I feelll like you're all missing one author who, after his latest work, deserves the title of best EU author. James Luceno. Cloak of Deception, Labyrinth of Evil, The Unifying Force, and most awesome of all, Darth Plagueis. Luceno gives you a great plot, with real characters, great twists, and none of the extreme philosophy of Stover. After Darth Plagueis, James Luceno deserves the title of Best EU Author hands down.
All I know about from the Tales from Mos Eisley book is that Wuher grinded up Greedo's body and turned Greedo's carcass into a new drink. That's disgusting and all and extended universe/expaned side stories like that are really unnecessary. Same thing with Tales of the Bounty Hunters and the Tales from Jabba's Palace. Do we really need to read and learn about a story of Weequays in Jabba's palace worshipping some droid or some machine where they think its telling them the future or whatever?
That's kind of the point of an expanded universe though and who knew? Greedo was actually good for something!
It was a Magic 8 Ball, basically. I'm rather happy that TCW shows that not all Weequay are simpletons like Jabba's guards...
I do love Cloak of Deception, it's basically the same plot as TPM, Palpatine creating a crisis to gain more power. The difference with TPM is this a tense, interesting well written story. while the charachters do not act stupid and are sympathetic, What TPM should have been in otherwords.
The Fett stories in TotBH and TfJP are actually written by the same guy, Daniel Keys Moran. I feel like he was pretty much the only Star Wars author who took the time to write Boba Fett as a real character, or at least as an interesting one. I love the Journeyman Protector backstory. They're like some kind of cops or peacekeepers, but Fett doesn't care about the law, he only cares about his own morality and perverse sense of justice. As a young kid, he gets kicked out of both the Journeyman Protectors and the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps because his unyielding self-righteousness keeps leading him to commit murder. As he gets older, he learns to compromise; instead of killing every corrupt person he comes across, he starts working for criminals, because this allows him to bring other, often even worse criminals to justice. Leia even points out his hypocrisy but because he is a sociopath obsessed with his own twisted idea of justice he has no trouble justifying the contradictions in his behavior. It's a much more nuanced and complex take on the character than in... literally every other story to feature Boba Fett.
Unnecessary? Pff. When a character appears on the screen for all of three seconds, they need a backstory.
I love the Tales books and IG-88's story has a certain robotic charm to it, but it's probably Kevin J's worst Star Wars writing. The prose is truly painful.
Writing quality aside, I think The Tale of IG-88 is the epitome of what the EU can do --:-- show how the "big story" we know is at the same time the completely different story of someone else. The victory at Endor accidentally foiling the droid revolution is the retcon of retcons, and it's awesome.
Did we really have to read a chapter about Weequays or Baradas going a little loony when worshipping some weird robot or a machine where they thought it was telling them the future or whatever? Bad enough there was even a whole chapter of a gamorrean guard and Oolah doing whatever she was doing such as an encounter with Luke in the Mos Eisley streets
I'm going to echo @Jedi Ben here- the kind of tales that are found in the anthologies are half of the point of the Expanded Universe, so I don't quite see the problem. Hell, at this point I would much rather have small-scale stories featuring minor characters than another "ZOMG THE GALAXY IS THREATENED BY THE SITH AND ONLY GERIATRIC LUKE SKYWALKER CAN SAVE IT FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME AND WE JUST KILL OFF MORE OF THE NEW GENERATION".
Same here. My copies of all the JAT books are well worn from being well read... back within the first 5 years of when they were published. Now I can't force myself all the way through Jedi Search. And I want to. I want to visualize that stuff re-informed by visuals of Coruscant from the PT etc.... but I just can't get through it. Plus... all that time in the spice mines of Kessel really really really drags. DRAAAAAAAAGS. It always did, I hated those chapters back then, but it's worse now. If you can't visualize it working on film, for the most part, I don't think it should be in a Star Wars book. A month in a prison, most of which is spent in pitch black darkness underground, is awful.
Am I the only one who liked the JAT? Haha.. I just liked the story and the characters. Not Admiral Daala that much, but still. I don't know, I guess that's just me.
No, it really isn't. It's an atrocious story. As someone who doesn't really agree with others when they talk about having their "own canon" (ignoring what they don't like; sorry but it's all or nothing, bud), this is one of my very few (only?) exceptions. This story did not happen.
