The Random EU Thoughts Thread — Page 6

Wexter said:

ZkinandBonez said:

I personally really like Dark Empire, and the fact that it didn’t really acknowledge Zahn’s books outside of the crawl is fine with me. More time spent making an interesting and different story, rather than spend too much time trying to connect everything.

I used to like Dark Empire as well. It did feel like jumping the shark at several points, but it had a very nice pulp comic feel. I also have to admit I am not a huge fan of Zahn. Always felt like his stories were really smart, but ultimately not that exciting.

Well, to be more precise, I really like Dark Empire I. II and Empire’s End are kinda weird, and “jump the shark” s few times as you said. I still enjoyed DE II for it’s art, but I have mixed feelings about the plot. It was oddly inconsistent. Empire’s End was just weird both in terms of the underwhelming plot and the change of artist.

I can’t really comment too much on Zahn until I’ve read more of his work. The Thrawn trilogy I really liked. Not perfect, but I thought Thrawn was amazing, the other characters were interesting, the action was good, the pacing was good, etc. But Hand of Thrawn has been a bore with the occasional interesting parts (depends of what character it’s about). The plot itself is clever, like you said, but it’s not very exiting.

Did Thrawn write anything prior between the Thrawn trilogy and Hand of Thrawn? I should ask this question in the recommendations thread, but if so are they any good? His writing seem to have gone from good to dull pretty in a fairly short period of time.

Finished reading all the comics in my book.

Included in personal canon

Star Wars #7-23

• Excluded #1-6 adaptation as it differs from the movie, although it was a very good adaptation.

Pizzazz #10-16

• Excluded the story from #1-9 because it includes four android kids that can control fire, wind, rain, and earth respectivelt without using the Force. I didn’t much care for that.

Star Wars Weekly #60

suspiciouscoffee said:

Finished reading all the comics in my book.

Included in personal canon

Star Wars #7-23

• Excluded #1-6 adaptation as it differs from the movie, although it was a very good adaptation.

Pizzazz #10-16

• Excluded the story from #1-9 because it includes four android kids that can control fire, wind, rain, and earth respectivelt without using the Force. I didn’t much care for that.

Star Wars Weekly #60

The next omnibus in the series will hopefully include more of the UK exclusive stories.
(EDIT: Never mind. It does include the rest of them.)

If not I’d recommend; The Day After the Death Star and Way of the Wookiee.

(Star Wars Weekly #60 is actually the only pre-ESB UK story I haven’t read.)

The next one actually includes those two stories and more! Issues #94-99 and #104-115 are listed.

EDIT: Saw your edit 😉

suspiciouscoffee said:

The next one actually includes those two stories and more! Issues #94-99 and #104-115 are listed.

I did actually read SWW #104-115 quite recently. They’re kinda weird. Not necessarily bad, but really weird. Kind of half SW half Forbidden Planet.

SWW #94-99 are some of the best though. Same writer and illustrator that made the (US) #12-23 (+ #24-37 which will be included in the next volume.)

Tobar said:

Jedit: Question, are the UK comics in black and white?

Yes. At least, the one featured in the volume I have is black and white, so I assume Volume 2’s UK comics will be the same.

Who?

I remember the names from the Tales of the Jedi comic series, but that’s it.

I started reading the first X-Wing book. It’s good.

It’s really hard to make that sort of action sequence work on the written page. Timothy Zahn deserves a lot of credit for pulling off the battle scenes in the underground cloning chamber in The Last Command.

suspiciouscoffee said:

I started reading the first X-Wing book. It’s good.

Finished it just now. There were probably a few too many dogfights, but I really enjoyed the characters and the interactions within the Squadron.
It’ll probably be a while before I read the next book.

I just finished reading The Approaching Storm by Alan Dean Foster, which is my first foray into an EU novel. The only other two adult oriented Star Wars novels I’ve read are Lords of the Sith and Bloodline, both of which are canon. So anyway, the book was alright, I liked the new characters like Luminara and Barriss, and I even liked Anakin, though Obi-Wan is his condescending prequel self, and the book was kind of boring, the story being kind of pointless. My biggest problem was the constant changes of POV, which happened sporadically, within paragraphs. I.E. Obi-Wan thought… then two sentences later Luminara noticed…, which really got on my nerves. Meh. Not one I’d read again.

So I finished Survivor’s Quest, and I really enjoyed it, much better than The Approaching Storm, mostly due to better writing and characterisation. Although, I did realise too late that this was the book in which it is said that Yoda told Luke that Jedi were forbidden to love. But it didn’t impact the story, Luke thinks about it for one sentence and it’s only slightly brought back at the end. Good book.

I finished the novel Outbound Flight, loved it, and started Vector Prime. I also received my copy of Heir to the Empire in the mail, but sadly it wasn’t the original art by Tom Jung, but instead some spiffy new art by Rich Kelly, which, while nice enough, isn’t as visually striking as the Tom Jung cover.

I read Vector Prime. I found it boring for the first half, but the second half picked up.

Also, is The Glove of Darth Vader worth reading in a “so bad it’s good” way?

“So bad it’s good” doesn’t work for books like it does for movies. At least not for me. Maybe a short story, but a full, bad novel? No.

DominicCobb said:

I’ve been thinking about picking up any old EU book. What are people’s favorites beyond the obvious (Thrawn trilogy, Han Solo adventures)?

The Wookiee Storybook. It’s canon in my eyes.

DominicCobb said:

I’ve been thinking about picking up any old EU book. What are people’s favorites beyond the obvious (Thrawn trilogy, Han Solo adventures)?

Not sure if you mean old as in from the 90s or old as in all of the original Legends stuff, but Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn is my favourite at the moment.