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I'm of two minds about the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Some of it I like (the Clone Wars cartoon, the Clone Wars comics), some of it I can't stand (all of the post-RoTJ tie-in novels).
I think a *huge* reason I dislike the post-RotJ stories is what *do* you use for conflict in a story-world that has just had a eucatastrophe? The Rebellion against the Empire has triumphed, the Sith are destroyed, and the Republic restored! Yeah! Good job, characters!
So what next? Fans who were there for the epic drama and heroic last stands aren't going to be that interested in the main characters settling down and trying to devise a provisional government, unless the writer in charge is absolutely *stellar*.
Bureaucracy is *boring*.
But necessary. And really, one doesn't tear down the administration of a Galactic Empire by just decapitating it? It will keep writhing, like a headless rattler, until you pin it down and *do* something with it. Personally, I'd find a story where Han realizes just how much paperwork Leia does as a Rebel/Republic leader really nifty.
I think a *huge* reason I dislike the post-RotJ stories is what *do* you use for conflict in a story-world that has just had a eucatastrophe? The Rebellion against the Empire has triumphed, the Sith are destroyed, and the Republic restored! Yeah! Good job, characters!
So what next? Fans who were there for the epic drama and heroic last stands aren't going to be that interested in the main characters settling down and trying to devise a provisional government, unless the writer in charge is absolutely *stellar*.
Bureaucracy is *boring*.
But necessary. And really, one doesn't tear down the administration of a Galactic Empire by just decapitating it? It will keep writhing, like a headless rattler, until you pin it down and *do* something with it. Personally, I'd find a story where Han realizes just how much paperwork Leia does as a Rebel/Republic leader really nifty.
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Still, it seems like they could have done something other than constantly invent yet New and Even More Horrible Villains. How about Star Wars mysteries? Or Saving the Planet, rather than always Saving the Galaxy? Everything that ever happens, only Our Heroes can fix it, and it gets really old - especially since they're all getting pretty damn old themselves.
But I see that Timothy Zahn has written a new book set just after ANH. That might be worth checking out....
And the sad fact is, no matter how much they stuck, I keep buying and reading them.
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Me, too
And Chiss, what's not to like about crazy, intellectual, xenophobic blue people? :D
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I think Jude Watson's books are an excellent example of focusing on the personal and the local, while against the backdrop of galactic events. If only the adult novels were that good....
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I keep trying to read Watson's books, but I can't get past the bad writing and out-of-character moments. However, I do like that she focuses on the more personal aspect, so I agree on that point. If only her execution weren't so painful... I think the adult novels tend to have better-quality writers, but ridiculously over-epic plots for a SW storyline. I think the EU would be more fun if someone took the scope that Watson takes, but had a better quality writer with a greater grasp of character and plot twists.
(Sorry for repost -- fixed a small typo.)
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Whereas I think the quality of writing in the adult novels is really awful. In them, character is quite often sacrificed for the sake of some plot device. I think they way overemphasize the details of space battles, and are always looking for the whiz-bang over the top battle moment at the expense of a deeper plot, and there are just a lot of hackneyed writing devices that they use. Truth be told, I remember very little about each of the adult novels once I've finished them.
Of course, people have different styles of reading as well as writing!
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Actually, I do agree that in general the writing in the adult novels is awful (The Courtship of Princess Leia is perhaps one of the worst books ever written), but they do have a few gems. Since Jude Watson is the only writer in her corner of the universe (which is not used in any other EU book--she seems completely isolated), she suffers from being the only one generating ideas. While the adult novels have such bombs as anything written by Kevin J. Anderson, there's a broader selection. So even though, as you've said, the adult novels are pretty bad, they have the rare gem.
You might like Rogue Planet by Greg Bear. It's set when Anakin is twelve, so it does have that young adult feel, and his characterization is near-perfect (most of his mistakes are due mainly to writing before AotC and RotS came out). I'm almost through the book, and there's been no space battles (though I think a short one is approaching), and the action has been deeply peppered with character moments, much like the SW films themselves. I also really liked Terry Pratchett's characterization of Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace novelization, and his style suits Star Wars very well. Matthew Stover has a wonderful grasp of Anakin Skywalker in the Revenge of the Sith novelization, but he does tend to be in love with over-dramatic writing devices that come across as forced. I have mixed feelings about Stover, though Shatterpoint (a Mace Windu book) was interesting, despite my issues with characterization. Dark Rendezveous by Sean Stewart als has some wonderful moments and characterization (and a lovely style). I'm sure you've received recs about the Timothy Zahn trilogy--not perfect, but suits the flavor of SW well. This, unfortunately, is all I can recommend to you. I hate about 95% of the Expanded Universe for all the same reasons you do.
Ah, yes, people are always looking for different things in a book, which certainly explains the popularity of the EU. Despite our differences, I'm pretty confident you would at least like Rogue Planet if you're a fan of Watson (I have a lot of friends who like Watson, and they're the ones who recommended this book to me), and I think if you have any interest in Yoda, Count Dooku, and their relationship, Dark Rendezvous should appeal to you. There's still action, but these books also give good character.
(Sigh. Reposted again due to my typos and inability to code properly. XD)
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THANK YOU!!!! I canNOT believe that there are people out there who love his books. Oh good lord.
Rogue Planet is quite possibly my favorite of the adult novels. He did some excellent little bits tying wee Anakin in to the future Darth Vader. Actually, all of the ones you name as being good are also the ones I like the best, so maybe we aren't in as much disagreement as we first thought! :D
And I'm with you on Stover. Parts of him are just brilliant (and I was totally thrilled that he wrote the ROTS novelization.) But other parts of him suck so bad, you want to cry. I actually took frikkin' notes in the margins of Shatterpoint because there was so much cool Jedi philosophy. I think he wrote Traitor, too, which was one of my favorites of the NJO series.
I should note, by the way, that I have read almost every single EU novel written. I haven't read the X-Wing books, or the Commando books, and I'm behind on the new series, plus the last couple of Timothy Zahns. I go through periods where my taste prevails and I stop reading the books. But after a few months, my Star Wars addiction overrules my sensibility and I go on a reading binge.
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I will never understand the KJA fans. Ever. Don't get me started on what he did to Dune. >:| The man should be forbidden to write.
Rogue Planet is very cool. I do like the baby!Anakin/Vader bits, but being a huge Obi-Wan fan, I adore his characterization the best. Especially with how much Bear portrays his developing love for Anakin, and how Obi-Wan desperately tries to keep it under control to keep the Jedi way. So few of the adult novelists get Obi-Wan. He loved Anakin, man. He just didn't know how to show it, and by not being able to express it, he was never able to connect with Anakin in the way Anakin wanted.
Yes. Stover did do a decent job on Obi-Wan, though on some things he felt slightly off, but he totally had Anakin down. But then he would write things in such a staccatto fashion that it felt like I was reading a book read by William Shatner. XD I think if he stops trying to be so trendy and flashy, and develops the stuff he's good at, he could rock the EU. What the man needs is a better editor.
Wow, you're devoted. And much more versed than I am. I've not read nearly as many as you, because I'll read the beginning in the book store to see if I like it, and often give up. I've a few NJO and post-RotJ books sent to me by a friend that I'm planning on going through, and I've read all the early stuff in particular, and a few books here and there in the prequels. I mostly stick to fanfiction by select authors, because it just feels more internally consistent than a lot of EU. But as much as the EU makes me cringe, I can't help myself from at least picking up the new books to see what's happening. The
dark sideSW love seduces me. ;)From:
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Fanfic does tend to be sporadic in quality. Some of it is better than half of the stuff published, some of it is world-class godawful, but I think the character focus is what draws me to it.
I have a rec list here (http://imadra-blue.livejournal.com/tag/recs). Some of the recs are of lesser quality, because some of the fics I may have liked not because they were well-written, but because they had a neat idea or hit one of my bulletproof kinks. I'll warn you in advance that there's slash on there, but there's also lots of gen and some great het. You can kinda tell how excited I am by the rec by how many adjectives I slap into the description. XD
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I like Clone Wars too, and I'm a fan of some of the prequel EU-- mostly because it doesn't try to be hugely epic (ok, well, KOTOR, but it was an exception). A creative writing teacher once told me it's not the stakes that make a story interesting, but how much the protag cares about the stakes. Some of the best plot advice I've ever recieved.
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Luke, for one, has a mission that will be greatly hampered by having to fight in wars.
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And what I'd really, REALLY like to see if post-RofJ espionage stories. Because of course there are people still loyal to the Empire, and of course there are people out for their own interests, and what could be DONE with all that, placed against a backdrop of political renewal which is, at times, going swimmingly, and at times is dragging it's feet in the muck because government DOES that. They need to either refresh the government entirely to make it their own, OR (and this is a very real possibility - how will you ever trust anyone who was working peacably under the Empire? Who was "just following orders" and who was complicit? See also: Nazi Germany) you need to dismantle it entirely in order to have something functional and ACTUALLY (more or less) under the control of the new regime. And this empire might just be quite a bit too big and too complex for that - the only structure currently in place is the Old Regime (in this case the Empire, which was once the Old Republic), and there are no outside governments to come in and offer support as you go through this process...
Course, I never read the EU books, with very few exceptions.
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Actually, I'd love to see a post-RotJ spy story.
One of my favorite SW series (written well before the prequels) had Leia as the planetary governor of Endor, and having to deal with the troubles of *that*. It was nifty.
And really, I don't see a way around co-opting the Imperial Buearucracy because how *do* you govern several thousand planets, starting from scratch? The New Republic would need something to cover the gap until they figured out their own system, or resign themselves to fragmenting into several polities.
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Wouldn't that be rad? Plot and spy stories are lots of fun.
That sounds cool! I might even be interested in reading it - which series was it?
Well, I think the answer might be to fragment into an alliance, because really. You can't just scale up from running a really rather smallish rebellion where everyone essentially knows one another (or, at least, the degrees of seperation are like 1-to-2 not HUNDREDS), and you can get direct feedback and listen to your pilots and run it the way you would a guerilla war and try to apply THAT experience to running a GALAXY. The leaders have Senate experience, but - are they intending to keep the Senate (what there is of it) in place? How do they intend to fashion what they're working with into a cohesive, functional government which still runs within their ideals?
I think it depends what sort of model of government you're going for.
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I, personally, would find the galactic clean-up and rooting out pockets of Imperial resistance fascinating. As I would the Jedi being rebuilt. But alas, the EU writers decided to try and make things epic and just too much for a universe that happens after "They lived happily ever after." Leave the epic to Lucas, and just have fun plugging the holes. You can still have action. It doesn't need to be a Jedi vs. Sith war to be interesting. *eyeroll*
But then, I'm not fond of much of the prequel stuff, either. It focuses too much on non-canon characters, and some of it feels off. Some of it is good (like the Clone Wars cartoons and Rogue Planet, which I've almost finished), but then you get the comic books, which I can't appreciate, or those Jude Watson books which everyone raves about, but then I read them and they are painfully out of character and ridiculously cheesy even by SW standards.
I dunno, man. I've always been happier with fanfiction (by certain writers) than with the EU. Though what I like, I like, and it generally tends to be the small stuff.
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I really do prefer fanfic to the tie-ins because if there is one writer, or a pair working together, they go off in their direction and don't push the re-set button.
I am rather fond of some of the comic books though. The stuff set in the Clone Wars when things are coming apart and the Jedi are acting quite dubiously are good, and I love the 'Aurient Express' two-issue story with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan -- the art is somewhat manga and stylized, but the characterization is *great!*
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The Thrawn sequence? Is that different from the first trilogy? Because I thought the first trilogy was pretty cool when I was twleve, but I probably need to re-read for the adult perspective. But I do agree that after that, they got ridiculously inconsistent, and I gave up.
Yeah. Fanfiction is often self-contained, so an individual person's little world will be consistent, and I've found fanfic writers actually try harder to be in character, as scary as that sounds. I may not agree with all the changes, but I can at least see how they got that conclusion.
I've never read that comic book with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. The comic book I read focused on Obi-Wan and Asajj. Now, I like Asajj. She's awesome. But I found they had Obi-Wan all wrong when it came to her. If they wanted hints of Obi-Wan/Asajj, they could have done that better ways than have him suddenly develop empathy for his enemies. Empathy for enemies was never Obi-Wan's strong suit, y'know?