I really liked the Timothy Zahn trilogy of books set 5 years after Jedi, but haven't really found any of the others to be worthwhile. Any suggestions that don't involve reading bad books to get caught up?

I really enjoyed the Han Solo Trilogy written by A.C. Crispin awhile back. I thought it was very well written and Crispin did such a great job bringing young Han Solo to life and showing the development into the smuggler we would get to know in the films. Great read, I highly recommend it.

Book 1, The Paradise Snare on Amazon

The Aaron Allston and Michael Stackpole X-Wing saga look like they're aimed at teenagers, but they're actually quite fun. Allston, especially, has the Whedon gift of producing proper funny lines and pieces of genuine pathos in the same book. I had most of the Star Wars EU books at one point, but I've sold them all apart from the Zahns and X-Wing books (and I, Jedi, which is a continuation of the others). There are a lot of average or worse ones out there. I didn't find the longer Yuuzhan Vong series very good, and I didn't bother with the one after that. I'm not sure about catching up, they're off in la-la land now as far as I can tell.

Stackpole has video game cred too, having worked on the original X-Wing game, and the evil Korolev/Warspite mission is in the books as a training scenario.

Oddly enough, the prequel trilogy has had the biggest effect in turning me off the mythos, and they've even spoilt the original trilogy for me to a certain extent.

New episode of the clone wars is on tonight

The Tie Fighter and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter games (Collector's CD-Rom versions) were ridiculously fun.

Karenn Traviss's series on the clone war started out really interesting and fresh, and slowly descended into over the top Jedi-hating Mandalorian-humping ridiculousness.

Her books that take place later on in the timeline are much worse.

Makes me sad because I really liked the start of the series and that time period has so much more potential.

So wrong. And yet so right.

Anyone else hate the New Jedi Order? Its like they asked how to kill off 90% of the characters they created. Including several from the kids and teens books.

[quote=Grenn][quote=Quintin_Stone]Anyone else hate the New Jedi Order? Its like they asked how to kill off 90% of the characters they created. Including several from the kids and teens books. [/quote]

I read an interview with R.A. Salvatore once and he basically explained the approach as this: people had begun to simply accept that the main characters were invulnerable and that they could never die so there was never any suspense. In these books they wanted to show that anything could happen. Anyone could die. It was never going to be guaranteed that a character would always triumph.

They've definitely taken this theme and run with it.

I am incredibly disappointed that they avoided the "Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?" line by not including one of them.

I, Jedi is an awesome book, probably my favorite standalone SW read.

As others have mentioned, the X-Wing series of books is also a great read.

I have read everything in the EU up until the NJO series started. Even ones that were released after NJO started but still pre-NJO story. I think one of those was also by Zahn... Survivor's Quest or something like that.

The only things out of that huge stack of books I will recommend to people are Zahn, X-Wing, and I, Jedi. Maybe the Jedi Academy Trilogy as well, only because that ties in with I, Jedi, and both stories seem like they are missing a few pieces without each other. But that trilogy is still pretty mediocre, more on the level with other EU books.

The rest of the bunch pre-NJO is pretty mediocre stuff, and you'd honestly be better off playing the video games to get some entertaining stories. Better writing and more fun. X-Wing series, Dark Forces series (yes that includes JK games, even though they seemed to drop the DF title), and the Rogue Squadron games (except 3).

From everything I've been told by friends that agree with me on the first round of EU stuff, NJO just gets even worse. I obviously can't say for certain, but I've heard enough bad things that I'm content with leaving my SW experience just before all that mess starts.

w00t: I've got a signed 1st edition copy of Foster's 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye', the first original full-length Star Wars novel.

boo: It's a paperback edition.

Thanks! I'll get him to wander over to the YA section and look for Star Wars books there as well as the children's room.

I made him a light saber scarf for Christmas, and he wants a blanket after I finish one I'm making for his sister. I'm thinking a large-than-life size R2D2, maybe. He probably wouldn't find a Han Solo in Carbonite blanket nearly as amusing as I would. (Just think how cool it would look on the bed.)

Also amusing -- the Darths & Droids screencap comic, re-imagining the Star Wars saga as if it had been a role playing game. It's ongoing, currently just past the arena fight in episode two. The first comic is here.

I am still an uber Star Wars nerd... original trilogy, not so much the prequels.

Some fun short story distractions can be found in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina. They give back stories to all of the bar patrons. There a bunch of other "Tales" collections as well. Star Wars books are a guilty pleasure of mine. They are all pretty bad, but I listen to the audio book versions while doing housework. Your local library may have a fair amount of them like mine does.

Also if you have chance, try to find of copy of Star Wars: Revisited. It's a fan edit of Star Wars and is everything the special edition should have been. The main purpose of the edit was to fix the horrible "color correction" from the released dvds, remove the stupid stuff (greedo shooting, Jabba) and then add/fix some of the fx work. There a couple additions I didn't agree with, but for the most part it works very well. (I changed his edit a little for my own personal version.. yes I know I'm a dork) Currently he's working on Empire and his skills are getting much better.

Darksaber was so dumb. Kevin J. Anderson novels should be found nowhere outside of middle school libraries (which is where I found them all).