Abrams Directing Star Wars

SW novels? What a bunch of geeks

 

*psst* They wrote Trek books too, y'know.

 

The concept was alright. Having exclusively Dark Jedi or gangsters as villains was very old hat and the Vong were a serious outside threat akin to the Dominion in DS9.

The Legacy era was a real step backwards though. A cowardly return to the same old Star Wars formula.

 

Hence the phrase "Vector Prime, perhaps?"

So you never finished the Thrawn trilogy?

 

I have all three and never even cracked open the last two.

 

IMO they're better than his later work.

 

I tend to forget Vector Prime was a Yuuzhan Vong story. The post-ROTJ books aren't exactly my forte or preference.

 

I enjoyed the 'Hand of Thrawn' duology for the way it thumbed its nose at the ridiculously over-powered Jedi tricks that Luke used in the other tie-in media. Zahn's interpretation of The Force seems most in keeping with the OT, IMHO.

His Thrawn trilogy really is where Star Wars tie-in books begin and end, though. No others have even come close.

 

Shadows of the Empire and the Thrawn books tend to be the novels most mentioned by my friends who are into Star Wars. I hear the occasional mention of the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies written in the late seventies and early eighties but if a book is going to be spoken of by my friends it'll probably be SOTE or the Zahn trilogy simply because they're the most well known and had the greatest advertising pushes.

 

Maybe Cumberbatch is really playing Thrawn in this movie, and the new Star Wars movie will be a crossover?

THRAWWWWWWWWWWWWWN!

 

And they still are!

 

Though he didn't contradict anything Luke did in other sources, he did have him become convinced he had been using too much of the Force and rein in his use of it to what he considered a proper level.

 

Actually VP had even more advertising including a tv commercial by Mark Hamil.

 

To be honest, I found the Thrawn trilogy to be very overrated. Nearly swore me off Star Wars novels completely. As it is, I think I've read ten, that's counting each Thrawn book seperately.

Actually, the idea of Cumberbatch playing Thrawn is kind of cool sounding.

 

I think the Thrawn books are better written and plotted than any of the movies .

 

I don't know, it's basically three 500 page books of a blue skinned guy staring at paintings

Spoiler: yes, I'm spoiler coding something from a book released 20 years ago.

before getting killed by his creepy bodyguard for some reason which I can't be bothered to remember.

 

I think they are both.

I do think they're not quite worthy of the praise usually attributed to them, but they do hone a certain level of sophistication not seen in the films. But that's usually par for the course with lit over film.

I do think Thrawn is a very interesting character and, ironically, how I've always envisioned what Khan should have been. However, I do think Zahn went a little too far with him. Like there were times I think he was a little too prophetic and a little too cunning to be fully believable.

Also, I could never get passed Zahn's obsession with the word "grimace."

 

True, but they remain some of the best pieces of Star Wars literature. Not THE best (Might not even make my Top 5 Star Wars novels!) but certainly memorable. And better than bloody Shadows of the Empire.

My favourite McDonald's mascot.

 

I did enjoy Tatooine Ghost. For the uninitiated it's the hardcover from a few years back wherein Luke and Leia discover information about their late grandmother Shmi and begin to learn a lot about the Skywalker family history other than "dad was a Sith Lord and cybernetic monster."

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader - set immediately after the conclusion of Episode III: ROTS and chronicling the earliest days of Darth Vader in the black suit - is an amazing SW novel and fills in much needed information about the beginnings of Vader's quarter century of co-rule at the side of Emperor Palpatine. It's also the novel that depicts the new Empire's subjugation of the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk and creating the system of slavery that would eventually trap Chewbacca in its snare.

 

Did somebody just say something?