Miller, she’s writing an excellent (and I believe quite successful) series of historical mystery novels set in antebellum New Orleans.
I too loved The Silent Tower, and many of Hambly’s other fantasy novels, as well. I grieved to see that she’d gone over to the mystery side (especially since the cover of her first mystery kept saying things like, “An impressive debut!” - as if she hadn’t written, like, twenty-five sf/f novels). Anyway, I read them expecting to be disappointed, and I wasn’t. They’re damn good.
Titles:
A Free Man of Color
Fever Season
Graveyard Dust
Sold Down the River
Die Upon a Kiss
Wet Grave
I reread this recently and I thought it was great! The creepy (in hindsight) vibes from Luke and Leia are what make it so entertaining. Plus, it has quite a bit more humor than some of the more recent ones I’ve read, though I admit I haven’t gotten to any of the X-Wing books yet.
Children of the Jedi turned me off SW books completely. I had been wavering after slogging through Rogue Planet, and CotJ nailed the coffin shut. As much as I’d like to read the Xwing series, I can’t bring myself to take the chance. IMHO, CotJ was pure crap from start to finish.
Children of the Jedi turned me off SW books completely. I had been wavering after slogging through Rogue Planet, and CotJ nailed the coffin shut. As much as I’d like to read the Xwing series, I can’t bring myself to take the chance. IMHO, CotJ was pure crap from start to finish.
Did you ASK anybody what books to read before you began? Don’t blame us!
Goodness, like any franchise operation like this, there will be some stinkers. but if you stick with Zahn, Stackpole, Allston, and later, Salvatore and Keyes, you’ll be good. I rewcommend that you go back and give them a try. I can also say that Allston, at least, is a super quick read- more like a comic book serial than a novel.
Just, for the love of OG, please steer clear of Kevin J. Anderson! shudder
Starwars, and now Dune. I have 2 reasons to kill him.
I’m trying to get all the X-Wing comic books to read-so far I was able to get The Warrior Princess and Requiem for a Rogue out of the library. Both are great-but the art in the latter is awful-especially Tycho during his nightmare scene-he looks like he has some hideous disease!
I really think that the EU needs to give us some more Tycho and Winter-they’re the best couple in the EU.
I’ve started to read the X-Wing series. I’m up to chapter five of Rogue Squadron (I’ve got finals, otherwise I’d be further.) and I can barely put it down. I think I want and X-wing now…or at least a pilot of one
heheh…
I started with Zahn, actually. Bad move, since it was all downhill from there. You can’t start with the best! The Anderson trilogy was next, and while I liked it a lot while reading it, the suckitude didn’t hit me until discussing it later with friends, and I had a sudden epiphany… “holy cow, it was crap, wasn’t it? and I just shovelled it down! weird…” Another death star? Something that blow up not just a planet, but a whole system? silly.
Hey, all you EU experts, if I skip Anderson’s stuff, will I still be able to understand I, Jedi, which I hear is intertwined with those much-maligned Jedi Academy books?
That question is impossible to answer, as they vary greatly from author to author. And everybody disagrees about which books are good and which ones are not. Here’s my opinion on the NJO books:
Vector Prime (R.A. Salvatore) - awesome book with a pseudoscience star-trekkish ending. Characters are handled very well, VERY important to the plot. You can’t skip this one.
Dark Tide: Onslaught (Stackpole) - characters are weak, nothing really important happens, but the battle at the end is well-written. Skippable.
Dark Tide: Ruin (Stackpole) - characters improve, great battle scenes, overall a very fun book. Minor plot importance.
Agents of Chaos 1 (Luceno) - So-so story and characterization, the author has this really annoying habit of referencing all of this obscure stuff from RPG’s and comics and who-knows-what. If you’re a geek you’ll probably love it, but I hated it. Very little plot importance.
Agents of Chaos 2 (Luceno) - same as above, except with a little more plot this time. Skippable, but you’ll miss one major event.
Vergere gives Mara her tears to help her fight the disease.
Balance Point (Tyers) - long and boring, but the characters are on target. The final conflict is well done, but most of the book is incredibly dull. Very important plotwise, though.
Edge of Victory: Conquest (Keyes) - this book focuses on Anakin and the Jedi Academy. Takes a while to develop, but once you get into the meat of the story it is a great read. Don’t skip, pretty major plot importance in this one.
Edge of Victory: Rebirth (Keyes) - not a whole lot happens in this one, but it is still a good read because Keyes’s characterization is great. A few significant events happen in this one involving Mara,
Gives birth to baby Ben and is finally healed of the Vong disease, after nearly dying from it while trying to protect her baby.
and a Yuuzhan Vong shaper named Nen Yim (something like that) but nothing too major plotwise.
Star by Star (Denning) - read it! This one has everything you could ever want from a Star Wars novel. And the most significant events of the series happen here.
Dark Journey (Cunningham) - I skipped this one, so I can’t comment, but most people don’t recommend it.
Enemy Lines: Rebel Dream (Allston) - Good battles, so-so characters, not real important plotwise. It is an easy quick read, though, Allston has a good conversational style of writing. But it doesn’t really have the “feel” of a SW book, so it was not one of my favorites.
Enemy Lines: Rebel Stand (Allston) - This book has some good stuff, but it has an awful lot of crap. Good stuff: wraith squadron, focus on Luke, adventure on Coruscant. But… the villain is possibly the worst character ever conceived by a SW author
he has lightsaber implants… sigh and the final conflict feels like something out of a crappy comic book. You should probably skip this book, unless you loved Anderson’s stuff, because this has an equal level of cheese. Basically no relation to the plot, too.
Traitor (Stover) - Really really different. But good different. If you like Jedi stuff and philosophy, you’ll enjoy this one for sure. And there is quite a bit of action mixed in too. Focus is on Jacen. VERY important to the plot.
Destiny’s Way (Williams) - I am in the middle of this one right now. Lotsa politics, and I’m not sure Williams really knows how to write Jedi, an underwater torpedo should not be a problem for a Jedi master - hello telekinesis but other than that it seems pretty good so far. And very important to the plot too.
Agreement with most of dil’s reviews above, for the most part. I did enjoy Allston’s NJO books a lot, although I agree that they aren’t nearly as strong as his Wraith Squadron books (he seems to be at his best when dealing with characters of his own invention). Also, I absolutely hated Destiny’s Way, because Williams seems to have done little or no research regarding his main characters. For example, all of the character development for Jacen and Vergere in Stover’s excellent Traitor is completely erased in Destiny’s Way. I had, after Traitor, been eagerly awaiting Jacen’s next move, as he and Vergere appeared to represent a new, ambiguous element in the New Republic faction, but Williams turns him into little more than the “although slightly pained by his memories, otherwise matured and dedicated to fighting evil” Jedi archetype that seems to be the fate of every Jedi character who faces any sort of internal conflict in this series.
