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Star Wars Novels/Graphical Novels 2


TheRevanchist

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6 minutes ago, Spaßvogel said:

He jettisoned the treatments they provided him and 95% of their plot threads from the rest of the canon. 

Uh, no. Abrams wrote some vague outlines fro 8 and 9, and when he read Johnson's script for 8 he loved it and said he wished he had written it. The story group had nothing to do with any of this.

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On 3/27/2018 at 2:29 PM, Darth Richard II said:

Uh, no. Abrams wrote some vague outlines fro 8 and 9, and when he read Johnson's script for 8 he loved it and said he wished he had written it. The story group had nothing to do with any of this.

Darth, is that actually the case?

That's really fascinating. I was led to believe it was a storygroup decision, and one that was partly based around the problematics of Vector Prime.

Are you privy to any interviews or features that cover this topic in more depth?

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Oh throwing out the old EU. Yeah they did that cause Chewie. (I also am off the personal opinion that just about everything that happened in the EU post abd including NJO was crap, but I digress)

what I think we were talking about is how ep 8 seemed to eh, dismiss stuff brought up in 7, but there's already a long thread about that in the entertainment forum

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Guh.

Had a look in the Entertainment Forum. Not even sure where to look on there for anything book-related!

That said - NJO was, honestly, an interesting undertaking. I've really enjoyed listening to/reading those involved talk about it. From an organisational, author-wrangling, and stylistic departure point of view, it's a vastly interesting project. To me at least. I've really enjoyed reading about all the interesting meetings and discussions that took place, and imagining all those authors sitting in a room together bouncing ideas and jokes off one another.

It's the kind of room I'd have loved to have been able to sit in and observe, undisturbed.

And as a nice bonus, it gave work to a staggering number of authors whose books I love - Sean Williams, Shane Dix, Walter John Williams, Matt Stover, Greg Keyes, James Luceno, Mike Stackpole, Bob Salvatore, all names that elicit many warm and fuzzy feelings in the cockles of my heart (or maybe the sub-cockle area).

I understand it was not everyone's jam, and no artistic endeavour ever is, can, or will be to everyone's liking. But what an astonishing group of talented writers to hire!

I love books and supporting authors no matter what the undertaking. I am absolutely shameless in my love for the authors I enjoy. :wub:

 

(Totally unrelated: I have a Bluetooth keyboard, and the n key does not always work. Is this due to it being a faulty keyboard, or due to the signal? Does anyone know?)

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On 3/28/2018 at 8:11 AM, Darth Richard II said:

Oh throwing out the old EU. Yeah they did that cause Chewie. (I also am off the personal opinion that just about everything that happened in the EU post abd including NJO was crap, but I digress)

what I think we were talking about is how ep 8 seemed to eh, dismiss stuff brought up in 7, but there's already a long thread about that in the entertainment forum

Thrawn was awesome, Jedi Knight games were decent, everything else was crap.

However, they had no need to decanonize pre-movie novels/games, and should have kept Thrawn trilogy considering that it is awesome and single-handed saved Star Wars in the beginning of nineties.

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15 hours ago, TheRevanchist said:

Thrawn was awesome, Jedi Knight games were decent, everything else was crap.

However, they had no need to decanonize pre-movie novels/games, and should have kept Thrawn trilogy considering that it is awesome and single-handed saved Star Wars in the beginning of nineties.

 

Given that they wanted to let new writers and storytellers have a clean slate, I can understand why they would want to jettison the old material. Especially Crystal Star.

Besides, a pretty impressive number of elements from the Legends timeline have been brought over into the New EU. None of which include Luuke Skywalker. Yet.     

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14 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Single handedly saved Star Wars in the 90s? Star Wars didn't need saving in the 90s.

Well, that is what I have read (I was born the same year as Heir to the Empire). Everyone says that Star Wars was becoming a non entity in the nineties after a decade of not having a movie. Then Thrawn happened, and people fall in love back with Star Wars (Thrawn trilogy is the second most sold sci-fi of all time after Dune if I am not mistaken), so Thrawn trilogy played a very big role.

There are still a lot of people who consider it as the second most important thing in Star Wars after the original trilogy. And it is definitely the closest thing to it.

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I don't think Zahn's series "saved" Star Wars, but it absolutely re-energized interest in it and laid real groundwork for the rapturous anticipation when Lucas announced the prequels. I became a big Star Wars nerd in middle school, in large part due to my friends who had started reading Zahn's books. Got the VHS box set (Han shot first!), got my parents to take me to a bookstore on the release day of the last of the Zahn trilogy, etc.

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  • 1 month later...

I only attempted reading the first of the Thrawn books. While I enjoyed the Thrawn chapters, the Mara Jade Chapters set my teeth on edge. I never finished it.

 

The new in Canon Thrawn book is interesting because Thrawn is interesting. Civilized, intelligent, driven by a desire to protect his people.  He is in service to a bad cause out of this desire, but we but we admire him as an underdog navigating through a society that doesn’t want him. The book is about his rise in the Empire and is essentially snap-shots of his career as he advances. Interesting portrait of Imperial society.  But for me the book lacks a compelling central conflict that drives the reader and Thrawn to the end.  Still haven’t finished this one either. 

 

 An unexpectedly compelling SW book for me was  Phasma. Star Wars meets Mad Max Thunderdome/Fury Road, filling a particular hunger I did not know I had till I read it. Inter First Order intrigues; a clash of a regressed tribe of humans encountering SW tech and personnel; a quest story within a New Republic/Resistance vs FO spy story. Flawed, desperate humans trying to find their way to a better place following questionable leaders, using  desperate tactics. Who Phasma is made clear. But no one in the book leaves their situation clean.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/4/2018 at 6:39 PM, TheRevanchist said:

Thrawn trilogy is the second most sold sci-fi of all time after Dune if I am not mistaken).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

Well, Dune is presently at approximately 20 million copies sold. I've found a bit of research that suggests StarWars.com had at one time claimed that the Heir trilogy sold near 15 million copies - but their current site doesn't make any such mention, and I've not had any luck finding any research that supports that number. Is there anyone who's research-fu can corroborate or deny the numerical assertion? 

Certainly, Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker books are around 14 million and counting. 

It'd be interesting to see the numbers on this. Maybe something that we could politely get El Commander Werthead to research and write about? Does he accept candy as bribes? Maybe cookies? :)

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11 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Man I am sooooo behind on my Star Wars reading.

And there's more to come. 

My local bookstore received word of a Lando novel coming out at some point this year, which makes me happy (unclear if Young Lando or Contemporary Lando). 

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I finished Last Shot a few weeks back. Pretty good Han and Lando romp covering both younger and older eras if you have need of a SW fix before the new Thrawn book comes out at the end of the month.

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  • 1 month later...

Anyone read the new Thrawn book? I thought it was decent. Fun to see Darth Vader and Thrawn interacting plus I liked the timeline structure. Some interesting Easter Eggs to the (now non-canon?) Thrawn trilogy and Hand of Thrawn series. 

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Read the whole book over the course of several days. Fun read, if incidental. Am wondering if the sub-plot with the Grhysk (that the correct spelling?) is going to go anywhere interesting, and is a long-game by the Lucasarts Story Group.

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Lost Stars by Claudia Gray is highly recommendable. It's a stand-alone book, and it's just so goddamn good. 

I've read every New Canon book that's come out, and hers is exceptionally good and is a book that I always keep both on my iPad (via the Kindle store) and on my bookshelves. It's one of those books that I very much loved enough to buy multiple times because I *knew* I'd be rereading it. 

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