Favorite Star Wars Book?

Wow this exploded fast, and I am feeling to ADHD to read it all right now... but as Kirby will be shocked if I don't chime in something...

I am a huge Matthew Stover fan. Besides Traitor he did the Episode III novelization which was by far the best of them and then he did Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor or something like that. That one was very different than the trend of the Star Wars books, and probably enough so that it will be forgotten, but it was better than they have been in a while. The really kick ass Stover novel though was Shatterpoint. Mace gets to be a bad ass and shows it. Just to leave that note finished, if you really like a darker more adult twist on Fantasy books, check out Stover's other stuff, particularly Heroes Die and that series.

I literally own and have read every book published and have most of the comics through about 2002 or so. It is largely a blur, so I have a hard time picking out stuff. I will say though the one-offs are typically much better these days than the continuing stories. Not sure if that is due to the split telling, the large number of characters to juggle, the fact that everyone is immortal or just not enough archetypes to retell in original ways.

My favorites to reread though are the Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron ones though... I love playing a Jedi, but outside a few novels, they are so wussy and not too clever with the all powerful force. I mean really.. if you can crush shit with your mind, why are you ever fighting a droid? Just a few strategic broken parts and battle done. Not good story telling, but then that is why Batman is more interesting than Superman for me. Not to mention you have a Tie Fighter flown by a mutant Ewok puppet.

Ah well then Jujitsu and I are in agreement then. Luke rules!

As far as how Jedi are portrayed in the books. You hit it on the head Rubini. I own all the books too, and I just can't stand scenes like when Luke and Mara couldn't defeat a single old droideka without resorting to ridiculous measures. Two Jedi Masters thwarted by a rusty old machine. Just toss the damn thing against a wall a few times and call it good. Sheesh.

Just once I would like to see a book where Luke just comes in, kicks everyone's ass, takes their names, and leaves. No plot devices to weaken him, just pure unadulterated badassery.

Kettch for the win! Yub yub!

I thought Shadows of Mindor was pretty good, but it suffered (much like the "Black Fleet" Trilogy) from the fact that it tried to play up the military sci fi aspects, but not as well (imho) as the X-Wing books. It was solid overall, but it made me miss the Stover and Allston books more than anything. I agree about the greater quality of the singles over series - "Legacy of the Force" and "Fate of the Jedi" haven't been awful, but they've certainly been sub-par (I think they'd be improved by shortening them to trilogies rather than trilogies of trilogies). Shadows of Mindor was pretty good, and I actually enjoyed Allegiance by Zahn, as well.

One of Luke's most bad-ass scenes (off the top of my head) actually comes from R. A. Salvatore's Vector Prime. This is back when the Yuuzhan Vong are still a completely new threat, and no one really knows how to deal with them. Anyway, some Jedi (I think it's Jacen) is getting his ass handed to him because he can't sense the Yuuzhan Vong through the Force. Then Luke shows up and pretty much crushes the bad guys under an avalanche of Force-projected rocks. Vector Prime isn't the best Star Wars book by a long shot, but that one scene definitely stands out in my memory. Also, his fight with Jacen in whichever "Legacy of the Force" book where the two of them first fight. Jacen actually puts up a pretty good fight, but he totally demolishes Jacen; of course, Luke is too good a guy to actually finish him off, leaving open the next few books...

Yes, Starfire, we are in agreement. I would skip to the Luke chapters to find out what was happening with him, not caring as much about what was happening with everybody else! And while I honestly really did forget the plot of that. . . thing. . . Crystal Star (which is unusual for me; I tend to have a pretty good memory), I just remember hating it and constantly thinking, "That's not what Luke would say! That's now how he would respond!" and getting really annoyed. I suppose I could look up the plot on Wikipedia, but ya know? I hated it in the first place, so I probably don't want to waste another second on it!

And I am still mad that they made all of the Star Wars families all disfunctional. I haven't read a Star Wars book in years because I want to keep the universe where I liked it. . . right after Luke and Mara got together and none of Han and Leia's kids were dead or nuts.

The addition of Ben to the Luke-Mara pair had some possibility, but in general I agree that the familial dysfunction has been over-played.

That said, familial dysfunction is one of the major halmarks of the Star Wars universe (just think of all the things that are wrong about the Anakin-Luke-Leia relationship in the OT). In general, I think my objections to the Skywalker-Solo family dysfunction that dominates the NJO/LotF/FotJ books are more about execution than premise.

Specifically: killing of Mara Jade was possibly the stupidest thing I have ever read in a Star Wars book (although not the worst written; see above: Crystal Star). Seriously, of all the characters you had the opportunity to kill off, you killed off her? I recognize that her popularity meant that she was a prime target, but seriously, she was one of the most interesting characters in the EU. Killing her off just makes so little sense...

Okay, you're totally right about family dysfunction* being the Star Wars norm. (*apparently you can also spell dysfunction with an "i": disfunction . . . I had to check! See my previous post.)

I guess my main beef is not the dysfunction, but the DEATH! I mean, do we really need nephews killing off aunts, and children and beloved Wookiees exploding? Boo!

And yes, Mara Jade was (IS!) awesome. Zahn did an absolutely fantastic job in crafting her. Then other people ("authors") made stupid storylines with her in them. Then Zahn wrote two MORE books and corrected their stupidity! (I loved that. "Oh? The Lando romance thing? That was a front. . .") And then he resolved the amazingly awesome tension between Luke and Mara that was a fascinating presence in the Thrawn trilogy from way back when he introduced her! Brilliant!

To hear that some idiot(s?) killed her off just makes my blood boil. I wonder if they even asked Zahn, or got permission from anyone. . . Grr to that person. GRR, I say!!! (And this is where my husband would chime in with "Tell us how you really feel!" )

Was I upset when Chewie died - yes. It left a hole in me.
But what they did to Mara - I must concur that I am more irked by that. It made me want to throw something.
And when I considered what they would do to the Luke/Ben dynamic, I stopped reading after the NJO books.

I think the most disappointing thing about killing of Mara for me (other than the fact that she was a total bad-ass) was that I actually enjoyed her part in the Luke-Mara-Ben character triangle that was developing right before she died. It was actually some great character stuff for Mara, because you got to see another side of her as a really awesome mom. It was especially interesting because it was both unexpected (by me, at least), but at the same time made perfect sense: given their pasts and personalities, you'd think that Luke would be the better parent, and yet I thought there was something really genuine about the way that rebellious teenage Ben clashed with his rather tightly-wound father (who, of course, has to deal with the stresses of running the entire Jedi Order) while connecting with his much more chill mother. I didn't want the thing to turn into a full-on soap opera, but there was something interesting about seeing Luke and Mara struggling to be parents, especially given the lack of strong parent figures in their own lives. And just when that dynamic was actually getting interesting, they decided to kill off Mara and have her death serve as a catalyst to have Luke and Ben start getting along.

In this way, I was way more upset about Mara's death than I was about Chewbacca's. Don't get me wrong - I love Chewbacca (who doesn't, really?), but he was never really more than a very loveable sidekick. I suppose they could have taken his character in a more interesting direction, but overall I thought his death (while sad) fit pretty well with the story's objectives of killing off a well-loved but relatively minor character to establish the seriousness of the new threat. With Mara, though, they killed off one of their most interesting main characters for no reason at all! What a monstrously dumb decision...

Overall, I think the biggest problem with the family dysfunction in the recent books has been the sheer amount of *angst* that surrounds it. Now, there were some pretty angst-y moments in the movies, even the Original Trilogy (Luke's response to the great revelation of The Empire Strikes Back springs to mind), but in general the main characters were more absorbed in their massive, galactic war against the evil Empire to be overcome by self-doubt. Luke, Han, and Leia never sat around navel-gazing, wondering whether defeating the Empire was the right thing. So much of the recent books has been about the indecision of the protagonists (should we act decisively to end the Dark Nest threat? should we kill Jacen? should we let Daala walk all over us? should we act decisively to end the new Sith threat?).

The sheer amount of indecision overwhelms the agency of the protagonists (and results in plots that should take three books or less to resolve lasting nine books...), causing the story to drag and the reader to lose interest. Seriously, there's room for some introspective, angst-y beats (despite its other shortcomings, I think Return of the Jedi actually did this very well - think about Luke and Leia's scene on the bridge in the Ewok village, or the scene where Luke turns himself in to Vader), but when familial angst is literally the central conflict of the story, it stops feeling like epic space opera.

Well spoken!

I haven't read a lot of the books you described, and I'm not all that sad that I haven't.

Just out of curiosity, what is Han Solo's take on having Force-sensitive kids, and then being father to a murderer? Do they even bother to explore that, or is it just kind of, "Duh. The Jedi can handle that Force stuff. . . duhhhh"

I mean, really. HAN SOLO! You'd think he would have come up with a creative way of fixing Jacen so he didn't go nutso and kill Aunt Mara. Oh, my husband tells me Han was going all alcoholic or something. For real? Sheesh.

Did Anakin and Chewie die first? Is that what sent everyone into super-angst land?

Well, if so, it just goes to show that a good therapist would have benefitted some of these folks better than Force abilities. Ugh. Really. I mean, tragedy can make you bitter or better (e.g. emotionally stronger or more compassionate towards others, etc.). Sounds like they went the "bitter" route with the books, which makes the characters seem rather pitiful.

There are a lot of books out there that I like from the EU, and most of my top choices would fall into the post ROTJ and Pre NJO books, basically the NR Era. Although I am not a fan of the Jedi stuff, I'm more in for the military sci-fi piece. The X-Wing Books, and others like Truce at Bakura where the alliance is still building up appeal to me.

With the recent Prequels I have to say that I enjoyed the Clone Wars EU stuff a lot. The Med-Star books were a lot of fun to read, and Michael Reaves other books before and after MedStar are also enjoyable for the connection they carry together with some of his characters showing up here and there from previous books.

I don't think any of the Star Wars writers ever really did the premise of "Han Solo as a father" justice, especially with Leia as the mom. Really, when you think about it, the Solo kids were pretty much raised by proxy (which probably explains why they turned out as such a dysfunctional bunch). Han and Leia kind of missed out on their opportunity to be awesome/interesting parent figures in their kids' lives. I guess there was a bit of material about how Han sympathized more with Jaina than Jacen, but then the NJO and post-NJO stuff rolled around, and things kind of went downhill from there.

One of the more interesting developments of the "Fate of the Jedi" books has been seeing Han and Leia involved in actual parenting, albeit with their secret grand-daughter, Allana. Of what I've read thus far, the execution has been a little lack-luster, but the premise of Han and Leia actually fulfilling the role of parents for a child is pretty interesting, especially given their recognition that they weren't the best parents to their own children.

Truce at Bakura was pretty good - I haven't thought about that one in a while. It does kind of fall into Jujitsu's "MAKE YOUR OWN ANNOYINGLY-FORMATTED STAR WARS BOOK!" ™ format, but since it was one of the first written, I think we can forgive them that. It's a shame that we haven't seen more of the Ssi-ruuk in the EU; they ended up being kind of a one-off bad-guy.

Yeah, what happened to the Solo kids is annoying. I used to be such a Jacen fan in the Young Jedi Knights books (What? They weren't half bad.) and then to have him fall to the Dark Side because he got hit with the same stupid stick his Grandfather fell prey to... Bah. Stupid EU. At least Anakin Solo went down fighting, but then again his death nullified Chewie's sacrifice so... Pretty much the EU has more bad than good.

Hey now, if you were raised by C3-P0 you'd be screwed in the head too. :mep: