Lit SOS: Save Our Skywalker, Luke Skywalker (v3)

The problem is DR really has become more defined by their big arcs - NJO, LOTF, FOTJ - than anything else! And that's a shame because it's the "anything else" that's where a lot of their best work can be found:

Survivor's Quest / Outbound Flight
Luke Skywalker & The Shadows of Mindor
The Reaves and Luceno verses
Knight Errant / Lost Tribe of the Sith
Crosscurrent / Riptide
X-Wing Mercy Kill
Heir To The Empire 20th Anniversary Edition
Allegiance / Choices of One
Shatterpoint
Yoda Dark Rendezvous
Dawn of the Jedi: Into The Void
Scoundrels (yet to read)

This comes to about 20-25 books! All of it pretty much eclipsed by the big controversial arc series.

 

Don't forget Kenobi, which might actually make me give Del Rey money for a book by someone other than Zahn since 2001.

 

!? How could I forget?

Getting my copy Thursday night!

 

I think people were more unhappy with the speech that led to it all was riddled with inaccuracies than anything else. Then consider it was followed up with early NJO where now Luke had an outright problem using the Force offensively, as in he literally couldn't do it anymore without being drained.

 

Yeah well, Zahn got the final word in on Bantam EU and the NJO picked it up.

 

Not disputing that. It is what it is. Doesn't mean people are going to like it though.

I personally tend to just console myself with reading the YJK series.

 

It just seems like when you break everything down in this thread, or on this board, ultimately no one is happy with anything. There's no gold standard to point to, there's always a flaw. The Expanded Universe just can't meet the Platonic ideal that is being held as the standard.

 

That's about right, and it makes quite a bit of sense when you consider the overall quality of tie-in fiction. To be blunt, the Expanded Universe in general isn't very well-written, so of course there's always going to be something big to criticize. It's not just that for every Thrawn Trilogy there's a Crystal Star, it's that even good books like TTT have lots and lots of problems for the attentive reader.

 

I'll agree to a point. What it seems like to me is that a lot of people (Not going to say everyone) are only happy with certain things, and then can never except anything outside of those things. Whether it be novels, an era, characters, etc. Though I don't know, sometimes I think some people are too critical of certain elements in the mythos.

 

I think certain folks on this forum in general have very specific ideas about what Star Wars either is, or what they think that it should be, and to put it bluntly, it simply isn't, and they get very cranky when confronted with that fact.

 

Darksaber was a bit 'Meh' and Crystal Star really needed the retcon into Kyle's and Jaden's videogames to be understandable - but otherwise I liked the lot!

I think there's a temptation to overanalyse EU books as if they were the Classics - the EU is escapism IMHO!

 

lol, welcome to my world In seriousness I would say very few will find fault with TTT, Mindor, SQ, SotE, and TUF on this thread. Even DE and HoT I hold as being in the top tier despite having a few problems.

Legacy comics is also a high point too, although Cade is pretty unlikable.

what is Star Wars to you ? For me it's an uplifting story about a young boy becoming a hero and goes through a journey that changes the fate of the galaxy by his hand.




aleja2, have you not read Mindor yet ? Read that when you get Kenobi

 

I haven´t read SQ (Luke and Mara have trouble taking down a single droideka? Really?), don´t care for TTT or SotE, like Mindor and TUF. 2 out of 5.

 

Yeah, I don't really expect all that much from a SW EU book for precisely that reason, if I want something more I know where to find i.e. it won't be SW!

 

Solent,I did say very "few" will find fault in the books, emphasis on the few

as for the droideka, considering it's Luke and Mara's first time fighting this opponent and Luke is voluntary restraining his Force use, it doesn't come off as bad. Although if you didn't like TTT.....

 

out of curiosity for the newer members here, what are your favorite books with Luke in it ?

For example, I own SotE, Mindor, TTT, DE, HoT, and SQ. I also enjoyed TUF and Invasion, despite the story direction

 

I found Thrawn´s superpsychology too stupid (and unlikely to work for most cultures), Mara does too much (Zahn´s Wesley Crusher), and Luke just doesn´t feel like in RotJ, he´s more like in ESB, doubtful and unsure. And while he´s quite resourceful as a person, not so much as a Jedi.

And Zahn really looks to have some trouble having Force users getting creative with their powers. Obi-Wan going Prince of Persia in OF (this one I liked) is the only significant example I can think of.

 

oddly enough I didn't have that problem with SQ, there is a bit where Luke and Mara reanimate the fallen corpses of their enemy(via telekinesis) and use them as puppets to set off a trap

 

Ouch.

Defiling corpses?

 

considering the recently dead were just trying to kill them a moment ago and they could not effectively block blaster bolts and look out for traps at the same time, I say telekinetically moving a body in order to fool your enemy was a cool and clever strategy. Plus it's not like the bad guys need it anymore....since they were dead.

 

I don't think he's voluntarily restraining his Force use in SQ. It's about using the Force appropriately for the situation. BUT I AM NOT HAVING THAT CONVERSATION AGAIN.

I agree, it is made very clear in the scene that this is the first time Luke and Mara faced a working droideka (and it's a great call back to the opening scene, where they face a manually operated one and easily get rid of it), and it doesn't stymie them for long. They work very well together to figure out the droideka's weaknesses and how to take it down. Also, this particular droideka had been reconfigured to fire blasters while in rolling position.

Zahn, Stackpole and Allston said at Dragon*Con that if the reader like how one of them writes Star Wars, then the reader will mostly like the other authors' books.

If the reader doesn't, then go elsewhere. After all, someone has to be buying Denning's books.

 

I'll hold you to that

 

With Del Rey's publishing strategy of the past decade, you had to buy Denning's books if you were buying Allston's, up until Mercy Kill.

 

Again, like 2 out of 3. I found Zahn improved a bit with time, but still doesn´t click for me.

And yes, I´d like to know who´s buying Denning´s books. I got down after LotF, yet it looks they still sale well enough or they wouldn´t keep him in charge. Would like to see a sales progression chart though.

 

actually JB did an article on how sales have been declining a bit....