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Star Wars

stigmaticman

stigmaticman

Active Member
I've read 4 or 5 Star Wars novels and I think they are some of the best
anybody else read 'em Star Wars novels that is?
 
My two sons, 18 and 22 yrs have watched every Star War movie heaps of times but have not read the books. Are you a fan of the movies? The first one came out when I was quite young, so they've been around for a while now:D
 
I love the movies and have watched each of the original three probably close to 50 times, the new ones not as much but i still like them a lot. The books i found to be not as good, maybe one or two that ive read i really enjoyed but all in all i didnt like them that much. When i read i enjoy more fantasy such as Salvatore or Tolkien, but i do love Sci-fi movies. The original star wars movies and books are identical, i kind of didnt enjoy reading them at all becasue nothing new was introduced by reading them.
 
I'm a huge Star Wars fan... before the prequels. Now I'm a slightly smaller Star Wars fan, but a fan nonetheless.

When my Star Wars fever was at its peak, I read a lot of SW novels, and found them to be mostly crap. The chief perpetrator of SW crap is none other than Kevin J Anderson, whom I will beat with a french loaf should I ever see him personally. His Jedi Academy trilogy was so bad I think I became stupider reading them.

However, there is one bright spark in the midst of all the nonsense, and ironically he was the fellow who started the whole shebang in the first place. Timothy Zahn's original post-movie trilogy (Thrawn Trilogy) remains the best SW novels ever written. It was so good that even his recent Hand of Thrawn duology failed to rise to the occasion (IMHO).

And the latest New Jedi Order? Let's just say I'd rather read westerns than NJO novels.

ds
 
Heh, a lot of the science-fiction novels I read were ones based on Star Wars. My favorite was Shadows of the Empire since it took place between the movies instead of taking place several years after Episode VI. My least favorite? Children of the Jedi. I remember not liking the writer's style and the story was "meh" at best. Can't remember if I read the sequel or not.

Oh, the New Jedi Order? I did buy the first few books; just haven't read them yet. The sad thing is I purchased them six years ago.
 
direstraits said:
When my Star Wars fever was at its peak, I read a lot of SW novels, and found them to be mostly crap. The chief perpetrator of SW crap is none other than Kevin J Anderson, whom I will beat with a french loaf should I ever see him personally. His Jedi Academy trilogy was so bad I think I became stupider reading them.
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I wasn't going to be so harsh about that trilogy, but can't argue with the truth. :D I read them because they tie into "I, Jedi" by Michael A. Stackpole. And that, I feel, was a very good Star Wars novel.

"Shatterpoint" by Matthew Woodring Stover was also a very good Star Wars novel.

I also read "Vector Prime" by R. A. Salvatore, the first of the New Jedi Order books. It was alright. Though it didn't make me want to read any more of the series.
 
watched and purchased all the movies.. :) a few times over at that, thank goodness for DVD :rolleyes:

have read a few of the books.. some are good, some are not.. problem with them, as with all the star trek books too, is the number of authors who bend their writing around the same theme.. some make it, others fail. regardless, i still read them from time to time... :D
 
I read Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire and never read any beyond that. To me, the fun of Star Wars is in the special effects and the music. The SW books are a rare case where what you see in your imagination is not better than what they can put on a movie screen.

A good friend of mine is a big fan of the whole SW universe and is trying to convince me to read either Shadows of the Empire or Zahn's next book after Heir to the Empire; offhand I can't remember the title.
 
scooter13 said:
"Shatterpoint" by Matthew Woodring Stover was also a very good Star Wars novel.
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Stover's an excellent author, but I haven't read this by him. I read a couple of Star Wars novels when I was younger, but I don't remember them being exceptional. Most tie-in novels tend not to be great, but there are some very good authors who write them.
 
Is the New Jedi Order series wrapped up? I remember reading it was supposed to last twenty-five books only...
 
Apparently it is wrapped up. Quite an extravagant hardcover, iirc. I won't bet my money on it being good though. As a gimmick they probably also come with complementary Wookiee hairs on the occasion of the silly thing they did with
Chewie
.

ds
 
Apparently it is wrapped up. Quite an extravagant hardcover, iirc. I won't bet my money on it being good though. As a gimmick they probably also come with complementary Wookiee hairs
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According to the Random House website the book comes with a free CD-ROM with interviews from the writers, artwork, and a guide to the Yuuzhan Vong (the villains in the series). No Wookiee hairs though.
 
In general terms, I think Starwars novels represent some of the most awfu SF books one can read, and even worse, it seems to be a tradiition. That, said there are some books I have found bearable, and some authors who have frequented the line that are really talented. The aforementioned Matthew Stover (I realy thought the Revenge of the Sith novelization was excellent and if the movie ws half as good it would have been superb - and not just the best of some downright awful prequel films). Sean Stewart is a terrific author (outside of Starwars) who wrote Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, I also think Karen Traviss is solid (Hard Contact). There is a theme here, and it's taht these 3 have wrten outstanding fiction outside of Starwars.

I thought Steve Perry's Shadows of the Empire was decent, but he had the benifit of writing in a timeline familial timeline (between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi), not to mention he was writing about the core charactersand and featuring the machinations of the Empire. I also like Zahn's Thrawn work, which seems to be universally liked, and accepted as a great addition to the mythos.
 
A whole shelf of my library is dedicated to Star Wars novels. My favorite Star Wars authors are Timothy Zahn (who I have met; a very nice man he is) and Kevin J. Anderson. Timothy Zahn told me that you have to be invited by George Lucas to write each Star Wars book you do, and you get an outline of what George wants the story can be, but you can add flesh and bone to it and improvise where you need to.
 
ValkyrieRaven88 said:
Timothy Zahn told me that you have to be invited by George Lucas to write each Star Wars book you do, and you get an outline of what George wants the story can be, but you can add flesh and bone to it and improvise where you need to.
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But that implies that George Lucas *invited* Anderson, and is somehow familiar with his work. Hmm...

ds
 
Ainulindale... I'll buy two french loaves, and we can beat him together. :)

He literally scarred my impressionable young mind when he took Yoda's credo "Size matters not" and had this Jedi remove poison by moving *molecules*.

Remembering it, I think I'll have both loaves to whack him for myself, Ainulindale - I'm afraid you have to buy your own.

ds
 
Ainulindale said:
I think Anderson is one of the the most pedestiran authors in the history of SF/F. :D
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I liked his "X-Files" novels. The SW ones... he seems to be in love with the Empire creating huge weapons of great power. That plotline was used in the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the later novel Darksaber.
 
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