The Approaching Storm and other pre-OT books

Alright I was hoping some you could give your opinion on the book.

I've read just about every EU book that has been released but never finished the YJK series. I was thinking of getting into the NJO series(only own VP) but I really don't care for all the senseless violence, killing of major characters and the way I've heard the characters were handled.

So I thought I'd give a few of the pre-OT books a try. I've heard of TAS as more along the lines as half an epilogue to TPM and half a prelude to AOTC. So how is it. Also any opinions you might have on any of the other pre-OT books would be great.

Thanks

 

man, NJO is much better than any prequal books! you need to reaad more than VP though, the next couple in chronological order are much better IMO, then, the most recent ones (DJ, SbS) are maniacally good too.

 

I love the prequel era, and the NJO books are alright, though kind of stale at points.

Personally, I truly dug The Approaching Storm. It's a great lead in to AotC, and and a good intro to ObiWan and Anakin.

 

yeah, depends on your style,

read darth maul shadow hunter, it's one of the best PT books.

 

I wasn't a big fan of TAS. Some of it was interesting, I liked the aliens and the culture of the nomad Alwari.

What I didn't like is that it didn't fit into the NJO, as least a little bit. I realize it was a set up for AOTC, but, at least RP was part of NJO, even if it didn't take place in the same time period. Then, at least, it would have offered something to the ongoing series.

 

TAS pretty much sucked, although it did have a couple great scenes.

The best PT novel is Cloak of Deception.

 

CoD was a great read. It tied in with TPM easily and featured Vergere.


Shadow Hunter was a fun, but depressing read. Lets just say the cool, or close to cool, character die in the book, or shortly there afer.

 

yeah, but a really cool, and sometimes funny book it was, though i would have liked to see jax at some point

 

I agree SH was a good read but it kinda sucked that the three characters I liked either died or got stolen and received a memory wipe. However, it had to happen considering that TPM would have been changed big timeif the Jedi found out about the Sith and the upcoming invasion of Naboo. It was great though when Lorn thought he was safe by giving the holocron to the "trusted" Palpatine!

 

did parts of it strike anyone else comical?

 

Yeah, some parts were pretty funny, or at least LOL funny.

 

I'm going to upfront say I think the Prequel books are alot more fun than the NJO series. Yes the NJO is filled with more drama, sadness, risk, blah blah blah but the fact remains that if Han Solo had died in the first round of blaster fire then we would have not had a very interesting trilogy. The NJO seems more interested in killing it's characters left over from Bantam than developing them.

The Prequel books I think are very cool because they show the jedi Knighthood at their prime and a respected part of the galaxy rather than the hunted hated minority they have resumed being in NJO. I recommend heartily the Jedi Apprentice series as well because despite the books being relatively short on plot they are masterful works of characterization and do not talk down....they even occasionally give startling insights into individuals such as qui Gon, Obi wan, and even to an extent Yoda.

Though it just kills me with the rumors Qui gon is going to have his mentor show up in the next movie we wont' be able to hear him reminesce about him in the Jedi Apprentice series.

Dark maul: Shadow Hunter was the second best book thus far of the books hardcover wise after the Approaching Storm. The Approahing storm was also a light hearted tale of good vs. evil with evil being primarily greedy arrogant scene chewing folk but not particularly violent vicious animals. In some respects I enjoyed that as a nice change from things.

Shadow Hunter was an excellent "Dark Book" and I truly enjoyed everything with Darth Maul in it even if he is more a movie character than a book one in action, his thoughts are occasionally beautiful poetry. It had a cheap ending though with Obi Wan being a red hearing for the rescue of the lovely young padawan (I wanted a romance dangit! A triangle! A new trilogy with smuggler, jedi chick, and obi wan!) and company. It was good to treat the villains as extremely competent but unable to catch a break til the end...

It was a really tongue and cheek humored book.

Cloak of Deception wasn't bad either though I admit the book was mostly about Qui Gon and Obi being run circles around by Sideous...I can appreciate that and it was excellent set up though I STILL Don't know what Palpatine was up to entirely in that tome.

 

Thanks. I think I'll give those a try. The Jedi Apprentice books are pretty short but I've heard they were well written.

Also this is kinda of off the topic but has anyone read the Black Fleet Crisis series or the New Rebellion? I never got around to reading those. How are they? I heard they weren't very good, kind of a low point in EU books but should I pick them up?

 

It was mentioned that Vergere was featured in CoD. Did we learn anything interesting? I passed on reading that book.

 

Cloak of Deception is easily the best of the prequel era novels to date, filled with great suspense and political intrigues. Great set up for TPM. Darth Maul : Shadow Hunter is pretty much the opposite of CoD, but that takes nothing away from it. Indeed, DM:SH is an action packed tale, a rock 'em sock 'em adventure that truly has that SW fee, if you ask me.


As for the other books, all I have to say is...Meh.

 

I enjoy both eras and think that they are both very well done. Better than some of the Bantam stuff, for sure.

 

The Black Fleet Crisis is a sort of "Meh" series which never reaches the full promised heights of it's set up. The biggest thing the series has against it is anti-climax. Luke is going after his mother with a mysterious force sensetive woman (note this is before Padme so guess what we're finding out), Lando is entering a mysterious alien artifact which will accomplish nothing of note to the main plot, and a new race of genocidal aliens has the largest fleet the galaxy has ever known which can utterly crush the majority of the New Republic's forces (it's the size of vader's task force if not larger) yet in the end there's no big space battle/war.

Plus Luke has causal sex, it's one of those things that makes you go "hmmmm."

The New Rebellion on the other hand is a wonderful action packed saga with a new interesting crime boss, a intimidating monstrous Fallen student of Lukes, and great actions from everyone involved politics of the New Republic to elsewise. It actually suffers I think from being too short as we never see the main villain's relationship to Luke but it really is a good book that adds to the Star Wars saga.

My favorite part being Han Solo "Dark jedi hunter"

Cloak of Deception mentions Vegere but we really don't see that much of her, she's more or less just onstage. Character development is not entirely good either because the Jedi are all good and the villains are good but mercanary and the Trade Federation is oddly...the most dramatic there

 

Thanks Charlemagne19 for clearing that up for me. One more question how is I, Jedi. I just ordered but I'm hoping I didn't waste my money. I really like the idea that it takes place during the Jedi Academy series(which I really liked).

 

I, Jedi is probably the best book of the old Batam Series after the Thrawn Trilogy with it tied with Visions of the Future and to a lesser extent Spectres of the Past for most "Old Trilogy like"

The book itself isn't about Luke's discovery of the Force which is sad since it might have been interesting to have the Master with a first person perspective (leia too) but is about Corran Horn and his embracing of his Jedi heritage before going to confront the sinister Leonia Tavira.

A large part of the Book is a rehash of the Exar Kun saga by Kevin J. anderson but that particular horror benefits immensley from a first person perspective and views different than luke and lukes original students. Corran gets a bit preachy but he gets his come-uppance in the end as well as being proven right in other areas.

The action scenes are incredible with the introduction of the Camasaii and an amusing number of scenes dealing with the rather strong libido of the rogue Imperial admiral. It also addresses a good deal more issues of teh Force than most Star Wars novels which prefer to describe it's effects and not the philosophy behind it

 

Great. Thanks. Now I'm glad I ordered it.

 

"The New Rebellion" was a good book, chiefly because it involved C-3PO and R2-D2, the two forgotten SW characters.

I've always been saddened that the two of them were pushed aside, never allowed to have their own stories. I loved the DROIDS comic book and cartoon series. The two of them, getting into trouble, was fun when I was a kid.

Now, you rarely see them, and if you do their just there. Not adding anything to the plot. So, my hats off to any writer that manages to get them involved in the story.

In fact, I always thought that was why they stressed the idea that droids were being destroyed and such because of the Vong. I figured that would lead them to develop a story arch for everyone's favorite droids.

This has yet to happen, but I'm still hoping.

 

up

 

I've read all four PT books, my take:

RP: A good read, with some nice foreshadowing of Anain's final fate. Bear's hard SF style makes for a different but good SW tale. The NJO tie in is actually subtle, if one had not known anything of NJO, the tie-in would not be noticed. Tarkin and Siener give a god idea of what has happened in the 3 years since TPM, while also leaving room for some speculation.

DMSH: An OK action read. Maul is more an egomaniacal, overconfident character; which adds to his final defeat by ObiWan. Even his master considers Maul cocky. The only flaw is the good characters are doomed. The link to COD is well dpone, with the Naboo crisis breaking at the end of the bok...cue TPM!

COD: The best of the bunch. We get a substantial understanding of the Republic; the woeflly underused character of Valorum (and the disgracefully underused Terence stamp) gets fully fleshed out and emerges as an interesting character. Just about every line in TPM that talks politics s covered in COD. Some have said Sid/Palp are shown as too good at manipulation, but I tend to see the character as more opportunist than grand genius.

TAS: A good set up for AOTC. But, the ObiWan/Anakin relationship seems off, from what the films tell us. Now this will probably get dismissed as ObiWan lying or twisting the truth. In the book obiWan states he took Anakin reluctantly, which I'm not sure about, where does that unease spring from? The political plots on Coruscant I liked, the idea of a neglected world being of critical importance struc a good parallel with current events. What is lacking in TAS, seriously lacking, is a sense of what has happened in the Republic since RP. Now it may be that job falls to AOTC. In its defence TAS shows secessionist thoght becoming popular but not why, what has happened to make it so? It cannot be senatorial incompetnce as that was around in TPM, years earlier. Could it be due to Dooku's actions, how long has he been operating? 2-3 years? Longer? Again AOTC needs to address these questions.

Though operating under tight restrictions, the PT books have worked better than I thought they would. By reading them in publication order, that is RP, DMSH, COD and TAS a net of references forms: Luminara, Darsha Assant, Bondara, Valorum. (plus in the case of COD EU references to Pestage and Kinman Doriana)

What I see no need for is a PT-NJO link beyond that present in RP, a very subtle one that can only be spotted by those who know of NJO. Either RP followed NJO: DTO or vice versa, for each supports the other on this subtle linking of the eras. The only obvious ref in NJO to PT is talk of the Jedi Council. Thus far, that plot has gone nowhere really; it may develope in the future but at the prsent it's a throwaway line.

Besides links exist of a different nature. The YV invade where they invade because of the recent ending of the Great Civil War, that war flows from the establishment of the Empire, which in turn flows from the fall of the Old Republic and the Jedi. Therefore it is the Empire that links the PT, OT, Bantam and DR EU together sequentially. Further links more obvious than that in RP/DTO are not needed and would appear crude if they were put in. A neat NJO PT ref is in BP, where Baraun talks about Palpatine.

Jedi Ben

 

I really liked rogue planet, han solo novels,and lando novels.

 

it may develope in the future but at the prsent it's a throwaway line.

Didn't Kyp say something about the possibility of a Jedi Council in Dark Journey? Nothing of relevance to the plot, but just enough to let us know that the DR people haven't forgotten it...