What was your favourite Star Wars novel and why?

[CaptainRAVE]

Im about to start The Black Fleet Crisis. Actually, thats what im gonna do next

[acdcfanbill]

i never really liked those too much, a good read, but the writer had some goofy ideas about how older jedi acted. i dont wanna discourage you from reading it, but it wasnt one of my favorites...

[nykel007]

I liked I Jedi it gave us plenty of insight of the jedi ways. It had rich charaters, and a taste of the X-ing series. A good combination.

[access_flux]

Oh People come on! why has nobody mentioned wht i really like I,Jedi? that book was great, and i have to say SOTE closely follows,

 

I have about 40 - 50 starwars books, and am only missing about 6 0r 7 now, so yer those have to be my favourites.

[Denise]

For those with mere-mortal attention span, I've bolded the bottom line somewhere waaaay down there if you'd rather skip to the point.

 

The Thrawn trilogy is good. Heck, if it hadn't been I wouldn't have bothered with any of the rest of it.

 

Then, though, I got into works by Kevin J. Anderson. I think it would be very difficult to do more damage to the EU than this man has done. Between him and (argh, I'm forgetting her name, what is it... Barbara Hambly?), they've overused and very nearly destroyed the original characters.

 

All of this gave me a taste for books that steer well clear of our increasingly bizzare Luke, the mired-in-politics Leia, meek house-husband Han, and the omnipresent Lando. Other no-nos for me include:

 

Admiral Daala, who evidently serves no purpose other than offering new and original ways to kill a Star Destroyer under her command. One of the original aspects of Star Wars was that the female characters are strong and dynamic -- Leia, Mon Mothma, Mara Jade.

Daala, though, is an incompetent fop elevated to her position because she slept with a Grand Moff, and averages AT LEAST one Star Destroyer lost per book.

 

Kyp Durron. I'd have been fine with this character if he'd actually been killed in the Maw instead of surviving to become the #1 generic not-quite-bad-guy throughout the rest of the EU.

 

Callista. She serves basically no point other than to deflect attention from the potential chemistry between Jade and Skywalker, and she grows even more tiresome now that we know the eventual outcome.

 

New Republic politics. Zahn fully explored the dangers of splitting the Republic. It's an old, tired subject. Let it die already.

 

Ssi-Ruuk, Yvetha, or Yuuzhan Vong (sp?). These just scream "I'm a cardboard-cutout evil alien race designed to replace the Imperials as the Main Bad Guys!". Even Stackpole's work with the Vong seemed pinched and hemmed in by a bad premise.

 

The era of the E-Wing, K-Wing, et cetera. Star Wars: The Next Generation just doesn't appeal.

 

------------------------

 

So anyway, thanks to the character assasination of the original stars, I've become quite attached to the X-Wing series. This is because Han, Luke, Leia et al are kept at a healthy distance; someone else gets to save the day, and the author gets no chance to screw them up any further. There's opportunity to create new players like Corran Horn, Face Loran, Kell Tainer, Myn Donos, Lara Notsil (and whatever alias she's using these days ). Heck, I think Corran has actually surpassed Mara Jade as my favorite character (and I'm talking overall, not just EU).

 

At the same time we have familiar but originally very minor characters like Wedge Antilles, Wes Janson, and Admiral Ackbar, so we're not cut completely adrift. When the original characters do show up they're generally used sparingly and treated with the respect they deserve. The one time they use a lot of a main character (Allston borrows Han Solo for a while) he's written in a way that, for once, feels right to me.

 

By the time Zahn wrote his Hand of Thrawn pair, the damage to the main characters and the Star Wars universe in general was almost irreparable. There was a lot of stumbling done on the way, what with the Crystal Star, the Jedi Academy Trilogy, Darksaber, the Black Fleet Crisis.. there are, IMO, too many bad SW books for me to list, so I'll stop trying. But Zahn is head and shoulders above most of the rest and it managed to shine through. This last pair isn't as good as the original Thrawn trilogy, the damage was done, but it's solid and entertaining nonetheless. We get to see that regular people can deal with Jedi, and this was done by inventing a very novel "Jedi trap" instead of giving Luke emotional problems or digging up yet more ysalmiri (they were great at first, but overused) like so many hack pretenders. I swear, Myrkr must be stripped raw of them critters by now, and Luke needs to look into some freaking therapy!

 

So all in all, Zahn, Stackpole, and Allston are the only three Star Wars authors I really trust. Zahn writes Lucas' original characters better than Lucas himself does, in my opinion. Stackpole knows what not to touch and watching him play in the rest of the Star Wars universe is great. And Allston... he can spin a good tale, but his real strength is that he's just plain funny. Yub yub, Commander!

 

So, I've written you all an essay, here, but I've not answered the original question. Between these three authors and their various works, it's tough for me to choose. But I, Jedi is the only one I've read more than half a dozen times (heck, I'm probably getting closer to the full dozen now, and my copy is looking a little beat up ).

 

As for why, first of all I came out of the X-Wing series really liking Corran Horn. The character re-evaluates himself and beats himself up so much that I know I'm not alone ( ). He's mortal. He fouls up, gets angry, has an ego, but he's basically a good person and he never leaves you with that same foul taste that Kyp does when they try to show you his dark side.

IJ also runs parallel to KJA's Jedi Academy trilogy and manages to salvage some interesting tidbits from out of that drivel. It gives us a look at the Force from a first-person perspective. It's very long and very diverse; it could probably have been three books with very little trouble (the pages are deceptively thin and the print is a little smaller than your average SW book).

 

So, bottom line: I, Jedi, followed closely by the Thrawn trilogy and the X-wing series tied for second place.

 

Congrats to anyone who managed to read this far through my crazed ranting and raving. Force Long Post is strong in this one.

 

[ August 03, 2001: Message edited by: Denise ]

[MadPoster]

I am guessing 8 stars, right?