Lit The New Jedi Order: Still polarizing? Or has it fared better over time?

I haven't read any yet, but I have heard that they are epic. Traitor, Vector Prime, Star by Star and TUF get mentioned a lot.

Does its 19 or 20 so books make it so that people don't want to re-read them? (Due to the time commitment)

I have seen this boards complaints about DNT, LOTF and FOTJ but while I see strong praise for NJO It can also go the other way.

Is the series polarizing today or has it grown better over time?

 

I've reread NJO at least 5 times completely through.
Still not sick of it.

Take from that what you will.

 

It's a slog trying to get through all of them. Took me two months 2 summers ago. The NJO is an epic story with engaging characters and memorable deaths and plotlines. There was hope things would work out. DNT/LOTF/FOTJ not so much.

 

Being followed by DNT/LOTF/FOTJ sure doesn't hurt.

 

I think the series has appeared to grow less polarizing over time here because A) most of its biggest critics at the time left the boards in the years since, and B) DNT/LOTF/FOTJ are so abysmal that NJO can only look even better in contrast.

 

The only books I've read more than once are Traitor and Vector Prime. The first is still great, the second I don't think ever was. I have fond memories of the series, though, and hopefully I'll have time to reread it some day. I remember having mixed feelings about it when it was coming out but being mostly satisfied with the conclusion.

Ruin, Conquest, Rebel Stand, Traitor, The Final Prophecy, and The Unifying Force were all great. Onslaught, Rebirth, Rebel Dream, and Remnant were okay but they weren't my favorites. I know SbS is pretty popular but aside from Anakin's and Borsk's deaths I was not impressed; I disliked Troy Denning's writing style before it was cool to dislike Troy Denning's writing style. AoC, Balance Point, and Dark Journey were forgettable in that I can remember almost nothing that happened in any of them. I did not care for VP, I hated DW, and most of the Force Heretic books bored me to tears.

The individual books are really hit or miss, but I think the series as a whole is remembered so favorably because the books that were good were really good, most of the books that were bad really weren't all that bad, the idea behind the series was one of the last very good ones Star Wars has had, and the ending was so strong it made it easy to forget the rough patches along the way.

 

Well, we always complain about the most recent, don't we? Sadly, it's true that a lot of people who used to be here, stopped after NJO. It was a new line alltogether and a very daring one at that. Some of it worked out very well, some didn't.

 

Well if it ended very well, that at least has to be commended. Especially if it leaves a positive impression over the whole series. I have never read a final installment of a series that changed the way I felt about a series for the better. Either I liked it or hated it, but I've never thought "This is just such a great ending!"

So look forward to reading TUF.

 

I tried to get through the NJO, I really did! I may have gotten 7 or 8 books deep before I stopped. The 19 book thing really turned me off, because I figured if I wasn't liking the first third of the story line, how was it going to get better?? I may pick it back up one day when I get REALLY bored, but to me, it was not that good. Polarizing...maybe...only because I could see where some SW fans (especially Chewie fans!) love and some hate it, but I just couldn't get through it, and it suck because I'm the type that likes to read the whole story before I go on to something else, especially in SW so I do not miss anything. So what I'm left with is going back and reading stuff I may have missed earlier in the SW timeline. And the DNT trilogy is just sitting on my shelf collecting dust because (in my mind), I know that I haven't finished the NJO, so why start it?? My OCD knows that the chronology will be messed up and refuses start the DNT!! Although based on some other posts up there, I may not even want to read it!

 

The NJO series is still very polorizing. I call it the best books ever written in Star Wars history by far. Most on here do not care for it.

 

This is probably a blessing in disguise.

 

Is it really that bad??

 

Read it make your opinions but it is not as good as the NJO imo. Too much dark stuff happens with little or no hope. The Big 3 are still chugging along. Give them a rest. I love the books but the landscape is changed way too much from the NJO.

 

I thought the same of the NJO. Not necessarily too dark, but it just seemed that way too many bad things happened to the main characters as well as pretty much any major planet for anyone or anything to come back from it. I still think the Vong invasion could have been summed up in a nice neat trilogy and then SW could have moved on to something bigger and better. So many things were either killed or changed by the happenings in the NJO books that it pretty much seems to have dominated everything that comes after it. Just my opinion, but damn, the Vong are even making their presence felt in the Legacy comics!

 

That was kind of the point to it, to break the Dark Sider / Warlord of the week stalemate that the EU had dropped into and leave a lasting impact on the Galaxy by brining something new to it. Legacy comics are just all the better for using the possibilities the Vong introduced, unlike LOTF/FOTJ which pretty much go out of their way to not mention them and fall back into Dark Sider of the week (hell they even bring Daala back only to turn her back into a Warlord)

 

It's not dark so much as it's boring and I don't care. The NJO was dark but the story was compelling because of its scope, cast, and stakes. Dark Nest is about bugs. The antagonists have no personality, all the main characters act like idiots, and Denning spends way too much time describing how tight Alema's clothes are. It's so dull I want to tear my hair out just thinking about it. Even the fight scenes are dull because of how bland the writing and characters are. It's not offensively bad like LOTF but it's just a painfully forgettable bridge series with artificial stakes and no interesting characters.

 

I wonder why the writing declined from NJO to DNT onwards. When I hear the best about NJO, it sounds so glorious.

Was DNT designed to lead into a new series (LOTF) or was it designed to move away from the Vong?

 

Given what TUF did, to my surprise I wanted to see what happened next with the Vong but the only story that actually did that was Legacy (comics)!

The other big mystery to me is why Invasion and X-Wing: Mercy Kill are the only returns to the era. More material can only really boost the original series.

For me, yeah, what followed could only raise up NJO but the story itself? Patchy. When it was on form, which is probably for me a third to half of its run, it is quite stunning - the problem is there's some real clunky other stuff to wade through at the same time.

Best NJO book? For me, TUF.

Book that is most representative of NJO as a whole, the good, the bad and the ugly? SBS.

 

Imho less planing and oversight. The NJO always seem to more quality checking and have a planned outline that went somewhere. LOTF/FOTJ just seems to be full of half planned and executed ideas. As on Dark Nest, I can see why people might not like it, I personally found it very entertaining, though yes the thing lacks real stakes and is dragged down by kind of leading into LOTF (though since LOTF is a disjointed mess little is really brought up that Dark Nest introduces)

I general I always felt that the NJO was stronger because it impacted people, normal people, not just the main characters. Sure LOTF also has a war going on in the background but it is so underused and irrelevant to what is basically a cheap family drama that one never feels that the basic person would even care who won.

 

LOTF and FOTJ were not finished in a good manner. Left too things hanging. No satisfactory ending imo

 

The NJO is generally popular on this board, but this board does not reflect fandom as a whole. Unfortunately it is difficult to gauge the sustained reaction to the NJO because so many fans outright abandoned the EU because of it. Additionally because the majority of the material that follows it in the timeline has been poorly received in general it's hard to make comparisons. Novels from the Bantam Era have nothing even close to the NJO's structure or ambition or coherency of design, so it's hard to evaluate them in the same fashion.

However, the NJO remains, now ten years after its conclusion, the least referenced and least returned to period of Star Wars history. The example I find the most telling: WotC did not produce a NJO era supplement for the SAGA edition RPG, and in fact produced only a few scattered pages of material involving the Yuuzhan Vong at all. This despite writing an entire era supplement for the then-unfinished Legacy comics series, which had a much smaller exposure footprint.

What that sort of neglect by the powers that be ultimately means is debatable, and it may have to do more with media than any sense of quality - the NJO is the one novel series that introduces more visual concepts than any other by far, and that has often been a hindrance. Without movies or games the look and function of YV tech and combat has always been somewhat vague, and to be honest less impacting - the spiky-blob look of the Yuuzhan Vong's ships just isn't up to snuff with much of Star Wars. Since toys are the overall biggest sales factor in Star Wars that's a big issue.

All that being said, to those who haven't yet read the NJO novels I would recommend holding off. Now is not a good time to focus on the post-ROTJ in general, and anything beyond 25 ABY in particular, since that is the point in the timeline where the probability of the axe falling spikes.

 

So you quit the NJO right before it kicks into high gear. The first 7-8 books are a bit slow and formulaic, though still (in my opinion, anyway) enjoyable. Star by Star changes the tact of the series completely.

 

I've always felt that I was "missing" something by not experiencing the post ROTJ era. At the end of the day, all roads lead there. Its where the EU took off. A few PT era and Old Republic and Before the republic material seems to have foundation in events that happen after the movies.

If the EU may fall into AU, so be it. I still will read it eventually. Hopefully I can get to it before the VII news changes things. I want to buy the 20th anniversary of Heir to the empire but I am looking for the right price

 

DNT are some of the best SW books written.
It actually reads like an adult book, the action scenes are fantastic, it's interesting . . .
I don't really get why people don't like it tbh