The Best and Worst of Star Wars Novels

[Mr Light]

THE EU IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE EU!


Now that this continuity is finished... what was the best and the worst?

THE BEST:
Darth Plagueis
Outbound Flight
Shatterpoint
Dark Rendezvous: doesn't get enough love. a perfect Yoda story.
Labyrinth of Evil
Dark Lord

The Han Solo Origin Trilogy: particularly book two. Han commands Nal Hutta in a vast battle against the Empire!
Death Troopers: the book that made me fall in love with Joe Schreiber!
Shadows of Mindor
Thrawn Trilogy
Jedi Academy Trilogy: I was surprised to find some hate for this. Of all the Bantam books this one felt the most like the movies.

Star by Star: this is the point where NJO got awesome. such breathtaking tragedy.
Enemy Lines 1/2
Traitor
the middle books of Legacy of the Force: from "Sacrifice" to half of "Revelations" this was pure gold
the last two thirds of Fate of the Jedi: best non-Thrawn villains of the EU make for a great series finale to the franchise.

THE WORST:
Rogue Planet: only read it once but I remember being bored to tears
Coruscant Nights: it was a chore to read this trilogy. Ironically I'm reading the fourth book Last Jedi right now and I'm actually enjoying it.
Tatooine Ghost: really boring.
Children of the Jedi: ugh.
Planet of Twilight: UGH!
Crystal Star: the worst!
New Rebellion: ugh.
Scourge: I actually did not finish this. I just didn't care.

 

[Masiral]

I mostly agree with your list, with a few exceptions: I'd drop the Han Solo Trilogy, Shadows of Mindor, and the Jedi Academy Trilogy - they were good, but not among the best - and I'd put Death Troopers among the worst - it really felt wrong, not much like a Star Wars book at all, and Han and Chewie were just forced into the book for no good reason.

I'd also emphasize Fate of the Jedi, especially Ascension - I know a lot of people didn't like Christie Golden's VOY relaunch novels, but she did some really good work in FOTJ.

And, having just finished the first novel of the new canon, A New Dawn, I can say that the quality of the SW novel line is going to continue to be very good.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Best: Thrawn Trilogy
Worst: The Crystal Star

 

[Mr Light]

This is a random thought, but how many SW books portrayed the "last surviving Jedi" after ROTS? Way too many

Coruscant Nights had Jax Pavan
Dark Lord had that one guy whose name I forget
Kenobi had.... Kenobi
Star Wars Rebels is going to have Freddie Prince Jr.
Star Wars Force Unleashed had General Kota and Shaak Ti.

Others? Was there one in the Commando books? I didn't read those.

 

[Faldor]

The X-Wing series was amazing

 

[Set Harth]

And, having just finished the first novel of the new canon, A New Dawn, I can say that the quality of the SW novel line is going to continue to be very good.

But don't forget, that's what we were thinking around 1991 or so.

 

[Wadjda]

This is a random thought, but how many SW books portrayed the "last surviving Jedi" after ROTS? Way too many

Coruscant Nights had Jax Pavan
Dark Lord had that one guy whose name I forget
Kenobi had.... Kenobi
Star Wars Rebels is going to have Freddie Prince Jr.
Star Wars Force Unleashed had General Kota and Shaak Ti.

Others? Was there one in the Commando books? I didn't read those.

The only Republic Commando book wort reading is the first one. Traviss turned everything into Mando porn afterwards.

 

[kirk55555]

I disagree. The Republic Commando books are my favorite Star Wars books, and that's saying something since I love a lot of Star wars books. It sucks that Traviss never got to finish the series, but what we got is great, and shows even more how badly TCW cartoon mangled the Mandalorians. Some of my favorite character come from the Commando books, and they definitely made me look at the clones differently.

To answer Mr. Light, by the end of Imperial Commando there were at least four jedi connected to the series who were still alive:

Bardan Jusik: a jedi who had quit the jedi order before Order 66 and joined the Mandalorians

Scout: a rescued Padawan who at the end decided to stay on Mandalore with the group, but who still wanted to stay a jedi

Arligan Zey: A jedi master who had been overall commander of special forces, he was saved by his ARC trooper second in command and left to go into hiding at the end of the last commando book

Kina Ha: A female Kamino jedi, who was ancient and a lot different that the others of her species, went into hiding at the end of the last Commando book

As for favorite and least favorite, The Commando books are my favorite obviously, and I probably love 95% of all the ones I've read. As for least favorite, those would be Traitor (A New Jedi Order book focused on Jacen, this is basically when the character became 100% irredeemably irritating to me) and the Dark Nest Trilogy, which had some good points but was also really annoying at times.

 

[Wadjda]

The problem was not the Mandos were bad mofos, it hurt the characterization of the Jedi who worked with them. They should had given her a series that was all about Mandos (Mando Merc or Mandos in their glory days).

 

[Reverend]

I have to admit, I'm somewhat baffled by the frequency is see 'Darth Plagueis' name dropped as one of the best SW novels. I mean it wasn't *bad* exactly, but I found the whole thing rather dry, with what I can only describe as an over abundance of continuity porn.

I'm also going to commit blasphemy and say that I don't rate the Thrawn trilogy all that highly. Don't get me wrong, it had some very strong characters and set things off in an interesting direction--both of which were largely squandered or outright ignored by subsequent authors--but the plot felt a little repetitive, languid and ultimately anti-climactic. I also found the two antagonists lacked a certain something.

Thrawn was refreshingly rational in the mould of a benign dictator, but that intellect left him feeling cold and without much of a firm grasp of what motivated him and why. C'baoth on the other hand was a straight-up moustache twirling madman, presumably to offset Thrawn's dry personality. Personally I thought the stuff with Karde and Jade were the most interesting parts of the books.

On the other hand I struggle to think of many better SW novels, so I guess one could say that they're a set of *good* books, made more prominent by sharing a shelf with a whole lot of mediocre ones and more than a few bloody awful ones. Perhaps because I view the Thrawn book as legitimately *good* I'm inclined to hold them to a higher standard.

If I had to pick a "best" (note, that I ever did bother with much published after Vector Prime) I suppose the first few X-Wing novels. Nothing fancy, just good straight-up serialized wartime action-adventure with a strong and diverse ensemble cast.

One caveat though: I've just recently started reading the Aaron Allston 'Wraith Squadron' books for the first time and I'm honestly struggling to maintain my interest. Do they get better? I'm honestly considering dropping it at this point.

 

[Masiral]

And, having just finished the first novel of the new canon, A New Dawn, I can say that the quality of the SW novel line is going to continue to be very good.

But don't forget, that's what we were thinking around 1991 or so.

Well, I wasn't born yet, so I don't know about that...but considering the next two authors are James Luceno and Paul S. Kemp, I don't think we have anything to worry about.

 

[Mr Light]

As much as I love the Thrawn Trilogy... pretty much everything about C'Boath was pretty bad, most especially the ending with the evil mute clone Luuuuuuuuuuuuuke. *groans*

 

[Stevil2001]

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is the best Star Wars novel bar none; no book better captures the spirit of the original trilogy. Tatooine Ghost is pretty great, too; what a perfect Han/Leia/Anakin story.

Count me among those who consider Darth Plagueis boring, but it's not as actively awful as the Darth Bane books, which turned a badass into a putz.

 

[Set Harth]

As much as I love the Thrawn Trilogy... pretty much everything about C'Boath was pretty bad

It's C'baoth, not C'Boath.

 

[Mr Light]

See? Even the spelling was bad!

 

[Mr Light]

Did anybody read "Shadow Games"? It came out last year and it's a Dash Rendar novel, so I'm assuming it's terrible?

I just finished reading The Last Jedi. It was decent. And I didn't like the Coruscant Nights trilogy.

Before that I read Dawn of the Jedi Into the Void, which I almost put in the 'Worst' category. I like the comic series, and this didn't have any of the characters from it, took place a decade before the series, and didn't have anything to do with it plot-wise, and I just wasn't interested in the story or the characters.

Before that I finally read "Kenobi" which was getting a lot of praise. I thought it was very well written, but I'm not a fan of Westerns and that's exactly what this story was. So I struggled to be interested in a story that revolved around a bunch of unimportant nobodies. I was really disappointed that we didn't learn anything at all about Obi-Wan's time on Tatooine. About his meditations with Qui-Gon. About his interactions with Owen and Beru. It was all off-screen and undealt with. It was a great use of Obi-Wan though, it perfectly channeled his dialogue from the Clone Wars show. I really felt for him, his position was so pathetic and tortured.

Going even further back... Maul Lockdown. Excellent stuff. I enjoyed Death Troopers more, but this was a solid prison/horror story that made great use of Maul and had some great tie-ins to the Plageuis novel.

 

[Masiral]

Did anybody read "Shadow Games"? It came out last year and it's a Dash Rendar novel, so I'm assuming it's terrible?

It's actually pretty good, a fun action thriller.

Before that I finally read "Kenobi" which was getting a lot of praise. I thought it was very well written, but I'm not a fan of Westerns and that's exactly what this story was. So I struggled to be interested in a story that revolved around a bunch of unimportant nobodies. I was really disappointed that we didn't learn anything at all about Obi-Wan's time on Tatooine. About his meditations with Qui-Gon. About his interactions with Owen and Beru. It was all off-screen and undealt with. It was a great use of Obi-Wan though, it perfectly channeled his dialogue from the Clone Wars show. I really felt for him, his position was so pathetic and tortured.

This was my problem with Kenobi as well, there wasn't enough Kenobi in it.

 

[Mr Light]

The first third was a particularly slog to get through. Obi-Wan isn't even in it!!!

As a general rule, I've found that Star Wars novels that are not about the primary characters tend to be pretty bad. (Primary includes major literary characters like the Solo kids, Mara, etc) There's only a few exceptions like Death Troopers. (Plageuis doesn't count; Palpatine is a main character!)

 

[Doctorwhovian]

I think the comics worked better with the side characters-the only real primary stuff they did was the Dark Empire saga (unless you count the comic adaptations of the Thrawn trilogy)-stuff like the Quinlan Vos story arc, the Rogue Squadron comics which introduced the Fels (Although the novels were pretty good too IMO) Tales of the Jedi etc. although there were some flops along the way.

 

[Wadjda]

Interesting, i also found books not about the Big 3 way more interesting. I love the heck out of that KE book.