Star Wars Novels/Graphic Novels

[First of My Name]

TFA has gotten me in the mood for more. I think I'll buy some of the new canon books.
 

I wonder to what extent the TFA book expands upon the film I have just seen.

Not a lot, according to reviews.

ETA: Now other people are saying there's a bunch of extra stuff, so nevermind.

[Calibandar]

TFA has gotten me in the mood for more. I think I'll buy some of the new canon books.
 

Not a lot, according to reviews.

I am looking into the Lord of the Sith book by Paul Kemp, Dark Disciple ( its about Quinlann Voss who I thought was an ok character in the comics I read years ago) and maybe Kiern Gillen's new Darth Vader comic, the first trade is out.

[First of My Name]

I am looking into the Lord of the Sith book by Paul Kemp, Dark Disciple ( its about Quinlann Voss who I thought was an ok character in the comics I read years ago) and maybe Kiern Gillen's new Darth Vader comic, the first trade is out.

I'm mostly looking at Twilight Company, Lost Stars and the Rise of the Empire omnibus, which contains Tarkin, A New Dawn and three short stories. Lords of the Sith is an option too. I'm not really interested in the other two you mentioned, though I liked Vos too they don't sound interesting enough to me.

[underarmsauce]

I'm mostly looking at Twilight Company, Lost Stars and the Rise of the Empire omnibus, which contains Tarkin, A New Dawn and three short stories. Lords of the Sith is an option too. I'm not really interested in the other two you mentioned, though I liked Vos too they don't sound interesting enough to me.

having read all but twilight company. In my opinion dark disciple is the best of the new eu so far and very much worth the time.  Don't waste your time with aftermath. A new Dawn was also well done. Tarkin came off as boring to me.  

[Spaßvogel]

Edited for being redundant with my post a few slots up.  Short version:  A New Dawn is great!  Twilight Company is good!  Tarkin is meh.  Heir to the Jedi is meh.  Lost Stars: battle of Jakku back story, but still a big of a slog (and far too many nudge nudge wink wink movie references).  Aftermath, scattershot and a big disappointment. 

[Darth Richard II]

That's odd, Golden's previous EU books were Kevin J Anderson level bad to me.

 

I liked Tarkin, but those kind of Star Wars books are kind of an acquired taste.

Also fuck Aftermath. Fuck it. In the ear.

[Calibandar]

I'm mostly looking at Twilight Company, Lost Stars and the Rise of the Empire omnibus, which contains Tarkin, A New Dawn and three short stories. Lords of the Sith is an option too. I'm not really interested in the other two you mentioned, though I liked Vos too they don't sound interesting enough to me.

I've been going through the back catalogue and the only ones I am interested in are Lords of the Sith, Shadows of Empire by Steve Perry and possibly Darth Plagueis ( I have no SW books other than Shatterpoint and Stover's Revenge of the Sith novel).

[Corvinus85]

I wonder to what extent the TFA book expands upon the film I have just seen.

It's a film that in some parts really piques curiosity and you'd want to read more about certain characters.

I'm going to have to pick it up. I, too, am really curious about a bunch of the stuff shown in the movie.

[First of My Name]

having read all but twilight company. In my opinion dark disciple is the best of the new eu so far and very much worth the time.  Don't waste your time with aftermath. A new Dawn was also well done. Tarkin came off as boring to me.  

Well buying the Tarkin/New Dawn omnibus is about as expensive as buying only AND, so I can't really go wrong there. I'm not really interested in DD though, Golden isn't the best writer, and I also had the entire story spoiled for me already. So I'm not going to read it (and definitely not Aftermath).

Edited for being redundant with my post a few slots up.  Short version:  A New Dawn is great!  Twilight Company is good!  Tarkin is meh.  Heir to the Jedi is meh.  Lost Stars: battle of Jakku back story, but still a big of a slog (and far too many nudge nudge wink wink movie references).  Aftermath, scattershot and a big disappointment. 

Thanks for the info. I think I'm going to buy Twilight Company but I might wait for the paperback. Lost Stars has such good reviews that I'm still considering it.

Yeah, I'm staying far away from Aftermath.

 

I liked Tarkin, but those kind of Star Wars books are kind of an acquired taste.

Also fuck Aftermath. Fuck it. In the ear.

I've liked all Luceno's SW books so far, and the omnibus version is great value, so I'm going to buy it soon.

Ouch.

I've been going through the back catalogue and the only ones I am interested in are Lords of the Sith, Shadows of Empire by Steve Perry and possibly Darth Plagueis ( I have no SW books other than Shatterpoint and Stover's Revenge of the Sith novel).

SotE is alright, Plagueis is great. I own both.
If you liked the Stover books (which pretty much everyone does) you could also take a look at his other SW books, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, and Traitor, which might be his best but requires a lot of background knowledge.

[Maester Llama]

Okay, I am about to get scorched by y'all:

 

I have finished Chuck Wendig's Aftermath. I ... I actually kind of like it. It is a book with some bad problems, I can agree with people about that, but I'm surprised it's generated this level of distaste. Let's do this:

 

Now, Wendig has talked about writing this in I think forty-five days, and you can tell, and while I think vast swaths of it are pretty impressive for something pissed out that quickly there are times when it's a problem. I confess to enjoying the stab at staccato cinematic writing Wendig makes here; I think it works well for this universe and the pace of this story. But some of the sentences -- or sentence fragments -- are real clunkers that grate rather than flow. I'd argue that this is only distractingly bad in a very few places, but it does happen.

 

The other big issue is that there seems to have been some state-of-the-galaxy info the book was supposed to get across that didn't fit into the central story Wendig was telling, and so he uses "Interludes" every few chapters to get this stuff in there. These interludes come in two flavours, and one works for me very well and one is rather more variable: The first variety are atmospheric scenes that are trying to convey the mood of the galaxy a few months after the end of Return of the Jedi, how divided and chaotic but also hopeful it is. These focus on either entirely new one-off characters who do not matter beyond their scenes, or very minor figures from the films. I think there is some great, great shit in here. We get to see really evocative little moments -- a rebel soldier coming home to his imperial sympathizer family, a kid who was being shipped off to be a storm trooper finding the academy torched by rebels, debates about what the New Republic should look like and how it should work. The characters are a bit generic, because we see them for so little time, but they serve Wendig's atmospheric purpose very well, and there are some poignant moments. The other type of interlude has to do with conveying some more specific piece of information about film-adjacent topics, and these I'm quite a bit more dubious about -- the book's game of chicken about whether or not Boba Fett is dead is particularly opaque. The single interlude including top tier film characters from the original trilogy feels on the one hand like it's trying pretty hard, but it does capture their charm, for me. However, even though it's just like all the other interludes and in a way this approach to the big guns as just a couple more people making their way in the galaxy is cool, it feels more distracting than the other interludes because it's about such well-known characters embarking on a major mission. Because of this, the fact that it has exactly zero to do with the main plot of the novel, like really truly almost nothing, and feels very plopped in, feels more agregious than it does with the rest of the interludes. That said, I suspect it may be setting up the next one, in which case that's gonna be a cool book.

 

That central plot that the interludes diverge from, though? It's pretty good so far as I'm concerned. The new characters are interesting, and they form a great motley crew by the end. Mr. Bones is funny enough and Star-Wars-through-a-violent-darkly-humourous-Wendig-lens enough that he almost redeems the battle droids from the prequels by himself. The themes of family conflict and the dashing rogue figure that are both so central to Star Wars are given new twists that I found very very fun. The villains are a mixed bag and mostly pretty  unimpressive, but that matches the themes of the book really well -- the Sith are gone, at least for now, and these are the distinctly less mythic figures scrabbling over what's left. The book also has a great line in convincingly depicting some of the imperials as people who are either true believers or folks just doing their jobs. The book has a lot of ragged edges and feels like it could have spent a bunch more time in the oven, but the action is very solid and so are the characters, and it takes the universe in interesting directions. I'm surprisingly eager to read the next one and, though it's a long way from an all-time memorable book, I'm kind of mystified about what everybody hates so much.

 

Note that I went into this knowing ahead of time that it didn't focus on the big film characters, and I think that helped.

[Corvinus85]

Has anyone picked up the Force Awakens novel yet? I downloaded a sample on my Kindle and the sample consisted only of the title page and table of contents. Damn you Disney!!!

I'm curious about how it reads, before I spend $14 on it. I don't want to read another Aftermath. And to provide a response to the above post, is not how you write a novel. This is a movie script. And there is very little character development. 

[Joe Pesci]

Has anyone picked up the Force Awakens novel yet? I downloaded a sample on my Kindle and the sample consisted only of the title page and table of contents. Damn you Disney!!!

I'm curious about how it reads, before I spend $14 on it. I don't want to read another Aftermath. And to provide a response to the above post, is not how you write a novel. This is a movie script. And there is very little character development. 

I got it and am currently in the midst of it. It's a decent read so far, TFA spoilers below.

I'm only up to where Han and Chewie meet Finn and Rey, there's not much difference in the novel yet other than a little bit of extra dialogue and some internal thoughts of some characters but those are necessary for a novel anyways.

[Darth Richard II]

I didn't think TFA novel was out til january?

[Corvinus85]

I didn't think TFA novel was out til january?

Released same day as the movie, hehehe.

[HexMachina]

I didn't think TFA novel was out til january?

I think you are out of luck, I think it was only the ebook that was released (with no official cover) and iirc you don't read ebooks? 

 

[Joe Pesci]

I think you are out of luck, I think it was only the ebook that was released (with no official cover) and iirc you don't read ebooks? 

 

I was at the mall today doing some Christmas shopping and I didn't see any copies of TFA at the bookstore so it's unlikely it's out yet. I'm assuming it wasn't released on the 18th like the ebook so as to keep the story from leaking as the stores would have to have the book before the release of the movie.

ETA: IIRC, the novelization of ROTS was out before the movie by at least a week but I don't know how much of an impact it may have had online at the time. Surely nothing like it would have had if the TFA novelization was released before the movie.

[TheRevanchist]

Has anyone picked up the Force Awakens novel yet? I downloaded a sample on my Kindle and the sample consisted only of the title page and table of contents. Damn you Disney!!!

I'm curious about how it reads, before I spend $14 on it. I don't want to read another Aftermath. And to provide a response to the above post, is not how you write a novel. This is a movie script. And there is very little character development. 

Read 1/3 of it so far. Decent, but nothing new. Hopefully it will improve later.

But, I don't hold my hopes high. Alan Dean Foster after all, the novelization of the original movie - written by him - has absolutely nothing new. 

[Corvinus85]

Read 1/3 of it so far. Decent, but nothing new. Hopefully it will improve later.
But, I don't hold my hopes high. Alan Dean Foster after all, the novelization of the original movie - written by him - has absolutely nothing new. 

Did he write all 3, or just for Episode IV? Because I do vaguely remember some extra bits and pieces. Mainly about Luke's training with Yoda.

[TheRevanchist]

Did he write all 3, or just for Episode IV? Because I do vaguely remember some extra bits and pieces. Mainly about Luke's training with Yoda.

Only the first one, IIRC. The other two had extra bits, while the prequels had a ton of new info, especially RotS.

[First of My Name]

Yeah, Foster only wrote the ANH novelization. IIRC there's a few deleted scenes that were in there but that's it, not nearly as much as new content as the other novelizations (particularly the prequels).