Book Question

I'm about a third of the way through /Shadows of the Empire/, and it's a great book, but rather poorly written, in my opinion...My main problem with it is that it does a whole lot of head-hopping--switching point of view in the middle of a scene or even in the middle of a sentence. Now I understand that since it's star wars, there are a lot of characters that are always represented as equally important (Luke, Leia, Han, Vader) and because of this a writer might be inclined to have multiple point of views, but Perry does it so haphazardly. In one paragraph he'll have Luke's thoughts saying, "He didn't know just what he felt for Leia--was it love, or something else?" and in the next paragraph Leia's thoughts will say, "She didn't know what she felt for Luke. She loved him, but not in the same way she loved Han." So this gets rather annoying.
It also does a lot of those narrative questions while head hopping (e.g. "Vader broke the connection. What did Xizor want? Whatever it was, he did not believe for a moment it was to serve the Empire--unless it served him first." pg 102) This bit isn't particularly bad with the questions, but the last character in the world in whose head I want to be is Darth Vader. He is supposed to be one of the most enigmatic, mysterious, impassive characters in Star Wars, so we should not be told what he is thinking.

Anyway, what I wanted were some recommendations for well written Star Wars books. Something that doesn't head-hop (preferably with three or fewer perspective characters) and that isn't full of questions in the narration. Something at a relatively high reading level, where you might encounter one or two words you've never heard of in each chapter. Any recommendations?

 

Have you read the Thrawn trilogy yet (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command)? I'd highly recommend that, it's suppose to be the best Star Wars EU in existence (I haven't read them yet). After that I think I'd have to recommend the X-Wing books. Those are also suppose to be pretty good. The only other ones I've been reading lately have been the NJO books (New Jedi Order). Those are excellent reading, IMO.

 

Darth Vader is the character we want in the head of. How else can we accept him back as a good guy at the end of Jedi? We have to understand that he is not an impossible killing machine, but deep down still a human being. I don't know if you're done with Shadows yet, so I'm not gonna point out part of Vader's character. The part I speak of is emphasized in the book.

To me, pretty much every book is good, because it's all Star Wars. I do prefer ones with certain characters over those post-ROTJ, though.

 

If you are looking for a book that focuses mainly on one character then I would have to say I,Jedi. It is about a Force sensitive guy named Corran Horn and all that he does to train himself to be a Jedi. It is written mainly in the first person I believe. It has been a while since I read it so I am not sure. I love most of the post-ROTJ novels. Especially the NJO.