Yeah, probably/hopefully just means that this book will explain why the Big Three are missing in the Jaina SOTJ series.
I for one am pleased that Golden is doing SotJ more than Denning for one reason only; Golden writes the Lost Tribe better. Denning writes them as bog-standard black robed Sith who have wear glass daggers. He never wrote a scene from the perspective of the Circle or the Sith leadership, and at best we have a single High Lord or High Lady running around who doesn't appear to have a general grasp of strategy or be presenting the view that they do. Golden wrote Kesh in Omen and Ascension very well. Denning didn't even reference the Sith task forces Gavar stole, so we are to purely assume Abeloth brought it back with her when she took over. With regards to Crucible itself, I still contend that Luke, Leia and Han will be focusing on Darth Krayt, and their presence elsewhere will force the Lost Tribe to keep from focusing on the NJO in the same logic that they cannot focus on Coruscant; the flanking attack.
Jennifer Heddle is currently responding to a handful of diversity questions I raised on the SW Books Facebook page. There could be more coming, but there's at least one newsworthy bit already:
I will admit that I'm incredibly sad to see this novel. Sending off my favorite character, eh, not really sure what else there is to look forward to. TBPH they have done jack squat as far as creating new younger characters that I can really care about the way that Luke captured my imagination. So yes, another Big 3 novel is great, but it has that bittersweet tinge to it, being their last big hurrah before they're stuffed in the closet for less interesting (to me at least) characters to take the forefront. Let's hope there's at least going to be something for me to look forward to going forward. Never thought I'd live to see the day they sidelined Luke for good. Also, the fact that the last real Big 3 novel is being written by my absolute least favorite Star Wars author of all time does not give me much optimism. Sorry.
I'm glad to see them confirming that this is indeed the plan. Having said that, "a bit" leaves it entirely open for this to be a one time deal, and them just go back to the spotlight again after Sword of the Jedi.
dewback_rancher It won't be the last big three novel. It'll just hopefully be the last geriatric big three novel.
Eh, after reading Exile by Allston I don't really want this novel. I found the Big Three's scenes to be boring (Han and Leia's more) and wasn't too impressed with Tempest. Hopefully the post SOTJ series isn't all about them.
I simply want to see where the 3 of them are going to be at the end of the novel. Beyond that, I can't look forward to anything else in the current era at the moment. They've done nothing to make me care about the current generation of Jedi and they haven't bothered to create a new generation for Ben.
Troy Denning makes me appreciate the Bantam years and NJO more than ever. Crucible sounds good, but I bet it'll change plot direction halfway through like LOTF and FOTJ have under Denning's leadership
Sword of the Jedi presaging a greater focus on younger generation: in that "flagship" series, yes. The Big Three will still be around but there's a reason we're giving them a big rousing adventure in CRUCIBLE, b/c they will then fade into the background a bit to let the younger generation come into their own. I truly hope they're serious about the younger generation coming into their own. More than anything I would love to see Ben finally start developing relationships with people outside of his father and rest of his family and be much more than just Luke Skywalker's son.
How self-serving of Kyle to be pleased with Luke's retirement... is he planning to stand for Grand Master or something?
Given the existence of the Rebels books, I get the sense that the Big Three will be just as prominent in the book line as they've always been, they're just going to work with them in other eras for a while. Which I am totally fine with. And we have to admit; as much as we're tired of then, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot to stop putting out Big Three books altogether. Keeping them out of the Legacy Era is all I ask.
Which makes the era all the less interesting for me. Let's face it, the Legacy Era is a giant mess, and now I don't even have good Luke stories to look forward to in the era. And then there's the Legacy comic, which let's face it, no one's ever going to make me like. Sorry to its fans, but I put it on a pedestal with The Force Unleashed 1/2 as far as "things I loathe". Bleh. Hard to get any excitement in the Legacy Era. First time I can say that about any era in the timeline.
I have no problem with a good Luke story (see: Mindor), but I would argue that making such a thing gets harder and harder the further past TUF you get. Do you really want Luke still saving the galaxy when he's 80?
Cooper: Unfortunately, the only era they seem to keep putting the Big Three into, is the Rebellion era, and that era is already over-loaded, in my opinion. Plus, Luke isn't a Jedi and can't even use the Force much at all in that era, so a big part of what I like about Luke is missing. As I've said before, I like the combination of Jedi Master and Farmboy. When one of those parts is missing, I find it disappointing. I have to agree with Dewback rancher. Without Luke, Leia, and Han, the Legacy era isn't all that appealing to me. Del Rey has done a lousy job of creating and developing new characters, in my opinion, so there's no one I'm really all that excited about following. The way their characters have been handled, I'm only mildly interested in Jaina and Ben, (and to a lesser degree, Raynar) and not at all interested in any of the other "next generation" characters. Like Dew, I'm not a fan of the Legacy comics either. Despite what everyone keeps saying, that series is far too close to the FotJ series, and it does limit what the authors can do in that era. It also negatively impacts Luke's era and the legacy of Luke, Leia, and Han. Worst of all, it gives us a VERY depressing future of that GFFA. Things don't get better; they get worse, and I find that very disappointing. Why not? Yoda was still active in his 800's! I know he was a different species, but Dooku was active in his 90's. When 120 is about the average lifespan and Jedi can live even longer, 80 is not that old. And Luke is currently in his early 60s..
And he's been in some war or conflict or another since he was 20. That's 60 years. I can suspend my disbelief only so much. At this point he's been in some conflict or another for 40 years. That's ridiculous. How does he not have PTSD? Add on another 20 years, that is absurd.
And this is the reality colliding with the fantasy of pulp heroes! Most series have solved it by either not aging the heroes, retiring them and jumping forward to the next generation. Oddly enough SW EU fans seem resistant to both, while the EU itself has aged the heroes greatly while not retiring them! It's a gigantic mess! Thing is, I have difficulty picturing Luke, Han and Leia 25 years later, never mind 40+! I'm pretty much with Coop on this one, let's have more stories set in earlier times, so long as they're good ones.
Yeah. The problem, I think, is that the EU spent too long showing us the unfolding adventures of Luke, Han and Leia while trying (fairly half-heartedly) to wean people off the characters, gradually. I suspect that had they just bitten the bullet and done things the way the Avatar franchise (and, eventually, SW:Legacy) did, "passing the torch" would have been much simpler. After TUF (though I'd have preferred it to have happened after the HoT duo, if I'm honest), what really needed to happen was a giant timeskip to a point where the Big Three were almost entirely out of the picture, the next generation were clearly the main authority figures and heroes of the setting and they were passing the torch on to the teenaged/young adult generation after them. I mean, had the Avatar franchise NOT skipped ahead seventy years to Korra, and instead focused on the continuing escapades of Aang as the means to advance the timeline while trying to pass the torch onto the next generation, we'd probably have a massive group of people who simply refused to let Aang and his contemporaries go. "Why do we need another Avatar? Aang's only 70! Avatar Kyoshi lived into her 200s! Aang should still be the hero! Tenzin and Lin are cool, but they're no Aang and Toph!" (Not a perfect example, since as the Avatar, Aang should always be at the forefront as long as he lives -- but you get what I mean, I'm sure ) As it stands, instead we have people excited about all the characters, from each generation, and not just those who kicked the whole thing off. Which is a fantastic state for the franchise to be in, IMO. There's also no need to worry that the "middle generation" of Tenzin, Lin, Bumi and the like will be squandered, or won't come into their own, because we've already seen that they aren't and do.
It's Catch22 for the publishers. The earlier era is completely jam-packed. They would have to completely erase swaths of story to go back & that would then have the effect of disturbing the continuity that comes after. They've already felt the heat of angry fans who do not want one single thing they like thrown into question (did it happen or not?) I don't think they're going to try rewriting the post ROTJ storyline right now. If they don't succeed in making the series fresh & exciting, the Post-Jedi timeline will have to be dropped, at least on the level of publication it's been on, cranking out series after series. And they can't plausibly have the Big 3 at the heart of every conflict as they get older & older. I think the idea here is simply to use them more sparingly while making an attempt to push their original characters forward. That's a decent, logical, safe plan of attack.
The problem Uli is that Legacy did that timejump and what happened? That firestorm's still raging! NJO was a missed opportunity, with a strange adversarial relationship between the generations that, to me, didn't work given who the older generation was comprised of. Despite that, the time to really bring those characters to the fore and recover from those is-steps, was post-NJO and that didn't happen as DR lost their nerve completely, which still makes no sense to me. You pull off a super-long series with a finale even its biggest critics love and you decide to throw the entire thing out the nearest window? Crazy. What buys me is that between the various moves made by various EU creators and the tendencies of fandom, the EU is systematically boxed in with none of the usual escape routes. Not good.
