I just started Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi last night. I'm only a chapter in, but i'm enjoying it so far. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the first person POV book writing.
All the reviews I've read for it have been... not so hot... I should be getting it from the library in a week or so.
So I stupidly went off to Amazon armed with "best EU top 10" lists from varying blogs etc.. and started following all the links "people who bought X bought Y" and, damn. People love this stuff, at least Amazon reviewers. I'd say 98% of books are at least 4 star with a huge amount higher than that. Markedly different than Treklit where people are fairly ruthless, cruel even Very hard to find a winner when everything apparently is. This is all because I recently read Kenobi and wanted to read more SW. But I do not want to read NJO (hated the first one), or any Han, Leia, Luke, Mara.. tales. I like the smaller stories, please no more saving the universe. Kenobi was a smaller story, it was great, focused on one planet and it's ins and outs. Anyway I ordered Knight Errant because it is written by the writer of Kenobi and Jedi Twilight, Coruscant Nights 1 because it is set in Coruscant slums which is just about my perfect setting ever for anything. I'm reading Rogue Planet atm because I had a copy already and it has the young Obi-Wan. So far it is pretty good. My research tells me the ONLY books that are about Qui-Gon Jinn are the children's ones by Jude Watson and apparently he is in Darth Plagueis which I am scared to read because I have had other people tell me it is beyond boring and I could not manage the Amazon excerpt. How much Qui-Gon story is in it? Qui-Gon is my favorite SW character and I am a little shitty there is no awesome novel of his life.
OH REALLY? I am going by: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Qui-Gon_Jinn Scrolling down to "Appearances" at the bottom. Doesn't list that book. Thank you for the tip! EDIT: and lo, the appearances which was a simple list now has a drop down menu, what the heck.. was wrong that I didn't see that before. Anyway. If anyone else has any Qui-Gonn books to recommend I would be happy to hear about it.
Darth Plageuis is one of the greatest SW books ever written Knight Errant was interesting. I really, really did not care for Coruscant Nights. I found them tedious to get through and I read all four. Ironically, their template is extremely similar to Rebels which I love. Good one-off Star Wars books: Red Harvest Darth Plageuis Maul Lockdown Outbound Flight Shatterpoint (the only Mace Windu novel!) Dark Rendezvous (the only Yoda novel!) Labyrnth of Evil Dark Lord Death Troopers Death Star Shadows of Mindor Courtship of Princess Leia
Publishing plans leading up to The Force Awakens include at least 20 titles aimed at various age groups.
I can't believe I haven't posted in this thread yet. I've been slowly working my way through Shadows of Mindor for the last few months and it's been pretty great. The only reason it's taken so long is I was reading a whole crap load of other things and went on breaks of several weeks to focus on other stuff. I also picked up the Essential Readers Companion a couple days ago. It's pretty cool. I was kind of hoping for more behind the scenes stuff, but I do like the artwork and the summaries will be helpfull to recap earlier books if they come into play later. Just out of curiosity, how much does Darth Plaguies weave into the other pre-TPM books? I have DP sitting on my tablet, but I was wondering if I should read the other books and comics mentioned on it's Wookiepedia page (Jedi Council: Acts of War, Cloak of Deception, Darth Maul, and Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter) first?
Of the books you've listed I've only read Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, but I have read Darth Plagueis and I don't think you have to read anything before reading it. Perhaps some of those other books might shed more light or there are references-that I must have obviously missed-but I don't think that should affect your reading and understanding the novel.
It definitely draws connections between them, showing them as steps on the Sith's path to galactic domination, and when I reread the pre-TPM books, I put Plagueis last. You could just read Plagueis, but for a richer experience, definitely read the other pre-TPM books.
Ok, I think I will wait then. I like to try to read all of the connecting books before I read the later one. Back aroudn the time it started, I tried jumping blind into the NJO books, and while I understood the stories fine, all of the references to the older books bugged me, so I set them aside and started over with Thrawn. Although I never made it past the Jedi Academy trilogy before I got distracted by the Clone Wars stuff. I just started getting back into the post RotJ shortly before the Force Awakens was announced... I have weird timing.
Plagueis ties EVERYTHING together in a brilliant manor. Most specifically to Cloak of Deception (which Luceno also wrote) and Maul Lockdown (which takes place in the middle of the book and was written afterwards). As for today's announcement, I'm not sure how to feel about it because I don't know how many REAL (ie adult) novels this means. I'm not interested in coloring books, guide books, and children's novels. Also I really want to know the authors involved. I'm dying to find out who's writing what and what the premises are...
Yeah, I'm really hoping we get more information soon. I find the timing of the announcement kind of ironic, because the other day I was just wondering if we were going to get any books leading up to the release TFA. Although I was expecting maybe one or two novels leading directly into the movie, not 20.
the "20 books" is extremely misleading, though. most of them are going to coloring books, guide books, and children's novels. I'm expecting 2-3 actual novels out of that number.
So far it sounds like Aftermath is the only adult novel among that group. Lost Stars, Moving Target, Smuggler's Run and The Weapon of a Jedi are all young adult novels. I'm pretty sure that number (twenty) also includes comic books, and there are two of those that we know of so far.
They have a lot to cover. 30 - 35 years (that had been covered fairly well until recently) that needs to be looked at all over again to get us up to speed for The Force Awakens.
They don't have to cover 30 years before this one movie comes out. They have years and years to profit off of this time period
True, but they do have to have enough to be sure the audiance knows why things are as they are. Or at least those pesky fans who want to know what happened since the films would mostly focus on the new characters rather than Han, Luke, and Leia. Plus there are the other characters, Wedge, Lando, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C-3PO. Any number of others.
The vast majority of the audience won't be reading these books or even know of their existence. It's up to the movies to explain why things are they way they are.