Disagree on Shadows of Mindor. It has great depictions of Luke and the entire OT cast, a pretty fun story, and while the space battle sequences do really drag, I like it overall. I do agree on the Jedi Academy Trilogy and Courtship. I think Courtship has some fun worldbuilding but Han and Leia are wildly mischaracterized.
On reflection, I can't understand how Bantam faltered after Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy - it's almost like they didn't know where to go with the franchise...they went on to publish quite a number of lacklustre novels afterwards - some with good ideas amongst them, but often poorly executed. My most recent Star Wars reads have been James Luceno's "Millennium Falcon" and Aaron Alston's "Betrayal" - both really good reads. I've somehow managed to avoid any below par EU books for quite awhile.
@ridensroom6957 This was the first time I've read it; I knew ahead of time *where* the series was going, but was surprised the "betrayal" was in deed rather than just in belief, in the very first book. 😮
@@andrewhelm2813 me too. Id heard all about who the new Sith Lord was but assumed the betrayal was of that Jedi leaving the jedi order by turning against Luke after finding a new path in his time away. I never expected him to make his Sacrifice so soon.
Shadows of Mindor is a good book but Stover was too cute with the unreliable narrator and, while I did like the nod to Revenge of the Jedi it was a little too inside baseball. Also bringing black hole in from the Russ Manning strips was ridiculous and I love those comics. The cover Rogue Leader is excellent though. The conceit is it's an inside universe novel for Star Wars.
I may have a different perspective on these books because I read them back when they were first published. My view on Jedi Search (the entire trilogy) is similar to yours though. Only that my observation has been that Kevin J Anderson seems like a bad writer. His style isn’t captivating like Zahn. That trilogy could have been better if better developed and then told by someone else. He also wrote Darksaber. I was intrigued by the summary on the cover, but after reading the book, I thought it was atrocious. What an anticlimactic ending for the Darksaber. This anthologies are really a mixed bag. I was however intrigued by the story of IG-88 as well as the droid/alien pair that figure out that the rebels have left the galaxy in ESB (4-LOM and the other one in Tales of the Bounty Hunters). I did like Courtship when it came out. You’re right to say the kidnap story was a bit overblown, but I liked how Dathomir had ‘light’ and ‘dark’ factions of force users . Also how Luke gets a whole treasure trove of Jedi records. Leia, however, fell too quickly for that Hapes Prince. So overall I thought the story wasn’t bad. Remember back then, they weren’t ‘legends’. There weren’t any movies other than the OT. These books were virtually the continuation of them.
I initially broke up with Star Wars in 2001 when they killed off my favorite character, and again in 2007 when they killed off another favorite character. So had brief flicker of hope in 2014 with the reboot, but that quickly quenched. So I got back into reading EU books this year and been trying to read stuff I had not gotten to yet. I also read Shadows of Mindor. I finished with the thought "What did I just read?". The concept was kind of fun, but story was so so. It did make me laugh several times in a good way. I read the Jedi Prince series, which is probably some of the worst SW written, but in fun, campy way. Bad but fun bad. I reread a lot of New Jedi Order, but skipped all the Vong parts this time. That made the series much better. Most of those books were well written (except Vector Prime), but far as I'm concerned Del Rey set the EU up to die by not leaving space for the sequels which Lucas had always teased. They also went far, far, too dark. However I appreciate the ambitiousness of the project and releasing stories in chronological order. I also reread the Dark Nest trilogy, and... I think it's a crime that's all we got for the next gens 20s. Wish they'd continued with another chronological series of smaller scale adventures set during the reconstruction period and let the character develop more naturally. Even a short story anthology like "Tales of the New Jedi Order" would have been awesome. Read all of Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi this year. Legacy of the Force is a dumpster fire of out of character decisions to make the story happen (Normally I love Allston, but even he couldn't salvage this train wreck). It's still better than the sequels, but most of the gripes I have about the sequels came out of that series with a little dark Empire and Jedi Prince sprinkled in... Fate of the Jedi was mostly better. They seem to have realized they went too dark and dialed back a bit. I think it would have been better without all the Lost Tribe stuff. I read Crucible, which just wasn't bad but didn't need to exist. It didn't wrap up any of the dangling plot threads from Fate. I am reading Scoundrels and have hope this will actually be a good book, but I'm less than a third of the way in.... Only thing that annoyed me so far was Han running into a Bounty Hunter on Ord Mantell because it's the wrong time in the timeline for that and I'm pretty sure that had been covered elsewhere, so it's redundant. Not impossible for him to have multiple run-ins with multiple bounty hunters on the same planet... but eh.
@stevenhenry5267 No, it wasn't. It was a pile of characters making one stupid choice after another. It's Tolstoy compared to the sequels. But whole thing is very forced and full of stupid decisions by characters who know better.
Granted, this is going on deep memory from when I was still a kid, twenty years ago, reading these, but: The Jedi Academy trilogy is just bad. Hot, smelly, garbage bad. The character Kyp Durron is so atrocious as a character (commits genocide of billions, and is still accepted as a Jedi...!? What is this? The Jedi of the USSR?), and the main villain being a force ghost, yeah, a spooky kinda guy, was just beyond dumb. I normally enjoy KJA's works, he's in the top tier for escapist authors I periodically dive into when I need a break. But his Star Wars stuff, I remember, was mostly cringe. Darksaber was fairly readable, but the ending to the final space battle was so hardcore DERP it ruined it for me. Courtship was a bit iffy for me. I liked it, and hated it in equal measure. That's about all I remember...no, wait. Wasn't this the one where there was a compelling bad guy, the locquacious, and ironically hilarious Imperial fat guy (he was a chongus) Warlord Zsinj? I think so, and he dies in this book, in a very early Star Wars EU understated, anticlimactic fashion. Zsinj was a missed opportunity, I will always think that. His one liners alone, admittedly in other novels, I think, were worth keeping him around, for. The Bounty Hunter trilogy was, as you said, boring. That's all I remember as I never finished it. I also never read any of the short story collections. As for Shadows of Mindor, I never read it, so I can't say.
Disagree on Shadows of Mindor. It has great depictions of Luke and the entire OT cast, a pretty fun story, and while the space battle sequences do really drag, I like it overall.
I do agree on the Jedi Academy Trilogy and Courtship. I think Courtship has some fun worldbuilding but Han and Leia are wildly mischaracterized.
On reflection, I can't understand how Bantam faltered after Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy - it's almost like they didn't know where to go with the franchise...they went on to publish quite a number of lacklustre novels afterwards - some with good ideas amongst them, but often poorly executed.
My most recent Star Wars reads have been James Luceno's "Millennium Falcon" and Aaron Alston's "Betrayal" - both really good reads. I've somehow managed to avoid any below par EU books for quite awhile.
Until we got that awful choice in the Jacen and Nelani scene, I really enjoyed Betrayal. Then I hated the rest of the series.
@ridensroom6957 This was the first time I've read it; I knew ahead of time *where* the series was going, but was surprised the "betrayal" was in deed rather than just in belief, in the very first book. 😮
@@andrewhelm2813 me too. Id heard all about who the new Sith Lord was but assumed the betrayal was of that Jedi leaving the jedi order by turning against Luke after finding a new path in his time away. I never expected him to make his Sacrifice so soon.
Shadows of Mindor is a good book but Stover was too cute with the unreliable narrator and, while I did like the nod to Revenge of the Jedi it was a little too inside baseball. Also bringing black hole in from the Russ Manning strips was ridiculous and I love those comics. The cover Rogue Leader is excellent though. The conceit is it's an inside universe novel for Star Wars.
As soon as Fate of the Jedi books are done, I'm starting the Tales and Bounty Hunters trilogy.
I found the first book of the Bounty Hunter trilogy absolutely painful and didn't finish the trilogy.
I may have a different perspective on these books because I read them back when they were first published. My view on Jedi Search (the entire trilogy) is similar to yours though. Only that my observation has been that Kevin J Anderson seems like a bad writer. His style isn’t captivating like Zahn. That trilogy could have been better if better developed and then told by someone else. He also wrote Darksaber. I was intrigued by the summary on the cover, but after reading the book, I thought it was atrocious. What an anticlimactic ending for the Darksaber. This anthologies are really a mixed bag. I was however intrigued by the story of IG-88 as well as the droid/alien pair that figure out that the rebels have left the galaxy in ESB (4-LOM and the other one in Tales of the Bounty Hunters).
I did like Courtship when it came out. You’re right to say the kidnap story was a bit overblown, but I liked how Dathomir had ‘light’ and ‘dark’ factions of force users . Also how Luke gets a whole treasure trove of Jedi records. Leia, however, fell too quickly for that Hapes Prince. So overall I thought the story wasn’t bad. Remember back then, they weren’t ‘legends’. There weren’t any movies other than the OT. These books were virtually the continuation of them.
I initially broke up with Star Wars in 2001 when they killed off my favorite character, and again in 2007 when they killed off another favorite character. So had brief flicker of hope in 2014 with the reboot, but that quickly quenched. So I got back into reading EU books this year and been trying to read stuff I had not gotten to yet.
I also read Shadows of Mindor. I finished with the thought "What did I just read?". The concept was kind of fun, but story was so so. It did make me laugh several times in a good way.
I read the Jedi Prince series, which is probably some of the worst SW written, but in fun, campy way. Bad but fun bad.
I reread a lot of New Jedi Order, but skipped all the Vong parts this time. That made the series much better. Most of those books were well written (except Vector Prime), but far as I'm concerned Del Rey set the EU up to die by not leaving space for the sequels which Lucas had always teased. They also went far, far, too dark. However I appreciate the ambitiousness of the project and releasing stories in chronological order.
I also reread the Dark Nest trilogy, and... I think it's a crime that's all we got for the next gens 20s. Wish they'd continued with another chronological series of smaller scale adventures set during the reconstruction period and let the character develop more naturally. Even a short story anthology like "Tales of the New Jedi Order" would have been awesome.
Read all of Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi this year. Legacy of the Force is a dumpster fire of out of character decisions to make the story happen (Normally I love Allston, but even he couldn't salvage this train wreck). It's still better than the sequels, but most of the gripes I have about the sequels came out of that series with a little dark Empire and Jedi Prince sprinkled in...
Fate of the Jedi was mostly better. They seem to have realized they went too dark and dialed back a bit. I think it would have been better without all the Lost Tribe stuff.
I read Crucible, which just wasn't bad but didn't need to exist. It didn't wrap up any of the dangling plot threads from Fate.
I am reading Scoundrels and have hope this will actually be a good book, but I'm less than a third of the way in.... Only thing that annoyed me so far was Han running into a Bounty Hunter on Ord Mantell because it's the wrong time in the timeline for that and I'm pretty sure that had been covered elsewhere, so it's redundant. Not impossible for him to have multiple run-ins with multiple bounty hunters on the same planet... but eh.
Lol. Legacy is mostly great. I have no idea what you were reading.
@stevenhenry5267 No, it wasn't. It was a pile of characters making one stupid choice after another.
It's Tolstoy compared to the sequels. But whole thing is very forced and full of stupid decisions by characters who know better.
Granted, this is going on deep memory from when I was still a kid, twenty years ago, reading these, but:
The Jedi Academy trilogy is just bad. Hot, smelly, garbage bad. The character Kyp Durron is so atrocious as a character (commits genocide of billions, and is still accepted as a Jedi...!? What is this? The Jedi of the USSR?), and the main villain being a force ghost, yeah, a spooky kinda guy, was just beyond dumb.
I normally enjoy KJA's works, he's in the top tier for escapist authors I periodically dive into when I need a break. But his Star Wars stuff, I remember, was mostly cringe.
Darksaber was fairly readable, but the ending to the final space battle was so hardcore DERP it ruined it for me.
Courtship was a bit iffy for me. I liked it, and hated it in equal measure. That's about all I remember...no, wait.
Wasn't this the one where there was a compelling bad guy, the locquacious, and ironically hilarious Imperial fat guy (he was a chongus) Warlord Zsinj? I think so, and he dies in this book, in a very early Star Wars EU understated, anticlimactic fashion. Zsinj was a missed opportunity, I will always think that. His one liners alone, admittedly in other novels, I think, were worth keeping him around, for.
The Bounty Hunter trilogy was, as you said, boring. That's all I remember as I never finished it.
I also never read any of the short story collections.
As for Shadows of Mindor, I never read it, so I can't say.
Jedi Search, Jedi Academy trilogy is Okay - but I, Jedi is the better telling
Lol. The Bounty Hunter trilogy is great. Not sure what you were reading.
@@stevenhenry5267 Ok, well, if you thought the Bounty Hunter trilogy was good, not surprising you liked Legacy.