Which Star Wars books to read?

[JRoss]

I haven't read either of the ones that you listed as bad in your first paragraph. I'm sure they suck too. I just was listing the horribleness with which I am familiar. Which is why I don't read SW novels anymore.

 

[sonak]

I haven't read all of the authors. Who else sucks, Lindley?

I prefer to judge titles rather than authors. However, I was thoroughly unimpressed with KW Jeter's The Bounty Hunter Wars, and with Michael P. Kube-McDowell's The Black Fleet Crisis.

The less said about The Crystal Star, the better, and Barbara Hambly's books are on the weak side.

In contrast to these, Traviss and Anderson are perfectly respectable, if not standout.

the Black Fleet Crisis is memorable for being so obviously padded. It's clearly a one-book plot stretched into a trilogy.

I recommend reading "Shield of Lies"(but in a way where you don't have to buy it) just for the absurdity of a three-hundred page book where almost nothing happens, plot-wise.



it's almost an impressive feat.

 

[Whofan]

Yeah, BFC is kind of a weird trilogy. If I remember it correctly, it's basically Luke on a quest for the identity of his mother but he stumbles upon some weird force cult instead; aliens who have posession of Imperial warships, Chewbacca 'Subtitled' and the return of his son Lumpy (From the holiday special!) and a lot of political jargon which make the prequels look not that bad in comparison.


Not sure if it was this book but I think they even reference the Ewok movies.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

Labyrinth of Evil
Yoda Dark Rendezvous

ok, thanks man. i'll check these out ASAP.

are there any books that focus on new types of droids? i really like reading or watching how the droids process information. is there anything else like that out there?

There are a pair of droids in Dark Rendezvous who are almost as old as Yoda and the book does explore their perspective.

really? that sounds great.

 

[ColeMercury]

EDIT: Oh, you said you're reading the RotS book right now. Well, never mind.

Okay, I'm going to add to the chorus that's recommending the Thrawn Trilogy. And I'd also recommend the Hand of Thrawn duology after that too. The Hand of Thrawn books do make reference to events in other books that happened in between, but stuff is explained in-text so you don't need to read those other books to get it.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

what's the book for ep1 like? does go into more detail regarding the droideka scene at the beginning?

 

[Admiral_Young]

The novelization for Episode One was written by Terry Brooks and is pretty good. It does not go into detail regarding the droideka scene.

 

[Mr Light]

Best Prequel Books: Shatterpoint, Dark Rendezvous, Labyrinth of Evil, Dark Lord

OT Books: start with the Thrawn Trilogy and see if you like that. Courtship of Princess Leia is good. Jedi Academy Trilogy. Hand of Thrawn 2 parter.

I don't know I would recommend New Jedi Order or not... it's too dark and bleak and violent but there are amazing books within it... I preferred the 9 part series "Legacy of the Force" and "Fate of the Jedi".

 

[Admiral_Young]

New Jedi Order is better than Legacy of the Force and I gave up on Fate of the Jedi after the first book.

 

[VulcanJedi]

hey guys, i'm looking at reading a couple star wars books and would appreciate some advice on which ones i'd find interesting.

here's the link for a list to look at:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_books

i really love scenes from the movies and the 'the clone wars' tv show where we see different types of droids. i've been reading the 'ROTS' book and i love the sections where they talk about the magna guards. general grevious is awesome, too!

what could you guys recommend i look at?

thanks

My favorite is the Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin (also a Trek author). The three books give us the early years of Han and insight into his personality. It also explains Han's resistance to hoaky religions and the force.

I think her style of writing captures the feelings and tone of the movies more than others.

 

[Mr Light]

The Crispin Hal Solo Trilogy is really excellent. Well, the first book is just alright. The only problem is all that stuff has been completely ret-conned since.

 

[Whofan]

Not sure what you mean by being retconned. (Although some elements are kind of weird and IMO hurt the development of Han in the trilogy, such as Han helping the rebels-and even having a rebel girlfriend-before ANH). I know that Lucas at one point intended to have Han feature in ROTS, but he didn't and so I think Han's backstory is intact.


The other element I can see being an issue is Han being temporarily an Imperial pilot, but I've read that's actually Lucas's idea when he wrote backstory guidelines for the licensees to follow (Seen in the hardcover edition of Making of Star Wars).


There is I suppose the Greedo, Chewbacca, Hutt and Boba backstories which are touched upon in the books which might seem a bit outdated.

 

[Set Harth]

The other element I can see being an issue is Han being temporarily an Imperial pilot, but I've read that's actually Lucas's idea when he wrote backstory guidelines for the licensees to follow (Seen in the hardcover edition of Making of Star Wars).

As you were saying, if there's nothing to specifically contradict it, it can be seen as having remained intact.

here is I suppose the Greedo, Chewbacca, Hutt and Boba backstories which are touched upon in the books which might seem a bit outdated.

In Boba's case the Canon Completist types will tell you that Tales of the Bounty Hunters is still canon, because of a later retcon which attempted to "fix" that source in light of plot revelations from AOTC. ( But AOTC basically blew the TOTBH backstory out of the water. )

 

[Hound of UIster]

I haven't read all of the authors. Who else sucks, Lindley?

I prefer to judge titles rather than authors. However, I was thoroughly unimpressed with KW Jeter's The Bounty Hunter Wars, and with Michael P. Kube-McDowell's The Black Fleet Crisis.

The less said about The Crystal Star, the better, and Barbara Hambly's books are on the weak side.

In contrast to these, Traviss and Anderson are perfectly respectable, if not standout.

With the exception of Karen Traviss, all these writers and books were written more than 10 years ago. How about naming a few recent ones?

 

[Whofan]

Regarding more recent books, I've heard that Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is a good read. Haven't read it myself though.

 

[Mr Light]

Mindor was a good one. The problem with talking about books from the past ten years is that they're all part of massive series and must be taken as a whole, there's been very few standalone non-Clone Wars novels. Mindor was one of the few, and certainly the best.

 

[Lindley]

I haven't read all of the authors. Who else sucks, Lindley?

I prefer to judge titles rather than authors. However, I was thoroughly unimpressed with KW Jeter's The Bounty Hunter Wars, and with Michael P. Kube-McDowell's The Black Fleet Crisis.

The less said about The Crystal Star, the better, and Barbara Hambly's books are on the weak side.

In contrast to these, Traviss and Anderson are perfectly respectable, if not standout.

With the exception of Karen Traviss, all these writers and books were written more than 10 years ago. How about naming a few recent ones?

I haven't been keeping up with the Star Wars line as much recently, but I do have a few opinions.

Troy Denning is a good writer on the whole, but his tendency to shoehorn in scenes in which the OT characters witness some scene from the prequels (retrieving old memories from R2, etc) was stupid.

Legacy of the Force was a good idea with poor execution. I didn't buy Jacen's development, put simply. I don't particularly mind the Mandalorian stuff as much as some do, but Jacen deserved better as a character.

Coruscant Nights was okay but should have been better.

 

[cbspock]

My favorite SW books were the first ones that came out after Heir to the Empire. The Vong books I found uninteresting. In addition to The Zahn Trilogy, I liked the Han Solo Trilogy, and Jedi Academy Trilogy. The X-Wing books were excellent.

I just started reading the newer Zahn books so far I am finding them interesting.



-Chris

 

[Mr Light]

I really, really hated Coruscant Nights. And I'm very forgiving of Star Wars books. I found them intensely uninteresting.

 

[Set Harth]

They had occasional moments of quasi-greatness ( Nick Rostu brought before Vader, Savaros and Tesla's Force combat, etc. ) but that did alternate with a high page count of tedium. It was like the author was trying to convey the "excitement" of going back to your KOTOR apartment and hanging out there for hours talking to your party members.

Though Maul POV was a strength of the author's previous book Shadow Hunter, the CN series stubbornly refused to give the reader any Vader POV ( or Sidious POV for that matter ) over three books. And it was full of absurdly blatant mistakes, including timeline errors misrepresenting the time elapsed since Shadow Hunter and unrecognizable Clone Wars placements, which should never have made it out of the editing process ( if there even is an editing process for these books ). Annoyingly, the third book went out with the same mistakes uncorrected, even though the corresponding mistakes in the second book had already been discussed online by the time the utterly useless Sue Rostoni received the page proofs for "editing" ( which really just means "cheerleading" ).