- Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, the droids, and all the others embroiled in yet another serious threat to the New Republic.
- The emergence of a new villain. With these, there were slight variations: one time, it might be a high-ranking Imperial officer. Another time, it might be a rogue force-user. Or it could be someone threatening Han and Leia's children.
- And of course, there's always some superweapon involved; it may be a Death Star-like machine, or it may be some unbelievable new Star Destroyer twice the size of Vader's.
- Storylines broken into a trilogy of books. There was (not to praise or criticize the quality, just listing the ones I remember) The Thrawn Trilogy, The Black Fleet Trilogy, The Corellian Trilogy, The Bounty Hunter Wars Trilogy, The Han Solo Trilogy (by Crispin), the Jedi Academy Trilogy...and again, I may be leaving some out. These are just the trilogies I remember. I think the authors tried to connect their work to the OT by structuring the stories in this way. I thought it was cheap to do so.
I liked a lot of the books and generally preferred the books that resisted the same old themes listed above. In fact, one forgettable book, The Crystal Star, was entertaining in one way - Luke and Han had been travelling together and were getting on each other's nerves. I couldn't tell you anything else about that book, but that part was pretty cool.