What are those old EU novels about anyway?

Well, let's see.

>Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura is a 1994 novel by Kathy Tyers. The novel's events take place immediately after the Battle of Endor depicted in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi.
>No sooner has Darth Vader's funeral pyre burned to ashes on Endor than the Alliance faces a new challenge at the far-flung Imperial outpost of Bakura. The Ssi-Ruuk, a race of cold-blooded reptilian invaders, plan to enslave human minds to pilot their invincible machines of war and destruction. With the hope of turning Bakura's loyalties toward the fledgling New Republic with defensive aid, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia race to the besieged planet. Yet as the eve of the final onslaught rapidly approaches, Rebel and Imperial forces still must come to terms with each other. And there is already evidence of a traitor hidden in their midst…


I've read this book, and the description is accurate. It's about giant lizards from beyond charted space invading a world a fringe world and harvesting people's souls to power their ships and starfighters through a process called "entechment". Also: the lizards can hypnotize you with their eyes. Also: once your soul is used up as a battery to power their ships it is utterly erased from existence.

Luke finds his first potential force-sensitive student in this book: Dev Sibwarra. A teenager who was taken prisoner by the Ssi-ruuk as a toddler and raised by them. They abused and exploited him but also brainwashed him so the thinks they're his family. He helps them find new worlds and people for the Ssi-ruu to enslave.

Eventually, the heros send the Space Dinosaurs back into the Unknown regions because they're afraid of dying on an unconquered world because it means their spirit will be lost forever or some bullshit. Dev dies. Luke stays resolute and continues searching for potential Jedi students.

So yeah, there's your original Episode VII. How does that compare to TFA?

The author was a woman, as you may have noticed. Before all this identity politics hullabaloo nobody cared at all if a woman wrote sci-fi or fantasy, and if you went into a bookstore you were as likely as not to pick up a book and it would have a female author. This idea that women are just now getting into these subjects is nonsense. Although I will admit that women were generally more on the Star Trek side of things than Star Wars.

Star Wars books were always laughable shite and written by shlock writers that otherwise cranked out hundreds of disposable novels based on various franchises.

And they used setting-interchangeable tropes that can fit anything they are currently working on for any franchise.

Just go to your local book store and look at the scifi shelves and you'll see literally hundreds of franchise books written by these zombies.

I read 9 EU books when I was recovering from painful surgery. They're literally mind numbing.

This was the only licensed work Kathy Tyers worked on. Same was true for many other Star Wars authors. It's my thinking that you are not much of a reader and just repeat what others have told you about this subject.

Nothing significant ever happened to the main cast so you could keep recycling stories. The comics were the same way. The Disney movies were the same way. Luke was still a whiney, sometimes murderous bitch, Leia still ran the rebels, and Han was still a smuggler. I can't wait to see 60 year old Daisy trying to save Kylo Ren.

The next major book in the EU is The Courtship of Princess Leia. There are several books that take place between Truce at Bakura and Courtship, but those are side stories. This is the next major chapter for the heroes of Star Wars, so it would be Episode VIII chronologically.

>Though Darth Vader and the Emperor are dead, the Empire lives on and a weakened Alliance must find powerful new help if it is to survive. The answer could lie in the Hapes consortium, a cluster of sixty-three high-tech worlds. There is only one catch: Princess Leia must marry the Queen Mother's son, the dashing and wealthy Prince Isolder.

Han Solo reacts badly to the news. Tricking Leia, he flees with her to the beautiful but untamed planet of Dathomir, where he hopes to change her mind - and win her heart. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker and Artoo form an unlikely partnership with the jilted prince to track down the runaways. But their mission is only the beginning of an adventure that will lead to the discovery of an awesome treasure, a group of Force-trained "witches," and a showdown with an invincible foe.

Like Truce at Bakura, this book's plot is pretty weird. It's split between Coruscant and the newly introduced planet of Dathomir and is the first book where you get to see Luke as a mature Jedi Knight out doing Jedi stuff such as controlling the entire Millennium Falcon by himself (moving other controls with the force) and doing crazy maneuvers that impress even Han. Sound a bit familiar?

The Dathomir Witches are an interesting group that includes dark side users that are not all necessarily evil (although the big bad of this book does turn out to be an evil dark side witch).

The romance angle with Han and Leia is well done and Prince Isolder is a good foil for Han.

This book is very female focused with only a sprinkling of male characters. But... no real political agenda. It just happened to be that way.

Yeah, that one and Hambly’s dreck were notoriously bad. Where the EU is concerned, stick with Zahn and Stackpole. The rest are hit and miss.

>cherry picking

jj abrams failed to realize that both star wars and star trek are primarily literary franchises with some minor filmed offshoots

I played the BF2 campaign this past week and kept thinking that this was a better story than the one they came up with for the new canon in the same period (which is covered in BF2).

Some EU books were good but a lot were shit. I try only include the ones I liked in my headcanon

You literally picked the worst Star Wars novel out of like 100. Congrats.

The books are very much like Dragon Ball. I know that sounds quite strange but it's the best comparison I can make. Every big arc the heroes fight a new, more powerful villain than the last and Luke develops into a more powerful Jedi. And they usually gain one long term ally in the process, often someone introduced at first as a villain like Mara Jade.

Not all Star Wars books are created equal. In between these books I'm posting are young reader books, books associated with video games, books associated with comic books, and books associated with role playing games. These are all usually of significantly lower quality and don't matter to the main story of the EU.

Maybe I should make an infographic about what books make up the meat of the EU.

Truce at Bakura is pretty good. And I give it high points for originality. Barbara Hambly wrote Children of the Jedi which was also weird but I liked it. Are you sure you are not confusing Hambly with Vonda McIntyre who wrote The Crystal Star? That is a bad Star Wars book.

>I can't wait to see 60 year old Daisy trying to save Kylo Ren.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Daisy Ridley flat-out said she doesn’t want to play Rey after J.J. Abrams directs Episode IX. Here’s the exchange after she was asked about it:

“No,” she says flatly. “For me, I didn’t really know what I was signing on to. I hadn’t read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, ‘Awesome.’ Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now.”

But, um, doesn’t that sort of sound like a yes? “No,” she says again, smiling a little. “No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it’s three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out.”

In the same article, J.J. Abrams also said he felt that Episode IX was the end of the Skywalker saga that has driven the nine-film story. “I do see it that way,” he says. “But the future is in flux.”

>start with the first book after ROTJ
>cherry picking

>In the same article, J.J. Abrams also said he felt that Episode IX was the end of the Skywalker saga that has driven the nine-film story.
Ben Swolo confirmed protagonist

I picked it because it is "what happens next" and is the first chronologically among the main storyline EU novels that have Luke, Han, and Leia as featured characters. Books that don't have these three are side stories.

Bumping an interesting thread.

Weird.. these all have stories that actually have plot elements.. wonder why they didn't try that for VII or VIII

It's not the same timeframe as TFA at all, TFA is ~30 years after the OT which would put it during the Second Galactic Civil War arc.

Which was also shit. There were islands of good material in the ocean of shit. The best books came when they stayed away from main characters with the exception of Shadows of the Empire. The Rogue and Wraith Squadron books were pretty good teen reads, I could totally see them being a TV series.

This novel was already more or less irreparably retconned by the CW cartoon without a replacement before the EU was mouse murdered.

not even close, not by a fucking mile. remember The Crystal Star? How about the Medstar books (aka shitty MASH in space), or the Yuuzahn Vong space orc shit, or the LITERAL FORCE GODS dragon ball Z garbage that was the last mainline series before the end of the old EU.

Pretty good posts. Keep em coming if you are continuing.

>I could totally see them being a TV series.
I really wish people would stop saying this about these books

I remember really liking Splinter of the Mind's Eye as a kid, but it's been years since I've even seen my copy

>This was the only interesting thing Troy Denning ever did as a writer for the EU and everything he did afterwards was based off of the consequences of this book.
Am I wrong?

This one is interesting for a different reason too. The covers for the hardcover and paperback are completely different and highlight different aspects of the story. Where the hardcover looks like a romance novel, the paperback is more in line with the rest of the books. This was a conscious decision by the publisher to try and appeal to different potential audiences.

lol what the fuck is that thing in the cover lol

>>LUUKE

and

>>LUUUKE

Star wars itself is laughable shlock and has always been best served by scholck authors and in shit like comic books and video games. It's flimsy fun b-movie stuff that utterly falls apart when you try to take it too seriously.

Some Yuuzhan Vong or another

I think you can read

Shadows of the Empire
The Truce at Bakura
The Courtship of Princess Leia
Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command
Jedi Search
Dark Apprentice
Champions of the Force

CAN STOP HERE

Children of the Jedi
Darksaber
Planet Twilight
The Crystal Star
Before the Storm
Shield of Lies
Tyrant's Test
The New Rebellion
Ambush at Corellia
Assault at Selonia
Showdown at Centerpoint
Spectre of the Past
Vision of the Future

Everything after Champions of the Force is sort of Epilogue stuff and some of it gets kind of boring, especially the Black Fleet and Corellia Books where you have dumb plots like Han Solo vs his evil, fat cousin.

There are some prequel books that are pretty good that don't have all the main cast in them, I'd read the young Han Solo stories before I'd read anything past Champions of the Force.

The New Jedi Order books? Well, that's a whole other story. If you get that far it will be up to you. But I would not ever start with them.

You are wrong. Troy Denning never did -anything- interesting for the EU and -always- wrote long boring, overly-sadistic novels that had almost nothing to do with the spirit of Star Wars.

>No x-wing series books

the fuck kinda list is this?

>No I, Jedi
>No Specter of the Past / Vision of the Future

Goddamn it user, fix your list.

>mfw when I was 12 or something like that I read Jedi Search and then immediately jumped to without realizing what I was doing

>Troy Denning never did -anything- interesting for the EU
Killing Anakin Solo wasn't interesting?
He was always my least favorite EU writer

I unironically enjoyed most of the NJO and I felt that it made some interesting choices, also cancer-ridden mara jade, queen bitch jaina solo, and the "we don't fuck around" imperial remnant were all great.

I'm gonna to say it.

I. LIKED. THE. NEW JEDI ORDER.

It was good and the Vong were an interesting twist to the usual battle between the jedi and the sith.

>I unironically enjoyed most of the NJO
So did I, it was an interesting direction for the story and the Vong were cool. Yeah it was kind of stupid but so was all of it.

These covers are cancer.

I haven't read any of those books but it's pretty obvious his list is specific to Luke Skywalker's journey.

Cancer for your hatred.

It wasn't. He was a good character with a lot of potential. It was grittiness taken too far in a franchise that isn't about that kind of thing. Especially at that point in the story. Han and Leia have suffered enough, ya know?

But still, it's war. People die. I can see why he did it.

TELL ME ABOUT NOM ANOR
WHY DOES HE WEAR THE MASK?

Wow, good call OP! We surely needed another Star Wars thread! I know this board has been filled with them for the past month, but your thread is really special. Thank you for your contribution!

>Maybe I should make an infographic about what books make up the meat of the EU.
Would be much appreciated user

Star By Star is the The Last Jedi of NJO books

The EU novels and content in the 1980s are hit and miss. Stuff is rather formulaic and predictable, some stuff borderline stupid. The best stuff involving events after RotJ is mostly going to be the Thrawn Trilogy.

Really some of the best stuff from the EU is going to be Old Republic or Prequel era based, which expand the lore and characters established in the franchise. One of the best examples is the novels by Matthew Stover and James Luceno with Shatterpoint, Labyrinth of Evil, the RotS novelization, and Dark Lord: The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader.

To hide his hideously mangled face

though if I remember right, he had some shaper gel or whatever that could make it look like a normal human or humanoid alien.

I’d add Survivors Quest to these pre-Vong books. A fun read.

Because its bad ass. That's why!!!!!!

There are some really great scenes in the NJO. One of my favorites is a scene in The Unifying Force (maybe?) which is white-knuckle escape from a Yuuzhan Vong concentration camp on a world that has been completely terraformed. It's these three strange species that all have perfect photographic memories so they are carrying a computer program in their minds. I think they start with a dozen of them and only two make it out. At the end of the scene they sit down with the GFFA officials and start spouting out the long program verbally. That's some good sci-fi.

The NJO was a lot worse when we had less star-wars to compare it to. Also it was a fully planned and highly coordinated thing with lots of talent behind the pages and the storylines and character arcs were planned out long-term. Reading it from book 1 through made you feel compelled to keep going as you wanted to see where things went. Previously the EU jumped around like a son of a bitch and at best you had runs like the X-wing series, but often you and 1-2 books and then *poof* some hack writer tossed your favorite character / ship / storyline / setting in the dumpster for a cheap twist.

MFW I remember I bought the hardcover in a bookstore when it was released

>Darksaber
I had been trying to remember that title

I always put them away first thing. I don't like any novel putting an image into my head of what things are supposed to look like. Also they didn't make Jaina QT enough on a lot of the covers.

SPACE ORC

The thrawn trilogy was great. I, Jedi was probably the best standalone Star wars story from a different perspective, and I uninironically enjoyed quite a few of the NJO books despite being a little long winded

>tfw no jaina solo gf

you know what, user?

You're right.

Why has no one ever said this?

big fan of the old star wars EU pre yuzhan vong and excluding all prequel books. truce at bakura was garbage.
courtship of princess leia was ok though

this is the one that's regarded as the best New Jedi Order book, right?

And the development of Jacen Solo! Though Anakin Solo death I think was a mistake. Should have kept him.

I already said it but I will repeat it: these books are the main story of Luke, Leia, and Han and all three appear in every single one of those books.

Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi are side stories. Good ones that I recommend tho.

>>No Specter of the Past / Vision of the Future
They're right there at the end of the post that you didn't even read to the end before responding.

Also shadows of the empire was good. Fight me.
>Tfw leia will never get GREENED on screen

The x-wing series by Aaron allston and Mike Stackpole are some of the consistent *best* of the old star wars EU. They are pulpy action books about a squadron of x-wing pilots but they tell a long-term story about the fight for the rebellion to be come the new republic and turning the tide against the empire. Little to no force stuff, all just WWII style war stuff and character drama. They were great reads as a teenager, now that I'm in my 30's im sure they don't hold up quite as well but compared to the rest of the old EU material they are pretty great and worth a read.

The last one is unironically great, Star By Star is more traumatic and weird. As I said I now think it's the The Last Jedi of NJO books.

Call me a pleb but the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the NJO up to and including Star By Star but no further was my jam, and I thought that the Thrawn Trilogy was overrated, despite having some cool setpieces and characters.

>the Jedi Academy Trilogy
The first I read and there's still scenes from it that stick with me.

This was my jam. Read them when I was eleven and twelve. Completely amazing, well written and engaging. Nothing like that crap that came out during the Prequel movies.

It's the one that killed the reason that Chewbacca died

like the last 20 years of the EU was pure suffering for Han Solo, his best friend died, his favorite son died, his other son turned to the dark side, killed his sister in law then was killed by the ONLY non-fucked up person in his family, his daughter.

Who ends up marrying the new Emperor and shitting out a bunch of force sensitive baby heirs for him.

I remember having and reading both Shadows of the Empire and an anthology about the various bounty hunters from Empire Strikes Back. Both of those were good.

>>/s4s/

Wasn't this the book where Luke fought off lizard people from another Galaxy?

Which fate is worse: Disney Han or NJO Han?

that's pretty damn cute, user

They were from the unknown regions.

the tales books and Shadows of the Empire were easily the best things in the old EU.

Lucas had a massive hardon for SOTE too, said if he had the story when the actors were still young he would have made that movie before ROTJ

Shatterpoint is honestly great, wish we could have had that mace windu in the movies instead of what we got out of SLJ.

The Thrawn trilogy is highly overrated and there is better EU content out there than it. The old republic suffers because it's very clearly unwilling to take risks and seriously backpedaled from the original comics that were based around the old republic where things actually felt like they were thousands of years before what we see in the movies. The stuff in KOTOR might as well take place 30 years before the prequels and does absolutely nothing interesting with the force mythology. The New Jedi Order for all it's faults was risky as fuck and made grand sweeping changes and did interesting things with the force and the people that use it by breaking it out of the usual light / dark dynamic that has gotten really damn stale.

No, these ones were from the Uknown Regions. The ones from another galaxy have their own series set in the timeframe of the sequel films.

Disney Han.... NJO Han came back around. He was in morning from Chewie dying.

NJO Han still has one non-fucked up child, a cute granddaughter and is banging milfmode Princess Leia on the regular.

TFA Han had Chewie for like 10 more years than old-EU Han.

Star Wars is primarily a toy franchise with feature film advertisements.

He's right about Trek. A lot of the Star Wars EU was written by people who also wrote Trek novels and probably were reading dime store Star Trek novels before Star Wars even existed.

The bounty hunter one was much weaker than the Tattooine one imo

>The NJO was a lot worse when we had less star-wars to compare it to.

Ain't it the truth. The more we see of the SW universe the more shit it gets.

>that's regarded as the best New Jedi Order book, right?
No. It's a very divisive book. The book with the highest agreed quality would probably be James Luceno's "The Unifying Force" which is a huge tome that wraps up the Yuuzhan Vong war.

Tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina was a fun read. It's a series of short stories that involve the Cantina scene in ANH from the perspective of basically everyone in the room, and events either preceding it or immediately after it. It's also the origin of those wacky wookieepedia articles that everyone likes to meme about.

Star Wars was always intended to be a space opera that was highly evocative of mythology and fantasy. The books kind of shit all over that by hiring scifi writers who turned their adaptations of the franchise into hard scifi that felt seriously out of place compared to the movies (at least to me; I've never been able to enjoy them). And that's putting aside the fact that the franchise existed for years before the novels began in earnest in the early 90s. If you think of Star Wars as a book franchise, you probably don't really understand what it was supposed to be.

lowbacca front and center. lucas really disliked the concept of a force-sensitive wookie and asked/told the EU writers to never not incorporate this concept into any additional material.

>The stuff in KOTOR might as well take place 30 years before the prequels and does absolutely nothing interesting with the force mythology.
Agreed, I don't get the KOTOR fanboys.

>Mace Windu
>comes from the fucking planet Kongo, full of spear chucking jungle niggers and warlords
>Lando
>comes from fucking space compton

Even in SW the black guys have it rough

>then was killed by the ONLY non-fucked up person in his family, his daughter.
wut? Han dies at the end of the old EU? Jaina kills him? I did know she marries Jagged Fel.

Splinter of the Mind's Eye is a bland read. Didn't even finish it.

>Shatterpoint is honestly great, wish we could have had that mace windu in the movies instead of what we got out of SLJ.
They're the same though???

This is my favorite Star Wars novel

He didn't mind it so much when there was just one, but a lot of authors kept doing it, there was also one in the Stark Hyperspace War comic.

During production of KOTOR II he came down and said NO MORE WOOKIEE JEDI, originally Hanharr was supposed to be trainable as a dark jedi but he trashed that.

>The x-wing series by Aaron allston and Mike Stackpole are some of the consistent *best* of the old star wars EU
>t best you had runs like the X-wing

Wraith Squadron Lt Kettch was best. Fuck Disney, can't believe X-wing series are now non cannon.

there were a few others. Lucas put a ban on any more because he (probably correctly) thought that literally everyone would start adding their own Wookie Jedi OCs into their stories

Movie windu and shatterpoint windu are the same in the sense that Clone Wars series Anakin and movie anakin are the same.

As in not at all.

These are great characters when they aren't written by Lucas.

>tfw Poe Dameron is as close as we'll get

Lucas hated pretty much everything about the extended universe. Lowbacca was cool.