Anchorhead said:
To me, the Prequel characters seemed forced. Kenobi and Annikin felt out of place in a Zahn story and particularly so in this one. Annikin reads like an after-thought. Zahn's work is much deeper than Lucas Prequel, so they felt like filler and I'm sorry they were there taking pages away from Jorus and Lorana. The Kenobi and Annikin roles could have very easily been one of the other pairs of Jedis on that trip and in the context of the story would have made more sense. Their reason for being added to the crew of Outbound Flight was thin.
Kenobi and Annikin also took pages away from the story of the ship itself, which I wanted to know more about. I dig the idea of several ships married to a large inner core for a years-long exploration of unknown space. In the story they plan on being gone at least ten years.
If Zahn had written Outbound Flight from a PT-neutral standpoint, I wouldn't hesitate to snatch a copy up from my local library and give it a read. As it is, though, I've made a firm decision to avoid any and all EU that I know with 60+% certainty isn't going to mesh with my personal canon, so I won't even bother. Shame, as the overall story sounds pretty good.