Star Wars Books Thread

[Mr Light]

I think enjoyment of the Revan novel would be entirely dependent on playing both games, yeah.
I don't remember the other TOR novels very well but I think I found them all pretty middling. Not great, not terrible.

I'm getting to the end of book 6 of the Fate of the Jedi series, Vortex. I really love this series! It's just FUN. It doesn't have any of the bleakness or darkness of NJO or LOTF. It's got huge big threats but it's never a downer. This is the pinnacle of Luke as a character, joking with Ben, dealing with an entire Lost Tribe of Sith, not hesitating to kill them in combat, using all sorts of crazy weird Force tricks he's learned over the years... What a great character!

 

[Hippocrates Noah]

Canonically they had to choose something... he's white male Mullet Man, apparently.

I never used that one, I always went with the guy who had the scar and soul patch or the flat top guy.

 

[Mr Light]

Revan was always a lady for me, so it was SUPER weird that he was a dude in the book
At least they made the Exile a woman.

 

[DarKush]

I think enjoyment of the Revan novel would be entirely dependent on playing both games, yeah.
I don't remember the other TOR novels very well but I think I found them all pretty middling. Not great, not terrible.

I'm getting to the end of book 6 of the Fate of the Jedi series, Vortex. I really love this series! It's just FUN. It doesn't have any of the bleakness or darkness of NJO or LOTF. It's got huge big threats but it's never a downer. This is the pinnacle of Luke as a character, joking with Ben, dealing with an entire Lost Tribe of Sith, not hesitating to kill them in combat, using all sorts of crazy weird Force tricks he's learned over the years... What a great character!

Glad you're enjoying FOTJ. I thought it was a series as dark as LOTF, though perhaps not as tragic since its focus wasn't the downfall of a beloved character. But still it dealt with dark subject matter, IMO.

I can't say which series I liked better LOTF or FOTJ. In hindsight, FOTJ was more epic in scope I think. FOTJ dealt with a lot of issues, sub-plots, perhaps too many, but I did like the idea of Darth Caedus (more than the actuality), particuarly his slow descent to the dark side.

 

[Mr Light]

LOTF, for the most part, is very good and Jacen's descent is handled superbly. But it's not "fun" it's tragic. Kinda like how I love ROTS, but it's definitely not fun. It's a tragedy.

 

[Skywalker]

LOTF was about 3-4 books too long, and the tonal shifts between books was way too weird. In one author's book Jacen was a conflicted man who believes he's just doing what's necessary, in another's (mostly Troy Denning's) he's a mustache-twirling villain with the big evil Vader-like cape and everything.

Of course LOTF just had to somehow turn the central conflict into another galaxy-wide war, which was completely unnecessary. And the last book was terrible, especially the way it ended.

 

[Mr Light]

I just re-read LOTF, and while I don't think the final book is quite as horrendous as I did the first time, it is still definitely disappointing. They just basically jettison the entire Galactic Civil War Two plotline and only make it about Jaina vs Jacen. It's hard to keep the books apart in my mind, but I think it was Allston's books vilified Jacen the most. Could be wrong.

 

[USS Firefly]

I heard that the ending of "Revan" was dissapointing, what is your opinion?

The Revan book is pretty good. Ever since the end of KOTR1 I'd been dying to find out what the hell happened when s/he disappeared and this is the answer. It also follows up on the KOTR2 characters. It IS super weird to have personalities stamped onto your playable characters though.

I heard that the ending of "Revan" was dissapointing, because it ended badly for Revan, what is your opinion?

 

[Mr Light]

It does have a bizarre WTF twist ending. When I read it, I didn't realize it was just a setup for The Old Republic MMORPG game and not it's own complete story. C'est la vie.

I'm reading "Conviction", book 7 of Fate of the Jedi. I'm sorry to say this one is a bit of a stumble for me because the A plot is a sequel to "Planet of the Twilight", the second worst ever SW book. Why would they do this???

 

[kirk55555]

I thought Planet of Twilight was fine Then again, I also thought Darksaber was decent, and I almost never see anything positive said about it. Honestly, the only bad Star Wars books I've read was Traitor, the NJO Book focused on Jacen Solo. Easily the worst SW book. There was also the Dark Nest Trilogy books, which I consider the worst event book/ongoing story in the old EU, but even then they weren't terrible (although all of the big changes from the book were basically gone by the next one, which was a good thing).

 

[Turtletrekker]

A new book will focus on Han and Chewie post-RotJ.

 

[Tuskin38]

Ugh if its written by Chuck I'll just read the summery on Wookieepedia once its out.

I wish Star Trek novels had audio versions like Star Wars.

 

[Mr Light]

Hmm. As I feared, the book will continue to feature the new characters from "Aftermath", rather than Han and Chewie.

 

[Mr Light]

I've started the final book in the Fate of the Jedi series now. I still love this series, but reading it again I definitely see a lot more repetitive time-wasting than I remember where they're just visiting planets looking for someone and not finding them over and over again. I think if this had been shorted from 9 to 6 books it would have been truly stellar.

Also, book 8 was a tad ridiculous how in the space of a single book the Lost Tribe manages to completely take over Coruscant, knowing almost nothing about the greater galaxy. Or that it never occurred to them that the OTHER evil super powerful female Force user who wants to be worshiped might possibly by the evil super powerful female Force user who had just disappeared. Or that the book treated her true identity as a mystery to the reader when it was painfully obvious the entire way through.

 

[JD]

8 reasons Star Wars: Bloodlines will be essential reading from Jennifer Heddle, senior editor for fiction at Lucasfilm, on StarWars.com.
The reasons I find most interesting are the beginnings of the Resistance and First Order, and the fact that EPVIII director Rian Johnson was involved with the story.

 

[Mr Light]

I so excited to read Bloodlines, I'm going to actually buy it instead of wait the 1-2 months it takes for the library to get it!

 

[The Wormhole]

Hmm, that list indicated the First Order is only being established at the time of the novel's events. But this novel is only six years prior to TFA. So, the First Order has only been around six years or so?

 

[JD]

Well, I just double checked the wording, and it said "the people who are working to build the First Order", so I guess it might not be the beginnings specifically. The idea was supposed to be that they were off in a small corner of the galaxy growing in power, while the New Republic, other than Leia, ignored them. So I guess it could be them just coming close enough to where they are in TFA that Leia and her supporters are starting to pay more attention to them.

 

[Mr Light]

The "Before the Awakening" novel certainly seemed to suggest the First Order was a brand new thing, since the Republic was basically choosing to ignore it as any kind of a threat.

 

[The Wormhole]

Well, if the First Order really has only been around for less than a decade, that kind of does make the existence of Starkiller even more likely. It took the Empire close to twenty years to construct and perfect the first Death Star, a moon-sized battlestation capable of destroying a planet at relatively close range. And in only six years or so the First Order turns an entire planet into a weapon which leaches energy directly from stars (and drains them after only two times) and can target and attack another solar system?