essential new jedi order books

have started reading the new jedi order books but was just wondering which was the most essential books to read to follow the storyline without reading them all?

cheers for any help

 

Certainly Vector Prime is a must, into's many important characters.
Then on to Dark tide one and two..............ah all the books are nessesary though parts of certain books could certainly be skipped. If this is spoiler free I could offer a bit more but I don't want to give away anything if your not familiar with the stories. Post if you dont mind a spoiler or two.....

 

well am up to star by star and wondered what books were not so essential to the story sfter that. please try to avoid spoilers after star by star

thanks again

 

Read Traitor, Destiny's Way, FHIII and The Unifying Force.

Enemy Lines Duology can be skipped without missing much in the overall story.

Same with Dark Journey.

Force Heretic 1 and 2 can be skipped. Luke and Co's story/mission in 'Reunion' is essential. I wouldn't try to read only the third book of a trilogy, but if you really want to go bare bones...

The Final Prophecy can probably be skipped, too.

 

Honestly, at this point I would recommend just reading all of them, since IMO the quality of the series is much more consistently good in the second half of the series.

However if you must skip, here are my suggestions:

The most skippable is probably the next one, Dark Journey, which is fairly short, but most people here seem to hate. I for one enjoyed it, but there was very little that actually happened in it, and I think that you'd pick up after it pretty quick.

Now, the Enemy Lines Duology I think is technically skippable, but they really are great reads. It really comes down to: are you reading these books to get through the story, or are you reading them to enjoy? If you are reading them to enjoy, you must read Enamy Lines. If not, I suppose you could skip them, although I'm still not sure I'd reccomend it, because it has the return of a lot of old faces, and is a nice counter to the depressing end of SbS.

Traitor is a must. If you haven't read this, you haven't read the NJO. Plain and simple.

Destiny's Way is also pretty important plot wise, and IMO a very fun read, so don't skip it.

The Force Heretic Trilogy is iffy. As people have said, there are some important plot points in the third one. Some people find this series boring, but I really really liked it. It shows the effects of the war on some of the factions that have so far been ignored. So it features a lot of returns from the Bantam era, and even some returns from earlier in the NJO. Also the Nom Anor storyline is pure gold. These books are a little slower pace, but I really enjoyed them. Though I suppose you could more or less figure out the important plot points for Luke and co from the next book in the series, which is:

The Final Prophecy. It is a really great book, and pretty important, as it leads almost directly into the start of TUF. Not to mention it is just a really good read. If you enjoyed the Edge of Victory duology, you'll enjoy this.

TUF is essential. Duh.

 

Well thanks for that guys gonna go for taritor, destinys way, unifying force and final prophecy.

thanks again

 

Also, did you catch Rogue Planet? It's not officially part of the series but was unofficially a lead in to NJO.

 

The FH Trilogy, while it is "skippable" to a degree as others have mentioned, always struck me as somewhat unique in the NJO series -- while they are still obviously part of the over-arching series, they almost seemed at times to be a trilogy set within the NJO-framework but also distinctly seperate from it. Yes, there's still Vong-ness going on, the war's still happening and all that, and the search for Sekot is essential to the series, but the trilogy was something of a throwback -- adventures of Our Heroes(tm) that was outside the war in general. That's what i think makes them skippable (unless say, you're a big Tahiri fan; then they cannot be missed) -- in certain respects they're almost self-contained.