Guides

Finally, I saved enough money to order the last 2 books of the NJO: TUF and TFP. But I also have money for one more book which I will spend on a guide. What shall I buy?

At first I thought of buying The Essential Chronology but I saw KJA as one of the writers and that scared me off. (I hate KJA's books) Right now I am thinking about buying Cracken's Threat Dossier or The SW Encyclopedia. (But the encyclopedia is much more expensive) Please help me out...

 

The new essential guides are good. Characters and vehicles. As a fleet junkie you would like vehicles. The book also comes out with some cool maps of battles.

 

Chronology, or New Characters. The encyclopedia and "A Guide to the Star Wars Universe" are unnecessary if you have CUSWE, so those two are the ones to get.

New Vehicles has a reputation for being pretty bad, and contradicts other sources, so I wouldn't recommend it.

 

I didn't find the Essential Chronology to be very helpful. It was basically an overview of SW history. Which I already knew having read the whole history several times in the books. TimeTales is much better.

 

TimeTales offers small summaries of everything; the EC patches up several holes (Pellaeon's campaign 11 year post Endor among them), and works it all together, at least that's how I remember it.

Really, none of the guides are necessary; just get another book.

 

Don't let Kevin Anderson's name put you off The Essential Chronology; the work is substantially Dan Wallace's anyway. But The New Essential Chronology, summarizing 5 years' more stories, is due out in just over a year's time. The Star Wars Encyclopedia is even more out of date, though a new one has yet to be announced.

The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels is perfectly fine; a few people nitpicking doesn't constitute a bad reputation.

You shouldn't neglect the Star Wars Roleplaying Game books, of course.

 

"But The New Essential Chronology, summarizing 5 years' more stories, is due out in just over a year's time. "

how will tnec be set up? will they repeat everything from the first one or do what they did for negtc and make it more like a "volume 2"?

 

I wouldn't buy any of the Essential guides just now, as they're all likely to be revised post ROTS so the current ones will be outdated pretty soon.

the new Chronology is more likely to be revised edition including the new films as well as the varoious stories written into the pre-existing timelin, as well as the NJO stuff.

 

how will tnec be set up? will they repeat everything from the first one or do what they did for negtc and make it more like a "volume 2"?

It's certainly being written to stand alone, and will include most of the content of the current book, revised and expanded, with maybe a bit less detail on the New Republic era.

I wouldn't buy any of the Essential guides just now, as they're all likely to be revised post ROTS so the current ones will be outdated pretty soon.

Eventually, but following the current pattern the third characters and vehicles guides would come out in 2009 and 2010.

Of course there's also the superb Visual Dictionary, Essential Cross-Sections and Inside the Worlds books, which I'd put right at the top of all Star Wars books.

 

I would go onto amazon and buy the old esential guide to ships and vehicals from there new and used section. You can probably find it really cheap. You may even want to look into an rpg book if the price is right. The power of the jedi source book has some cool stuff about the jedi in it.

 

The EC is worth reading at least once, though the NEGVV was error-ridden and didn't cover a lot of ships that deserved it. I personally prefer the old EGVV to the new one.

WEG produced a wealth of useful materials, all out of print now, but the more common ones are going for $15-20 on ebay now. I consult my Imperial Sourcebook more often than the EC and both EGVVs combined. Not to mention the Dark Empire and Thrawn Trilogy sourcebooks, all of which are excellent.