New Testingstan

I don't agree with that at all. The Thrawn Trilogy is the closest in feeling like the original trilogy of any EU book I've read. His grasp of the characters is also far better. Whenever I read Zahn's work, I can easily imagine hearing the characters speak in their voice. (IIRC Zahn credited this by listening to an audio tape of the OT while on a long car trip) Zahn's later works might fall in the category you mention, but those were different stories with different characters.

At the very least I'd put Zahn ahead of fucking KJA for grasping the spirit of the setting better. KJA couldn't grasp his fucking arse if his life depended on it.

I really liked the Zahn trilogy too, and then thought his subsequent Duology was boring and disinteresting. I winced my way through the first KJA book and never read any more of them. I hated the NJO for the way it treated the cosmic scale of the struggle in the earlier books as being so much of nothing, tearing down all the achievements and replacing them with a stereotypical evil bio-alien invasion. I choked down about three of the X-wing books before giving up on them as troped up video game novelizations -- I actually enjoyed the storybook accompanying the video game TIE Fighter more than Stackpole's novels. And the short stories in the WEG RPG books, which I bought all of just to read the fluff.

Of the other novels -- the two Han Solo trilogies set before ANH, both the old one by Daley and the new one, were excellent, and I really like them. I also enjoyed The Truce at Bakura, and The Courtship of Princess Leia. I really found none of the other books enjoyable, and so at that point, early into the NJO series, I gave up on everything Star Wars except watching Revenge of the Sith, and then I have basically ignored it for at least the past 6 years. Ironically though, just within the last month I started up an RPG set in Star Wars, for the first time since 2007. So basically in my private little Star Wars universe there are only 11 EU novels I care to remember.

Well, I don't think Kevin J Anderson is a very good writer. I usually put him somewhere between decent and mediocre. But he does write fun simple adventure stories that I'm able to enjoy. Darksaber was the only Star Wars novel he wrote that I really liked.

And yes I am aware that basically everyone hates Darksaber, but I stand by that. People complain about the plot being incredibly stupid, but to me the idea that the Hutts would steal the plans to the Death Star and then try to build a miniature version of it using hive mind space monkeys that work for really cheap wages so that they can use in a galactic-scale extortion racket, but then at the big finale it doesn't fire because the Hutts used shoddy building materials and then it gets comically destroyed by two passing asteroids is the sort of wacky in a good way humor that I like seeing in my over the top space opera.

Which come to think of it is another big reason I like the Wraith Squadron books so much. They have a great sense of humor to them and it does a lot to make the characters in it likable.

Now all that said, I haven't read the Thrawn trilogy or most of the other non-Wraith books in like a decade and what I say should probably taken with more than a grain of salt because of that.

Darksaber is the only star wars book I've actually read, because for some reason there was a copy of it at my grandparents' house when I stayed there for Christmas one year.

Kevin J Anderson paired up Wedge Antilles with Qwi Xux. That is unforgivable.

Iella Wessiri hadn't even been invented then.

Maybe it's the way Ralin describes it, but Darksaber is exactly the thing that gets me pissed off with KJA. I haven't read it, I only read about 100 pages of the first book in the Jedi Academy trilogy before closing it and never reading another KJA book for SW again, but let's look at Darksaber. The premise for the story is solid: why wouldn't the Hutts want to try and get a Death Star for themselves? Hell, why isn't anyone else trying to make another Death Star or mini-death stars or whatever? It's a solid idea, and one you can imagine the New Republic would have to deal with in a post-We-kicked-the-empire's-arse galaxy. Not only that but it's a believeable threat, and it has the virtue of being a galaxy-threatening superweapon that isn't some lame bullshit the EU came up with to try and upstage the films.

Except look at the KJAisms: they get substandard labour to build it, because yeah that'll work out great; the thing doesn't even work, because the hutts decided to go to the lowest-bidder for parts and labour - so there's however many billions of spacebucks down the toilet; and then it gets taken out by a passing asteroid. Everything about all that just screams lame to me.

I do think the Wraith Squadron books are great though. I used to not like the first book, but when I reread it years later I got more into it and ended up finishing the trilogy.

they're the space mafia building a moon-scale superduper laser in secret, of course they're going to end up with substandard stuff

Crazedwraith wrote:Iella Wessiri hadn't even been invented then.

I read the X-Wing Series before JAT back in the day so...

Still I don't think I would have liked Qwi Xux anyway. That whole "I didn't know I was building terrible things with the name DEATH Star" she's so naïve ploy he pulled? Yeah right, she's just that stupid. He could have done something more with that, like the whole tiny thermal exhaust port weakness was put there by her intentionally as a minor act of rebellion because the Empire was threatening her and her world with death if she didn't cooperate. That would have been better than "I was naïve and silly and didn't catch on to the whole DEATH Star thing" she claimed. Though IIRC Han (I think) called her out on that, so points to KJA, but I don't think he really quite followed through like he could have.

evilsoup wrote:they're the space mafia building a moon-scale superduper laser in secret, of course they're going to end up with substandard stuff

Technically it wasn't moon-sized. It was a scaled-down version of the Death Star that stripped out basically everything but the reactor and the superlaser and space for a couple hundred Hutts. Leading to it looking like a giant lightsaber. Thus the name.

I know, I've read it; but I wrote 'moon-scale' rather than 'moon-size' - it's still a massive project, even if it's not quite as huge as the Death Star

Ah, right, missed that.

Oh, also people hate it because it kills off the general who gives the briefing on the Death Star right before the Battle of Yavin in the original movie and apparently it's a travesty to kill off a film character without a good reason. I'm one of like two people on earth who got into Star Wars through the EU instead of the movies and I can't remember him being used for anything interesting since then, so I really don't care.

I read all of Darksaber a while back and I still have to echo Stofsk's criticism. Like, in the end the whole endeavor that some guy died over culminated to a huge anti-climax like some unfunny joke. Maybe if the whole thing was more tongue-in-cheek and wasn't the grand EU event of the time it might have been better received.

I don't even remember what really happened in my last EU book I, Jedi. I know Corran Horn had to find his wife because she was Taken to somewhere.

Does he have a special set of skills ? Ones he intend to use on those responsible for that rapt ?

Look Corran is a Jedi but his family is not good at telekinesis but they're really good at energy absorption. In fact he's even better than Luke at that!

Isn't that great?

His grandpa was a Jedi ya know but his dad was in CorSec and I think he hated Jedi.

His wife's dad owning a Star Destroyer was pretty pimpin' though. He wanted to paint it red but the Empire only made tons of Imperial gray paint cuz I guess Star Destroyers aren't just bare metal?

Ralin wrote:Ah, right, missed that.

Oh, also people hate it because it kills off the general who gives the briefing on the Death Star right before the Battle of Yavin in the original movie and apparently it's a travesty to kill off a film character without a good reason. I'm one of like two people on earth who got into Star Wars through the EU instead of the movies and I can't remember him being used for anything interesting since then, so I really don't care.

Actually the its the Crix Madanne it kills off. The dude giving the breifing on the ground operation before the battle of endor.

gawd, get it right mang

Wasn't he an ex imperial commando or something?

I still like that part in The Bacta War where they're repainting the Rogues' X-Wings and the squadron mechanic goes up to Wedge and says, "Sir, we have a problem. We ran out of room on the X-Wing to paint all of your TIE Fighter kills. Do you want us to group them by squadron or by flight wing?" and Wedge is all like, "Eh, whatever" entirely too much.

Man has half a Death Star painted on his cockpit. He gives no fucks.

He's just a murder machine.

Ralin wrote:I still like that part in The Bacta War where they're repainting the Rogues' X-Wings and the squadron mechanic goes up to Wedge and says, "Sir, we have a problem. We ran out of room on the X-Wing to paint all of your TIE Fighter kills. Do you want us to group them by squadron or by flight wing?" and Wedge is all like, "Eh, whatever" entirely too much.

Man has half a Death Star painted on his cockpit. He gives no fucks.

Two Half death stars according to the first book.

Crazedwraith wrote:

Ralin wrote:Ah, right, missed that.

Oh, also people hate it because it kills off the general who gives the briefing on the Death Star right before the Battle of Yavin in the original movie and apparently it's a travesty to kill off a film character without a good reason. I'm one of like two people on earth who got into Star Wars through the EU instead of the movies and I can't remember him being used for anything interesting since then, so I really don't care.

Actually the its the Crix Madanne it kills off. The dude giving the breifing on the ground operation before the battle of endor.

gawd, get it right mang

Yeah man. Jeez.

Anyway the whole thing just felt like killing off a "movie" character for the sake of being able to say you did it. There's literally no reason for Madine to have gone on that mission, none. I know Star Wars isn't the best about this, but at least the Jedi were fucking super heroes and the Admirals are on big badass spaceships, but why would the General in command of Special Forces personally go on a mission?

Plus the pointlessness of it all with the utter anti-climax of the superlaser fizzling out and then it gets smashed by asteroids. What the fuck was the point? It wasn't even being played like some kind of comedy, which might have been funny as a Take That toward the Superweapon Syndrome of the EU at that time...if the writer didn't suck. See above for how I think he bungled up a possibly interesting character for Qwi Xux.

Crazedwraith wrote:Two Half death stars according to the first book.

Well damn.

I'm starting to consider the possibility that I'm remembering things imperfectly.

Yeah, well, I'm more worried about my crystal clear recollection of minutia of useless shit instead of things i might productively use at some point

also wedge getting credit for half the ds1 was pretty wank,

Even if you don't count the droids, there were four pilots besides Luke who survived the battle. Are assists split among all those involved or does everyone get the same whether it's one person or ten getting the assists?

Four? Are you counting Han and Chewie in that? I thought only two Xwings (including Luke) and a single Ywing made it through the whole thing.