Lit Your First EU Experience

My first EU book was betrayal from the legacy of the force series. Possible one of the worst places to start, but it made me fall in love with star wars and the EU.

 

my first star wars book was the second star wars book ever written in the eu. I never read "Splinters" I read the Thrawn trilogy the moment it came out.

 

Vision of the Future, at age 7. I had no clue what was happening or who half the characters were. I still need to re-read it.

 

Probably The Essential Guide to Characters. Or The Paradise Snare. Or Shadows of the Empire. Or Wraith Squadron. Or Before the Storm.

I know a lot of the stuff I got early on, but hell if I know a specific order.

 

I read most of the Bantam-era novels when I was much younger. When I hit high school, I took a break from SW and read some other stuff. I actually thought for a while that SW novels had ceased to be made, don't know why. Then for Xmas one year, I received Betrayal and Force Heretic 2, LotF and NJO respectively, and was thrown a curveball when I found out what was going on....

 

Uhm, 5 years ago I lost my sight and was forever exiled from my happy world of Star Wars Galaxies. I meandered into a store with my wife and she plucked 2 audio books off a clearance rack. These were Legacy Of The Force 6 & 7. I thought the production quality was great and this guy, mark Thompson was amazing but at first I put off because of Jayna. I thought she acted too juvenile and sassy and later it became clear she was really cast as a SW version of the new Starbuck from the 2003 version of Battle Star Galactica. I wanted to hear more about the story though and it was actually incredibly frustrating to piece together what books preceeded or followed those books. You know, they're not numbered and that's a deliberate sales gimic. I started surfing audible.com and iTunes for others and there they were. I still had no clue where they feel in the timeline and this really a royal pain the ass. I eventually completed the series and started collecting other ones but it took some work. The audio versions are really good, at least the ones with mark Thompson doing the voice acting, but it would really, really help shoppers if they bothered to index them or classify them by era or something. I passed up buys several times simply because I didn't know where to fit it in. Most people here seem to use the New Jedi Order series as the standard, but actually, I never read it. I guess the fims are the best starting point. Get the film novelizations and move forward. Use the guide here to help pick them. If you run into enough questions then read everything before the prequels. You probably know everything in SW is dated before or after the Battle Of yavin (BBY) it makes sense to use that as your reference.

 

Mine was the The Thrawn Trilogy back in the early 1990's. I was kinda of hoping they would be made into movies since they were just that good. I even listened to the audio books as well. I would totally reccomend these books to any noobs to the EU.

 

I agree! The Thrawn Trilogy is perfect starting off point for new readers.
I never got why people who had not read it could even follow what was going on in the EU.

 

There are other logical jumping on points, X Wing (you don't need to know what is going on), Vector Prime (you kind of have to accept certain things, Mara being Luke's wife, Solos married with 3 kids, Chewie dying) It is a lot to accept so quickly if you are expecting something set directly after RotJ, once you realize there is a time gap you are ok and most enjoy it. Needless to say, In EP 7, seeing elder versions of Luke, Han, and Leia will quickly explain, alot of time has passed

 

My first EU book was "Heir to the Empire," followed closely by other two in the trilogy.

 

A children's version of the ANH novel, back when I was struggling to learn English. I remember disliking it immensely, because I sucked at foreign languages

 

I think it was Heir to the Empire.

 

Dark Force Rising & The Last Command, at about 12 or so. Didn't get to read Heir to the Empire until later.

 

The newspaper strips by williamson that became Classic Star Wars and also the marvel comics, around the same time (about 1981?) I was 8 I think.

 

Mine was the NJO: Destinies Way. I'm one who has no issue with jumping right into the middle of a story, and I was lucky enough to get the book that turned the tide in favor of the hero's.

 

The Mandalorian Armour

Technically at least. I count Knights of the Old Republic as the first time I 'fell in love' with the EU. Before I played that I wanted to read/watch/play about characters and events I already knew from the films (i.e. I know that I got TMA because it had both Boba and Vader on the cover). After that game I wanted to read stories inspired by the films.

 

Heir to the Empire. I'd always enjoyed Star Wars, and happend upon the Zahn trilogy by chance. The Last Command had just come out on paperback, so it had to be like 1994, and all three books in the series where on display at the bookstore. I snatched up all three, read that first chapter of HTE with Pellaeon and Thrawn, and my casual enjoyment of Star Wars became an obsession. I rabidly consumed all Bantam books as they were released, but TTT is still my favorite. I had lost interest by the time NJO was starting up, though now that it's over and is a fan-favorite here, I think I'll give it another shot soon.

side note: I'm halfway through Darth Plagueis and it is SICK. Might be taking HTE's place as my favorite SW novel (not that it's a competition)!

 

Yes! I had a similarly ghetto 1st experience with X-wing: I did my first playthrough with a mouse and keyboard! It was ridiculous, but when I finally got a flightstick, I was amazing at the game from playing at a disadvantage for so long!

 

Vector Prime. But I remember reading about 50 pages of it and not understanding what was going on. So I went back to Truce at Bakura to catch up!

 

Dark Empire

 

A local bookstore was closing down when I was around 10. They had the entire X-Wing series on clearout. I bought them and won golden passes to go behind the scenes of the local Trek Expo, allowing me to meet Wil Wheaton. Thus I got to meet one of the most awesome scifi/nerd culture icons ever, but I also got nine of the best books in the EU that got me started on the path to total Star Wars and scifi nerdom.

In conclusion, best nine dollars ever spent.

 

So who did you get to meet?

 

X-Wing has quite a few references to the Thrawn trilogy in terms of foreshadowing. You don't need to have read it to enjoy the series, but it arguably makes it better.

 

Well, since you ask, there was this time on Nar Shaddaa when a one-armed female Twi'lek stripper and a male Trandoshan podiatrist in a wheelchair approached me about delivering a floral arrangement to a Ranat bouncer on Sluis Van whose child was goddaughter to Zorba the Hutt...

(It was TIE Fighter for DOS.)