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havokeff wrote:

Guardsman Bass wrote:As for Anakin Solo, didn't Lucas himself actually ask for that, because he thought people might confuse Anakin Solo with his Anakin?

As I recall it, yes. We are obviously too stupid to figure it out.

Yeah, I remember commenting at the time it was as stupid as the Bat Embargo the DCAU was under. Although that may have been semi-justified as a legal rights issue, maybe.

It was still stupid though, if true. I mean they had to know going in that "Anakin Solo" was similar to "Anakin Skywalker" (Hell that was the point!) so you'd think if it would have been a major issue they could have told them no back then. Or maybe they just didn't expect the post-RotJ EU to still be going on when the prequels rolled around.

At least Anakin got to go out fighting.

I actually liked how Chewies death in Vector Prime was handled. Chewie died saving those closest too him, and it inspired the right level of emotion.

I also enjoyed Vector Prime for the most part. The characters were good, I didn't mind the biotech, the diolouge and prose were good, the only part I didn't like was the battle sequence, because it was confusing, and made no sense.

Actually liked Tatooine Ghost. It was nice to see something else other than the galactic threat of the month (all right, Thrawn was present but he really doesn't count in this case). I thought the writing was fairly decent and it was sort of amusing to watch Leia get mad when Anakin's childhood friends say that he wasn't always a bad person.

Guardsman Bass wrote:James Luceno probably would have been a better choice (although I don't know if Lucasbooks had even heard of him at that point). He writes pretty good "transition" Star Wars novels, like Labyrinth of Evil (which was pretty much a set-up for Revenge of the Sith).

James Luceno kicks ass. I've loved all his books so far. He has a great knack for mixing established EU stuff with original new stuff and politics with action, as well as creating believable personal struggles. Almost all his books are transition so far, but he's always managed to give them his own personal touch.

For a thread titled 'Worst EU Novel', this page of posts is pretty positive...

I concur. In fact, the Unifying force is my favorite book. Matt Stover also rocks

Yes, Luceno's always a winner in my, heh, book.

Of the ones I've personally read which I consider absolutely terrible, the only one that sticks out in recent memory would probably be Revelation and Dark Journey.

I will have to throw my weight behind:

• The Crystal Star
• Children of the Jedi
• Planet of Twilight
• The Black Fleet Crisis

Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines probably belongs on there as well, but I've never managed to bring myself to finish it. I've been "reading" it for at least six months now with no progress made.

If I absolutely had to choose one of them it would probably be Planet of Twilight. That book was terrible, the characterizations were off, and we had Leia moping around like Luke did in Children of the Jedi.

I actually liked Dark Journey, and I liked Revelation at first, but looking back, your right. I swallowed Traviss's crap only because I was hyperinclusionist. When I learned more about her and her agenda, I realized that the book was shit. It's a shame because if she didn't include the mando wanking/anti-jedi horse crap to a minimum, the book might actually have been good.

Personally I think the Black Fleet Crisis is much unfairly maligned and deserves much more praise for what it did (portraying the universe in as realistic a fashion as possible) and what it tried to do (move beyond the characters and threats set in the movies to show that people and situations change over the course of decades). For those demeaning it, I have to ask how old were you when you last read it? From what I can tell, they are a trio that gets better as you get older.

Ender wrote:For those demeaning it, I have to ask how old were you when you last read it? From what I can tell, they are a trio that gets better as you get older.

I think I was around 18. Back then, I just found the characters completely unsympathetic and unbelievable, as well as largely unrelated to anything we saw in the Star Wars movies.

I liked the idea of introducing verisimiltude into the NR armed forces, but the rest was just idiotic. The idea of a unified galactic government being seriously threatened by a backwater like the Koornacht Cluster just showed the NR to be morons, the willfully ignorant minimalism regarding Coruscant was painful, and the pacing was, IIRC, atrocious. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was and remains the fact that none of the characters managed to evoke any sympathy.

This is Star Wars. We're supposed to root for our heroes, not yawn.

Ender wrote:Personally I think the Black Fleet Crisis is much unfairly maligned and deserves much more praise for what it did (portraying the universe in as realistic a fashion as possible) and what it tried to do (move beyond the characters and threats set in the movies to show that people and situations change over the course of decades). For those demeaning it, I have to ask how old were you when you last read it? From what I can tell, they are a trio that gets better as you get older.

The minimalism was annoying, but I actually still enjoyed the novels a lot, particularly when it didn't focus on the movie characters (it's been a while, but I don't think the Yevetha were a threat to the New Republic - rather, they were basically ethnically cleansing both their sector and some of the surrounding worlds, and the New Republic was having political issues). The worst part of the series was actually the whole Luke-Akanah plotline, although it did have at least one moment of hilarity (when Luke goes into a cafe themed after the events at Jabba's Palace).

Do I have to pick just one? Even worse, with Walden's going out of business, I picked up three new novels. What was I thinking?