Lit The New Jedi Order Series

Many characters are too Mary Sue/Gary Stu for my taste.
Tried to reread the whole series at one point, just couldn't do it.
They try to make certain characters (set A) sound so bad butt at the expense of certain other characters (set B).
Then half way they changed their minds and all these cool set A characters lose their mojo and the worthless
characters B starts to shine.... you guessed it, at the expense of set A's.
Then nothing gets resolved. situation at the beginning looks pretty much like the situation at the end.

 

The entire NJO series is a masterpiece barring maybe Dark Journey. You would do well to read the whole thing TEAM PADME.

 

I disgaree with you Jedi Ben. There is no finer writing in all of star wars than the NJO series.

 

Luke Skywalker And the Shadows Of Mindor by The Stover prove you wrong!

 

On a massive scale there is none. LOTF and FOTJ don't come close while X-Wing is great but not quite there.

 

So, by default, I'm supposed to be satisfied with what we've got and that's all there can be? I'm not. NJO could and should have been brilliantly epic but its makers got stage fright and retreated when it should have been balls-to-the-wall insane! You and Matteus think what you've got is the best thing ever, I'm telling you NJO under-performed, delivering but a fraction of what it was capable of, its vast potential lost, thrown away and untapped!

For instance, one of the speculations around 2000 / 2001 time was that the Vong War would end but the galaxy would be utterly devastated by it, with the Jedi acting as lone marshals enforcing law in a post-apocalyptic galaxy. Given what was going on at the time, it had a certain plausibility.

Or, as the war turned against the Vong, the NR and Jedi would have to contemplate some horrific acts to force a Vong surrender. For all its invocation of realism, NJO's resolution was decidedly fantastical, guess in the end NJO didn't really believe in realism, or maybe it would have been too nasty.

 

Well to us the NJO is the best thing in Star Wars. The post-NJO failed to live up to expectations. You can't blame the NJO for the writers throwing those ideas out the window. This is Star Wars, so realism doesn't really exist in it. Yes I know that I've said before that the Big 3 shouldn't be running around the galaxy saving the day after this but they have running around for decades so let them retire.

 

Yeah, like, what if the NR and the Jedi had this virus that would wipe out all the Vong and they have to decide whether or not to use it.

 

NJO introduced so called morality in War into Star Wars.
EPIC FAIL.

 

I would say that the morality of war was touched on and worked well.
The New Republic is not one for victory through super arms race, ie... You have a death star, so we will build two death stars to outnumber yours.
Yet when it comes to the question of Chemical, Biological, and Radiological weapons, it is a good question to ask. If you could purposefully kill off a specific species that was harming the entire galaxy.

We have touched on torture with the Embrace of Pain, Chemical/Bio Weapons with Alpha Blue... I think the realism is quickly approaching...

The moffs poisoning an entire planet that would only kill the Fett gene... Sounds alot like Saddam and the Kurds, if he could have picked a certain religion for the Chem/Bio weapons to select.

The morality of war is touched on. Sith do the bad things, Jedi don't. The end...

 

Alpha Red was one of the best things NJO came up with but there should have been more of that.

And FS, when the marketing is quite deliberately wishing to raise expectations, is it so unfair to expect much of what it trumpeted? I bought every NJO book, I read the lot, did I get my money's worth in all cases? I don't think so. And of course I can blame the NJO for writer's throwing ideas out the window, they should have a clearer notion of what they were doing and where they were going!

As for morality in war, it is possible, but not so much in a total war setting - in that type of environment, civilian casualties will be necessary by design because for total war there is no such thing as civilians. That's why the furore over the Sernpidal attack had no credibility for me. Neither did a war experienced galaxy permitting the Vong to control the initiative of the war for 2 years. Even the most self-interested politician isn't that suicidal!

To be fair, I can understand why NJO went for the change of course, the path it was on was going to, if followed logically, lead to one hell of a horror show, but does that not suggest that the path embarked upon was manifestly unsuited to SW? I think it's plausible.

What would I have liked in NJO? Effective political leadership, effective Jedi, skilful military ops, planetary bombardments, a sense of a war for the galaxy that didn't depend upon its villains being effective from the heroes being hamstrung! And the Vong were a big enemy to do all that and more, you only to have look at Dark Tide I to see that, an invasion on the scale of billions of enemies! Each a match for a Jedi and the Jedi only number 100! Yet there was this strange over-protectiveness of the Vong by the writers, it's never made any sense to me. Abandoning that leaden timeline that was a millstone around NJO's neck at the start would have been good, as would actually realising they had 20 books and at least 6000 pages of space to play with. Yet, all that was done was the standard 3-act plot. If there was ever a time to break away from that, a 20-book series was it.

It'd also be nice to be able to say to someone: Yes, you do need to read the entire series, each book is excellent, don't think of skipping one. I mean, I wouldn't tell someone to skip an X-Wing book, yet that's what I find myself having to do where NJO is concerned.

 

I agree I wish the military and Jedi didn't need ZS to help save the galaxy, that they would just destory the Vong perhaps the Shamed ones join the Jedi in a resistance movement and the Vong are pushed into a corner of the galaxy, so in the end the Galaxy is fracture in Vong Space, Imperial Space, Republic Space, Hutt Space, Chiss Space, and something else...

 

If Denning had written The Unifying Force, this is what would have happened.

 

Yeah, it was kinda brushed over quickly. Luke said no, Omas said maybe if I have to, and that was mostly it. Discussion over.

Neither the Jedi Order or the New Republic were engaged in total war. Maybe the NR should have been, but the Jedi don't engage in total war, that's not what the Jedi do.

I did find the politics disappointing, depressing and painful to read. But I guess it's part of that whole "dark" feeling the NJO was going for, if they wanted to make me feel like crap, they succeeded.

I've always hated the presence of that kind of politics in Star Wars.

Seemed plenty effective enough for me.

Yeah, not many great examples here. I think Luke and Wraith Squadron going into occupied Coruscant, and maybe the Mission to Myrkr, as dumb as it was, were supposed to be it.

Wedge's defense at Borleias was pretty skilled. Ackbar going back to Rebel tactics late in the series worked alright for me, and "Ackbar's back!" was a great moment.

Yogand's Core, Ithor.....

Most of the planetary destruction was wreaked by the Vong, and I think this was intentional to show the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

I thought the Vong were suitably effective villains. At times they came off as incredibly stupid, but overall they worked for me and are among my favorite villains.

Plenty of people here have told others to read them all, to not skip any. They're not all excellent, but I'd recommend reading them all. Dark Journey may be an exception, but if you're gonna read 18 books you might as well read one more.

I understand we just have a difference of opinion, it's cool. I'm not saying you're WRONG or anything.

I think the NJO is the best of the long series, even better than the X-Wing series.

 

I think NJO and X Wing are on the same level. There is a bit of realism. The farther we go away from the Skywalker and Solos, the better the plot. I don't mind Jedi, but not the most powerful Jedi currently in the galaxy who happens to be sixty can fix it all...

 

Jedi Ben, yes the galaxy was not thrown into an apoclypse. I think the series was really dark as it was. What you call potential, i call a disster. Could the NJo series have been better?yes. But it is still the best multi book series in Star wars history, and i dare say that some of the individual novels are among the best ever.

 

I suppose CT if I list the NJO books I retain as being:

DT 1 and 2
BP
SBS
EL 1 and 2
DW
TUF

That probably tells you what I'd have liked NJO to go more in the direction of!

I really liked what TUF did with Alpha Red, the blowback potential was the best critique of it and then a year later guess what happens?

As to difference between the sides, if people saw no difference after DT then I'm not sure what else could be done. If you treat it as fantasy, then it's all good I suppose.

I am curious about one point: When did you read the series?

Matteus, did you read Tyrant's Test? The brief but brutal resolution of the Yevetha threat was where I saw NJO as also potentially going, that the Vong were far more numerous and powerful but of the same kamikaze mindset - no reasoning, no negotiation, just fighting and death.

 

One thing that I've been thinking about ever since reading the first half of the New Jedi Order series is how ironic or whatever where the main Bothan Borsk or whatever his name was he brought up something such how the tables have turned where the Vong have been going after not only droids but humans too since the Empire were being prejudice or whatever towards alien species like Bothans, Wookies, Sullustans and whatever else. He was pretty much in Leia's face about it the whole time during the first half of New Jedi Order and I dont blame Borsk. Then the Council was being filled with senators of species all over again just like during the prequels such as sullustans, ithorians, quarren and whatever else that were running the show after Vector Prime.

 

Borsk should have known better, but then he was cloaking his rampant xenophobia for the entirety of the Batmam run over the banner of "cultural values".

Changing tack, being fair to NJO, it had the spectacular misfortune to come out in the wake of both Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine, both of which pushed the envelope for SF TV. Then it had Farscape for competition, which did much the same. And there were other major creator SF series in flow around it too. Had it come out in a quieter, less radical and innovative period, it might have done better for me.

 

i thought that the black fleet crisis series was deplorable writing

 

The Black Fleet Crisis trilogy was pretty hard for me to read as well

 

Can't comment on black fleet because I did not read the books
But hot stang the super star destroyers on the cover/blurb looked/sounded nice!

 

I would reccomend reading the NJO series.

 

So on Friday my school is having a read in day and I was considering getting Star By Star from my library but it's soooooooooo long and I've only reading the first NJO book so I'm not sure if I should really get it.

 

njo rules