Lit The Dark Nest Trilogy - worth reading?

Well, good luck. You're gonna need it.

 

Or the Leg comics because like Mercy Kill they actually had Vong in them!

 

Hopefully the new canon will avoid these 180's in character actions.

 

Going on 19.

 

Pretty much, which is why I say it's really not necessary. The most important things (Not going to list them for the sake of the OP, as he hasn't read it yet and I don't enjoy spoiling) can really just be told to you by someone else, or looked up, and you can move on without ever having read the novels. Even if someone doesn't tell them to you, DNT is barely referenced in LOTF. Jacen and Tenl Ka is something i'm sure all of us saw from a mile away. Allana's really the only new thing by the time of LOTF, and she is again explained within the novels, as is Ben and his close relationship with Jacen.

Jedi Ben Yeah, I thought DNT dealt with the Young Jedi Knights in a terrible manner, pushing the Big 3 back into the spotlight by changing Jacen completely and then having the others become unlikable Joiners.

 

I read the first Dark Nest book having not read any of the New Jedi Order, nor any Star Wars books save Heir to the Empire (which I found dull in the extreme) and Shadows of the Empire (which I found pointless).

As such it made little sense to me, but with it's thousands of characters and endless Jedi and references to previous events, it served to illustrate just how bogged down in it's own continuity the EU had become, when Star Wars should be accessible.

 

As someone who has read - and survived - such outstanding SW-novels like Crystal Star, Planet of Twilight, The New Rebellion and The Bounty-Hunter War-trilogy I can say, that DNT is a decent read. Not the cream of the crop, but still enjoyable, if you are willing to overlook some changes/shifting away from NJO.

However you should save yourself the trouble and money and IGNORE everything that comes after, until the Legacy-comics. You will never get those hours of your life back.

 

Why even bother with DNT when TUF is a splendid ending.

 

I've made the observation (or theory) that the entire post-NJO output is not storytelling that exists to tell a good story or even with the primary objective of telling a story at all, but to "set up" the universe the way that certain people want it to be. Dark Nest was setting the stage for JINO/Caedus and LOTF was intended to resurrect Anakin Solo as the protagonist. The actual story is simply a means to these ends, which is why LOTF is such a trainwreck since it was just supposed to build up to Anakin Solo's triumphant resurrection, and having that denied, Denning just killed off Jacen and made the whole thing a pointless endeavor of salting the earth. I think FOTJ was at least partly intended to ensure Jaina didn't become an Imperial Knight, because the story is at the Jedi temple after all.

 

Because we wanted MORE! It wasn't until we saw how bad it was that it was acceptable to end it with TUF.

 

We should have known.

 

The Legacy comics are good. Should just skip everything in between TUF and Legacy:Broken.

 

Of course TUF makes a splendid ending, but with DNT you'll have three more SW-novels, which - while not the best - are a decent enough read against the withdrawl.

 

It just figures that no one could properly follow the NJO, Mercy Kill doesn't really count in my opinion, since it had to deal with the baggage that is the post-NJO.

 

Also I really hate Stealth-X's.

 

I may be alone in this, but I don't think Jacen was too bad in The Joiner King. He definitely wasn't TUF Jacen, but he was at least still feasibly a good guy. Jaina, Zekk, and the others? Couldn't stand them, not in one scene they were in that I can recall. At all. Jaina improved by The Swarm War, but she was pretty much unlikeable through the first two thirds of the trilogy. Which isn't good. Other than Jacen, the only Young Jedi Knight that I remember being likeable was Tahiri. Ironic, considering what happened to her and Jacen later on...

But seriously, this series is okay, but not anywhere near awesome. It's the beginning of the proverbial end, the point at which Jacen begins turning into Caedus, and thus any good in the trilogy is mitigated by that. Also, for my part, I found Alema to be an annoying and unbelievable villain except in a few scenes. She was over-the-top at most points, and I think LOTF handled her far better than this trilogy. Jag, for what little of the series he's in, acts like a total tool, but I still somehow managed to find myself rooting for him over Jaina. Welk was a bland, uninteresting villain killed off too early to have any impact on the story. Lomi is pretty good but she's so busy being in the shadows to do anything interesting beyond being invisible because LOL DOUBTS EVERYWHERE. Raynar was basically the only good or believable villain in the series.

And the basis of the plot. A Chiss/Killik war. Okay, great. Unfortunately, we're apparently supposed to be on the Killiks' side here, when all I wanted all along was to see Jag and his buddies glass each and every Killik planet with extreme prejudice. The Dark Nest thing was brought in to make the rest of the Killiks seem acceptable, I think, but it still failed because whether they were good or bad, the kriffing things were just too creepy to root for. Then there's the aforementioned basis of Lomi's power: doubt. So how does she make Luke Skywalker doubt? By apparently planting evidence that Mara Jade, his wife, killed off his mother. And Luke would believe this...why? And if I remember, I think Alema tried to stir up doubts in Mara that Luke was cheating on her...with Alema. Ew.

But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the last bad thing to come out of the series: Nek Bwu'atu. The guy is karking annoying. I mean seriously, he's so smart, he's such a nice guy, he is at least ten steps ahead of everybody else, he beat the "Thrawn simulator" (lolwut) and despite all that, I wanted to punch the guy in the throat from the moment he was introduced.

Overall, the series' good points are really equaled by its bad points, at least. If you want to read it, go for it, but don't say I didn't warn you.

 

The really sad thing is, that those considerations could have laid the groundwork for some really good stories. Unfortunately we got only a narrow picture or glimpses of the opportunities, those considerations offered, if they weren't wasted outright, by focusing on the Jedi-/SkySolo-family-drama.

And if you want to write a trilogy about the Big Three after NJO, let it take place somewhere before. The NJO was meant as a changing of the guard after all.

 

But the NEW JEDI ORDER was also the longest, most intense series of STAR WARS novels ever written, and the readers–as well as the heroes–needed a break. My story had to be something less than a galaxy-wide war, something on a smaller, less cataclysmic scale.

DNT small scale conflict? Small scale my butt.

 

nah

 

Everyone in DNT kept saying how this was going to be the worst war ever and the whole galaxy was in danger but I didn't get it. Did the Killiks even have spaceships? Oh I guess they take over other people's minds and steal their spaceships. Whatever, they never felt like a believable threat.

 

I thought it was only Jacen who thought it was going to be the worst war ever–and then it turned out later that he was actually seeing the war he caused. Or am I mistaken on that?

 

TheNewEmpire - Read CT's post in the slow tones of an overly-inebriated Lit fan at a bar. Like Jack Nicholson talking about his family in the bar in The Shining. There ya go.

 

Anakin 2.0.