Chat corner 29: The New Jedi Order

[annathecrow]

Welcome to this week’s chat corner!

Optional prompt

This week, the topic is “Star Wars: The New Jedi Order”, the now-Legends book series covering the original next generation of the main SW trio.

19 books (+ some novellas and short stories), 12 authors, tie-ins with other media - this thing is HUGE. It was published between 1999 and 2003, e.g. during the same time the Prequel Trilogy was screened (1999, 2002 and 2005).

So… what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Don’t care? Missed its existence?

Comments

[annathecrow]

Your courtesy link to the "I wanna be morose about something" post, aka The Dark Side.

[annathecrow]

I can't comment on the story itself, never having read the series, but from reading the Wkp:

• The size of this thing terrifies me. That's. That's a A LOT of books. I gave up on Wheel of Time after 6! I have never read this many books in any series, and I'm counting 90s style "young reader" books and comics into that!!!
• ...hmmm. Looks like Disney hadn't bought LucasArts just because of the nice shiny IP, huh? I mean, I shouldn't have been this surprised, I knew LA was doing tie-ins and multimedia projects, but somehow I am anyway.
• "religious zealots from Outer Space" as the main villain is NOT inspiring great confidence in me, I gotta admit. I can't believe I'm saying this, but "we fucked up and the Space Nazis are back" is actually a better conceit. As we all know though, execution is what matters, so it's entirely possible NJO is the better story.

[kittywhite]

Yeah as I mentioned in my comment below the villains really make or break this series for the reader.
You do get a lot of page time explaining their point of view and culture and that’s why I was ok with it but other people obviously weren’t.

[kittywhite]

I personally love it and I’m currently re-reading it now (up to book 4).
However, it is an incredibly polarising series and so much of that comes down to how believable you find the villains, the Yuuzhan Vong.
I’ve always found them a very brutal and truely alien foe but to other people they are just weird BDSM Guys who hate droids.
Before the NJO every antagonist was either left over from the Empire or something to do with ancient Sith Lords so this was the first time I was seriously worried for our heroes and important characters actually die. You probably have heard who gets killed off in the first book and many people refused to continue reading after that or stopped after the massive and tragic 600 page “Star by Star” (the 9th book).
I believe it’s still worth a read even today and I’ll tell you right now you don’t need the massive list of pre-reading that Reddit or other people always list as the books explain past events so you can just jump right in, like I did in 2003.

[annathecrow]

I haven't heard who dies! Now I'm afraid to look it up! XD

You know what? No spoilers, I'm gonna try the first book and see how I like it. I've read SW books for worse reasons :D

[fleurviolette]

Just wondering, which books in NJO would you recommend reading?

So far, I read Traitor by Matt Stover. I like his writing style, and I have all his sw novels, which are 4 books lol

[kittywhite]

When the series was released the intention was that you could just read the hardcover books and get the gist of the whole story but then you’d miss stuff like the excellent Traitor which was in paperback.
(The hardcovers are Vector Prime, Balance Point, Star by Star, Destiny’s Way and The Unifying Force)
The answer to what else to read gets a bit more complicated.
The fan preferred version is Vector Prime,Balance Point,Star by Star, Traitor, Destiny's Way, The Final Prophecy and The Unifying Force however I’ll add my own thoughts below.

- Dark Tide duology you can skip, it’s mostly reconnaissance missions to learn more about the invaders and then some smaller scale battles.

- I liked the first book in the Agents of Chaos duology but that’s only because Vergere gets introduced there and Han actually gets to do something besides hang out at a Cantina since book 1 ended. You can skip the second one.

- The Edge of Victory duology was written specifically to highlight the character of Anakin Solo before everything that goes down in Star by Star. If you want that behemoth to have more impact, read these two books.

- If you like Jaina Solo I’d say give Dark Journey a read also, lots of fans crap on it because it’s written by a woman and about a female character but I enjoyed it.

- Enemy Lines duology is for fans of the previous X-Wing novels so I didn’t enjoy it much but you might if you like those books.

- Skip the Force Heretic trilogy, it drags on and if you must then just read the 3rd book.

[fleurviolette]

Thank you for the rec list! Will definitely keep it in mind when I get back to reading the classic EU books. Atm I’m reading Dune, specifically Children of Dune.

[annathecrow]

Thanks for the rec list, from me as well. I hadn't realized it's more complicated than "x books in a row"! I'm definitely saving this into my reference folder for later :D

[extrapenguin]

Thanks! The Yuuzhan Vong were interesting based on what I've osmosed from elsewhere, though I haven't read any Legends stuff post-OT (beyond like five pages of the Thrawn trilogy, which I bounced off of) so it's nice to have a place to start!

[fleurviolette]

I didn’t mind its existence. I think the concept of a series focusing on the next generation of Skywalkers and new jedi facing a threatening alien species who work outside of the force is different.

This concept could have worked as an animated or live action series, which could have brought in more fans who haven’t read the books.

[yourlibrarian]

I hadn't heard about it but it sounds interesting. How does this tie into the Zahn series, or does it?

[kittywhite]

There’s numerous references to it throughout but just some I’ve picked up on my latest re-reading and I’m only 4 books in.
- Leia has Noghri bodyguards and there’s a joke about wanting to get rid of the Vong in a similar way to how Thrawn went out
- Mentions about Thrawn and his art observation tactic
- Pellaeon is in it, he’s leading the Imperial Remnant and Mara Jade is a main character too.

[yourlibrarian]

Thanks!

[atamascolily]

I read the first book, Vector Prime by R.A. Salvatore when I was in my early teens, and I got to the Major Character Death in the climax, and I couldn't read anymore. I just couldn't. It hurt so much to watch my space family and all that they'd built get pummeled like that.

Since then, I've had a lot of people rec it to me, as I'm a big of the earlier Legends material, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to go back and revisit it. In my head, I just sort of cherry-pick bits from NJO to add to my own personal headcanons about what happens after Visions of the Future.