Books "Sword of the Jedi" trilogy would be over by now...

The Lost Tribe short stories also bothered to actually treat the culture of Kesh as a thing in and of itself, instead of All Sith Are The Same.

 

I consider Ascension to be the worst SW novel ever. Elections for Chief of State were written as High School Student Council Elections in complete earnestness, there was a laughably bad attempt at a space battle full of nonsensical things happening without any real sense of how or why they were happening, Luke was consistently written as a cold jackass, the Ben-Vestara romance felt like it was written with seven-year-olds as the target audience, Vestara's murder of her own father was brushed over and not given any emotional weight, the story arcs of Gavar Khai and Lord Vol both fizzled into nothingness, storylines such as the collapse of Lecersen's plot were rushed through in too short periods of time... the list goes on an on.

The first two weren't much better. Omen was barely 200 pages and fizzled into a climax-less ending, with a Jedi-going-mad plotline on Coruscant identical to Outcast's, very poor Jaina characterization, an Aing-Tii plotline full of telling rather than showing, and an obligatory and not-at-all-interesting backstory for the villains. Allies had awful prose, terrible similies, lazy research, scores of grammatical errors, a head-desking attempt at a romance, awkward references to moments from the films, and awkward POV switches.

Allston's and Denning's books weren't much better. But Golden's were especially bad.

 

I ended up throwing in the Lost Tribe stories on whim in order to get free shipping on an order from Barnes & Noble, and boy was I glad I did when I finally end up reading them. JJM did such a splendid job of exploring how a dark side culture would develop in an isolated setting.

 

I honestly think the Lost Tribe stories were BETTER then the rest of the series. Though I did like the first two books even if they weren't great, think it really went south when they said 'mad jedi caused by ancient evil'. I honestly remember very little about the series after the second book.

I was looking forward to the Lost Tribe more then the jedi hahah

 

If they planned DNT/LOTF/FOTJ out from the start and tied things together, the era could have been amazing imo.

They really needed to do the Jaina SOTJ trilogy 10 years ago instead of in 2014.

 

I had no more luck with the Lost Tribe than I did the other stories featuring them, but at least they were the central feature there.

In FOTJ the Lost Tribe were essentially cannon fodder for the Jedi Order. I don't recall a the Lost Sith killing even a single Jedi(the Jedi took care of that themselves) but maybe I'm forgetting something. I feel like it would be pretty hard to work with neutered villains of that nature.

I think the Mandalorians killed more Jedi than the Lost Sith did in that series........silly Karen Traviss and her Mando loving writing..................

 

I like positive Zeta. You should try more things on a whim.

 

Man, Unofficial NJO Homepage... now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Same with the Unofficial NJO Encyclopedia, I remember following them for a long time, and how as FOTJ went on, that seemed to be the thing that finally killed off enthusiasm for it. And now the forum and the main page alike aren't even up any more.

But yes, I think that Knightfall in particular would have been very interesting and is one of the most mourned canceled work. Giving Danni Quee something to do and a much-needed focus of her own, and the droid rights storyline which I think was one of the most original idea seeds in the NJO. A shame.

As for Escape from Dagu, I guess I'm in the minority but I actually don't mind Dietz's work. It is what it is, spinoffs of spinoffs, and with that qualifier, I had no big problem with his Dark Forces or Halo stuff. It's also funny that the didn't think Shaak Ti could support her own spinoff, given how prominent she got in just a few years (Clone Wars cartoon, multiple ROTS cut scenes, TFU, even choosing her species for Ahsoka).

Yeah, Mandorla is by far the cut novel that I am upset about the most (especially given pretty much all other cut stuff I don't really care all that much about at all).

It's especially clear when you consider how it was used. If I recall right, after it gets established in Destiny's Way, the phrase is only used once more in the NJO, a single time in TUF. After that, it doesn't get brought up again until Tempest, at which point it just dominates every aspect of Jaina's depiction.

It's funny - just as LOTF, and then FOTJ, escalated how aimless the stories themselves were, there was increasing coordination in how they all tied in with each other. LOTF, Millennium Falcon, FOTJ, the Jaden Korr duology, Mercy Kill, and the Lost Tribe novellas all had stuff referencing each other and picking up plot points other ones dropped (not that that is a good thing that those plot points got so sloppy).

 

I don't have much of an opinion on Dietz myself, because I haven't gotten around to reading much of his work, I ended up reading the third Dark Forces novella, Jedi Knight, not aware it was about the Ruusan section of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II instead of Jedi Outcast, which was what I was familiar with. Halo novels are on my list of things to read, though probably not anything beyond the first 6 novels, and the anthology, Halo: Evolutions, which I have read, since I have lost interest in the direction of Halo under 343i. I was mainly going on the apparent trend between Escape from Dagu and Mass Effect: Deception.

 

Eric Nylund's three Halo novels were all pretty good (by the standards of being video game spinoff novels, of course). But I think he's pretty good at "big concept" scifi which lends himself to some of the stuff in Halo. I remember reading his Signal to Noise/A Signal Shattered duology in the late 90s and would recommend them. There are aspects of them that I think actually can be seen in his Halo works.

To connect him to Star Wars, Nylund also wrote the Battlestar Galactica: Cylon War comic for Dynamite, which was illustrated by Joshua Ortega, who also illustrated the KOTOR prequel comic from Star Wars Tales.

 

And that's the problem right there. Heck, we have the evidence staring us in the face - look at Aaron Allston, arguably one of the best SW novelists, and his FOTJ novels. Considering that we have Mercy Kill as evidence that his writing ability hadn't declined, I'm amazed about how much Del Rey and LFL evade taking any of the blame for the post-NJO metaplots.

 

I hardly disagree, but the point is this trilogy looked very strongly to continue those metaplots.

 

I love the promo cover for SOTJ

but man that's either some strong wind or an excess of hairspray

 

Wow, this thread has certainly brought up some memories. I was sorely disappointed that Blood Oath was cancelled, especially after the set up in Invincible. Instead of getting to see Zekk's story played out, he and the twins got stuck returning in the midst of Fate of the Jedi, with what happened to him having been brushed off completely.

Then Mandorla. It would certainly have been nice to finally see a continuation of Nomi and Vima Sunrider's storylines.

As someone who loved Crosscurrent, Riptide, and TOR: Deceived, I was really excited to hear Kemp was getting to write a duology. And then nothing. I hope eventually, someday, we get some idea as to what the duo would have entailed. Characters, planets, plot inklings- I will forever remained intrigued as to what could have been.

While I understand many don't care for Christie Golden's writings, I would have been interested to see what she could do when she had the ability to come up with a story on her own. All we've gotten from her Star Wars-wise is three novel in the Fate of the Jedi series- a series of which she was brought in to later on, after Karen Travis left- and an adaption of The Clone Wars episode scripts that they never got to. I could be wrong, but I'm thinking she wasn't that involved with the original creation of the Fate of the Jedi storyline, so she never really got a chance, imo, to show what she could do on her own. She got stuck telling/continuing others' stories, and the Sword of the Jedi trilogy could have changed things around. Alas...

 

Anyone have info on the comic The Hatred Vector?
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Hatred_Vector

Or any other comics?

 

I don't necessarily disagree with you, just that it was possible that it could be not terrible.

 

Ugh, I hated those guys.

 

I sold off all my post-NJO novels off to a second hand book store because there was no way I could ever look at them again after the mess it made of Star Wars continuity.

 

Eric Nylund is the main reason why I want to read Halo novels, with The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole from Halo: Evolutions having already done a splendid job of making me a fan. I think Nick would enjoy that story.

 

Did you visit the forums there? UNJOH was my first big involvement in any forum. Man, those were some weird times.

 

Thought I'd left a post here. Oh, well.

I would've liked to have seen this book series get made, but since by all accounts it was canceled when it was just just 12 percent of a book (barely a concept), why did this become the holy grail of canceled Legends stuff, when there's other things that were finished or almost finished but never released? What's so special about it?

On the other hand, we now have a trilogy in theaters that has a female Jedi as the lead, who's living in the same general timeframe, and is a mechanic to boot. As far a consolation prizes go, I have seen worse. (Yeah, I'm going to get hate mail for this, but whatever.)

 

Because people who hadn't already been completely repulsed by the post-NJO era, for some bizarre reason wanted proper closer for the era.

 

Wasn't Crucible the thing that gave closure (of some kind, at least?).

 

No. The galaxy was still in darkness and the Big 3 stepped down. Abeloth, Krayt, Vestara and who knows whatever else.

You want closure? The Unifying Force.