Lit FOTJ–what people dislike about it

I see no one's mentioned Mindor yet. Tut, tut.

 

Yes, Mindor.

 

Well when I said KJA, I think what I really meant was the Jedi Academy Trilogy and Darksaber.

Post-ROTJ definitely has more duds in it than the OT EU, the Dark Times EU, the Clone Wars EU, the pre-TPM EU, or the Old Republic EU. Because most people either hate everything after The Unifying Force, or they hate everything after Vector Prime.

 

The OT EU is mostly comics and YA books, with very few full-length novels, most of which are very recent (Shadows of the Empire and Splinter of the Mind's Eye being the main exceptions.

Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine seems to be one of the most notorious OT EU books. I personally found it a little dry but not horrible.

 

No Mindor?

 

The post-ROTJ EU novels takes up at least half of all EU novels. If you hardly like any of them, there's a very narrow area that you do like.

 

Not all clone wars and preclone wars books were good.

 

Seeing how the Rebellion became the dominant power in the galaxy, how the Empire was defeated, how the Jedi came back makes the Post ROTJ era my favorite era.

 

I don't think anyone really likes Jedi Trial, among Clone Wars books - the kindest thing said about it is typically that it's mediocre but not horrible.

 

Umm...I do.

 

Yeah best thing about it was corran's grandad. There was a novel around tpm and it was not great. Approaching Storm??

 

Jedi Trial wasn't bad, but it really read like it should've been longer and more detailed. It had some good moments though. I'd say I like it as well.

 

Interesting - I liked bits of it, called it "not horrible"- and tended to say "it's not that bad" when people bring it up as "worst SW book" - but it's interesting to see even warmer words than that for it.

 

I like it too.

 

I thought it did a good job of fleshing out Luminara and Barriss. Liked the "evening entertainment" uses of the Force, for example. Levitating self, and sand, spinning, while weaving the sand in complicated patterns in the air at the same time - seemed like a manifestation of great control.

 

Agreed, but there weren't any terrible multi-book series there either.

And my biggest problem with it is that as soon as all of the above happened, they set about systematically destroying it. The NR gets owned by the Vong, and are replaced with the bastion of idiocy that is the GA, the Empire becomes non-evil and competent, and everyone hates the Jedi.

Then eventually we get Legacy with ten billion Darths running around ruling the galaxy, their biggest opposition being the non-evil Empire, and the Jedi got wiped out again.

 

The galaxy still had a lot of problems after the end of the Galactic Civil War. All of the damage Palpatine has done since before the Clone Wars wasn't going to go away overnight. Bail, Mon Mothma, Leia, Luke, Han and company did their job but that doesn't mean that Borsk and company did their job. Was the United States able to stand on its own two feet after the American Revolution? Nope. The Founding Fathers and the next generation had to keep the work up. And with the Vong running around I can see the NR falling. The Jedi getting lambasted is getting old but people still being suspicious after the Clone Wars through the New Jedi Order's first challenge makes sense imo.

Legacy came after the NJO, which with the Vong war, might cause Krayt's numbers to rise. And don't forget the Lost Tribe. Krayt was one last effect of Palpatine. Works for me. The Jedi weren't as bad off in Legacy as they were in ROTS.

 

It's probably mostly nostalgia–it was one of the first full-length SW novels I ever read, when I was probably eleven or twelve years old. The only books I'd read before that were possibly the Enemy Lines duology. At that age, you can ignore some of the silliness that's intrinsic in the book (like Erk and Odie...having those names) and just enjoy a simple war novel. To me, even to this day, it's an overall fun novel with some silly points, but nothing any sillier than some of the Bantam-era books–certainly it's less silly than Courtship.

 

MINDOR FOREVAH.




*ahem*

 

I can see it, that doesn't mean I like it.

 

Content wise Crucible is the worst imo. Reading wise, the worst is Planet of Twilight imo.

 

It might be because it was one of the first few EU books I read at the library - but I liked Planet of Twilight. Mostly for its depiction of Leia though.

 

When I was that age I read the AOTS novelization, and that was what hooked me on Star Wars for good. I can't tell you how many times my BFF and I read the Courtship of Princess Leia. Or YJK for that matter, which was definitely silly. Silliness FTW.

 

It seems nostalgia can make us overlook a lot of mistakes, eh? In fact, that's even the case with FOTJ–probably the reason I enjoy the first few books as much as I do, despite their flaws, is that I read them when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, before I read most of NJO, and thus had nothing better to compare them to.

 

I left work at an odd time today, and the Barnes & Noble is right there at my bus stop, so I used up the 40-ish minutes flipping through a copy of Crucible, just like I said I would. Turns out I wasn't so much grossed out by the descriptions themselves as I was rolling my eyes at how often the carnage happened. I was like, "Am I reading about SW characters here or crash test dummies?" Srsly.