Lit Reading NJO...Again

For me, the TFA soundtrack.
Jaina Solo with I Can Fly Anything
Jedi Steps with Jacen at the end of Traitor.
March of the Resistance with the Insiders.
The Falcon for the Falcon.
The Starkiller for the destruction of any planet.
Han and Leia for them.
The Ways of the Force for feats with the Force.

Etc.

 

Rogue Planet is an OK read as a stand-alone - but I still would argue that the NJO is best read as a post-ROTJ story - almost keep it in greater isolation from the rest of the EU for fear of weakning it. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Rogue Planet read like YA?

EU is always lauded with trying for this massive continuity/consistency thing but DNT, LOTF etc.. proved that they couldn't pull this off in a compelling way.
As a reader, you just start retconing things in your mind after a while because the only thing you are left with is the literal plot, but all of the development falls flat.

 

For those interested, a couple years back at Salt Lake Comic Con, there was a discussion with Salvatore and Stackpole on the creation and first few novels in the NJO. People posting here might find it an interesting listen: http://fullofsith.com/archives/1515

 

Glad to see this thread exists. I may very well re-read the series again as well. I currently am working on a video game adaptation of the NJO so that is taking some of my time. But I am very glad to see interest in NJO continues! I will definitely be checking in on this thread with great interest.

 

Sounds great, xezene. How did that video game idea come about?

I wonder how "abridged" you will make it. Curious as to how people consider the "fast-track" NJO version - i.e. only read the initial hardback releases.
Odd that this has been suggested often to first-time readers of the NJO - yet the only reason I can think of wanting to rush through it is that you are desperate to get to the DNT/LoTF.

 

That sounds bloody fantastic

 

Yes, I would love to play that game!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the positive words guys! I am looking forward to it as well.

As I got into the unbelievably expansive world of Battlefront II [2005] modding -- there are literally hundreds of worlds of maps to play (satisfies the EU lover in me), some still getting cranked out as we speak -- I realized no one had ever done a serious NJO adaptation, not even in mod form. A few had tried [X-Wing Alliance mod team only got so far before throwing in the towel] but had not succeeded. Then this led me to a larger revelation which is that the NJO didn't seem to get any video game representation whatsoever. Knowing that its been almost 15 years since the NJO finished, and now that the franchise is in different hands, I kinda came to the conclusion that the NJO era may not get made unless I made it. So, over the course of the past year, I've been teaching myself bit by bit how to mod and do the different things to make it a reality. I know some strategy games like Empire at War do have people who are trying to make this era, but for me I've always felt that to get a sense of NJO you have to be IN the war [like in Battlefront], as the characters, seeing the mayhem for yourself.

Overall it just comes down to the fact that when I read the NJO I wished there was a game of it, and there never was. Now hopefully NJO -- and the important characters and battles of it -- will finally get its video game representation. The BFII engine can surprisingly handle a lot, so the scale of the battles I can generally preserve (including ground-to-air and/or ground-to-space), though I may have to abridge some of the unbelievably gigantic Coruscant battles. xD

 

That suits the tone of the NJO, excellently, I think. Hope the project goes well.

I find it surprising they never pushed much other media out there that tied into the NJO - they kept it strictly in the readable format, rather than go out for an all out multimedia campaign - unlike say Shadows of the Empire as probably the most familiar example on the N64.

 

Yeah, the PT was very much the focus at that time. Maybe if the PT had started a few years later, it would have been different.

 

Just finished Vector Prime. I'm cheating some...abridged audiobook. Blech...I am so anti-abridged...but apparently also a hypocrite.

It's a really short abridgement too, a little over 3 hours. So really just bare bones of the story. I wonder why they made that decision?

In any case, they did a decent job of hitting on the main story points.

Granted, it has been more than 15 years since I read the book. So in ways it was a new experience. Chewie's death scene is really good. ***spoiler?*** Lol. Also, Han's grief/semi-ptsd is extremely interesting. And the Mayor of Sernpidal...lol.

Well...on to the final Stackpole Star Wars books.

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

I might hold off judgement until you're through Agents of Chaos. That turns up Han's grieving mode to maximum.

Never listened to the abridgements - besides the infamous abridged audio for SBS which manages to eliminate 50% of the plot from the novel. Who is the reader, Anthony Heald? He did much of the old Bantam's audio-book run.
When they started up all the unabridged audio with Marc Thompson, they actually went back and did unabridged versions of SotP/VotF yet neglected everything else. How odd.

 

Yeah, I think Luceno's introduction of Droma was so well done, it's interesting to read how these two characters, who spend most of the time arguing with each other, help each other deal with loss and tragedy, and form a strong friendship by the end.

 

I'd love to see more adventures with just Han and Droma.

 

The New Jedi Order is the pinnacle of post ROTJ EU. Nothing else matches it in terms of scope, ambition, and result.

 

I'm reading through The New Jedi Order for the first time at the moment, since getting into the EU at the end of last year, but my read through is going quite slow since I have to wait for each book to arrive in the mail one at a time. Right now I've finished Star by Star and am waiting for Dark Journey. I think it's a pretty awesome series so far.

 

Oddly, I just started re-reading NJO on a whim using my local digital library connection, but slightly out of order...I started with Vector Prime, natch, but had to wait for Balance Point - Ruin....so I skipped to Agents of Chaos I. Han just rubs me the wrong way in that...maybe he's supposed to. At least he was able to find some accord with Anakin.

I felt the whole plot with the 'defecting' Priestess just seemed pointless...especially since she just died at the end of book 1...what was the point? It took us nowhere, I didn't learn anything new about either the Vong or the Republic, and seemed a rather cheesy way to end. I agree with Smuggler, though...Droma is a fun character to read.

An aside on Chewbacca: wasn't Luke originally planned to die in Prime? Or was that in the video Brule posted? My computer here has no sound, so I don't bother with watching video on it.

 

Oh... Um... Good luck.

Just remember you've got one of the best books in the series after it - Rebel Stand.

 

Agents of Chaos was originally going to be a single paperback that followed up the Dark Tide trilogy. When DT was compressed into two, AOC was expanded into two. My guess is that Elan and Vergere were the titular "Agents of Chaos" when it was just one book, and that their storyline would have concluded the novel. I didn't see it as taking the plot nowhere --- it's a scheme by the Vong that fools New Republic Intelligence and can only be thwarted by Han, who is trying his best to stay away from the war but is gradually realizing that he can't. And you really didn't learn anything new about the Vong? Elan's storyline introduced us to the Priest caste, and to Vergere, both of which become very important as the series proceeds.

 

NRI under Cracken might've likely seen through the ruse but it appears Dif Scaur was more interested in getting face to face with the enemy, little realising that is exactly what the Yuuzhan Vong wanted. As shown in Dark Tide, the Jedi and the New Republic Fleet were fooled, Agents of Chaos showed that NRI was fooled twice over. It didn't take until Star by Star for the Senate to be fooled and almost obliterated (which would've been nice).

 

Dark Journey is actually way underrated (and Rebel Stand slightly overrated) imo.

 

Wasn't Dark Journey tonally off, and factually a little sloppy? Not to say the fiction was not credit worthy - it just didn't seem to add anything, one of those sapping books like Force Heretic. I can't really remember - I only read it the once.

This is the one that tried to be a bizarre counterpoint character piece for Jaina in contrast to Jacen.
Trip What's your reason for thinking it underrated? Very short book if I remember correctly.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by tonally off; by factually sloppy I assume you mean in how it lines up with the end of Star by Star, which is true-- neither Rebel Stand nor DJ mesh super well with the end of SbS, probably because the first two pick up immediately after the end of the latter and were written at the same time.

Anyway I like it because it deals really well with the aftermath of Myrkr, lets us get to see more of who Jaina is (important since up till this point she's had the least pagetime of the Solo kids), brings Kyp and Jag into the picture, and yeah works pretty well as a companion to Traitor. Cunningham isn't as talented an author as Stover so it obviously suffers in comparison to his prose, and yeah, it's fairly short (so is Traitor, though it doesn't feel like it) but it's pretty good for what it is.

(I think Force Heretic is underrated too, incidentally-- maybe not the most interesting books plotwise, but full of pretty great character moments. Dark Journey is similar.)

 

I can agree with you on that last point - Heretic did have good moments - earlier as a I recall - books 1 and 2 were OK. The issue is that for every good character moment, there's one bad/reductive one. I found Tahiri's entire arc in that trilogy to undermine the significance of her Vong capture - or at least it was at odds with her characterization in the earlier novels post Edge of Victory.

Pagetime for Jaina - a plus - but did we really need it on a background of some bizarre courtly romance theme, mixed with Vong action? That's what I mean by tonally off. I find the mixture a bit nauseating. Maybe if they'd developed some of the political Hapes subplots etc. but it all ended up stranded in this novel, never to be expanded upon or tied up. The characterization isn't nearly as exciting as Anakin's and Jacen's (Conquest and Traitor respectively), purely because it is building off rather simplistic and shallow themes - Jacen and Anakin had an established continuity of their philosophical standpoints. Jaina is merely bereaved and suffering emotional shock of a recent loss (+ the romance) - that doesn't offer much scope for development in my opinion. I disliked Han's arc in Agents of Chaos for the same reasons.

This was soap space opera pushed to the (wrong) limits - but just my opinion. Heretic wasn't badly written.

 

yeah i think it's totally fair to not really dig the Hapan stuff, and if you don't, then the book obviously isn't going to work. I don't think the book is "just" about Jaina's grief over Anakin any more than Traitor is just about Jacen's, though. Like, that's the catalyst, of course, but a big part of it is her learning to deal with her grief (and dark thoughts stemming from the grief) by allowing herself to lean on others-- Kyp and Jag-- which is interesting because it's basically the opposite of Jacen's lesson, which was to turn inward to deal with his grief. But the reason for this is that Jaina is a very self-reliant person who doesn't open up to others or rely on them, whereas Jacen's this big empathic mess who has trouble figuring out where he ends and others begin sometimes. It's also the book where she kind of breaks, finally, with her parents (with a bookend scene in one of the EL books where she lets Mara go) which is something that'll have huge ramifications down the road with the second Empire and all (unfortunately this wasn't really expanded on at all in post-NJO stuff but meh you can extrapolate from Legacy and that's what headcanon's for).

Also the ball scene is admittedly cheesy (though i love it tbh) but the reason it happens is because Jaina's being Jaina and avoiding dealing with her brother's death-- remember, Kyp has to come and basically drag her to his funeral.