The New Jedi Order

I'm a little over halfway through with Jedi Eclipse. Its a very good continuation to the NJO and a good sequel to Hero's Trial.

(oops, sorry, my web browser is doing weird things and apparently I'm not allowed to delete?)

I just typed out an incredibly long, articulate post. And then I hit backspace. Sometimes when I hit backspace it makes me go back a page in the web browser instead of just deleting the last letter I typed.

Darn it. Now you'll never believe I can be articulate! ::sigh::

Anyway, essentially, I didn't say a whole lot. Wait, that's a lie. I said a lot, but it was mostly just my thoughts on the differences between the Star Wars forum here as part of a Tolkien community and the Star Wars message boards I had been frequenting since, well, before we actually knew there would be an Episode 1! The main differences I noted were as follows:
1) Here, Kevin J. Anderson does not appear to be seen as The Great Enemy. This is somewhat difficult for me to understand. You do remember Daala, right?
2) Never before have I encountered anyone who did not love the X-wing books. Literally. I find this even harder to believe than item #1. You mean there are actually people out there with opinions different than my own?!?! Inconceivable! :lol: (No, seriously, though, this is a new one for me. What's not to like? I want to know. 'Cause then I can convert you. )

Then, I proceeded to ramble about my experiences with the New Jedi Order, as follows:
1) Vector Prime was generally received as a disappointment everywhere I was posting at the time. We were all about ready to give up on Star Wars books, period. I remember especially vividly the yelling matches (I don't know who we were yelling at---no one was taking the other side) about exactly alien invaders with different technology had to be superior just because they were different.
2) Onslaught was typical Stackpole. Again there was hope. (Not a lot, but some.) Even if Han was still treated poorly and the Vong were still annoying, at least we could fight them with X-wings, see Mara Jade acting like Mara Jade, and hope against hopes that we might encounter one or two of the Wraiths. (This last one didn't happen. ::sigh:: )
3) At this point I stopped being able to keep up. Don't know why. Mostly because I stopped trying. TOO MUCH STRESS!! ARGH! Anyway, a close friend tells me that Hero's Trial has the best characterization of Han Solo since Ann Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy. That is high praise indeed!
4) The newest NJO book comes out very soon. It might even have come out today. I don't remember. I think it's by Kathy Tyers, and it's in hardcover, like Vector Prime. I hope these are not bad signs.

On a more cheerful note, the TPB version of Union is supposed to be out this month! Yippee! (I can't afford it but at least I can dream! )

http://www.geocities.com/shadowstarsrpg/sarahsig1.jpg

Your Star Wars people must hate Tim Zahn then. It sounds to me that you've been hanging around in a lot of forums populated by kids... who generally like the X-Wings books because most of them are really written for a younger audience.

Personally I like some of the X-wings books... the first one for example is spectacular, the dogfights are extremely well written, but they QUICKLY go downhill from there. It sound to me like the forums you've been hanging in are more interested in X-Wings and Smugglers, while the people here are more interested in the Jedi.... me I want both.

What??? Hate Zahn?!? You're joking, right? Zahn is the absolute master of Star Wars novels!

While the particular message board I was talking about was techically dedicated to some of the young adult Star Wars books (::shudders:: please, don't get me wrong---we were only very, very rarely on topic ), and there were a few younger members, most of us were in our later years of high school and quite a few were in college. (I suspect there were a few who were older, but they weren't admitting it. The community was at least mature enough to go for years without a moderator.) That is one of the differences between a Star Wars-based community and a Tolkien-based community---the Star Wars fan community in general is much younger. Anyway, I'm not going there now (AOL message boards requiring access to AOL, and all the good boards being taken over by lunatics these days), so most of my Star Wars discussions have been with my friends, some of whom are quite excellent judges of literary merit, at least in science fiction. (But don't tell them I said that. They would hate me for it. )

I don't have any problem with Jedi. I am actually very interested in Jedi. Unfortunately, so is every 12-year-old kid who read a couple of KJA young adult novels and now figures he's a Star Wars fan because he thinks Darth Maul is too cool to really be dead. Therefore, there's bound to be a lot of fluff that is supposed to be about Jedi.

Also, I am not as militant about disliking Kevin J. Anderson as I may have sounded. (This is one of the risks one takes when one tries to summarize a long post.) I think that probably he gets a lot of criticism that he doesn't deserve simply because his trilogy happens to come right after the much-celebrated original Zahn trilogy. It really isn't very fair to judge him compared to Zahn---I mean, seriously, a lot of fans practically worship Zahn, or at least his books! Is it really KJA's fault he had such an impossible act to follow?

I like the X-wing books because they are fun and don't pretend to be philosophical. The Jedi no not exist. They are not real. The philosophical aspects of the Force are very interesting---up to a certain point. After that point, however, it just gets ridiculous! And that's what so many authors seem to do! If I want philosophy, I'll read Plato!

(Okay, so I have very strong opinions about mixing philosophy and science fiction. I read Star Wars for fun and nothing else, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Tolkien I will analyze to death, but Star Wars is my refuge from Deep Thought. Everyone needs one of those.)

Ok, as long as you like Zahn you are OK.

He is da man.

Yeah, Timothy Zahn is the best. I've read sample books from many Star Wars authors, but his books definitely come on the top. I haven't been reading the New Jedi Order because it has Chewbacca's death in it. But on most of the message boards that I've been to, they are counted as second only to Timothy Zahn's. I decided they might be good after all, if they've got such high praise, and a couple days ago, I bought Vector Prime. I hope I made the right decision.