I also agree that I am glad Zahn couldn’t use a clone of Obi-Wan, with or without a U, in his books. I think Outbound Flight was a much better and more rich background than having a clone.
I agree with omniscient in that I really hate it when a villain has a way to come back, again and again. You never really know if they are gone or not. That was my complaint about Dark Empire (or was it II?) that had a clone of the Emperor. When does it end?
What annoyed me about Darksaber was a couple of points. One, it was a death star. It may have been smaller but it was a death star. In general, KJA doesn’t add anything new to the story. Second, he killed a major character in such a non dramatic way. There should have been a bit more drama surrounding it.
I really didn’t like Jedi Academy trilogy. As other have said, it was like a retelling of the main story with names changed, although not in all cases! Again, he didn’t add anything to the EU and took away from it when he didn’t get Mara Jade and Luke together, as Zahn intended at the end of his books. At least, it was obvious to me that’s what Zahn intended but then KJA splits them up such that Zahn had to explicitly spell it out in his later books.
Having said this, KJA must sell books or he would be done. I just don’t know who’s buying them as I don’t know anyone who likes him.
Merijeek: I think that authors, in general, shouldn’t listen, nor respond, to criticism from the average reader. I do think they should have a group of people who can offer them criticism and they listen to them. The average reader can only vote with his money.
I read the trilogy when I was 13 and took my internet screen name from my favorite character. I haven’t read it since then because I was worried I wouldn’t like it anymore, but from what people are saying in this thread it sounds like it’s worth re-reading.
Zahn created Coruscant, right? Did anything else from his books make it into the movies? It would be cool if George Lucas made a trilogy of these books instead of the prequels, but I think his ego wouldn’t allow it.
Someone mentioned upthread that Thrawn was evil. I don’t remember him that way. What evil things did he do?
I read a theory that he simply used the art to focus his thought process then used the “know how to defeat them by their art” as a diversion when people wanted to know how he came up with his plans.
Agreed that Thrawn wasn’t evil, or at least not in the same way that the Emperor and Vader were evil. In fact, further EU books make it clear that Thrawn was fighting the New Republic because he didn’t think the NR could defend the galaxy against the Yuuzahn Vong. Which, really, isn’t that far off from EU reality as shown in the later books. He honestly believed that a renewed Galactic Empire would provide a more likely victory against that threat than the current (fairly weak) New Republic could.
To be fair, a new Empire under Thrawn would supposedly be a lot more progressive in regard to non-“human” aliens than Palpatine’s Empire was.