Lit The Yuuzhan Vong

Hey, thanks for informing me of that, i suspect it will take me a little while to work out exactly where people stand on different issues, and to understand the meta on some of the issues any way. Though for the record, while i enjoyed the LOTF, i do agreed that it misinterpreted Traitor, from the point of view that i don't believe that is what Vergere was trying to achieve in Jacen, i believe he failed to live up to what she wanted him to be, and instead he took the path that many others had taken before him, giving into his own self security and interests, i was just commenting that the inside look we received into that process, and role the YV war played in it, were very interesting.

 

i loved the NJO, and am sad that it and the rest of the eu is going away. The Vong were awesome, and i would love to get a Sekot story epilogue

 

Love the concept, love the dark tone, love that they seem unstoppable but aren't shallow drone. Wish the aftermath of the invasion was respected better in subsequent stories.

If I must find a dislike it'd be their look. Could be more alien.

 

I agree

 

I think they were made so close to Humans so the infiltration angle could work. An ooglith masquer, no matter how good, couldn't make an ambulatory jellyfish Nom Anor pass for a human.

 

Hmm... well they are "body sacks" but yeah humanoid was pretty much a given, though they properly made them rather human-like just to increase the horror factor of what they do to themselves.

 

Horror, that's another thing I believe is great about them. A polar opposite of the clean-cut, ruthless-but-not-bloodthirsty Imperials we were used to. Political vs. Religious drive.It's like a Romans/Aztecs parallel.

 

Yeah, there were darksiders, but there was a definite distinction between that paradigm and the one we see today. Back in the Bantam era, darksiders threatened not the Jedi, but the New Republic -- or else they were sideline villains to give Luke someone to swing a saber at while something else threatened the New Republic. Your Kuellers, Ismarens, Jerecs, and Hethrirs were out to conquer the New Republic, not to defeat the Jedi, who were not an organized presence in the books for the most part. Luke happened to be a Jedi, but he fought these darksiders -- and plenty of non-darksider threats -- not on behalf of the Jedi Order, but on behalf of the New Republic. He was joined in those fights by Minister of State/Chief of State Leia, Han, Lando, General Antilles, Admiral Ackbar -- New Republic characters, not Jedi characters. Luke didn't mount up with Kyle Katarn and Corran and Kenth Hamner and Cilghal and Kyp to fight Kueller -- he was aided by Han, Leia, Mara, Talon Karrde, and Wedge. C'baoth played second fiddle to Thrawn -- you'd never see that arrangement today. The Confederation was lucky if it even got mentioned, and Daala was just a placeholder until the Lost Tribe and Abeloth took over the story. Every story since the NJO has revolved around Sith villains, whereas there were plenty of books without Force threats in the Bantam era -- TAB, X-wing, GODV, Darksaber, BFC, Corellian Trilogy, HOT.

There were darksiders, but that doesn't change the fact that a completely different paradigm was operating, one in which conflicts were generally defined in terms of "X vs. the New Republic," darksiders were one option among many, and the "protagonist group" was seen as the New Republic, which includes some Jedi. Now, conflicts are defined in terms of "X vs. the Jedi," darksiders are absolutely mandatory and are always Sith (Denning even went back to retcon his DN antagonists as Sith), and the protagonist group is the Jedi Order plus Han (and Jag if you make me grumble grumble grumble I LIKE ZEKK BETTER), who are usually fighting the New New Republic, and you can't be in the story if you're not at the Jedi Temple.

 

my bold

 

Welk and Lomi Plo apparently worked for Darth Krayt, though it makes no sense.

 

SO what do people think about they way the Vong is used in the Legacy-era?

 

Cade's era? My thoughts when I first read it was that it's about time someone brings them up again and the scars they left on the galaxy. Thought it was innovative the way Kol Skywalker attempted to have them do some good with their bio-tech to help all the worlds they'd damaged, really the perfect solution. That being said, I also like how the One Sith manipulated things to screw that up and use the anger that was already present to further weaken the galaxy.

 

More would have been nice, though I am pretty sure there would have been a Jariah plot with them if the series was not cut short.

 

Do anybody know it is her real hair in the pic or part of her skin-symbiot

 

Is there a way to brush up on the Yuuzhan Vong without reading 19 novels of questionable quality? Or even Wookiepedia?

 

Questionable quality?

Have you already read them? I recommend reading the series at least once, Cynical_Ben just did and liked some of the books considered "bad."

The Yuuzhan Vong themselves work best within the context of the series, as they were a mystery which solving went hand in hand with the plot. Clinically analyzing them is like explaining a joke.

 

Yeah, read books 1-14, then read the Wookieepedia summary of the Force Heretic trilogy, then read books 18 and 19 and call it a day.

 

Force Heretic is benign in its mediocrity.

 

Yes, many years ago. The issue is, I have a life now.

Though if I read them again, I'll probably just stick to the Big 5, plus the standalone novels. Or just get the audio books...

 

Coming out of my writing haze to answer the Ben-signal. Yes, I have read the entire series now, and yes, I agree with DM, hoping to understand or have the series explained to you without actually reading it for yourself would only result in a gross misrepresentation of what loving and carefully crafted art was spread across those 19 books you dismiss. I'm not about to crown the NJO as the pinnacle achievement of the EU, it isn't perfect by any stretch, and inadvertently or not it did lead to the creation of the following books on the timeline. But I'd say it's the best work done by multiple authors in the Del Ray era. Anything better was done by a single author acting alone, and 90% of the time it's probably Matt Stover.

To "brush up on" the Yuuzhan Vong as a culture you do have to read the series. It's that simple. I got the lowdown on them from the Wook after seeing them pop up as a faction in the Star Wars miniature game years before I read the series. All I got was the concept, a few names of principle leaders, and some idea of what they'd done, the footprint they left behind on the galaxy. And that left me with a bad taste in my mouth and put me off reading the series until just this past August. I didn't want to read the NJO not because I thought the books were bad, but because I didn't appreciate the ideas behind the creation of the Yuuzhan Vong, their technology, or their way of life.

Then I started reading the series. And they fascinated me. The best parts of Vector Prime were the glimpses we get into the head of Yomin Carr, an infiltrator charged with befriending the team at a research station, then sabotaging their equipment and killing them all to prepare for the invasion. What makes him fascinating isn't just his weird technology or his biology, it's his very way of thinking about the universe, it's his outlook on pain, on death, on being considered worthy in the eyes of his gods. And from him, we get a taste, a tease of what's to come, of a culture so deep, so unlike anything we've ever seen in the EU before, it makes all of the other cultures that came before them look like shallow parodies.

The Yuuzhan Vong are not a simple, easy culture, race or ideology to understand. You can't read a summary and "get" what they're about. At a minimum, you'd have to read Vector Prime, Conquest, Traitor and The Unifying Force to get even a tenuous grasp of what they're about, along with The Final Prophecy, Ruin, Rebel Stand and Destiny's Way to set those books up and provide more depth and variations on what might be seen as stereotypes or comic one-dimensional characters on a place like the Wook.

If you want to brush up quickly, you can read the review thread I've put together, the link is in my signature. It's long, I know, but it's shorter than reading the series, and I try to summarize as much as I review, so you should get an idea as to what each story is about as well. Otherwise, I'd recommend the books I listed, the first three most strongly and the others a supplements.

EDIT: I really hope this doesn't come off as confrontational, I mean no offense. But I'm in the midst of writing my review for The Unifying Force, and I've gotten a bit overwhelmed with this series as a whole and what it represents.

 

I am.

 

Not at all, I just question several writing choices that ten years have not made easier to digest, and remain unconvinced there was ever a need. Anyway, I was more interested in Vong culture than the war itself, so I imagine I'll be spending a lot of time flipping pages to relevant scenes.

 

Me too!
I'll take it one step further, I crown the NJO the pinnacle achievement of the entire Star Wars Saga.

 

I view the NJO as more or less equal to the film saga, and a companion piece to it.

Up until relatively recently, my thought was that Star Wars was two stories which partly overlap, one which started with Darth Plagueis and continued until Empire's End, and one which started with Rogue Planet and continued until The Unifying Force.