Lit Legacy of The Force, and beyond

So I recently read the 9 book Legacy of The Force series, and despite being warned off of it somewhat I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The real premise of this series is Jacen Solo’s fall to the dark side and its effect on the GA as a whole and particularly the relationships between the main characters.

I was a bit wary of the idea of Jacen Solo as the bad guy but it didn’t take too long before I wanted to see him get punched in the face.

We already saw some foreshadowing of his fall in the Dark Nest Trilogy where Jacen had been on his 5 year journey and had come back…different, but in LOTF he goes the whole nutbar.

This is the series of books where we see Ben Skywalker at an age where he becomes an integral character and not just ‘the kid’ and he has his own moments where you want to give him a good shake but there are other moments where he seems mature beyond his years and is surprisingly likeable.

Boba Fett is back with a vengeance here and is worked into a far deeper character than you initially think. At first I found his sections an annoying side show to the main plot but soon found myself enjoying them almost as much.

It was great to see Luke getting a bit more action in this series and he displays some pretty impressive feats and really gets to show why he’s the Grandmaster. Even at the height of his arrogance Jacen acknowledges Luke as the one real threat to him and really it’s Luke’s compassion which stops him from just ending Jacen (That’s never happened before right? >.> )

Perhaps it was my low expectations of this series which made me find it all the more, dare I say, exciting to read, I found myself reading the 8th book while waiting in a queue for a ride at a theme park, I was stealing every minute I could to keep reading. Of course this wasn’t the case at the start of the series, it began pretty slow and didn’t have the impact of say ‘Vector Prime’ but once I got near the end of the series I was hooked.

Again we lose a couple of major characters here, and one who I felt had become a very like-able character. I won’t say who, it’s likely you already know but its probably the death which is 2nd only to that in ‘Vector Prime’ in terms of its impact, I genuinely felt sad afterwards.

So I would personally recommend this series. Don’t be put off by people telling you not to read it, everyone has different tastes and you may just be denying yourself something you’ll really enjoy.

I’ve since read Millennium Falcon and am now 3 books into Fate of The Jedi which I am also finding enjoyable, again having been warned off it.

When in doubt…read them all hah.

 

And in today's episode of Forum Posts From An Alternate Universe, we present: someone who read a very different set of LOTF books than I did.

 

I dont know if the fact I'm reading them at this late stage makes a difference. 2 years ago I'd read about 2 Star Wars novels, now I'm at about 70 so I'm taking a lot in but dont have the full story so to speak

 

I applaud you for trying books many here dislike. I am glad you enjoyed them.

 

Thank you Everyone's opinion varies so hopefully at least some people will give the books a chance. There's of course the chance that they won't enjoy them but they just might and its important for people to have the choice

 

I agree. Differences can be quite enriching and branching out can unveil hidden joy otherwise may be missed.

 

It's okay, a lot of people read a different set of NJO books than I read as well.

I can understand the perspective of enjoying the Denningverse. I think it comes from having different criteria going into it. I think it's an interesting topic, because it's sort of paradoxical, in terms of how fans value certain things in certain circumstances and don't value them in others, in terms of whether they enjoy these books.

Alternate response:

 

I think I found them enjoyable as I kind of separated them from what came before. Otherwise the whole AHA Vergere was a sith with some crazy complicated plan to corrupt Jacen and make him into the ultimate badass. That aspect of it is pretty far fetched. I think if you view it as an action series with a standard plot hole filled action script tailored to its needs then its a fun read.

 

Well, yes, that's certainly a pretty necessary first step.

Though, really, what does that say about what the EU - which people mourning its demise have been hailing as one of the longest-running single stories in the science fiction field, and things like that - wound up turning into?

 

It was far from consistent a long time before the post NJO though, its not exclusive to the legacy period

 

LOTF and FOTJ had a lot of good concepts but the complete picture makes them fall short of the NJO.
The NJO series wasn't perfect but it worked for me.
I have to suspend my disbelief a lot for LOTF/FOTJ.
Plot lines are extended beyond their usefulness (who killed Mara? Sacrifice to Revelation. Just tell them for crying out loud!) or are dropped (The Tassels). And don't get me started on FOTJ.
Character assassinations of Jacen and Tahiri didn't help either.
The lackluster deaths of Mara and Pelleaon as well.
And Daala as CoS? Are you kidding me?

The whole era needs to be rebooted imo.

 

Yeah, but I've never seen five years of publishing so thoroughly dumped on before.

Really, what I find interesting, is that people are/were drawn to the Expanded Universe due to its continuity, and viewed it as this massive universe in which all things are equal, and I think that some people are willing to accept the Denningverse because it's a part of that.

But if the Denningverse followed up the OT, and Jacen was Luke, people would scream bloody murder. So despite this egalitarian view of the EU, people obviously don't value Jacen's characterization to the same extent that they do Luke's. People still complain about Dark Empire because Luke kinda sorta might have "turned to the dark side." For the people that do care about Jacen's characterization, the whole conceit of Legacy of the Force (and really, Dark Nest as well) and everything that builds off of it ruins the whole thing from the onset.

 

Yeah, exactly my point. The big strength of the EU is supposed to be its single continuity; even if everything didn't always fit together smoothly, it was all supposed to be one big story. But LOTF - and I'd say FOTJ after it as well - require that the reader jettison all but a very sketchy outline of what preceded them in order for the story to work at its most basic level. How* did that happen?

*This is a rhetorical question.

 

I guess the best way to determine whether to recommend (or not) that someone read LOTF is to ask them if they have any qualms about Jacen Solo becoming a different character entirely. If not, they might like LOTF. If Jacen is their favorite character in the NJO, or they're heavily invested in the NJO as a story, the odds are slim that they'll appreciate LOTF. If the NJO is just another story to you, then you might like LOTF!

 

I read Legacy of the Force before I did NJO (my EU experience has been weird, to say the least), and at the time I enjoyed it. I went back to it after I finally read NJO and found it definitely didn't hold up at all.

 

This exactly.

 

Oh I totally understand that Jacen got screwed over becoming the bad guy for no good reason. They used the excuse of the events in 'Traitor' for a start despite the NJO already having established that Jacen had come out of that pretty well in the end. Then decides that he went on a 5 year journey where 'stuff hapened' and then if that wasn't enough has Vergere and Lumiya double team him with some elaborate sith makeover scheme. It wasn't a natural progression to the dark. In some ways this made me feel more sorry for Jacen in the end but yes, the story is pretty tenuous.

 

I enjoyed it, but probably mostly because it were some of the first SW books I read. Before this I'd only read some Clone Wars and Bantam books. I didn't have any real investment in Jacen. Like others said it was mostly 'just another adventure' to me.
I've reread the Traviss books since then and I enjoyed them, but they weren't as good as I remembered. Unlike many others I think they're the best of the bunch. But I have to note that I was about 15 when I reread them, and 12 or 13 when I read them for the first time, and by no means a weathered critic. If I read them now my opinion might change.

 

I can deal with the events of Traitor having negative aftereffects for Jacen, him having difficulty adjusting after the war, and being manipulated by a Sith. Vergere herself being a Sith outright was a mistake, the whole, you need to sacrifice a loved one to become a Sith thing is outta nowhere, Tahiri still pinning after Anakin was dumb, Luke's way of helping Alema was quite unsymathetic, Traviss' transparent fangirling of the Mandos didn't help, I could go on forever.

Also, turning evil to prevent visions of catastrophy again? The Jedi should plaster warnings about that on the frontdoors of the temple.

 

Jacen becoming Sith just because Lumiya said that was what Vergere wanted for him was stupid as heck.
Wasn't the point of Vergere's lessons to question everything and not follow blindly?

 

I have to say, this is my favorite novel in the Legacy of the Force series:

 

I read LOTF as a reentry into Star Wars, and I will certainly agree that, on balance, it's all a whole lot better if you forget NJO ever happened--because I kind of had. Now, I skipped Dark Nest because it didn't interest me, but if I'd read that first I would have certainly been primed to pick out the bad stuff... so that's one thing which I can't necessarily recommend about the OP's method.

So, from this perspective, a couple things: Each author had the things they shoehorned, but that also made things a little less boring. You could know to expect a Fett story every three books, etc. And if we're making any apologies for Denning, I think there's one big one: He inspired people to make their prose more visceral. He doesn't know how to work in a sandbox for crap (probably cat crap, since, you know, sandbox), but he knows how to build tension. The question is, was that tension being built in part because you were reading something happen which you reeeeally didn't want to happen? Was he actually writing well, or was he utilizing a meta-trolling technique to create a certain mood? It's hard. I'll say that if you pick out a line here or there, his prose was more interesting than a lot of Star Wars writers, to the point that I can see why they hired him; vivid language does a good job of making "long haul" storylines feel more interesting in their downtime. But I think you can then take a look at something like Traitor (or for that matter, even something like I, Jedi) and realize that Star Wars is better used for creating a story with a clear, thoughtful, principled message... not so much one packed with tension and vivid imagery, as that can obscure things negatively.

 

I enjoyed the series a great ton as well. It seems people who are huge fans of NJO seem to have a pretty big problem with LOTF. I've read Traitor, SBS, DNT and I feel Jacen's path in those books leads nicely into LOTF. It does have it's missteps with the missing scenes and what not, but it's a well written entertaining storyline.

Don't you know the only way to rule the galaxy is to rule it with an iron fist?

 

Even without considering the NJO at all, LOTF has massive problems, both as a story and as a Star Wars story in particular. The disjointed narrative, the total bungling ofJacen's progression after Bloodlines and mishandling of him as a villain, the way the Confederation just falls out of the story, the total lack of narrative for Jaina in the real story until Revelation, the stalling of Luke and Mara's response that rendered them totally ineffective as characters, the fact that the ending ignored all the other books and all the building plot threads and dismissed them in favor of President Daala, the sickening nastiness and total waste of Jacen's end, the fact that only the Allston-written books were any good as individual books whatsoever . . . LOTF was a disaster independent of whether its characterization of Jacen was natural or not.

FOTJ was even worse, as a story.

 

Yes, but Hav - your reviews of them were epic!