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Jul. 12th, 2020 02:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarlingoneWhat I've been doing lately is mostly reading through Star Wars Legends in publication order. I've gotten to 1998, and I only have a couple more trilogies to go before the Yuuzhan Vong War / New Jedi Order (which is a spectacular 19 books long), so here are some quick notes of what I think so far.
* Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster: Apparently this was a novelization of the original low-budget concept for Star Wars 2, before anyone knew Star Wars would be a success, so it's set primarily on a fogbound soundstage *koff* that is to say planet. It's notorious for featuring Luke aggressively pining after Leia (Han doesn't appear as Harrison Ford was not low budget enough); it's also incredibly cracktastic. Notable moments include Luke slapping Leia, an Imperial stabbing someone's eye out with a data recording rod, and Darth Vader falling down a well at the end. XD Leia does get to have a lightsaber duel with Vader, though, so it beats all actual Star Wars movies in that regard.
* Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley (Han Solo at Stars' End, Han Solo's Revenge, Han Solo and the Lost Legacy): I like these. They're fun, if you enjoy that sort of 1970s space-adventure genre. They're set before ANH, so it's Han and Chewie doing smuggler shit on the Falcon with an otherwise OC cast (including a pair of adorable droids), and they were published before ESB, so they don't feature Lando. Notable moments include a battle between raft-towing Loch Ness monsters and Chewie making a hang-glider out of a pterodactyl corpse. :D
* Lando Calrissian Adventures by L. Neil Smith (Mindharp of Sharu, Flamewind of Oseon, Starcave of ThonBoka): These were okay. They're also set pre-ANH while Lando still has the Falcon. They're well-written, but definitely trippier than the Han Solo Adventures, and featuring an OC droid who doesn't grab me as much. Apparently the author is a well-known Libertarian and gun rights activist whose origfic is heavy on political views, but you wouldn't know it from these books, or at least I wouldn't, so I give him props for that. Notable moments include Lando growing bigger and smaller on a conveyor belt journey to enlightenment (I told you these were trippy) and playing sabacc with sapient space-mantas in a cave made entirely of precious gems. This is also the series that invented sabacc, later the only card game played in the Star War, so there's that.
* Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command): Fucking classics, for good reason. Tim Zahn is a longtime writer of hard sci-fi with a Master's in physics, who also pulls off the extremely rare stunt of making the movie characters sound like themselves. Plus, of course, his OCs are not to be sneezed at; Grand Admiral Thrawn especially has achieved the possibly unparalleled distinction of coming over into new canon with his continuity almost entirely intact. (Can you tell I'm bitter? ;P Only a little. But the Rogues have been made mincemeat of in new canon, while Thrawn is on his second new trilogy, or is it his third? And yet he's still not boring.)
* Glove of Darth Vader series by Paul and Hollace Davids: A young readers series that was pretty much outside of continuity from the start. Features Emperor Palpatine's three-eyed son and a three-eyed imposter usurping the Imperial throne, plus aggressively environmentalist morals (the ones against whaling and smog were especially... striking), Jabba the Hutt's bearded father, Han and Leia's elopement to Hologram Fun World, and a Leia-droid with laser eyes. Oh, and Moffs running the Empire from their shared Moffship by holding a Mofference. And I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of notably cracktastic oddities. The best I can say for it is that it's definitely entertaining in its bonkerosity.
* The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers: Begins the day after Return of the Jedi ends. The Rebels receive a message from a remote Imperial planet asking for help against an invading race of lizard-people who, I swear to god, use imprisoned human souls instead of electricity. This has the... interesting side effect of leading Luke to win battles by persuading the entrapped souls to commit suicide. O_O Also, Luke's brain is petrifying due to Palpatine's Force lightning. Not necessarily related, he falls in love with a woman whose main characteristics are liking to go barefoot and holding to an anti-Jedi religion. (Seriously, she's introduced as wiggling her toes, having kicked off her shoes during a Bakuran Senate meeting. I think she's supposed to be quirky.) By the end of the book, she's pro-Jedi, despite Luke's terrible pickup lines like "I know you better than you know yourself", but the rest of her faith appears unaffected. Notable moments include Luke using the Force to cure himself of parasitic caterpillars in the aorta (I swear, I can't make this shit up) and Force ghost Anakin Skywalker appearing in Leia's bedroom, not to ask for her forgiveness, but to tell her "I am forgiven", direct quote, and that she has to accept him because he's lightside now. Tyers writes Christian fiction mainly, which gives that particular passage a definite flavor.
* The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton: This is a bad book. Leia is a hysterical female devoted only to being unreasonable and stringing her two competing boyfriends along as long as possible, Han is a jealous idiot who's not only reverted to a bad imitation of pre-ANH characterization but also somehow become best friends with C-3PO, Luke is an honest-to-god Mormon missionary for the Jedi faith. (Wolverton is Mormon. This book makes a lot more sense when you know that.) There are two separate matriarchal societies, one of which is Evil and the other is polyandrous noble savages with a lot of gratuitous bare breasts. Also, the riding rancors are sapient enough to tell their children stories about their human owners' White (wo)Man's Burden. It's... there's some compelling images, like the riding rancors, and the darkside "Nightsisters of Dathomir" have been reused in much better media, but this is not a good fucking book.
* Jedi Academy trilogy by Kevin J Anderson (Jedi Search, Dark Apprentice, Champions of the Force): The best I can give Kevin J Anderson as a writer is that he was dedicated to making Legends continuity coherent, as much as it could be. Other than that... well, this is the story of how Luke founds a Jedi academy on Yavin 4, which is immediately infiltrated by darkside spirit Exar Kun, who is bound to the planet. Luke's student Kyp Durron, who is explicitly shown to be using the Dark Side before coming to Yavin 4, teams up with / is "possessed" by Exar Kun to wreak general havoc and destroy an Imperial solar system. (Scare quotes because Kun provides the power and darkside training but none of the actions or motivations.) Han Solo manages to convince Kyp to turn himself in, and Luke promptly convinces everybody that Kyp should just be accepted back into Jedi society with literally no consequences because he's lightside again now. He seriously tells some of the injured parties "if you still hold a grudge, you can take it up with Kyp later". The writing is workmanlike, but these are bad choices.
* The Crystal Star by Vonda McIntyre: Since the Rogue Squadron Discord book club is doing this book at some point, I skipped it for now, as it's notoriously weird and not necessarily in a good way. I'm not sure it would have been worse or weirder than some of this other shit, though.
* Corellian Trilogy by Roger MacBride (Ambush at Corellia, Assault at Selonia, Showdown at Centerpoint): Surprisingly good, especially for a trilogy based around the central conceit of planets that were moved to their current system via giant repulsorlift drives, and featuring talking otters and Han's goatee-wearing evil cousin. The physics is fairly bananas but internally consistent, and there are four whole badass ladies of distinct personalities -- Leia and Mara Jade team up, plus extremely smart Intelligence agent Belindi Kalenda and Lando's future wife Tendra. I do resent that the Solo kids are portrayed as not understanding Shyriiwook, though, because what the fuck kind of bilingual household is this anyway? :P Literally nobody in Legends so far ever addresses how they avoided learning the language Han and Leia converse with Chewie in.
* Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly: Apparently this was part of a... miscommunication, or something. Reportedly, Hambly was commissioned to write a trilogy about "the great love of Luke Skywalker's life", but after this first book, Lucasfilm decided to make Luke/Mara endgame instead. Which I think was a much better choice, because Luke's girlfriend in this book, Callista, is... definitely something. She was a pre-Clone-Wars Jedi who died sabotaging a giant automated Imperial ship and managed to put her mind into the ship's computers. She and Luke fall in love while he's trapped on the ship finishing the sabotage with her help. Then, just before he has to blow up the ship thinking it will kill her, she transplants her mind into the body of a Jedi student of Luke's, who conveniently wanted to die for reasons. But in the process, she somehow loses her Force powers. I've never heard whether she was supposed to eventually regain them or not, but both the premise of "this body used to be your student" and the premise of "you need to help me regain my Force powers" strike me as bad ways to start a relationship. Hambly's a technically skilled writer, and her Han and Leia actually get along (a sad rarity in Legends writing), but I've never felt any particular wish to seek out her origfic.
* Young Jedi Knights series by Kevin J Anderson: I only read the first few of these, because they seemed rather excruciatingly slow. They focus on Jacen and Jaina Solo's training at the Jedi Academy, still on Yavin 4, while being repeatedly kidnapped by the evil "Shadow Academy" and the anti-human "Diversity Alliance" (I'm not sure why the concept of reverse-racism terrorists strikes me as so peculiarly '90s but it really does), and befriending the drug-addicted twentysomething daughter of one of Han's old enemies. I was especially frustrated by the fact that the twins at age 14 still can't understand any Shyriiwook, which is a repeated plot point when Chewie's Force-sensitive nephew Lowbacca joins the Jedi academy. :P If it weren't for that driving me crazy I might have slogged on through.
* Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina / Tales of the Bounty Hunters / Tales from Jabba's Palace / Tales from the Empire / Tales from the New Republic: I have discovered that I don't like Star Wars short stories. I don't know if it's just that short story collections inherently have some level of mood whiplash or what. I got some interesting background from the stories Tim Zahn and/or Mike Stackpole wrote in a few of these, but mostly they seemed kind of pointless.
* Junior Jedi Knights series by Rebecca Moesta: These focus on the training of Anakin Solo, Han and Leia's youngest son, and his friend Tahiri Veila. They're much shorter than the Young Jedi Knights books and not nearly as annoying to me; I got through all six, possibly because there are no Wookiees for me to be irritated about. They're kind of cute.
* Darksaber by Kevin J Anderson: Sequel to Children of the Jedi. Luke and Callista travel around trying to revive her Force powers while Durga the Hutt attempts to build a copy of the Death Star superlaser (the titular "Darksaber" due to it looking kind of like a lightsaber handle). Notable mainly for flashbacks to the graphic and repeated deaths of Death Star designer Bevel Lemelisk at Palpatine's hands. Due to Durga's cost-cutting, the Darksaber is destroyed before it can even fire a shot. Callista decides to leave Luke, and is last seen unconscious on a Star Destroyer sinking into Yavin; we never find out how she survives. A deeply anticlimactic book.
* Rogue Squadron quartet by Michael A. Stackpole (Rogue Squadron, Wedge's Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War): Starring Daddy Issues McDaddyIssues aka Corran Horn. To be fair, a competent piece of writing on a set topic, that being "tie in to the X-wing computer game". The space battles are full of the sort of shield-balancing and fuel economy juggling that apparently characterized the game. But all the women are beautiful and slender, the narration slips regularly into weird noir-novel things that try to be puns, and the character motivations are just... uniformly peculiar. Corran's rant about how his father's death was worse than the losses of any Alderaanian is, um, characteristic.
* Black Fleet Crisis trilogy by Michael P. Kube-McDowell (Before the Storm, Shield of Lies, Tyrant's Test): Definitely the worst Legends books I have read yet, and that's saying a thing. Leia is completely and utterly irrational; according to the author's rather self-satisfied FAQ on his website, he was trying to write her having a stress breakdown, but what came out is the kind of '90s Crazy Bitch Feminist who says a great deal about the man writing her. She literally says "is it because I'm a woman, is that why everyone's treating all my orders as suggestions" at one point, and Han or Ackbar has to coax her into every single rational action she takes. Luke is a megalomaniacal Jedi Master (he seriously rebuilds Darth Vader's secret castle using the Force) off on a quest for his mother with a Force-using woman even more powerful than he is. Han, of all people, is the voice of reason. And Lando spends the trilogy stuck on an alien generation ship which literally never ties into the rest of the storyline in any way. It's... if it was even bonkers, it wouldn't be quite so bad, but it takes itself extremely seriously. Oh, did I mention the on-page alien sex scene? Or the fact that both Han's and Chewie's sons have become Unmanly due to paternal neglect? This trilogy is full of the author's issues and not much else.
* Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry: After the Black Fleet Crisis, this was honestly a breath of fresh air, even with the big bad being Falleen Prince Xizor, whose pheromones can force any woman (except of course Leia) to have sex with him. It takes place between ESB and ROTJ, and it's just a good solid workmanlike piece of writing getting from point A to point B with the required elements of the Shadows of the Empire video game in between. It's not great literature, but I've had enough of writing that thinks it is. Also, it explains how Leia got Boushh's outfit.
* The New Rebellion by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: An adult-level prequel to the Young Jedi Knights "Shadow Academy" arc, featuring fallen Jedi student Brakiss. Not too bad, although it definitely suffered from being set right after the Black Fleet Crisis books and featuring yet another Senate vote of no confidence in Leia as president. Artoo and Threepio got to save the galaxy, which was nice. There were definitely some dangling plot threads I would have liked tied up, but it was okay, and I was sorry that nobody ever did anything more with the young X-wing mechanic Cole Fardreamer.
* I skipped the Galaxy of Fear books altogether. Somehow "Star Wars does Goosebumps" doesn't appeal to me.
* The Dark Forces novellas feature video game protagonist Kyle Katarn, who goes from Imperial to Rebel to Jedi. He has no distinguishing features except apparently a beard. I didn't have much opinion about him. Apparently he was slated to die in the NJO but was kept alive in case anybody wanted to make an NJO video game. (They didn't.)
* Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin (The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, Rebel Dawn): I don't get along with something about AC Crispin's writing. I've never quite managed to put my finger on what. This is the official story of Han Solo's life before ANH, and it does a very good job incorporating everything else that was canonical about Han at the time it was written. I just don't like it. It leaves an odd smell in the mind. Also, I think the big moral dilemma that causes the final breakup between Han and previous love of his life Bria is dumb as fuck. Death Star rumors or not, you don't fucking hire smugglers for a cut of the take and then screw them out of the deal because you feel like your noble goal needs the money more. It was obvious that readers were supposed to side with Bria or at the very least be torn, and it just made me feel like she was too stupid to live. (Obviously she doesn't live. Han hears of her death literally the day before ANH starts, so that he's free to fall in love with Leia. :P But there was never any comeuppance for altering the deal on the smugglers who got her her revenge.)
* Planet of Twilight by Barbara Hambly: In which Callista reappears and is finally packed off to find herself. Also there are disgusting bug-alien blowjobs (not literally, but the implication is there). And sapient crystals that enhance Force powers. And a plague of evil ticks sweeping the galaxy, and Threepio and Artoo wandering around by themselves and then with an alien journalist. It's... a lot. Mostly a lot of bugs. So many bugs. More bugs than in The Mummy, practically.
* Hand of Thrawn duology by Timothy Zahn (Specter of the Past / Vision of the Future): Originally planned to be one book, had to be split for bulk. In which the Empire and the New Republic finally sign a treaty, Thrawn is not back from the dead, and Tim Zahn has very pointed opinions on every other Legends book that was out at the time. He especially rips the Black Fleet Crisis to shreds, which is fair. He also retcons away the Mara/Lando fling that had been established when Luke/Callista was supposed to be endgame, which does annoy me slightly. Let Mara have had a life outside of Luke, for christ's sake. :P I suppose it has something to do with Romance.
* That's as far as I've gotten. Next up are the Wraith Squadron trilogy by Aaron Allston, which I love and have pretty much memorized; I, Jedi, by Mike Stackpole, which is first-person Corran Horn self-insert fanfic of the Jedi Academy trilogy, which I'm not looking forward to but it may be more interesting now that I've actually read the Jedi Academy trilogy; the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy by K.W. Jeter, which I haven't read, but nothing I've seen concerning Legends Boba Fett has been remotely interesting yet so I'm hoping I'm not bored completely to death; and Starfighters of Adumar by Aaron Allston, an excellent book and the last breath of free air before the NJO.
* Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster: Apparently this was a novelization of the original low-budget concept for Star Wars 2, before anyone knew Star Wars would be a success, so it's set primarily on a fogbound soundstage *koff* that is to say planet. It's notorious for featuring Luke aggressively pining after Leia (Han doesn't appear as Harrison Ford was not low budget enough); it's also incredibly cracktastic. Notable moments include Luke slapping Leia, an Imperial stabbing someone's eye out with a data recording rod, and Darth Vader falling down a well at the end. XD Leia does get to have a lightsaber duel with Vader, though, so it beats all actual Star Wars movies in that regard.
* Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley (Han Solo at Stars' End, Han Solo's Revenge, Han Solo and the Lost Legacy): I like these. They're fun, if you enjoy that sort of 1970s space-adventure genre. They're set before ANH, so it's Han and Chewie doing smuggler shit on the Falcon with an otherwise OC cast (including a pair of adorable droids), and they were published before ESB, so they don't feature Lando. Notable moments include a battle between raft-towing Loch Ness monsters and Chewie making a hang-glider out of a pterodactyl corpse. :D
* Lando Calrissian Adventures by L. Neil Smith (Mindharp of Sharu, Flamewind of Oseon, Starcave of ThonBoka): These were okay. They're also set pre-ANH while Lando still has the Falcon. They're well-written, but definitely trippier than the Han Solo Adventures, and featuring an OC droid who doesn't grab me as much. Apparently the author is a well-known Libertarian and gun rights activist whose origfic is heavy on political views, but you wouldn't know it from these books, or at least I wouldn't, so I give him props for that. Notable moments include Lando growing bigger and smaller on a conveyor belt journey to enlightenment (I told you these were trippy) and playing sabacc with sapient space-mantas in a cave made entirely of precious gems. This is also the series that invented sabacc, later the only card game played in the Star War, so there's that.
* Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command): Fucking classics, for good reason. Tim Zahn is a longtime writer of hard sci-fi with a Master's in physics, who also pulls off the extremely rare stunt of making the movie characters sound like themselves. Plus, of course, his OCs are not to be sneezed at; Grand Admiral Thrawn especially has achieved the possibly unparalleled distinction of coming over into new canon with his continuity almost entirely intact. (Can you tell I'm bitter? ;P Only a little. But the Rogues have been made mincemeat of in new canon, while Thrawn is on his second new trilogy, or is it his third? And yet he's still not boring.)
* Glove of Darth Vader series by Paul and Hollace Davids: A young readers series that was pretty much outside of continuity from the start. Features Emperor Palpatine's three-eyed son and a three-eyed imposter usurping the Imperial throne, plus aggressively environmentalist morals (the ones against whaling and smog were especially... striking), Jabba the Hutt's bearded father, Han and Leia's elopement to Hologram Fun World, and a Leia-droid with laser eyes. Oh, and Moffs running the Empire from their shared Moffship by holding a Mofference. And I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of notably cracktastic oddities. The best I can say for it is that it's definitely entertaining in its bonkerosity.
* The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers: Begins the day after Return of the Jedi ends. The Rebels receive a message from a remote Imperial planet asking for help against an invading race of lizard-people who, I swear to god, use imprisoned human souls instead of electricity. This has the... interesting side effect of leading Luke to win battles by persuading the entrapped souls to commit suicide. O_O Also, Luke's brain is petrifying due to Palpatine's Force lightning. Not necessarily related, he falls in love with a woman whose main characteristics are liking to go barefoot and holding to an anti-Jedi religion. (Seriously, she's introduced as wiggling her toes, having kicked off her shoes during a Bakuran Senate meeting. I think she's supposed to be quirky.) By the end of the book, she's pro-Jedi, despite Luke's terrible pickup lines like "I know you better than you know yourself", but the rest of her faith appears unaffected. Notable moments include Luke using the Force to cure himself of parasitic caterpillars in the aorta (I swear, I can't make this shit up) and Force ghost Anakin Skywalker appearing in Leia's bedroom, not to ask for her forgiveness, but to tell her "I am forgiven", direct quote, and that she has to accept him because he's lightside now. Tyers writes Christian fiction mainly, which gives that particular passage a definite flavor.
* The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton: This is a bad book. Leia is a hysterical female devoted only to being unreasonable and stringing her two competing boyfriends along as long as possible, Han is a jealous idiot who's not only reverted to a bad imitation of pre-ANH characterization but also somehow become best friends with C-3PO, Luke is an honest-to-god Mormon missionary for the Jedi faith. (Wolverton is Mormon. This book makes a lot more sense when you know that.) There are two separate matriarchal societies, one of which is Evil and the other is polyandrous noble savages with a lot of gratuitous bare breasts. Also, the riding rancors are sapient enough to tell their children stories about their human owners' White (wo)Man's Burden. It's... there's some compelling images, like the riding rancors, and the darkside "Nightsisters of Dathomir" have been reused in much better media, but this is not a good fucking book.
* Jedi Academy trilogy by Kevin J Anderson (Jedi Search, Dark Apprentice, Champions of the Force): The best I can give Kevin J Anderson as a writer is that he was dedicated to making Legends continuity coherent, as much as it could be. Other than that... well, this is the story of how Luke founds a Jedi academy on Yavin 4, which is immediately infiltrated by darkside spirit Exar Kun, who is bound to the planet. Luke's student Kyp Durron, who is explicitly shown to be using the Dark Side before coming to Yavin 4, teams up with / is "possessed" by Exar Kun to wreak general havoc and destroy an Imperial solar system. (Scare quotes because Kun provides the power and darkside training but none of the actions or motivations.) Han Solo manages to convince Kyp to turn himself in, and Luke promptly convinces everybody that Kyp should just be accepted back into Jedi society with literally no consequences because he's lightside again now. He seriously tells some of the injured parties "if you still hold a grudge, you can take it up with Kyp later". The writing is workmanlike, but these are bad choices.
* The Crystal Star by Vonda McIntyre: Since the Rogue Squadron Discord book club is doing this book at some point, I skipped it for now, as it's notoriously weird and not necessarily in a good way. I'm not sure it would have been worse or weirder than some of this other shit, though.
* Corellian Trilogy by Roger MacBride (Ambush at Corellia, Assault at Selonia, Showdown at Centerpoint): Surprisingly good, especially for a trilogy based around the central conceit of planets that were moved to their current system via giant repulsorlift drives, and featuring talking otters and Han's goatee-wearing evil cousin. The physics is fairly bananas but internally consistent, and there are four whole badass ladies of distinct personalities -- Leia and Mara Jade team up, plus extremely smart Intelligence agent Belindi Kalenda and Lando's future wife Tendra. I do resent that the Solo kids are portrayed as not understanding Shyriiwook, though, because what the fuck kind of bilingual household is this anyway? :P Literally nobody in Legends so far ever addresses how they avoided learning the language Han and Leia converse with Chewie in.
* Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly: Apparently this was part of a... miscommunication, or something. Reportedly, Hambly was commissioned to write a trilogy about "the great love of Luke Skywalker's life", but after this first book, Lucasfilm decided to make Luke/Mara endgame instead. Which I think was a much better choice, because Luke's girlfriend in this book, Callista, is... definitely something. She was a pre-Clone-Wars Jedi who died sabotaging a giant automated Imperial ship and managed to put her mind into the ship's computers. She and Luke fall in love while he's trapped on the ship finishing the sabotage with her help. Then, just before he has to blow up the ship thinking it will kill her, she transplants her mind into the body of a Jedi student of Luke's, who conveniently wanted to die for reasons. But in the process, she somehow loses her Force powers. I've never heard whether she was supposed to eventually regain them or not, but both the premise of "this body used to be your student" and the premise of "you need to help me regain my Force powers" strike me as bad ways to start a relationship. Hambly's a technically skilled writer, and her Han and Leia actually get along (a sad rarity in Legends writing), but I've never felt any particular wish to seek out her origfic.
* Young Jedi Knights series by Kevin J Anderson: I only read the first few of these, because they seemed rather excruciatingly slow. They focus on Jacen and Jaina Solo's training at the Jedi Academy, still on Yavin 4, while being repeatedly kidnapped by the evil "Shadow Academy" and the anti-human "Diversity Alliance" (I'm not sure why the concept of reverse-racism terrorists strikes me as so peculiarly '90s but it really does), and befriending the drug-addicted twentysomething daughter of one of Han's old enemies. I was especially frustrated by the fact that the twins at age 14 still can't understand any Shyriiwook, which is a repeated plot point when Chewie's Force-sensitive nephew Lowbacca joins the Jedi academy. :P If it weren't for that driving me crazy I might have slogged on through.
* Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina / Tales of the Bounty Hunters / Tales from Jabba's Palace / Tales from the Empire / Tales from the New Republic: I have discovered that I don't like Star Wars short stories. I don't know if it's just that short story collections inherently have some level of mood whiplash or what. I got some interesting background from the stories Tim Zahn and/or Mike Stackpole wrote in a few of these, but mostly they seemed kind of pointless.
* Junior Jedi Knights series by Rebecca Moesta: These focus on the training of Anakin Solo, Han and Leia's youngest son, and his friend Tahiri Veila. They're much shorter than the Young Jedi Knights books and not nearly as annoying to me; I got through all six, possibly because there are no Wookiees for me to be irritated about. They're kind of cute.
* Darksaber by Kevin J Anderson: Sequel to Children of the Jedi. Luke and Callista travel around trying to revive her Force powers while Durga the Hutt attempts to build a copy of the Death Star superlaser (the titular "Darksaber" due to it looking kind of like a lightsaber handle). Notable mainly for flashbacks to the graphic and repeated deaths of Death Star designer Bevel Lemelisk at Palpatine's hands. Due to Durga's cost-cutting, the Darksaber is destroyed before it can even fire a shot. Callista decides to leave Luke, and is last seen unconscious on a Star Destroyer sinking into Yavin; we never find out how she survives. A deeply anticlimactic book.
* Rogue Squadron quartet by Michael A. Stackpole (Rogue Squadron, Wedge's Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War): Starring Daddy Issues McDaddyIssues aka Corran Horn. To be fair, a competent piece of writing on a set topic, that being "tie in to the X-wing computer game". The space battles are full of the sort of shield-balancing and fuel economy juggling that apparently characterized the game. But all the women are beautiful and slender, the narration slips regularly into weird noir-novel things that try to be puns, and the character motivations are just... uniformly peculiar. Corran's rant about how his father's death was worse than the losses of any Alderaanian is, um, characteristic.
* Black Fleet Crisis trilogy by Michael P. Kube-McDowell (Before the Storm, Shield of Lies, Tyrant's Test): Definitely the worst Legends books I have read yet, and that's saying a thing. Leia is completely and utterly irrational; according to the author's rather self-satisfied FAQ on his website, he was trying to write her having a stress breakdown, but what came out is the kind of '90s Crazy Bitch Feminist who says a great deal about the man writing her. She literally says "is it because I'm a woman, is that why everyone's treating all my orders as suggestions" at one point, and Han or Ackbar has to coax her into every single rational action she takes. Luke is a megalomaniacal Jedi Master (he seriously rebuilds Darth Vader's secret castle using the Force) off on a quest for his mother with a Force-using woman even more powerful than he is. Han, of all people, is the voice of reason. And Lando spends the trilogy stuck on an alien generation ship which literally never ties into the rest of the storyline in any way. It's... if it was even bonkers, it wouldn't be quite so bad, but it takes itself extremely seriously. Oh, did I mention the on-page alien sex scene? Or the fact that both Han's and Chewie's sons have become Unmanly due to paternal neglect? This trilogy is full of the author's issues and not much else.
* Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry: After the Black Fleet Crisis, this was honestly a breath of fresh air, even with the big bad being Falleen Prince Xizor, whose pheromones can force any woman (except of course Leia) to have sex with him. It takes place between ESB and ROTJ, and it's just a good solid workmanlike piece of writing getting from point A to point B with the required elements of the Shadows of the Empire video game in between. It's not great literature, but I've had enough of writing that thinks it is. Also, it explains how Leia got Boushh's outfit.
* The New Rebellion by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: An adult-level prequel to the Young Jedi Knights "Shadow Academy" arc, featuring fallen Jedi student Brakiss. Not too bad, although it definitely suffered from being set right after the Black Fleet Crisis books and featuring yet another Senate vote of no confidence in Leia as president. Artoo and Threepio got to save the galaxy, which was nice. There were definitely some dangling plot threads I would have liked tied up, but it was okay, and I was sorry that nobody ever did anything more with the young X-wing mechanic Cole Fardreamer.
* I skipped the Galaxy of Fear books altogether. Somehow "Star Wars does Goosebumps" doesn't appeal to me.
* The Dark Forces novellas feature video game protagonist Kyle Katarn, who goes from Imperial to Rebel to Jedi. He has no distinguishing features except apparently a beard. I didn't have much opinion about him. Apparently he was slated to die in the NJO but was kept alive in case anybody wanted to make an NJO video game. (They didn't.)
* Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin (The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, Rebel Dawn): I don't get along with something about AC Crispin's writing. I've never quite managed to put my finger on what. This is the official story of Han Solo's life before ANH, and it does a very good job incorporating everything else that was canonical about Han at the time it was written. I just don't like it. It leaves an odd smell in the mind. Also, I think the big moral dilemma that causes the final breakup between Han and previous love of his life Bria is dumb as fuck. Death Star rumors or not, you don't fucking hire smugglers for a cut of the take and then screw them out of the deal because you feel like your noble goal needs the money more. It was obvious that readers were supposed to side with Bria or at the very least be torn, and it just made me feel like she was too stupid to live. (Obviously she doesn't live. Han hears of her death literally the day before ANH starts, so that he's free to fall in love with Leia. :P But there was never any comeuppance for altering the deal on the smugglers who got her her revenge.)
* Planet of Twilight by Barbara Hambly: In which Callista reappears and is finally packed off to find herself. Also there are disgusting bug-alien blowjobs (not literally, but the implication is there). And sapient crystals that enhance Force powers. And a plague of evil ticks sweeping the galaxy, and Threepio and Artoo wandering around by themselves and then with an alien journalist. It's... a lot. Mostly a lot of bugs. So many bugs. More bugs than in The Mummy, practically.
* Hand of Thrawn duology by Timothy Zahn (Specter of the Past / Vision of the Future): Originally planned to be one book, had to be split for bulk. In which the Empire and the New Republic finally sign a treaty, Thrawn is not back from the dead, and Tim Zahn has very pointed opinions on every other Legends book that was out at the time. He especially rips the Black Fleet Crisis to shreds, which is fair. He also retcons away the Mara/Lando fling that had been established when Luke/Callista was supposed to be endgame, which does annoy me slightly. Let Mara have had a life outside of Luke, for christ's sake. :P I suppose it has something to do with Romance.
* That's as far as I've gotten. Next up are the Wraith Squadron trilogy by Aaron Allston, which I love and have pretty much memorized; I, Jedi, by Mike Stackpole, which is first-person Corran Horn self-insert fanfic of the Jedi Academy trilogy, which I'm not looking forward to but it may be more interesting now that I've actually read the Jedi Academy trilogy; the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy by K.W. Jeter, which I haven't read, but nothing I've seen concerning Legends Boba Fett has been remotely interesting yet so I'm hoping I'm not bored completely to death; and Starfighters of Adumar by Aaron Allston, an excellent book and the last breath of free air before the NJO.
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Date: 2020-07-12 07:35 pm (UTC)That's amazing. I approve of the duel, though.
Fucking classics, for good reason.
I keep hearing this! The fanart certainly supports it.
A young readers series that was pretty much outside of continuity from the start.
I never actually read these books, but I had a friend who had copies, and I used to look at them occasionally. Am I correct that the three-eyed son is just named Triclops, because why not?
Hambly's a technically skilled writer, and her Han and Leia actually get along (a sad rarity in Legends writing), but I've never felt any particular wish to seek out her origfic.
I love her Benjamin January mysteries, especially but not exclusively before she changed publishers, and the one professional example I've read of her fanfic—Renfield, Slave of Dracula (2006)—was a letdown. (Among other reasons, I expected it to be at least 200% queerer from that title. It was very het. Why?) Unless her other tie-in work turns out to be brilliant, she may just be best with her own characters and not other people's.
I am fascinatated by this giant sprawling patchwork of Lucasfilm dictates and individidual writers' ids.
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Date: 2020-07-13 02:35 am (UTC)Hambly's a technically skilled writer, and her Han and Leia actually get along (a sad rarity in Legends writing), but I've never felt any particular wish to seek out her origfic.
I don't think I've read any of Hambly's tie-in work, but I have read a bunch of her origfic, with mixed results. She's written a couple of things that have a good chance of appearing on a list of my favourite novels, depending on what day it is, and a few things that I've seriously regretted reading, and several stops in between. Since sovay mentioned it, I liked the first Benjamin January novel, but I haven't risked reading any more of those because my experience has been that the longer she sticks with a series the more likely it is to tip over into "seriously regretted reading"; the ones I count as favourites are all standalones or first-of-series-es. (Not that those are necessarily light reading either -- like, one of my favourite Hambly novels is a screwball romantic comedy with leads modelled on Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but also one of my favourite Hambly novels is a murder mystery with a villain who earns the story nearly all of AO3's Major Warnings, and it's the same one.)
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Date: 2020-07-14 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 08:34 am (UTC)I still remember liking those Michael Stackpole ones. (His X-Wing, the Jedi Acadmy, I, Jedi. All of them.) ;-p
The one that's making me laugh the most is that the first one I read was The Truce at Bakura and I DO NOT REMEMBER ANY OF THAT. I just remember it being really fun, like actual SW in book form, and after that I read any I could find. I think your copy was clearly fake and not the real book, which was obv. what I read. Whatever that actually was, since I recall no details. :lol:
I do remember finding The Courtship of Princess Leia frustrating and very disappointing, so apparently past me had some taste or something somewhere. \o/ And I felt much the same as you about the short story collections too, especially Tales from the Cantina. Look, we converge here for a moment!
But, then, as long as it was reasonably entertaining, I never asked or expected anything more from SW and, tbf, actual 90s SF and fantasy was frequently so much worse than anything SW tie-in novels threw at you. (Like, I gave up reading SFF because of how bad it was and how I could so rarely find anything that didn't tell me, a soft, unscientific female, to go away. At least once actually straight up. So, I suppose I had lower expectations to start with!)
♥
(The GFFA is a good place to go to.)