Lit After the NJO ended, where did you expect the EU to go?

That scene, like most scenes involving Jacen's fall during LotF makes sense only in the context of Jacen's actions in DNT, where he repeatedly has shown that he believes he is smarter not only than everyone around him, but everyone else in the galaxy put together, and that his insight is supreme and therefore he can make these kinds of decisions. His desire to play god and control the fate of the galaxy is pretty obvious and quite consistent from the moment he walks out on Akanah at the beginning of Joiner King, what it is not consistent with is his entire character up to that point. In terms of flaws in dealing with Jacen post-NJO the real problem is that he was set up at the end of TUF to undergo a massive change in character - because that's what hugely eye-opening spiritual experiences do to people - and yet when he showed up there was real no reveal at all as to how he'd gotten to be the arrogant all-knowing super-sage he believed himself to be is wasn't until late in FotJ that they even tried to write in some flashbacks to figure out how it had all happened.

This sort of thing, of which Jacen's fall is only a particular prominent example of this kind of mishandling, does seem to have it's roots in the D&D franchise writing style that Del Rey used more or less exclusively in the post-NJO. Forgotten Realms novels, for example, are written to provide a narrative that connects pre-existing meta-plot elements, the characters don't drive the story because the story has already been determined. In that situation (which can produce perfectly good novels by the way, I'm not trying to dump on FR or Dragonlance) there is a tendency to write around certain events and make assumptions about the back-drop. The problem with the post-NJO is that the reader has no way of figuring out what that backdrop is supposed to be, since it doesn't exist in RPG sourcebooks anywhere, but only in Del Rey planning sessions.

One of our members Sinrebirth actually undertook to do a fan-fiction rewrite of Invincible just on the principle of including all of the important stuff that is so obviously shuffled off-screen in the novel. If the series had been structured properly that sort of thing ought to be inconceivable.

 

I'm so happy that Star Wars novels are being treated the same as D&D novels.

 

Now I find myself wishing Jacen had rolled a natural 20 on his wisdom check.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the prequels influenced the NJO. I said, "Let's follow up the NJO..."

I agree the prequels influenced the later books. LOTF in particular was a tepid, pale, ill-conceived and unimaginative attempt to rip-off Anakin's fall.

However, I also strongly believe the egregious mess that followed the NJO is more than partially due to one author having his hands all over DN, LoTF, FotJ and Crucible.

What DID influence the NJO were fans supposedly whining about the "bubble." To the extent that Salvatore - heavy handed to the last - even included a line about the "bubble bursting" at the end of Vector Prime.

Only, it wasn't the "bubble." Shapiro keeps bringing that up in all the interviews I read as the fans' #1 criticism of the Bantam books.

Only that's a biased and IMO, very wrong, reading of what was happening in EU fandom at the time.

The actual criticism was that the Bantam books weren't tightly coordinated, and so they appeared out of chronological order, and therefore a book set later in the timeline had no references to earlier events that should have logically been there. And characterization veered wildly all over the place (my favorite was Mara Jade: trusted friend or mistrusted foe? You never knew which one would show up). And you knew characters weren't in jeopardy, because they appeared in books previously published but set later in the timeline. And certain plots, such as superweapons and kidnapped Solo kids, were WAAAAY overused.

So the NJO was a big step forward in that the books were coordinated (somewhat) and appeared in chronological order. If that had happened in the Bantam era, the complaints would have been been far fewer in number. It wasn't so much the "bubble," (and again, the "bubble" was because books were published out of chronological order) as it was the lack of any perceived forward movement.

But "Specter of the Past," "Vision of the Future," "I, Jedi," and the X-Wing books did away with those complaints. Shapiro took her cues from the wrong end of the stick, and it shows. Badly.

IMO, the Yuuzhan Vong, questionable political correctness of the name and questionable depiction of religious zealotry aside, do not belong in Star Wars. They are a Star Trek villain out of Galaxy Quest, with a hint of Starcraft (and then Denning really stole Starcraft for Dark Nest.) The invasion was ridiculous, relying on first Mara ("So once upon a time I met this guy named Nom Anor, who I couldn't sense in the Force, but I didn't say anything about it even though every other author got the memo about how competent I am, so sure, Leia, let's you and my sixteen-year-old apprentice go visit him even though we will accomplish nothing except lots and lots of narrative exposition while letting a lizard smell my breath") and then Danni Quee (Yomin Carr: "Danni Quee is SO SMART and SO BRAVE. She will be a WORTHY SACRIFICE." Danni: "Um, gee, Yomin, can I swallow another one of your lies? I haven't exhausted my gullibility!") carry the Idiot Ball.

Not to mention the world building is ludicrous. So the YV destroy their own galaxy, yet somehow maintain enough resources to travel for eons to another galaxy and then STILL have the resources to inflict the amount of damage that they do?! RLLY?!?!

As for metaphysics: the Vong are completely all over the place. They are Force invisible (Oh, I'm sorry, "torn" from the Force because of separation from their home planet, even though the Force is "an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.") Fine, whatever, but it really reads more as a cop out to get around the SW Universe metaphysics instead of using them.

Then there's lovingly described torture as religion or just plain torture for torture's sake - yeah, that says Star Wars and space opera and action adventure.

Not to mention that the Death Star was supposed to be the number one horrible threat to the universe - but the Vong do the destruction of, if not a thousand Death Stars, then at least a hundred. So much for the Emperor being the #1 Big Bad - in fact, the galaxy probably would have been better off if the Empire had been at full strength when the Vong attacked. So Luke, Leia and Han pretty much screwed the GFFA by taking the Empire down. Nice going, kids.

And how does a SF concept such as a living planet that propels itself around space, in particular, belong in the OT universe?! Or even the PT universe?! I don't blame Greg Bear for writing Rogue Planet - he writes hard SF. But Star Wars is not hard SF. I do blame his editors for approving a story concept that doesn't fit the universe.

I'll give you Vergere, and I found her conversations with Luke and Jacen to be intriguing and interesting. But, well, we all know how that was retconned.

And no, ending with a pyrrhic victory that includes the destruction of nearly everything Han, Leia and Luke worked for does not fit the plot of the films. IMO.

I think the NJO only gets rated now because a) it's long over and by comparison to what came after, it smells like roses; b) readers who didn't like the NJO left the EU ages ago and so by attrition these forums tend to have more NJO fans than non-fans; c) It did end on a fairly up note, which casts a retroactive rosy glow over what came before; d) some books, such as Traitor and Destiny's Way, managed to rise above and actually succeed as books (I know some include The Unifying Force in that list, but I think that's not so much because the book is well-written as it is the book finally gives the reader catharsis and relief.)

Let's be honest: NONE of the books would exist if Lucasfilm didn't think they would make money. They all only exist because of commerce.

I don't think it's so a question of "spin-off" storytelling. After all, the Thrawn Trilogy is pure spin-off, taking all its cues from the OT (Karrde is a smuggler with questionable loyalties ala Han; Thrawn commands a Star Destroyer much like Tarkin commanded the Death Star, albeit with a bit more intelligence and self-awareness; C'Baoth is the flipside of Obi-Wan; Mara is the anti-Leia: Force sensitive but a bitter Imperial instead of a gracious Rebel; the climax is a lightsaber duel between Luke and a dark side Force lightning user; Leia and Han are married and expecting twins, which is a natural outgrowth of where they were in RotJ; etc.

Now, are the books after NJO full of unoriginal, cliche and hackneyed storytelling? A thousand times yes. IMO.

LIke I said, I think Del Rey really did honestly try with the NJO. I give them props for aiming high, although I think the entire story was badly conceived, shoddily overseen, and did not fit the universe of the films (we're just going to have to agree to disagree, because I will not be swayed on that point. Been there, had the argument in 1999 - 2001 with the authors themselves - some of whom sent private emails of support and agreement but I won't name names - still have the t-shirt. I do not view the NJO in any way as a companion to the OT, although I appreciate the writing in Traitor and especially Destiny's Way.)

I think the original concept - dark force users, with Anakin as the hero - would have been 1000% better, and I'm sorry we didn't get to see Dark Horse's initial version. I realize that Lucas himself apparently jettisoned both ideas (although I also think he makes a convenient scapegoat. Bringing his name into conversation kinda stops it cold - who's gonna question him?!) And, hmmm, Lucas apparently didn't stop LotF and FotJ from using dark siders. Nor was there anything stopping the creative team from changing Anakin's name to, say, Kinn or Nakin or something completely different - as it was, I know I'd be squicked if I was named after a man who became a serial killer feared throughout the galaxy. I'd certainly change my name as soon as I legally could.

But Del Rey bit off more than they could handle. Remember, the original plan was for 25 novels. Meanwhile, a casual reader was supposed to be able to pick up the five hardcovers and get a complete story without needing all paperbacks. And that got cut down to 19 books plus novellas. The whole thing turned into a bit of mess, story wise.

But I do think they at least tried. And it's painfully apparent they stopped trying immediately after. I absolutely, 150% agree with you about the post NJO.

 

I think I expected more immediate fallout from the YV War and perhaps conflict springing from the galaxy recovering. I expected Jacen and Jaina to take more central roles in the stories and did not expect either to fall to the dark side or die. I expected Ben to grow and begin his Jedi training, similar to what we saw him do in FOTJ and Crucible. I expected many of the younger Jedi from NJO, i.e. Zekk, Lowbacca, Tahiri, Tesar, etc, to be major supporting characters for Jacen and Jaina stories. I expected more standalones and trilogies, most definitely not nine book epics and the galaxy at the brink of another war. I figured they would spend decades picking up the pieces and the younger Jedi (and Han, Luke, Leia, and Lando) having to get involved with smaller conflicts stemming from that.

 

I believe the term you are looking for is Charlie Foxtrot.

 

Oh, we need to make that a board meme!

We've a continuity problem! SUMMON SINNY! Light the Sin-Signal!

 

But you have to admit, it does explain a lot!

 

You mean Cluster Frell Zeta? Yes, that fits!

 

I expected the fallout of the Vong War to be similar to the fallout of the Galactic Civil War, where the Big 3 spent years cleaning up the mess left from the war and recovering and establishing a new government. Instead, we had the entire thing basically swept under the rug.

 

I fully agree with you. Personally I became a bit depressed every time I remember that for this cool setting to exist all the hard work the heroes of the Alliance and the New Republic has done comes mostly undone, just a bit more than a century after they overthrow Palpatine and his Empire.
So I just ignore that (something superhero comics have prepered me well for) and enjoy the show

 

All the heroes can be are exemplars - it's not on them that the rest of the galaxy can't follow their example.

 

aleja2

Up until recently I thought the series would be better if it kept the exiled Ur-Sith antagonists instead of the Yuuzhan Vong, but I realized that the Yuuzhan Vong are actually the best villains to fit what is going on under the hood in Traitor and Destiny's Way and The Unifying Force. Their absence in the Force is important to what Jacen learns about the unifying Force and it plays into this notion of transcending the dialectic, which is played with through both the light side and the dark side as well as Force presence and non-Force presence and even the widely misunderstood assertion that there is no dark side. "By growing to understand you better, I grow to understand our enemy better," Sekot said. "Do you see a contradiction there, Jedi?"

I suppose if the NJO is guilty of anything, it's that it was too deep. I think The Unifying Force did an okay job of using Sekot as a cliff notes version of Vergere, but the ideas that the series is getting at simply lose something in trying to articulate them -- which was another theme to Traitor. I'd say that my signature was probably the most important part of Traitor that explains a lot of it. It's a lot easier to just say Vergere is a Sith and call it a day than to attempt to wrap your mind around it, it would seem.

And for Zonama Sekot -- I liked the idea that it's the inverse of the Death Star, when you think about it. And I liked the idea overall -- it's the embodiment of the symbiosis theme that Lucas tried so hard to get across in Episode I through the midi-chlorians and life forms and the Gungans and the Naboo and the Jedi and the Republic, etc. And the living planet is key to the Yuuzhan Vong as well. I'm not sure how most people interpreted it, and maybe mine is wrong, but I saw it more as a consciousness that rose out of all the life on the planet, rather than the planet itself having a consciousness. A form of monopsychism for the life covering the planet made possible by the absolute symbiosis of its ecosystem. And following that, the Yuuzhan Vong weren't deliberately stripped of the Force by Yuuzhan'tar, but their connection to the living Force created Yuuzhan'tar, and when they killed it, their connection to the living Force was severed, or somehow altered or twisted into Jacen's Vongsense.

I guess my overall feeling on the series is that I don't disagree it has its flaws, but Anakin, Jacen, Jaina, Luke, Leia, Han, Tahiri, and Kyp all had character arcs for a change, Jacen's hero's journey arc was really good, the philosophical musings were really interesting, and those things makes the flaws that the series has seem inconsequential. It's easier to buy something like the Yuuzhan Vong as villains and whatever issues they may have if you can appreciate why the writers made those choices, that those choices were serving a narrative purpose and that purpose works for the reader. On the other hand, the follow-ups don't really seem to have much in the way of character arcs at all, or a hero's journey, and there's definitely nothing philosophical in them -- I'd say they're anti-intellectual or anti-philosophical in the way that they promote Jedi platitudes as a dogma from which there can be no deviation, starting with going out of the way to discredit the NJO's themes.

 

This is a really well written post that might make me re-read those three books.

Might.

Because I bailed on the EU after Balance Point (and I only stuck around that long because I heart Kathy Tyers and wanted to give Michael Stackpole's duology the benefit of the doubt) and so I admit to speed reading Traitor, Destiny's Way and TUF at the library (I'm a pretty good speed reader, however )

But I'm not sure that I can, because the previous books in the NJO pretty much destroyed any goodwill and any willing suspension of disbelief I was willing to give Del Rey's version of the EU. I still think Vector Prime has some of the worst writing I've ever had the displeasure of paying for, and the Yuuzhan Vong set up was very poorly done. When your villains only make sense in hindsight, that's a huge story problem. Their original presentation in narrative failed to work for me - they were just some generic Big Bad, indistinguishable from any other generic SF/F big meanie hellbent on conquering and destroying the heroes for no other reason than hey, the franchise needs a bad guy. Their one-note religion (as originally presented), their hatred, and especially their violence and torture seemed to serve no other purpose other than: "Hey, you whiny fanz wanted death and change, we'll give you death and change! Take that, whiny fanz! Mwa-ha-ha!!!!! How you like them popped bubbles?!"

It's just too bad that Traitor came 13 books in, which is a very long time to ask readers to hang on because, hey, the story gets better and might actually make sense. And I agree that the three books listed (although I'm still not sold on TUF) do, finally, present a narrative drive and themes that make sense and provide story and character motivation.

And I thoroughly agree with you on the books after the NJO. But it's hard to write a philosophical Hero's Journey with themes and arcs when you plot by rolling a die.

 

aleja2
If the Yuuzhan Vong don't work for you, I'm not sure I can convince you otherwise. I think they're more layered and thought out than the Lost Tribe of the Sith, whom really define the idea of the franchise needing bad guys. I didn't have a problem with them in the sense that they seemed one dimensional at first because they're an unknown, and as the series progresses the protagonists and the reader learns more and more about them. So for them to make sense in retrospect makes sense to me in that you are learning more about them over time -- but I can see why their initial depiction could be a dealbreaker. I think Stackpole developed the torture fetish, but later novels established this was something emphasized by Domain Shai and the Yuuzhan Vong in general weren't in the habit of climbing into the Embrace of Pain on a daily basis.

 

Are we talking of FOTJ Lost Tribe or JJM-written Lost Tribe?

 

loved the vong. best villians ever!!

 

Fate of the Jedi OBVIOUSLY

 

You never know!

A Q I'd be interested in seeing the answers to: Could the JJM-written Lost Tribe have worked better or was FOTJ's use of them so simplistic and bad there really is no possible salvaging it?

 

I'd say the problem is that Fate of the Jedi's plot is such a mess -- if you can call it a plot -- that none of the ideas it presents have any chance of being well executed. There's no narrative arc at all and the Lost Tribe doesn't really have any business being in the story except so Ben can have a Sith girlfriend.

 

Well, you can't convince me. But I appreciate the try.


It's the mustache twirling in VP that sealed the deal. Nom Anor and Yomin Carr just won't quit monologuing whenever they are on page. Nom Anor even had the black cape. I'm just surprised neither Mara nor Danni were tied to a railroad track while Anor and Carr were at it.

Mikos Reglia is pretty graphically tortured in VP, IIRC, with poor widdle Danni Sue looking on. Somehow, the YV deemed a Jedi unworthy but Danni Sue, of course, had to be preserved to become Jacen Solo's telegraphed-but-the-other-authors-failed-to-heed-Western-Union love interest But it was pretty obvious from the start - with the description of Nom Anor's pain fetish - that the Yuuzhan Vong had a big red flashing sign over their heads reading "LOOK! TEH EV!L BAD R EV!L BAD U GUYZZ!!1!!

It's a question of subtlety. There's evil bad guys who are unknown at first, but their evil becomes revealed until your jaw drops. Evil bad guys who outsmart and outthink the heroes, and in return push the heroes to new heights. Evil bad guys who inform and deepen our knowledge of the universe. And that does happen: 13 BOOKS LATER. Which is 13 books too late IMO.

Then there are the Generic Evil Bad Guys (TM) who come straight out of the Acme Villains R Us catalog. There's no subtlety, no mirroring of the heroes, no deepening of the themes, no resonance. And in the first 12 books of the NJO, the Yuuzhan Vong couldn't be more out of the Acme catalog if they tried. They are about as subtle as, well, dropping a moon on someone. (Again, I have no problems with Chewie dying. I do have a problem with killing characters as if they are the Road Runner on his worst day and the Yuuzhan Vong are Wile E. Coyote on his best day. But asking for subtlety from Salvatore and the Del Rey editorial team is apparently like asking for an In N' Out on Mars. Maybe someday, but don't hold your breath.)

 

Which annoyed me anyways–not necessarily the fact that she's a Sith, but the fact that she's Vestara. She was okay when it looked like she had a chance at being good in Ascension, but other than that she has almost continuously annoyed me merely by existing. But then, I always thought Ben should be paired with Seha Dorvald, so I'm biased.

 

The Yuuzhan Vong were opened up a bit starting with Conquest and Anakin allying with Vua Rapuung and the introduction of Nem Yin, and it was probably always the case that seven books into the series we'd start to see the inner workings of their society because the cancelled Knightfall trilogy seemed like it would have similar subject matter and likely explore it even deeper than Conquest did -- though I believe the cancellation of Knightfall actually resulted in Luceno getting another novel, so Jedi Storm would have been the sixth book.

It also turned the corner on the ideological conflict between Anakin and Jacen with Anakin realizing that maybe there was a bit more going on here than a dualistic conflict and the Yuuzhan Vong weren't all irredeemable monsters.