Novels to bridge the gap between Episode VI and Episode VII

I bought a bunch of them in the 90s and never finished most of them, they were so lame. The thrawn trilogy is pretty  good though. Maybe because its the only one written without knowing it was just part of a big boring machine that never ends.

I've barely read any of the post-Jedi EU, but doesn't pretty much all of it become relevent again in the NJO???

Hal's situation is eerily similar to mine. I remember burning through the GoDV series as a kid, so fast that I even remember telling my mom and sister "it's called Queen of the Empire" several times before they went into town and stopped by the bookstore. Granted, they weren't the longest reads. Shadows of the Empire got read once it hit paperback at Crown Books. I seem to recall a paper add slipped into the packaging of the Episode I vhs as being the first time I heard about Rogue Planet. Pretty exciting to have Greg Bear - one of the big names of science fiction - writing a Star Wars novel. Reserved it at the library and finished it .... Just in time for one of my relatives to get it for me as a surprise birthday gift which I took to the store and exchanged for something else.

The library also provided The Approaching Storm two years later.

The number of unread Star Wars books I have is just embarassing. Even Splinter of the Mind's Eye is among them (the 90's paperback with the GL intro), purchased at the same used books place where I found a '76 paperback of Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Later, at a different used books store, I'd track down first edition pb's of Empire and Jedi as well. All four of those will definitely get read in the next two years.

I did finally read Heir to the Empire at some point, but never got around to finishing the trilogy (yup, books 2 and 3 are still sitting in that pile). It will always be considered "the most important" by many people simply because it was the first official Star Wars novel set after ROTJ, and it'd been eight long years. It's set five years post-Jedi, so books set in the intervening years (like Truce at Bakura, X-Wing, Courtship of Princess Leia and Tatooine Ghost) were written later.

Vector Prime was one of those books that was a "must read" because of the hype surrounding it. I read dark tide I: onslaught and then skipped ahead to Balance Point once it hit paperback, but that's when I stopped bothering. The internet made it so much easier to get the cliffs notes version of what was going on in the books.

I did end up burning through the clone wars novels after getting Labyrinth of Evil from the library and loving it. Of course, this was around the time of RotS' release, "the last Star Wars."

Crispin's Han Solo trilogy and Tatooine Ghost still sit unread down there, along with one-third priced copies of the Agents of Chaos books from B. Dalton's going out of business sale.

I was wondering that. The Thrawn trilogy is fantastic (and I'm now sorely tempted to spend my summer re-reading it) but if you think Arndt is poring over it to ensure he connects all the dots you're sorely mistaken (let alone the sprawling remainder of the EU).

Every Star Wars fan needs to read the X-Wing series. The Allston ones were probably more entertaining, but the Stackpole ones deal with the recapture of Coruscant, which is just awesome.

I got through a fair amount of the NJO books before I got tired.  There was some great and intense stuff in them but I felt the storyline was starting to drag it's heels a bit towards the end.  The Dark Nest Trilogy was the only part I didn't read.

My only recommendations, and only because "I" thought they were cool, The Bounty Hunter Wars & Shadows Of The Empire.

:)

Hal 9000 said:

I don't expect the new films to make anything of the existing EU, but hopefully they steer clear of openly dismissing it entirely. If the films skip 40 years and don't require knowledge of what happened in between, these still might be fun as occasional podcast replacements.

That's exactly how I've been hoping Ep7 will be handled. It would be pretty stupid at this point for them to do anything but this, especially considering the cover art they chose for Crucible.

It's not like it would be all that complicated. They just need to follow a few simple rules, such as setting it 40 years since Endor, keeping certain characters dead and maybe avoiding going to certain planets so they don't have to even bring up the Yuuzhan Vong thing.

I won't spoil anything, but if you step back and look at who's still alive there are some intriguing possibilities for where they could take the new movie.

Besides, if they come up with an original script with original characters they won't need to worry about what EU stuff to reference and what not to.

Yeah, except ..... no, at least I hope not. God, would that be dumb. You're probably right, though. I just think it's dumb for them to have built up all that continuity, to say all the while that it's canon, and even needing George's approval to kill off one of the major characters, only to then go and say it never happenned.

How well do you think such a move would go over with the fans? It's been the official continuation of the story for all these years. Wouldn't it be kind of a slap in the face for them to say "it never happenned, deal with it?"

Oh, and I just checked Wookieepedia. The Falcon is still intact in the EU. You're probably thinking of the cover art for Jedi Search, which depicted the ship as having crash-landed on the surface of a planet.

The fans may be the ones who keep the franchise ticking over between big releases, but it's the moviegoing public at large that need to be considered the most.

The best chance this film has of being a creative and commercial success is for it to be as fresh and dynamic as Star Wars was is 1977 - hard to achieve if you're hamstrung by 20 years of overcomplicated 'canon'.

doubleofive said:

I'm pretty sure its the one where Luke disguises himself using the Force. For some reason, I do not like the idea that a Jedi can just change how other people perceive them. It's either way too powerful, and would come in handy way too often for him to only use it that one time.

Fang Zei said:

I just think it's dumb for them to have built up all that continuity, to say all the while that it's canon, and even needing George's approval to kill off one of the major characters, only to then go and say it never happenned.

How well do you think such a move would go over with the fans? It's been the official continuation of the story for all these years. Wouldn't it be kind of a slap in the face for them to say "it never happenned, deal with it?"

Abridgement helps if the original book was poor to begin with, though (The New Rebellion, I'm looking at YOU).

Akwat Kbrana said:

Tatooine Ghost [<-- Oh dear Lord, this one was awful; worst Star Wars book I've ever read]

The Jedi Academy Trilogy are sort of in a category all their own. On the one hand, they are quite important insofar as the EU metanarrative is concerned. On the other hand, even though the overall storyline is pretty solid, they're remarkably poorly-written (though not as infuriatingly bad as the four afore-mentioned shite-biscuits). Maybe give them a try, but don't feel bad if you give up halfway through.