and didn't have much to say besides "They're good". Dark Journey is the weakest one in there, but it's still pretty fun, even if it ends very suddenly. Enemy Lines, Traitor, and Destiny's Way are all excellent; the latter in particular I feel doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, and I really wish Walter Jon Williams had come back again. Keyes too; they just get Star Wars, both the universe itself and capturing that epic space opera vibe that the movies have at their best. Weirdly enough, Destiny's Way is also the only NJO book to even mention Nom Anor's first appearance in Crimson Empire II.

Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


So The Final Prophecy was a lot of fun. Kinda feels like Force Heretic III done right; you've got a plotline of Jedi trying to find and survive Zonama Sekot, with a parallel plotline of Han, Leia, and Jaina fighting a battle while the Galactic Alliance deals with a communication problem. The parallels don't really go that much further, but it's still kind of interesting to compare; particularly the fact that while there's not actually that much more plot advancement in TFP than Force Heretic, it's better structured, has more interesting character work, and has just plain better writing, so it flies by where the latter drags. The Wedge plotline is fine and all, but the real meat is the Tahiri/Corran/Vong/Sekot plot. Like in Edge of Victory, Keyes does a great job making the Vong characters and culture feel three-dimensional, and Nen Yim, Harrar, and Nom Anor all having their own distinct perspectives and agendas makes for a great dynamic. And I didn't have much of an impression of Tahiri before reading the NJO (having only read LOTF with her in it), but Keyes' version of her really is great, and it really sticks out how LOTF did her dirty. Overall it's neat approaching the end and seeing how gradually and organically these characters have evolved and matured over the course of the series; Jaina and Jacen are the two others that stand out most in that regard.

Also I just want to mention the line near the end "No world should have hyperspace for a sky," both because it's just kind of a cool image, but also something I had been wondering earlier when thinking about the experience of Zonama Sekot travelling.

I actually put writing this off a little since I wanted to jump right into The Unifying Force, so I'm already about a quarter of the way into that and enjoying it a lot. Feels weird to finally be at the end after so long, but also really looking forward to reading something that isn't Star Wars after this.

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Lord Hydronium
Sep 25, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien


Well, I've finished The Unifying Force. Gotta take some time to put together some more coherent thoughts about it and the NJO as a whole, but I'll say that it was a great ending and I'm so glad I finally got around to finishing the series.

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