Been reading some EU. It's getting close to TFA now, and my Star Wars interest levels are rising, so I need to get a fix. I've never really read any EU before (some junior novels when I was younger and I think I got a chapter or so into Heir to the Empire but that's it), so now's the time. I'm trying to go somewhat chronological, but I'm not really interested in the really early stuff, or the really late stuff. Once you get too far away from the movies it's sort of like, what's the point? I want stuff that deals with the characters from the movies. So I want my EU to be filling in the blanks between the movies (and within them). (Also just the idea of the really early and late stuff in the timeline has me considering depressing existential ideas which I don't need from this franchise.)
Unlike most here, I'd imagine, I actually don't mind the PT stuff so I've been delving into that. I was really young when I first saw the OT, and it wasn't long before the PT came along, so most of my preconceptions and speculations about the world pre-ANH were simply replaced and supplanted (rather than squashed) with what I saw as the real events. Obviously I can look back at the PT and list the ways things should have been done differently, but I won't ignore the fact that the PT is canon, and I honestly don't mind it either.
So I read Darth Plagueis by James Luceno, and it was pretty good. I appreciated the way he explained all of the machinations of the PT in ways that Lucas never could, fully developing threads like Dooku and Sifo-Dyas that were only vaguely explained in the PT. It's pretty cool to get a behind the scenes account leading up to the dawn of the Empire, and Luceno details things well. I would probably prefer that the origins of Palpatine and Plagueis went unexplained, but that's the whole point of the book really so I can't complain. The one thing he never explicitly states is whether or not Plagueis and Palpatine created Anakin with the force, but it's pretty heavily implied and I'm okay with that.
I'm not sure if it was the best first EU book for someone to read. The beginning was a little tough, and I had to consult Wookiepedia quite a bit to figure out what the species Luceno was referring to were. It was also just hard at first to become invested into the Plagueis character, and I really just wanted to see him interact with the stuff I'm already familiar with, but I guess if I had already read a lot of EU stuff a book like this would be a nice change of pace, following an unknown villain prominently for once. Still, the first part of the book was still rather dull with politics and such (and sort of the rest of the book for that matter), but things started to pick up once Palpatine arrived. The last third was exciting, but very rushed. This is partly due to it (from my understanding) covering events that were more fully fleshed out in the novels Cloak of Deception and Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, and of course The Phantom Menace. Ultimately, however, it was a satisfying read.
Next up, Terry Brooks's novelization of The Phantom Menace, in an attempt to see if the book version might be any better than the film itself. And well, it is, of course, but, like many fan edits, once you wipe away all the crap you're still left with a rather boring story. Some of the bad dialogue is still here, but I don't have to worry about any bad acting or racially insensitive accents. Jar Jar's tolerable, but ends up feeling really out of place. The truth is, reduce the really bad stuff, and you notice there's not much that's interesting about TPM.
What I really do appreciate is how Brooks expanded character motivations and thoughts. Anakin's additional material works really well, and there's a good bit of foreshadowing with the Tuskens (though way too much bad foreshadowing with Padme). Obi-Wan is the other notable. Turns out if you really pay attention to him he's actually a dick in TPM, but thankfully Brooks uses this as part of a character arc for him, something that is sorely missing from the film where he has nothing to do. Brooks's writing itself is serviceable, though at times repetitive and even childish during the Anakin stuff (obviously on purpose, but not very well done, in my opinion). Still, I enjoyed it.
After that was Greg Bear's Rogue Planet. I hadn't heard much about it, but my thought was that there should be a novel to fill in the ten year gap between TPM and AOTC. Since this was the only adult EU novel that fits (oddly enough I remember reading an old Jedi Quest book when I was a kid that I thought did a pretty good job filling that gap), I thought I would read it to see how the old EU handled that timeframe. It started out well enough, with an exciting first chapter that put the characters in an interesting situation that helped define them. And then the book slowly became what I was worried it would become - another boring and pointless story. So much time is spent on this random and largely uninteresting planet "Zonama Sekot" that reading became rather tiresome. The other problem was the whole story is built on a bunch of mysteries - mysteries neither the protagonists nor antagonists have answers to. And then when they're finally answered, at the very end, they're anticlimactic and don't even make that much sense. And the worst part of it all is that the main reason I was reading this - to see Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship develop - is one of the most undercooked aspects.
Despite all of this, the novel is actually very well written and characterization is also well done. Tarkin also shows up for a bit and we get a good insight into what he was like before the Empire (not very different) so that's fun. All in all, it wasn't a terrible book, but it was a disappointment. A lot of wasted potential.
Now I'm on to Attack of the Clones. Let's see how this goes. I'm only a few chapters in and author R.A. Salvatore is already twisting himself into knots trying to explain this assassination plot. Novelizing Lucas's screenplays must be a hard job.