CP3S said:

Anchorhead said:

Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command

Specter of the Past
Vision of the Future

Sounds like you've really been on a kick to branch out lately. I generally don't like EU novels with few exceptions, but I love the first three Zahn books. Those are good reads, all about Luke, Han, Leia, and the gang several years after Return of the Jedi. Specter and Vision continue the story a few years later, I heard they are good, but have never read them.

From all I have heard, pretend the others don't exist.

I also always liked Shadows of the Empire, which most people hate. But I think falling in love with the video game and the story has a lot to do with that. I actually haven't read the book since it came out, so I don't remember how bad it was in writing. Every so often I listen to the abridged audio book, my preferred way to experience the story. It leaves a lot out and cuts the story down to the very basics, but I think it does an excellent job of doing so.

The Tales of books have been others that have always stood out to me. Personally, I think they get silly at times, but that is to be expected from any anthology of short sci-fi stories. Surprisingly, my favorite of these was Tales of the Bounty Hunters.

I was a teenager when I read any of these last, Revenge of the Sith (love the way it is written, story still sucks though) being the only SW novel I have attempted to read as an adult (if you exclude listening to the full unabridged audiobook of Attack of the Clones). So, I might feel differently about them if I were to encounter any of them today.

I'd say give Heir to the Empire a chance, if you don't mind reading a story where you have to take the events of Empire and Jedi into account, it can't hurt.

I'm a lot like you C3PX (we should splitscreen again sometime!) though I can't follow you to Shadows of the Empire. I really enjoy the soundtrack, but that's about it. I recently listened to some SW audio books, SotE amonth them, and found I couldn't believe how crap it was. I also re-read the comics and found they didn't fare much better.

EDIT: I also really dig the "Luke in Red Trooper Armour" POFT2 that was produced as part of the SotE figure line.

I listened to the Duology as well as Survivor's Quest and didn't really care for them. But then I listened to the Thrawn Trilogy, which I remember loving, on tape (3 hours per 300 page book) and found them to be quite bad. I have experience with how a poor audio abridgement can really ruin the quality of an otherwise very enjoyable book. So I made the Mrs. read them out loud with me in the car. I found them to be every bit as good as I remembered and perhaps a little better due to my own increased maturity and especially in the light of where Star Wars has gone since