Lit The Dark Nest Trilogy - worth reading?

For me, Dark Nest will always just be the books in which Luke and Jacen watch Revenge of the Sith on DVD. That's really the only thing I remember.

 

Pardon me while I laugh uproariously.

 

Why is that?

 

2.0 implies that it was an improvement. It wasn't.

Cynicism, I assume.

 

Or realism!

 

Well, Coruscant wasn't captured and the Chief of State wasn't killed so I guess that's the novels' definition of "smaller than a galactic war". Since LotF and FotJ, which tried (and failed miserably) at redoing galactic wars in less than half the page space of the NJO saga (which was a pretty good portrayal of a galactic war, or at least closer than most other attempts) killed quite a few Chiefs of State, guess that's the main difference. In a way I can see that, as most of the battles took place out in the Unknown Regions, and at least the Jedi weren't slaughtered. While I wouldn't call DNT good, at least it didn't have many of the worst flaws of LotF or FotJ. Though being only three books instead of nine long, stretched out books probably helps.

Although DNT also skipped over much of the devastation of the Vong War really, really quickly, rather than trying to do anything different. Oh look, its Coruscant, same as mostly any other era.

 

That's what cynics call cynicism.

Agreed. Small scale is Kenobi. For some reason, after a certain point in the timeline they decided that the only way to tell a story was to burn the galaxy down over and over again. In my experience, the bigger the scale in the EU, the worse it is.

 

While the terms often are used interchangeably K, I think it could be argued there is a difference: A cynic would only see the negative and refuse to grant any possibility to the idea that there could be positives, whereas a realistic assessment would have to consider both negative and positive.

 

BC, lemme tell you something, when I was a kid, Lit used to mean something. We used to get dressed up, I wore a Crimson Jack costume for a week, just to color our Jar Jar coloring books. Now? Crimson Jack's not even canon. So what was I wearing? I don't even know. Just a pair of underwear, a tight sleeveless shirt and knee high boots. Hey George, why did you let Disney steal my continuity?

Ooooohhhhh
Disney's saying let's go
Ooooohhhhh
but my heart is saying no

Hey, you wanna see my impression of a new Star Wars fan? "I wonder if Han and Leia get married." WHAT'S THE MATTER NEW FANS, CAN'T YOU READ? Kids today, they don't even teach them to read, they just give them their Kindle audiobooks and they're like "how come this movie only has audio?"

Glove of Darth Vader? More like Glove of Luke Skywalker, amirite?

Kids today, they don't even talk about how long a SSD is, all they care about is if the new astromech droid has wi-fi. Pfft.

"Did you see the new drawing of Dave Filoni's cat, it's on Netflix." You know what you should put in your Netflix queue, kids? THE CRYSTAL STAR. It's a book, y'know, those things made out of paper with words on them, it will blow your little freaking minds. They don't even know what paper is. IT'S MADE OUT OF TREES. There, I said it.

You call this Star Wars? Stupid. Stupid. It's just stupid. I haven't had any Star Wars in years. And when I say Star Wars, what I really mean is....right? Right?

Diversity.

So I haven't won any Aluminum Falcons. I'm no Kyp Durron. Okay? I'm no optimist. That's not me. So? So what?

CORN ONNNNNNNNNNNN..........

Boba Fett is still Jaster Mereel to me, BC.

WHEN I SEE YOUR AVATAR,
there's not a thing that I would change.
Cuz you're amazing,
just the way you are.

Knock knock, BC. Wait. Wait. You say knock knock.

BC: Knock knock.
CT: Who's there?

Now say "NEU".

BC: NEU.
CT: GO AWAY.

I'm so happy, the carbonite army is gone.
I'm movin' on.

This time, baby, I'll be cannon proof.

Cannon go boom. Canon go boom, too.

 

I really can't see Troy Denning or someone else completely derailing characterizations because I doubt the novels will be allowed to do that sort of thing now.

 

Here's hoping.

 

A great small scale conflict that felt big- Black Fleet crisis. A local power with some captured ships wipes out a few dozen worlds on a xenophobic expansionist bent. They win early rounds not because they are "big massive threats!" but because they played politics well, and were extremists willing to go further than the NR was until the end.

The Yevetha were great villains. The Killiks/Chiss, the One Sith Tribe, even both sides of the Confederation vs GAG/Caedus were not.

 

It was mainly Jacen who kept coming back to that concept, and had a vision of a galaxy spanning conflict without end, that would put all others to shame. Can't remember Luke or Leia's thoughts on things, but Han compared the situation with the Killiks to the Vong War in his mind, despairing at the fact his kids were being dragged into it again.

 

Well, no dad would want his kids sucked into another war. Although comparing it to the Vong War is a bit much, to say the least.

 

I doubt the novels will be edited for characterization much, if at all.

I can easily see Denning getting stuff past the editors.

 

That's what I probably would have used to think, but with some of the stuff I've learned lately, it sounds like Denning's screwups operated at a much higher level than I would have thought. Which is promising, because it's the "Denningverse" that's really bad. SBS and Tatooine Ghost are, at the least, not terrible.

 

looking back at it, I really enjoyed the trilogy much more the second time I read it. though I still find all those bugs a bit ... disturbing. there were some great things set up (like Jacen's 5-year exile) which - of course for the late EU - weren't followed through afterwards.

the single books? they seem like a video game with every book killing of a "boss" at the end, with the over-boss in the third book.

altogether: while TG and SbS were pretty good books (for Denning), his tendency forgraphic violence and being overly cruel to the characters starts to show. And it didn't get better afterwards...

 

Okay, this is another reason I really disliked DNT. The fact that it set up that Luke & Co only find out about Padme conveniently in the book that comes out right after ROTS is released even though timeline wise it's the stupidest thing ever. I would have accepted them learning about her sometime after Black Fleet and just never mentioning her on-page. Though I always thought the mother subplot from BFT was a bad idea since it would have been clear even at the time the upcoming prequels would establish the mother.

Absolutely agree. Despite my above critique, I think Black Fleet is a criminally-underappreciated series and does so much right that DNT does wrong.


Also, out of curiosity, can someone briefly post what the plan was for resurrecting Anakin? I remember that being talked about as a discarded plan but forget the specifics.

 

While fighting Jaina, apparently Jacen would need to flow-walk to Anakin's death in order to create an illusion of his face (I guess he forgot what he looked like, though I'm not sure why he's able to flow-walk at a different location entirely than the world ship). In doing so, he goofs somehow and swaps places with Anakin, but with the illusion over himself as Anakin intact. Then Jaina miraculously heals Anakin of his mortal wounds and all is right in the world.

And this is straight from the ERC, and Troy Denning's outline for Invincible that he first turned in.

CT-867-5309

Yeah but something like JINO won't work now. If Episode VII had another Jacen as the protagonist, Denning won't be able to derail him and kill him off because he would rather resurrect another character and write about him instead.

 

Wat.

 

I have a review of tjk over at goodreads. If you dislike the jacen direction then don't read. I'll post something more substanial tonight when I'm not on my nook. Hooray, first tapatalk post, boo, no blue.

 

Seriously, wat? That crap series was supposed to lead up to a bad time-travel plot? What's next, a transporter malfunction?

 

Got it one. Once an author has a sufficient fan base within a franchise they can decide to use that to make demands other authors would not and, due to their ability to command sales via that fanbase, get those demands accepted.

Now, if it turns out, their ideas are 100% brilliant 100% of the time there's no problem with this.... But no one's that good. Strange as it sounds, what links Denning and Zahn is coming a cropper on their own mythology.

In this respect, I have to give Luceno, JJM, Ostrander and Allston due credit - those guys really know how to collaborate on a shared universe.

 

The thing I've always wondered about is how Denning was able to get that kind of editorial monopoly in the first place. He doesn't have that sort of fanbase.