Lit Empire & Rebellion #2: Honor Among Thieves

Truly? I loved it. It's in my top five EU novels.
A whole novel dedicated to a battle between the Galactic Empire and New Republic: what could be better?
It was pulpy, self-contained and fun; it added great continuity like the fabled battle of the eponymous Mindor, and Luke resigning his commission; and it was very well written, with Luke, Leia, Han and Lando(!) all coming off near-perfectly.

Also: Luke, mirroring his father, crash lands a Mon Calamari cruiser on a planet.
And: it's set in the New Republic era.
And: the space battle is brilliant.
And: Rostu, Vastor and Geptun.

It was everything a SWEU novel should be, in my opinion.

and in mine, it was a waste of time and money, I don't think the characterizations were that great. I HATED the Mandolorian army, I reject the living rock, affected by the force. just terrible

Make sure Honor Among Thieves is on your list. One of the best EU books I've read in a very long time. Lots of action, with humor and snappy dialogue a la ANH. And Scarlet might be my favorite EU character since Brian Daley was doing the honors.

Plus it's got like a billion new planets (OK, 27 ... but point stands). The galaxy actually feels properly big.

Do we really need that many new planets for one story? What's wrong with using the (rather large) amount of plates we already have? On most of them we have only seen one city after all. Or in Coruscant's case; one part of the city

There is no dearth of talented SW artists. Dark Horse hires people to do gorgeous covers of comic issues that will cost you $2.50 and which you'll read from cover to cover in less than twenty minutes. But for Waru-knows-what reason, Del Rey continues to put these lazy photoshop stock image jobs on the covers of books that will cost you $25 in hardcover and which will take you far longer than twenty minutes to read.

Why?

WHY????

Seriously, why? These stock image covers aren't just lazy, they're boring. They don't grab the interest of a potential buyer. A stock image of Han holding a blaster is tacky and overused, and it doesn't present the book as being at all unique. A Trevas-drawn image of Han firing his blaster at a new-and-interesting-looking badguy would practically scream "I'm new! Buy me! I'm unique!" There are tons of consumers who ignore the old adage and who judge a book by its cover. Has Del Rey completely given up on selling SW to them?

Just because it need to be said again

Well, this is all I needed to hear.

That is a really good question. I mean, while I applaud expanding the universe with new characters, ships and sometimes planets, 27 in one book? Thats.....more than a little excessive. There are so many planets that have only ever been visited in one book/comic/game/etc and never mentioned again that could and should be re-used at some point.

Sure, if you need a new planet in area X where there's a bunch of mining planets but no water world, ok sure, create a water world. But somehow I doubt that this many unique planets to this book (that will likely never be referenced again) were necessary.

There is an atlas for this kinda thing that the authors can use...






As for the photoshop covers. There have been some notably terrible ones in recent years - Crucible, LOTF for the most part, and perhaps the worse offender Millennium Falcon.

I'm not sure why there's been such an emphasis on that recently.

But what bugs me just as much is that since the end of NJO pretty much every cover has been decided to be "show precisely one character, and if possible from the waist up. Two if you absolutely have to."

Look at the Bane Trilogy, any of the TOR novels, DN, LOTF, FOTJ, Riptide, Crosscurrent, Choices of One, Red Harvest, Death Troopers....

Can we please get some covers that actually show more than one person at a time? and maybe, just maybe some planets or ships?

YES YOU SHOULD.

Well, it sounds like a hardcover pickup.

As for the planets, sounds great. With so many stories just set on one or two planets, and everything revolving around Coruscant, we've been missing a real pan-galactic planet-hopping adventure. Hopefully a good chunk of those planets are visited, and not just referenced.

Wow, really? Granted I'm a geography dork, but I love that this book is full of new places. As a fan/reader, I get impatient with Star Wars Clue -- "it was the Ithorian, with the lightsaber, on Bespin." Gimme new stuff, so long as the results still feel like Star Wars -- and SWEARHAT (best acronym ever?) most definitely does. I really think folks will like it.

And yeah, anyone who hasn't read Daley, you're in for a treat. The characterization of Han is spot-on, it's full of great little character moments and observations, and it's genuinely funny.

I only read Daley relatively recently. After I finished university, moved away, and lost interest in nearly every new novel, I started checking out some old EU gems that I had missed --- The Han Solo Adventures, the X-Wing novels, the Droids cartoon, the radio dramas of the original trilogy --- each one of them was a treat. Just for the hell of it, I may add the Jedi Prince and Galaxy of Fear books to that list some time.

And Jason: Yeah, I'd take a new planet and new species over a Twi'lek and a Rodian on Tatooine any day. I think what Gamiel was going for, though, was the bevy of already-existing but criminally underused planets and species that exist in EU lore. Then again, is there really any difference between creating your own planet and using one that only exists in the EU as a descriptionless namedrop? Like you said, the galaxy's still big enough for thousands of new planets.

Yep, both are good strategies.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Can't resist a well done Han.

Plus you need to do some kind of read-through article(s).

New places are nice but why not visit new places on old planets. F.ex. tCW have given us new places on old planets

I am not even going to got there, because I was about to do yet another rant on TCW and what it did with planets. I don't have anything else to talk about, because virtually no one cares about the stuff I like, and what I like is little more than footnotes or completely meaningless thanks to what has happened in recent years.

Daley is on my to-do list, but I only got around to obtaining the two Han Solo trilogies when A.C. Crispin passed away.

@jasonfry, because I just have to ask, when you compare SWEARHAT to Daley, does that extend to Han's characterization as well? Absolutely love Daley's take on Han.

Zeta I joined after you and have not seen your rants, just you snobbing tCW and I want to know what you think. So were can I read your rants?

Everywhere.

If you don't know what Zeta thinks of TCW, wait five minutes.