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I havn't read any of the Star Wars EU novels though. Are any of them worth reading?

In short, yes. The best starting point, coincidentally, is Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy (his later Thrawn Duology is also a good read). From there, well, the matter becomes more disputed, but thisthread, along with many others, puts forth some of the better ones.

Seydlitz_k wrote:I havn't read any of the Star Wars EU novels though. Are any of them worth reading?

Here's my list. The Episode III novel is also highly recommended but I leave it off the list since I don't know if you call a movie novelization "EU".

*=highly recommended

PREQUEL ERA:
-Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter
-Outbound Flight
-Dark Rendezvous
-MedStar Duology
-Jedi Trial
-Labyrinth of Evil*

IMPERIAL ERA:
-Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader*
-Shadows of the Empire*

POST ROTJ ERA:
-Wraith Squadron*
-Iron Fist*
-Solo Command
-Tatooine Ghost
-Heir to the Empire
-Dark Force Rising
-The Last Command

NJO ERA: (if you must)

-Star by Star
-Force Heretic I (THE EMPIRE WILL ALWAYS STRIKE BACK!)
-Unifying Force

POST NJO:

-Nothing yet.

000 wrote:
Let's see... thirty-two or so Marvel comics issues, twenty-six or so issues of Empire, A NOVEL, several comic strips, the new ongoing Rebellion series, a whole mess of RPG supplements, a number of video games...
Nope, that period's a clean slate.

Yes, A novel. Given that I don't really read comics, and am not into RPG's I'd say it's pretty fresh with regards to novels being written about it. Now, the post-ROTJ and NJO era's on the other hand....

Zahn IMHO (and minimalist scale issues aside) has basically gone the same route of David Weber when it comes to his characters. They're pretty much wank characters, but IMHO its something that can be somehwat tolerable. I'm not as enamoured of Zahn's work as I used to be, but he's still one of the better writers (I still prefer Allston, Denning, and Luceno.)

I still haven't read "Outbound Flight" yet though....

Connor MacLeod wrote: I still haven't read "Outbound Flight" yet though....

You really should try and rread it one of these days. It was several orders of magnitude better than the disapointing 'Survivor's Quest'.

At least the wank regarding Thrawn balanced out a little somewhat in that TZ actually allowed his grand creation to be killed, unlike Michael Hackpole and the lame-oh Corran Horn.

Thrawn was also reduced from destroying "fifteen of Palpatine's best ships with hand-picked crewers" in VotF to obliterating "fifteen armed transports with a moron in command" in OBF. Thrawn's clone died and the GA interpreted a lot of information the wrong way, what lead to his sudden death at Bilbringi.

Hardly wankage, if you ask me.

I expect a similar correction of the "white-washing" of Mara.

Connor MacLeod wrote:

They're pretty much wank characters

I really don't get this 'Thrawn is wanked out' crap. How is he wanked out? What, so its entirely impossible that a species could evolve such that their minds have the capacity to be trained to a far higher degree of strategic skill than humans? So I suppose in your reckoning, RL people like the Rain Man are 'wanked out'? This is a universe of trillions, and out of those trillions cicumstances coincide to create a brilliant tactician. Oh noes! Wanked out lolzorzz!!!

Cool, thanks for the tips. Think I'm gonna go out and buy some of the Thrawn books to read soon. Just because you hear so much about him.