Lit The New Jedi Order Series

Thing about the NJO is, the stuff that isn't majorly plot important is in books that are fantastic, and the stuff that is plot important tends to be in the books that aren't as good. So it's hard to recommend books to skip. Easiest way to do it is read the books that were originally in hardcover + Traitor, and then fill in on the duologies if you like it. the Force Heretic trilogy can be skipped outright.

 

I think the first Force Heretic book was good -- well I liked it when I was 15 -- and it introduces the Zonama Sekot plotline. The second one was unimportant, but I think number three may be worthwhile, or not, Final Prophecy could be completely fine coming after book one.

 

I wasn't talking about the darkness. If I want dark I'll go read twilight.

I was referring to the comment that more people died during the clone wars than the NJO. I just don't think that's accurate is all.

 

Well, my comment was specifically referring to the fact that more named, established characters die on the TV show allegedly for children known as TCW than die in the New Jedi Order series. But the main point is that the NJO isn't darker overall than any other SW media.

 

Thanks for the reactions, I might pick up Vector Prime.

 

I think the NJO is definitely darker, number of deaths notwithstanding. Han's actions after Chewie dies, for example, aren't something you'd find in most pre-NJO SW books, let alone TCW. Same goes for the Yuuzhan Vong torture.

 

Pick it up! Even if only to read THE CHAPTER.

 

There's worse torture in other stories.

 

that is what made it dramatic for once. You did not know who would survive

 

But used far less often, IMO. I doubt there's a single book in the NJO that doesn't reference torture a couple times. The on-screen torture was more graphic than usual and it left deeper psychological and mental scars.

Just out of curiosity, which torture in SW is worse than that in the NJO?

 

When it comes to torture in SW, I was more .... not disturbed but worried for the character I guess, in Black Fleet Crisis when the Yevetha capture Han. That was much more brutal than what we see the Vong do - plus with the Vong you have the religious aspect of it, with the Yevetha is was just because they completely hated everyone different from them.

And Han's reaction to Chewie's death was done pretty well, I really enjoyed that arc.


EDIT: Besides, I think the torture that the Night Lords perform in every single appearance they have in 40k leaves the Vong in the dust.

 

Your mixing two different things. There is a difference between an adventure movie with violence, high body count and gross scenes and a 23 novel series that creates a depressing bleak tone for the universe that continued long after the series was over.

 

Off the top of my head, the aforementioned BFC, the aforementioned SW radio drama, and the worst torture depicted in SW is in X-Wing: Rogue Leader.

And IMO, all were worse than the NJO. The torture in the NJO is pretty tame. Like the Embrace of Pain just causes pain. It doesn't cause permanent infirmities.

And yeah, I always scratch my head when people complain about character arcs.

I don't know what 23 novel series you're talking about.

The NJO wasn't depressing or bleak in overall tone at all, especially its ending, which is probably the best ending in all of Star Wars.

 

Oh I think Han's reaction was great, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about it.

I never read BFC and I'm not sure what 40k is (a game IIRC?), so that may be the cause of our disagreement.

It may be more tame, but that doesn't mean that it isn't far more present in the NJO than it is in other SW works.

Again, I've never experienced the other stories you mention, so our different viewpoints may stem from that. And for the record, I never complained about a character arc. I like the character arcs in the NJO a lot.

 

I guess you have not read the Post NJO Denningverse. Jacen's torture of Ben, Tahiri's torture of Ben and Shevu and the Torture sabaac game in Crucible are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand that are IMO much worse than anything portayed in NJO.

 

Oh yeah I wasn't even trying to name Denningverse stuff.

It always bothered me that in Dark Nest some dude got his ear cut off because he looked like Han Solo.

 

Yes 40k is a tabletop miniatures game. It has it's own huge setting and even more books than Star Wars has (the quality of course is even more all over the place). To give you an idea of what the aforementioned Night Lords are capable of, in one piece of fiction they invaded a hive world (a planet covered in mile high cities) and hacked into the telecommunications networks and broadcast the murder, death and torture as it happened. The Imperium reports after the attack started that fully one-third of the population died from fear itself. Total. Nervous. Shutdown.

TvTropes has a Nightmare Fuel page for 40k that is a mile long. To quote TvTropes on this page:

• In brief, the whole game. On this page, we have named every fighting force, every faction, some of the most significant aspects of the setting, the resident death worlds, and even a food production plant. It's a brutal, horrific place, with more atrocities in a year than we see in a millennium, but remember that in Warhammer 40000, almost all of the evil on the part of heroic characters and factions is necessary giventhe world they live in. Or at least, there have been enough instances where The Extremist Was Right that the "ask questions" part of "shoot first and ask questions later" was forgotten. That should tell you something about what you're about to find.

 

I have read all of those except the Crucible one, I was talking about the pre-NJO in my original post, not Denning's torture playground.

 

That sounds like the YV times a dozen.

 

Well you didn't sepcify that in your post. I assumed you must have been somone who abstained from reading the Denning verse because all the torture in those novels were one of the most distinctive and distasteful elements in Denning's body of work, and a perfect example of torture used more frequently and disturbingly than in NJO.

 

I could've said that more clearly, yeah.
On the contrary, I think Denning's were some of the earliest SW books I read, I must've been 12 or so. (To be fair English isn't my first language, so at age 12 half of what I read probably flew right past me ) I don't mind torture if used effectively in a story (like in Traitor), but some things - like the aforementioned torture of Ben - can hardly be called effective storytelling.

 

Denning's torture scenes are nothing, you should read his emergency C-section in one of the Forgotten Realms books. I think it was 10 pages long (or felt that long) and after a while my eyes started to glaze over. Horrid writing.

 

lol wow

 

That is Warhammer 40k, this is Star Wars. They are different things; I don't want my WH40k in my SW or my SW in my WH40k (even if I admit that some of that SW hope, optimism and ‘we can work together’ would be sometime be nice in 40k)