Star Wars Novels
 

I mentioned earlier that I stopped reading Star Wars when I got into the Epic Fantasy genre. I should mention, however, that the books I had read were very good as well, especially:

Timithy Zahn's trilogy starting with "Heir to the Empire" (Grand Admiral Thrawn is very similar to Lex Luthor)

Kevin J. Anderson's "Jedi Academy" trilogy. (I love the Sun Buster!)

The recent books by James Luceno are also very good, since they help to fill in the gaps around Episodes One through Three.

There are many others as well. So what do the rest of you think? Are there other fans of the many Star Wars novels out there? I sure hope so!:cool:

I think the general consensus on this subject is that once you go past Zahns Empire trilogy all things Star Wars descend into general crappiness. Not that I can speak from experiance thought; there's too many books to even begin trying to get into the EU, just trying to find them all, in the right order, is a nightmare.

However the Empire trilogy was pure awesome. Thrawn is one of my favourite villains from pretty much anything.

Episode 3 turns a meh movie to a fucking awesome story.

He turns Anakin from an emo whiny bitch to a confused, conflicted, desperate young man trying to do the right thing and falling from grace.

Stover is, by the way, awesome.

I'm currently reading one of the later books (in "The New Jedi Order" series) and I'm rather enjoying it. Generally, I've tried to stick to the books that are closer in timeline to the original trilogy, like "Shadows of the Empire","Tales from _____(Jabba's Palace, etc), or any of the other ones mentioned and such, but this one is pretty good too. I just may have to read more!

My all-time favorite Star Wars novel would have to be "The Crystal Star". I quite love Han and Leia's kids when they're little.

The Yuuzhan Vong? Yeah, some of those books were pretty good.

In addition to Zahn's books, I would recommend the X-Wing series, particularly the books by Aaron Allston. Starfighters of Adumar is easily one of my favorite books in the Star Wars EU.

I've stopped reading after the Legacy of the Force series though, so I can't say anything about the new books.

I have also heard good things about the Thrawn Series. Plan to pick it up sometime.

Honestly I think the Thrawn books suffer from a bit of rose-tinted-glasses syndrome. (They're almost 20 years old, after all.) I mean, they're good, but I don't really think they're the end-all be-all of Star Wars EU.

As for Keven J Anderson... I liked his books back when they first came out--that is, when I was in elementary school--but re-reading them a few years ago was flat out painful.

My favorites, in no particular order:
The aforementioned Starfighters of Adumar by Aaron Allston, I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter by Michael Reeves, and Traitor by Matt Stover--the only book I've ever read whereupon finishing, I turned it directly over and started again at page 1.

I've not read any of the books that have been published after the NJO finished up, however long ago that was. Unfortunately that hasn't kept me from buying them; I now have something like two dozen of them waiting to be read...

Oh damn. That book. That was one hell of a mind screw, and absolutely worth picking up.

Fucking Vergere.

Me myself, I liked the Thrawn Trilogy, the Jedi Academy Trilogy and I, Jedi. Of all the new jedi around, I like Corran Horn.

I've only read probably a dozen Star Wars novels all-told. From what I can remember the gems were the Han Solo prequel trilogy (should've been movies!) and the one about Boba Fett and how awesome he is at killing Hutts and such (these particular Hutts lived their entire lives inside bullet-proof armor too so it was quite an accomplishment).

EDIT: Oh and to my sixth-grade mind The Hand of Vader young adult novel was good. In retrospect it was actually pretty terrible.

ANOTHER EDIT: And how did they find another three-eyed mutant to impersonate the real three-eyed mutant when that was a big deal? Also that is a spoiler but seriously spoiling Hand of Vader isn't really going to make anyone do anything but thank you because now they don't have to read it.