Lit The best of the post-NJO series/novels?

What were the best of the post-NJO series/novels, and why?

 

I had tried some of the others but Kemp and Allston's final X-Wing book are the clear winners.

First, all are accessible independently of whether the reader has read DN-LotF.

Kemp brought a different take to Thrawn that fitted well. He then did something different in Riptide by bringing in Wyrrlokk in a way that fitted perfectly to the Legacy comics.

Mercy Kill not only acts as if the Vong war happened, but by its flashback sections, shows how much was still untold of it. Then there was the next generation of Wraiths being every bit as off-kilter as their predecessors.

 

For me, Millennium Falcon is top of the list, followed by Crosscurrent/Riptide and Mercy Kill. They actually tried to tie things together.

 

There are only two books in the whole period that don’t suck, soooooo . . .

Millennium Falcon is a fun, low-stakes adventure that uses Han and Leia well and bounces around through the Falcon’s history in a fun way. It touches on Han and Leia’s grief and uses Allana well, making the best of being in the era it’s in. It’s the sort of well-executed, non-galactic story the era should have used more but didn’t.

Mercy Kill is stuck with some of the dumb politics of FOTJ, but for its part, it’s a neat story that allows us to revisit beloved characters and see the fallout of the NJO the way we should have. Again, it’s a well-crafted little adventure that doesn’t need Sith or the galaxy at stake to tell a good story.

The Kemp books, well, I really, really like them in concept. Underused supporting character in the lead, side adventure, weird mysteries. But they fall down in the execution. Crosscurrent doesn’t even know what to do with its whole time travel conceit and barely uses it. Kemp is focused on his Jaden story, which basically repeats in Riptide. But while there’s some potential in his weird clone hook, the story getting there is not engaging enough, and then it all comes to nothing anyway because the books never got a conclusion. They’re well-intentioned but ultimately rather meh.

Dark Nest was wildly misguided. I like some of the aspects, like the Killiks, but the story sets out from terrible premises and ultimately led to ruining the EU. It’s exhibit A in the case for not leaving Troy Denning to his own devices.

LOTF was similarly based on just terrible premises and did in fact ruin the EU. The scenario set out in Betrayal, Jacen’s characterization, had potential, and I think you could actually do a serviceable version of this storyline by swapping in a different character, because there were some aspects that worked. But the series quickly developed badly, with the wrong authors writing a round-robin style that didn’t work, Jacen devolving in exactly the wrong direction, inattention to the GA/Confederation conflict, and just overall terrible storytelling decisions that tanked the series and took it in a nihilistic, unrecoverable direction.

FOTJ, well, it had some potential too. The premise of Outcast also could have worked. Luke and the Jedi reckoning with their role in relation to the government, a serious political crisis around that, plus a weird Force threat sending Luke and Ben on a journey through other Force traditions — you can work with that! But the round-robin style broke down completely this time, with the plot clearly not even sketched out and the authors repeating the same beats over and over. They added one interesting idea to try to pad it out — the GA confronting slavery — but didn’t know what to do with it. Another plotline they added to fill things out, Tahiri’s trial, was a disaster. They didn’t know what to actually do with the journey plotline, and the political one quickly fell prey to awful, hamfisted writing. Worst of all, they introduced yet another group of Sith to the mix, which was a total mess, and contributed to the disastrous final third of the series, when everything just went completely off the rails.

Crucible is a giant turd.