Lit FOTJ–what people dislike about it

Seconded. Ewoks comics, Marvel SW stories about the Hoojibs, Hiromi, and Jaxxon, all come in for regular rereads in my case.

 

Kablob Apparently.
Iron_lord I like COTJ for some of the humor in it. "Just because you keep soap in the pantry, doesn't make it food." etc but POT just doesn't have that same spark. And the readability of it imo isn't as good. If you like it, that is good.
ThreadSketch The Big 3 lost all of their dignity in this book. At least with The Unifying Force, the Big 3 got the ending they deserved.

 

I'd burn this thread down if it were mine

 

For the whole time I read through CotJ, I just kept thinking, "...what is a foo-twitter?!"

Losing dignity is tolerable for me once per novel, but yeah, more than that, forget it.

Man, I regret not grabbing that copy of TUF that I saw perched on the shelf at Goodwill a few months back. (I don't have my old EU collection anymore.)

 

Go buy it now!
Stopping 2 aliens doing whatever they were doing doesn't compare to ending a galactic war.

 

Honestly, I'm more with Kablob than not here. In broad strokes the post-ROTJ EU works, but I've said before that I felt the Bantam and Del Rey post-ROTJ novels were both largely rubbish in different ways, and while my opinion of the NJO has risen a lot since then I otherwise stand by that statement. There was a lot of bad stuff, and even the good stuff wasn't as coherent as it could have been.

 

Depends on what we're looking for from them. Bantam was a hodgepodge of mostly superficial storytelling, generally a poor simulacrum of the films.. Del Rey's very limited New Republic era offerings weren't half-bad, consisting of I think three books total: SoM, TG, and SQ.

I think part of the problem is that the post-ROTJ EU came in four flavors: saga, different genre, character pieces, or diet saga. There's some overlap between them. Most of the stories in Bantam were the latter, seeking to emulate the films but with much lesser stakes, an Imperial threat and a dark side threat versus the Big 3, e.g. Hethrir and the Empire Reborn, Exar Kun and Daala, Gethzerion and Zsinj, C'baoth and Thrawn (though I don't classify TTT as such, but it follows that formula). The good Bantam books were more military SF than space opera, or at least slanted more in that direction: TTT, HOT, and BFC. The saga stories are really only Dark Empire and the New Jedi Order: stories that sought to have stakes equivalent to the films themselves and a component of destiny to the story, which I think leads some to instinctively dislike them because they consequently seem to diminish the films. The Del Rey New Republic stuff are all character pieces: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Tatooine Ghost is about Leia, and Survivor's Quest is about Mara. No Han novel, unfortunately -- I guess we have The Last One Standing though, believe it or not, it's as much a Han story as a Fett story, and Han is the eponymous character (although the title is deliberately ambiguous).

I don't know what to classify the Denningverse as except a dumpster fire.

FWIW, the best pre-ROTJ novels IMO are both character pieces as well: Shatterpoint and Dark Rendezvous. And Revenge of the Sith...

 

Don't forget Scourge.

Good point; I'd never really paid attention to the fact that they generally had one Empire threat + one dark sider.

I'd agree with you there–TTT and HOT are less so military SF, but BFC (and the X-wing series) are very much military SF. Honestly, with BFC I felt like I was reading something closer to Star Trek than typical SW. Not that that's a bad thing; BFC is overall a pretty good trilogy, and I'm going to give it a reread in a few weeks after I finish Apocalypse and A New Dawn.

And typically, all the best SW books are character pieces–I'd qualify Traitor and Shatterpoint as character pieces, and then throw in LSATSOM and Kenobi and you've got yourself a seriously entertaining and enjoyable set of books. Even SQ and TG are great, and The Last One Standing is, of course, great, even if it's a short story rather than a full-length novel.

That's apt.

 

My weeping emoticon was meant to convey the fact that someone else purchased it shortly after I saw it. *le sniffle*

 

Caveat: I was looking strictly at Big 3 stories for post-ROTJ, hence no mention of X-Wing or Scourge.

I think another component is that the post-ROTJ is dominated by the Big 3, and their stories bring certain expectations than others do not, and consequently a majority of post-ROTJ stories are judged by higher standards than the prequel era stuff.

No one wants a story about Luke fighting on Praestlyn during the Galactic Civil War, or whatever (although I suppose SOM is that except like, 1000000x better). But Big 3 stories generally seem to need to be GALAXY SHATTERING in some sense. At least Del Rey thinks so. And so did Bantam for the most part. SOM, TG, and SQ are the three exceptions among 41 other post-ROTJ novels published by Del Rey featuring the Big 3 that were GALACTIC.

 

And don't forget my two favorite novels of the entire EU, Kenobi and Dark Lord.

 

For the most part I think doing character studies is the best way to go because it plays to the strength of the medium. I do think that the New Jedi Order wouldn't really work in the film format because it also takes advantage of the medium -- the climax of the entire series with Jacen and Onimi simply wouldn't work on film because it is completely necessary to be in Jacen's headspace. And I think that's a strength of literary Star Wars: the Yoda arc of TCW probably would have worked better on the page than on TV.

 

My two biggest issues with the series was the random introduction of Mortis into the series in book 9 with no buildup.

And my other issue was the random introduction of Daala's carbonite prisoners in Vortex, which seemed to be set up as something big but never got mentioned again.

 

Definitely this. Though I thought the Yoda arc was great, but then again I'm a sucker for whenever a Star Wars story gets all Mystic Force on us. (That and Mora-Kora looked exactly like it did in KOTOR, which made me squee like you wouldn't believe.)

 

The Yoda arc is essentially presenting the same idea as the New Jedi Order -- I've posited previously that Jacen's moment of Oneness with the Unifying (Cosmic) Force is precisely what the Jedi do to become apparitions.

I think there's an argument to be made that there's more nuance to it on the screen simply because it isn't spelling it out, but then of course that results in differing interpretations.

I mean, I'm the type of person that says Luke is most nuanced as a character in The Empire Strikes Back because it's obvious (to me) that Luke's motivation for going to Bespin isn't merely to save his friends; nay, that's the excuse. The real motive is to use his new Jedi training, which he arrogantly believes will allow him to face Darth Vader and avenge his father's murder. And that arrogance is why he's at risk of falling to the dark side (and, I should note, that self-importance is picked up on again in Dark Empire). He's not going to be compelled to join Vader by his oratory skills -- that's for JINO.

 

I prefer to make a distinction between post-RotJ and NJO. My idea of post-RotJ is basically from Truce at Bakura to VotF. From Vector Prime onwards is when everything goes downhill, with the exception of TUF, which was a much better finale than you'd expect from NJO. SbS is a perfect representation of all of the NJO's strengths and weakness, and while Destiny's Way has some cool moments, its also a bit of an abrupt turnaround. As Jedi Ben said (I think it was him) a few pages ago, they finally let the heroes actually win something rather than having a pyrrhic victory at best.

Though its probably unfair to judge the post-RotJ period too harshly since they were still throwing together the EU back then. Its not like now with series planned out in advance. Or at least supposedly planned out in advance. Maybe it was because it was a different decade, and most of the books were meant to be standalone, but still, most books ended with the Empire on the decline and the New Republic mostly stable. With books like the Thrawn trilogy, Hand of Thrawn duology and the X-wing series, its still my favorite era. Note how many characters in FotJ originated from a Bantam book (Corran, Kyp, Cighal, Callista, Akanah, etc.). Well, partially because the Bantam books came earlier, but that doesn't excuse the lack of NJO characters either.

Also, partially due to the era (and I think Lucasfilm saying no Sith, as the prequels were going to cover the Sith), we didn't get a deluge of Sith, just Dark Jedi and most of them were related to Palpatine's Empire one way or another. And I miss the Imp warlord villain these days, as instead we just get more and more red lightsabers. The Vong were a change, but now even they've been shuffled off to the trash can, to be replaced by more and more Sith, despite Palpatine supposed to have been the end. Well, the EU can't let the Sith go, they're very popular, but since by FotJ they had run out of villains, they just made up an entirely new planet of Sith as cannon fodder for the heroes to be busy with. At least the Legacy comics said the One Sith had quietly built up their numbers over a century, instead of just stumbling onto one of the worst possible things ever (an army of Sith).

Also, again possibly due to the times, during the New Republic era (Bakura to VotF), the Chief of State was typically a hero, either Mon Mothma or Leia. They're both definitely good, compared to NJO which started with Borsk (kind of miss him now), but then the Jedi had to basically blackmail the Senate to keep the war effort from collapsing to get a competent Chief of State next (if Rodan had been reasonable, that might have been an interesting working relationship, and not like Omas was perfect either, since he authorized Alpha Red in the same book he was elected), then we get the Niathal/Caedus reign, followed up by the completely ludicrous Daala, then the even stranger Abeloth... who might have been an improvement over Daala, though only marginally. Then we finally end up with Dorvan, whose only qualification might be that he's the last one standing in the administration but otherwise isn't that great either. Mercy Kill had him as a distant competent figure, but other than that, nothing.

No offense, but most times I prefer Star Wars not get too close to mystical. The cave vision in ESB is nice, simple and direct as a test for Luke- one that he fails. The Yoda arc in "season six" of TCW was just typical hammy and sounded over-important. "Birthplace of the Force", here's Dagobah, and I was left wondering that if Yoda had to go to all this trouble to prove himself worthy, what about Obi-wan? Or Anakin's Force ghost? Especially since he went through all that trouble then turns out Qui-gon just has to teach him. And one more thing that nagged at me- Qui-gon was talking like the Clone Wars were already lost (which they kind of were for the Jedi) but that's supposed to be a secret until the end. Well, maybe its just a change of narrative since I remember the lead-up to Episode III with Labyrinth of Evil then Stover's novelization, and its just of annoying Qui-gon's talk about preparing for the future after the Clone Wars. Sure, we all know how the Clone Wars end, but in-universe they're not, but not like TCW kept up with logic much.

 

it was the birthplace of the midi-chlorians not the Force

sumerian not babylonian

 

Agreed. Should have started in Vortex or Conviction.
I still want to know what that Carbonite army is. Can we say that army is people that have been missing over the years?

 

Okay to get this thread back on track

The number one thing that always bothered me about LOTF and FOTJ was their structure. They were novels that made no apologies about the fact that they were selling a product rather than a story. You look at the NJO, and two of the most popular novels are Conquest and Traitor. You don't get novels like that in LOTF or FOTJ. A novel with a single focal character is simply not going to happen. Individual novels in LOTF and FOTJ aren't dramatically structured like novels; they pretend as if they're each one giant story that is horribly inconsistent. They're not going to set aside a whole novel for Ben to grow into his own as a character. People that don't like Ben might skip that one! And they're not going to let the novels stand on their own, because then people might skip some of those too. No you have to read the whole series.

 

We need Tales of LOTF and FOTJ.

 

Wrong Ben became a developed character when he shot that guy in the head and felt bad about his friend becoming a suicide bomber.

 

he became a developed character when he told Luke to let him kill Jacen after Luke did all the work

I really saw him building toward that moment

 

Someone could have killed Jacen in every book but they kept letting him go because LOTF is a 1980s cartoon produced to market a brand name to children.

 

Much as I hate the idea of Jacen going dark–if they had to do it, they could've structured the series way better. Build it up. Dark Nest was the buildup and Betrayal was the start of his fall. It would've been better–so much better–if they'd had more buildup. Maybe two or three more trilogies between Dark Nest and Betrayal. Use it to build up Ben's character. And Jacen's. It would've given time for Ben to have friends from ages 8 to 13. Given us time to see "Jacen" develop from what we see in Dark Nest to what we see in Betrayal. And then, when Betrayal finally did come, it should've gone Betrayal > Bloodlines > Tempest, several standalone novels (Ben GAG piece, Jaina piece), Exile > Sacrifice > Inferno, several standalone novels (Luke + Ben piece), Fury > Revelation > Invincible, and have Invincible end with Jacen going into exile after realizing what he's done wrong. It would've all gone much better, IMO.

 

They were afraid if the series was too long, people might quit early and not buy them all!