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

and then the whole thing with that thrown chair that hit that alien group and then they attacked Bossk. Good lord that was great.

 

Finished Betrayal and am on Bloodlines.
Really fun book, all character personality changes and insanity of the whole plot aside.
Allston certainly loves to use the word grin doesn't he? He had Jacen grinning at least once for every chapter he was in.
The whole war between Corellia and the GA doesn't bother me. I can see it happening.
The whole fall at the end OTOH was stupid as heck. I can't believe Jacen was swayed by those arguments by that person.
Jacen in the NJO at his most annoying would not have been swayed. He would have known that the Sith were not the way. The Tassels and the Force Ghost (spirit thing) at the end were interesting.
Han and Wedge's conversations were hilarious.
Onto Bloodlines which, is one of my most favorite books ever.

 

Oh dear.

 

Jacen was stupid for following the Tassels but they were pretty interesting except for the "He will crawl through his cloak" one. Don't know what they were thinking with that one. The Future evil Jacen force spirit was fascinating. I wanted to see more about that.

 

Ah, if you're aware that plot strand doesn't go anywhere maybe it won't be as disappointing to you!

 

The Tassels at least were mentioned in Bloodlines but not after that iirc.
The Force spirit was great. I wanted more about that. So disappointed we didn't get more of that.
I was sort of hoping that Jacen would somehow injure Luke late in the series and show Jacen how badly he messed up.

 

I really had high hopes for LOTF. It started really great and just went downhill with sacrifice

 

Hate Mara's death JediMatteus? That has to be the most appalling death in the EU. You Chewie death haters think Chewie's death was bad? Mara's death was worse but since Chewie was a movie character it will take the top spot

 

Alas, Jedi Ben, the stultification of literature education has reached the Britannia. The phasing out of ritual beatings at the boarding school is truly worse than implied.

The tassels are nothing more than a standard macguffin utilized by the authors to transport Jacen away from the core group so he can start growing his evil intentions. The macguffin could have been a portrait of Jacen's grandmother, a holocron, or a golden ticket to the Star Wars version of Burger King for free food. Once the tassels served their purpose their continual inclusion in the narrative would be extraneous.

Most of the philosophizing at the conclusion of Betrayal is largely the problem of Allston attempting to reach out of his limited repertoire, and, to no surprise, failing to deliver the intended emotional response. The main problem inherent to alternating authors is when an author disliked by a reader is included. I can skip over Enemy Lines while I'm forced to relive Allston in between authors I enjoy with LOTF and FOTJ.

Speaking of writers I do not enjoy, I decided to finally finish Rebirth. I skipped over Greg Keyes in fall 2002 because I wanted to see Jimmy die in Star by Star, even buying the hardcover a month before the publication of the softcover. I recognize Edge of Victory was expanded to a duology after the cancellation of Knightfall therefore the novels were written on a tight schedule. I hope this is the rationale behind the quality since Rebirth is an embarrassment to read. So, yes, Ben Skywalker recovers from a truly awful background.

A continuation from my previous post in the thread, Keyes' structuring and characterization of Tahiri's mind rape is shocking in stupidity. Somehow, a fourteen year-old gifted child is portrayed closer to a five year-old mind set. Additionally, Tahiri response is akin to someone who lost a dodgeball game, not someone undergoing a severe trauma. Oh, I'm fine! Oh, I'll just yell in Vong at moments!

Rebirth is the enlargement of the story to include the other characters in the series, yet the length is the same. Therefore, Keyes hits each story thread slap shot, staying only for a couple pages until teleporting to the other side of the galaxy. Greg, you can have ten different narrators if the book is ten times Rebirth's current length. Writing around eighty thousand words containing many viewpoints requires a skilled writer paying attention to their craft. If Edge of Victory is meant to be the swan song for Anakin Solo then focus all of the events around the soon to be dead character. Put Anakin at the destruction of the Sernpidal worldship since Anakin was the one Solo at the planet when Chewie died.

Gag, I stop now. My desire to learn Alfred Bester's backstory has dropped since Keyes is the writer.

 

Imagine if Chewie's death had been written by Karen Traviss . . . that would have been a whole new level of bad

 

Well then we still might have the occasional novel from Salvatore and not Traviss but how does getting tricked by your opponent with the force image of your son and getting poisoned to death a better death scene than having a moon dropped on you? Its not. Its worse.

 

Exactly. It's a lot worse. That's the point.

 

So how can people complain about Chewie's death?

 

I dunno why you asking me? lol

 

Um you commented on a post of mine from earlier.

 

Ok well, if I had to guess, I would assume that people were upset by Chewie's death because they love the character and hoped the movie characters would never die. Personally I thought it was a great plot point to kill off chewie.

 

the one thing i did like about Mara's death was that it took a super powerful sith to resort to an illusion to escape with his life. At least mara kicked butt!! No my biggest problem was that the actual writing quality was so bad in the last couple novels and in sacrifice. and then the vengeance killing with Luke. I did enjoy Inferno and Fury though

 

Ah, but my school days were a long time again, youngling!

In your current mid-20s lit critic incarnation Sniper you've missed that those tassels were a damn sight more interesting than simply functioning as a macguffin to drive the plot. Indeed, I'd hazard quite a few people would have been interested in Darth Vectivus than Darth Caedus!

 

I was a young kid in high school when the NJO was in full swing and I refused to read it because it was so different to what I considered what star wars should be. Many years later I realized that I never even gave NJO and chance I and reading through it ofr the first time. I am up to Force Heretic and I am really enjoying the whole thing. I find it to a dark engaging epic that sprawls across the whole galaxy and through several years. It really is a star war. Although it is a little too long, maybe a few less books would have been a good idea.

There is so much star wars content that any can read, NJO tries and mostly succeeds in being something new. If you don't like it, like didn't all those years ago, you don't have to dramatically abandon the star wars and the EU, just go and read some of the dozens and dozens other book, comics, cartoons, games, rpgs etc.

My two bits anyway

 

Pfft, Ben, Jacen killing the red shirt because Lumiya is offering an angry whopper > bad faux poetry. The jalapenos will fuel the Sith fire in Jacen's soul. Alas, Ben, working on the school literary magazine put my mind into permanent pseduo-literary editor mode.

Speaking of allegeded attempts at profound thought, tis time to throw my hat at the dead Chewie and Mara bits.

Chewie served no purpose in virtually all of the post-Return of the Jedi EU. Dead Chewie pushed Han's characterization through the New Jedi Order, giving Han a plot thread of some relevence for once, and have we really seen a great need in the status quo dying for, "Oh, yeah, Chewie is in there ready to shoot!' In the original trilogy Chewie, and by extension the droids, actually served a part in the scripts. How often are Artoo and Threepio so vital to the plot that the apparatus of the novel collapses if they are removed?

No, no, they must be included for the Star Wars feel! If the authors truly feel an inclusion of a character, however extraneous they may be, is a prerequisite then the authors are not looking deep enough into the source material to extrapolate the thematic depth of the original films. Killing Chewie helped downsize a bloated cast, established the tone of New Jedi Order, and made the character a lot more interesting in the long run. One of the actual smart moves in the series.

Onto Mara's death, or how a sizable quotient of Literature's posters actively want dull novels.

Yes, the move on Mara probably contained commercial and narrative rationale. If anyone here thinks sales is not an important factor in the production of the EU then you need to wake up to the realities of the publishing business. Notice the word business. We are still discussing the event six years later. Jacen needed to liquidate someone for the hardcover, Mara is popular enough yet not a film character, and Ben Skywalker needed a way to fray the Jacen/Ben apprenticeship. Makes sense from a marketing perspective.

Mara dying is an important element of Ben's growth into manhood. Congratulations to Del Rey for finally portraying a padawan at least somewhat close to how a gifted child coming from a big name family might act. Ben does not have the luxury of a normal life. The character additionally needed a way to stand-out from his cousins and the other characters in newer generation.

Could the framing of the scene itself used another pass by Traviss? Yes. Mara bringing a couple other council members or masters for Jacen to off instead of the lone wolf approach would have made a lot more sense. I must inquire this of the other posters, how did you want Mara to die? No, you cannot flank the issue by stating Mara should have lived. Decaptation? Blowing up the Jade Shadow? Dispatching several minions to kill Mara from affar similar to The Godfather Part II?

Once you remove yourself from the initial emotional reaction observe how the scene reveals Jacen's character. The duel is visceral, establishing the balkanization of the Houses of Skywalker and Solo. Notice Jacen's multiple attempts at hiding what he has done previous and after Sacrifice. Mind wipes Ben several times, keeps Allana hidden in the background, tries to cover up his upgrade to Sith Lord until the end of the series (notice the alternating usage of Jacen and Caedus in his scenes in Inferno), callously using his dead brother's memory to lure Tahiri back while admitting in Invincible that flow walking is an elaborate ruse? Jacen never tries a front assault; he always approaches from behind. The method of killing Mara is indicative of Jacen's character. A blaze of glory would have moved counter to how Jacen operates.

 

I am sorry Sniper_Wolf, but Jacen's fall is too similar to his grandfather's for me to take and isn't what I wanted or expected out of the post-NJO, and Mara should never have been killed in the first place.

 

I thought Jacen's fall and means of his fall was a great idea and the motives and method very, very different from Anakin Skywalkers. They just handled it poorly and turned him from what DN and Betrayal set up as a fascinating new sort of antagonist into a generic, incompetent bad guy by the time we got to Revelation.

 

I fully expected the Solo twins to become the new leaders of the New Jedi Order, so the thought of Jacen's falling doesn't work for me at all.

 

For me that would have been too obvious. And boring.