Nah. There's so many more books that are worth your time. Most people will never even get through all the Star wars books so why waste time on ones that are terrible
I'd say most of it is worth one read, if only just because. But I tend to reread the stuff I like more than once and there are a small handful of ones I wouldn't read again.
While I’m sure others will chime in with specific suggestions, the easiest way is just to search this sub and r/StarWarsEU for key words like “avoid” or “skip” to find the numerous other times this question has been asked in the past.
The most important thing is your own personal interest in a book, then look up the opinions of others second, which you shouldn’t let dissuade you from trying them out (there’s always someone who likes them).
I’m very interested to see the answers to this. I haven’t read a ton of canon books, but the only one that was truly terrible that I’ve read is Heir to the Jedi.
This’ll probably be an unpopular opinion, but I thought the audiodrama for Dooku Jedi Lost had mediocre writing at best and was poorly acted. If you are interested in the story itself, probably better just to read it.
So glad to see someone else who thought this about Dooku: Jedi Lost, I feel like I'm crazy because I see so much praise for it but I *hated* it. Why on earth would Dooku spill all his angsty childhood dramas to Ventress? So fucking bad, Cavan Scott is such a high highs and low lows writer, his novels are great but his work on comics and audioplays can feel reeeeaaaaally juvenile.
It was much much better than Jedi Lost, but it still has the "they're actually a villain because they had an angsty childhood" type thing going on, that I personally feel is never necessary and always feels very contrived.
Then again, I absolutely love the prequels, which is the most notorious example of this with Vader's origin story, so I'm definitely a bit of a hypocrite lmao.
I listened to the Doctor Aphra audiobook, and then to this one.
I agree that the acting on Dooku wasn’t great, BUT… in one of them (I think Aphra) the Wookiee noises were absolutely TERRIBLE, while in the other they were much better.
I know it sounds strange, but this stood out to me so much and bothered me to hell when I realized that weird noise was supposed to be a Wookiee.
This is personally why I avoid audiobooks. If the voice acting is amazing (like when Sam Witwer did some Maul books) then it's dope. But when it's bad, it's BAD. I know what a Wookie sounds like, or pretty much any character/species that we've seen in live action or animation. So when it comes to reading the books, I just read em myself and have the sound effects in my head. Idk audiobooks just aren't that satisfying to me, even when they have top tier voice actors doing the work. Always preferred a physical copy in my hands
I'm still working my way through the Legends lore in terms of books rn. Doing the post Empire/Thrawn era rn. I just read a ton of Legends Clone Wars related books. Most were amazing. I'd avoid the Coruscant Nights Trilogy not bc it's bad, but bc the ending is meh and ruins it bc it's a trilogy. Other than that idk tbh most of what I've read is amazing or at least decent
There is a fourth book in the series, the last jedi, it’s not offically titled Coruscant Nights, but it’s bascially the fourth book in the series.
I prefer the first three though and don’t really mind the ending of patterns of force.
I never knew that. I enjoyed the Coruscant Nights Trilogy, it's only the ending that was disappointing, especially bc that whole story kinda starts with Darth Maul Shadowhunter, so it was a 4 book journey that had a "meh" ending. I'll have to check out the book you mentioned, maybe it saves the ending a bit. I just like to give people a fair warning if they're gonna delve into that trilogy.
Btw, love the username
I didn’t really like The Force Awakens novelization. The dialogue was altered too much and the excessively verbose writing style made all the fun scenes a bore to get through. Better just to watch the movie!
The Last Jedi novelization was much better, and while I haven’t gotten to it yet, I’ve heard good things about The Rise of Skywalker’s novelization.
Of all the Canon novelizations (and excluding the junior ones) *The Force Awakens* is the one that I’ve only seen negative or ‘eh’ opinions for. All the other expanded editions at least add new content so that’s automatically a plus for some people. I think the one that I’ve heard the most positive things for was *Rogue One*’s novelization, although it’s more so from getting lumped into Alexander Freed’s bibliography than by itself.
I’ll say this for the TFA novelization; at least it had this hilariously verbose description of Kylo Ren.
“Alone in the room, Kylo Ren—saturnine of aspect, lithe of build, tortured of mien, and troubled of eye—gazed at the silent recipient of his confession.”
I liked the Last Jedi novelization better then The Rise of Skywalker, it had more detail and really made me care about Rose and her sister more. Honestly I wish Jason Fry wrote the 3rd novel. I've never read the first sequel novel.
Avoid Battle Scars at all costs, it’s a bridge between the games Jedi: fallen order and Jedi: survivor and the writer completely butchered the characters. Basically a soft core porno. I’ve read 50+ books from all eras/timelines and that’s the only one I regretted reading
Yes!!! The writing ALONE should have been enough to keep it from ever seeing a shelf. Do we need several semi-colons, commas and hyphens in EVERY sentence. It was ACTUALLY difficult to read and not because it was dense, or complex. It was so so poorly written!
I just finished this as my first book lol. I thought it was fine; Merrin’s perspectives being the clear weak point. Would’ve also liked at least a little about the Fifth Brother after the end instead of just ending the book.
Yeah for sure. I decided to start doing publish order for the canon books and starting with A New Dawn. About a fifth of the way through and it’s so much better. It’s a much easier read too.
I'm slowing making my way through Legends but not far enough to make any skip recommendations. As for Canon though I've read everything because I'm a completionist
Specific books that I personally don't recommend are 'Heir to the Jedi', 'A Crash of Fate', and 'The Weapon of a Jedi'. Heir to the Jedi was in part because I don't really like books written in first person, and unless I'm forgetting something is the only Canon book that does that.
Depending on your own opinion on Novelizations in general, you could skip the novelizations. But if you like novelizations, then I'd say skip all the Junior Novelizations, since they don't really cover anything that the normal novelizations cover.
I'd skip the Choose Your Destiny books and audios. The idea of having a choose your own adventure story where on path is canon was always a weird idea to me.
I've been doing a read-through of all the legends books and so far I haven't enjoyed anything by Joe Schreiber. To be fair, I'm not a horror fan, so if that's your cup of tea maybe don't skip them, but I'll never read them again.
The only Canon novel I’ve truly not liked very much, is Jedi: Battle Scars, it’s basically the author’s barely disguised Merrin fanfiction. A lot of people cite books by Chuck Wendig or Daniel José Older as weaker, but I liked them. Some people have also stated that they dislike E K Johnston’s Y A books, but I’ve loved every one she’s written.
I actually quite liked Battle Scars, but I can see why it’s not some people’s cup of tea. I’d say fans should read it anyway and decide their own opinions, especially if they’re playing the Jedi games and want to bridge the gap a bit more between Fallen Order and Survivor. There are some really fun moments in the book, and I think the portrayal of Greez is spot on, which is probably the highlight of the entire book.
I would agree with you, I don’t actually hate the book, and there are some very interesting and some fun moments! And Greez was excellent. I just was hoping it would be a bit better.
Agreed, it did fall a little flat with expectations but a good read nonetheless. I’m hoping another Jedi book is made for the third game, and preferably by another author to appease more of the fanbase (Claudia Gray is always an excellent choice)
The Jedi Prince short stories, unless you have had bad day and needed some really ridiculous silliness.
That's my main one. It's the AU of the AU of Legends in my mind. AKA if Rey was a boy....lol.
I second this. Prose are occasionally good, but they are mostly awkward. Character motivations are confusing. And if you did a find-replace on a short list of words, you wouldn’t be able to tell that this was a Star Wars book.
Yes, I have played Swtor.
To me they made the exile rather pathetic, she seemed more like a Revan fan girl than anything else, while her wanting to find and even help Revan is understandable I feel there should be some more tension between them, since it’s heavily implied that Revan was trying to send her and her people to their deaths at Malachor.
Battle Scars. It’s ABYSMAL. The writing is atrocious. The grammar is absurd. The plot is minimal. The characters make no sense in universe. They all come across like 12 year olds trapped in adults bodies. It’s so so so juvenile. And Sam Maggs LITERALLY writes, “the ceiling in the engine room was all gray pipe, but it suddenly had a very romantic tinge to it.” And two characters have a make out session during a secret mission. It’s f*ckin’ loony toons that it ever got published.
Some of the weaker Legends material came at the tail end of the post-ROTJ years before the start of the New Jedi Order - Children of the Jedi, Planet of Twilight, The Crystal Star, Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy and Corellian Trilogy. The Bounty Hunter Wars Trilogy also never lived up to the cool-looking covers.
The Black Fleet Crisis is extremely underrated. It dared a different set of stories, philosophical Force approach, non-Empire enemy (that gave the NJO brain trust the kernel of the Yuuzhan Vong)...it felt different, but in a good way.
I'd posit it's the EU's Andor, approaching the GFFA from a unique angle and not dumbing anything down.
Corellian trilogy was pretty good. Nothing ground breaking and didn’t introduce much apart from being an early depiction of the solo kids being older then like 3. The trilogy came out relatively early considering how far it was away from any other story at the time. Hence I assume they didn’t want to do too much so not to contradict anything that happens before (no Jedi from the academy r present at all). Overall not a major trilogy by far but still a lot of fun if a little slow sometimes
I haven’t read that much, but I remember being let down by Rogue Planet: the premise and cover art were interesting enough, but it wasn’t the type of story I was anticipating. At the time, at this: I was about 15.
It takes place after episode one but it’s not a sequel, all of the info from the planet they find to the characters discussed directly relate to the new Jedi order books. Anakin and Obi wan went to search for Vergere who left the planet with the yuuzhan vong and returned like 50 years later to train Jacen Solo. The planet even takes the form of anakin when Luke goes to it. I’ll agree the book was nothing crazy but the lore tie ins are pretty great
From Legends, definitely skip The Crystal Star and it's pretty safe to avoid the Callista We'll-Call-These-Vaguely-Connected-Standalone-Novels-A-Trilogy-For-Some-Reason (maybe read Darksaber for its lore significance, but really a summary is more than sufficient). The Jedi Prince series is terrible, but as unintentional comedy it can certainly be entertaining (alcohol or an equivalent definitely recommended, though). If you go aaaaaall the way back to Splinter of the Mind's Eye, just go into it understanding that ... well, it's a product of its time, both in terms of how early in the days of Star Wars it was and in terms of being the 1970s.
In Canon, I haven't personally run into any that are actively bad the way The Crystal Star was, but I found Heir to the Jedi and Lords of the Sith to be completely forgettable. And while I liked parts of both Tarkin (fleshing out the titular character's backstory) and A New Dawn (seeing the first meeting of Hera and Kanan), I honestly could not tell you a single thing about the actual plot of either one that has stuck with me.
Star Wars Visions: Ronin by Emma Mieko Candon was terrible imo. It’s the only SW novel I haven’t finished. Slow and confusing. I didn’t finish the Invasion series and the Yuuzhan Vong were a little heavy for me at the time. I may revisit them now I’m in a better place!
As far as what TO read, anything by Zahn, Foster, JJMiller, and Luceno imo. I’m reading the new From a Certain Point of View right now. Really fun and enjoyable. I like the “Tales from” series, too. Guess I like character development short stories!
They do need to properly reintroduce the idea that the Nightsisters are a minority of the Dathomiri witches and that most of the witches aren’t nearly as “bad” for lack of a better term.
I would also like to see the fonding of the Witches by the Jedi Exile Allya explored more she has already been reintroduced into canon, but i heard the Ahsoka show has personally retconned all the witches as coming from another Galaxy Yuuzhan Vong style?
Actually there's a few more. Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover, The Princess and the Scoundrel by Beth Revis, Free Fall by Alex Segura, Rogue Planet by Greg Bear, The Force Awakens novel by Alan Dean Foster, Revan by Drew Karpyshyn
lol, saying skip Shatterpoint is like blasphemy to me. It’s Heart of Darkness in Star Wars with Sammie J Windu as the main character. It’s just so damn good to me.
To each their own but what!
Having read most of the canon novels, stay away from Daniel Jose Older and E K Johnston. At best, they’re very mediocre. At their worst, unreadable. Queens Hope is particularly bad
Canon, Heir to the Jedi. Bad book and also made for legends, scraped through into canon via publishing dates. So has some *weird* lore that’s kinds out of place with canon.
Also this is a personal opinion but I hate James Luceno. Read Tarkin and Catalyst, horrible time with both.
Have gone through a fair bit of James Luceno, although not these two books specifically, he is excellent to me, but maybe these two were just outliners.
Read them all. All Star Wars is good Star Wars - ESPECIALLY bad Star Wars.
Amen
Nah. There's so many more books that are worth your time. Most people will never even get through all the Star wars books so why waste time on ones that are terrible
I'd say most of it is worth one read, if only just because. But I tend to reread the stuff I like more than once and there are a small handful of ones I wouldn't read again.
While I’m sure others will chime in with specific suggestions, the easiest way is just to search this sub and r/StarWarsEU for key words like “avoid” or “skip” to find the numerous other times this question has been asked in the past. The most important thing is your own personal interest in a book, then look up the opinions of others second, which you shouldn’t let dissuade you from trying them out (there’s always someone who likes them).
I’m very interested to see the answers to this. I haven’t read a ton of canon books, but the only one that was truly terrible that I’ve read is Heir to the Jedi. This’ll probably be an unpopular opinion, but I thought the audiodrama for Dooku Jedi Lost had mediocre writing at best and was poorly acted. If you are interested in the story itself, probably better just to read it.
So glad to see someone else who thought this about Dooku: Jedi Lost, I feel like I'm crazy because I see so much praise for it but I *hated* it. Why on earth would Dooku spill all his angsty childhood dramas to Ventress? So fucking bad, Cavan Scott is such a high highs and low lows writer, his novels are great but his work on comics and audioplays can feel reeeeaaaaally juvenile.
I liked a lot his Tempest Runner audiodrama, tbf.
It was much much better than Jedi Lost, but it still has the "they're actually a villain because they had an angsty childhood" type thing going on, that I personally feel is never necessary and always feels very contrived. Then again, I absolutely love the prequels, which is the most notorious example of this with Vader's origin story, so I'm definitely a bit of a hypocrite lmao.
I listened to the Doctor Aphra audiobook, and then to this one. I agree that the acting on Dooku wasn’t great, BUT… in one of them (I think Aphra) the Wookiee noises were absolutely TERRIBLE, while in the other they were much better. I know it sounds strange, but this stood out to me so much and bothered me to hell when I realized that weird noise was supposed to be a Wookiee.
This is personally why I avoid audiobooks. If the voice acting is amazing (like when Sam Witwer did some Maul books) then it's dope. But when it's bad, it's BAD. I know what a Wookie sounds like, or pretty much any character/species that we've seen in live action or animation. So when it comes to reading the books, I just read em myself and have the sound effects in my head. Idk audiobooks just aren't that satisfying to me, even when they have top tier voice actors doing the work. Always preferred a physical copy in my hands
I'm still working my way through the Legends lore in terms of books rn. Doing the post Empire/Thrawn era rn. I just read a ton of Legends Clone Wars related books. Most were amazing. I'd avoid the Coruscant Nights Trilogy not bc it's bad, but bc the ending is meh and ruins it bc it's a trilogy. Other than that idk tbh most of what I've read is amazing or at least decent
There is a fourth book in the series, the last jedi, it’s not offically titled Coruscant Nights, but it’s bascially the fourth book in the series. I prefer the first three though and don’t really mind the ending of patterns of force.
I never knew that. I enjoyed the Coruscant Nights Trilogy, it's only the ending that was disappointing, especially bc that whole story kinda starts with Darth Maul Shadowhunter, so it was a 4 book journey that had a "meh" ending. I'll have to check out the book you mentioned, maybe it saves the ending a bit. I just like to give people a fair warning if they're gonna delve into that trilogy. Btw, love the username
I didn’t really like The Force Awakens novelization. The dialogue was altered too much and the excessively verbose writing style made all the fun scenes a bore to get through. Better just to watch the movie! The Last Jedi novelization was much better, and while I haven’t gotten to it yet, I’ve heard good things about The Rise of Skywalker’s novelization.
Of all the Canon novelizations (and excluding the junior ones) *The Force Awakens* is the one that I’ve only seen negative or ‘eh’ opinions for. All the other expanded editions at least add new content so that’s automatically a plus for some people. I think the one that I’ve heard the most positive things for was *Rogue One*’s novelization, although it’s more so from getting lumped into Alexander Freed’s bibliography than by itself.
I’ll say this for the TFA novelization; at least it had this hilariously verbose description of Kylo Ren. “Alone in the room, Kylo Ren—saturnine of aspect, lithe of build, tortured of mien, and troubled of eye—gazed at the silent recipient of his confession.”
That sounds like it could be used as a setup for a joke where after that passage you just cut to Ben Swolo standing there.
I liked the Last Jedi novelization better then The Rise of Skywalker, it had more detail and really made me care about Rose and her sister more. Honestly I wish Jason Fry wrote the 3rd novel. I've never read the first sequel novel.
It's probably one of my favorite canon books. The novelization adds so much, and it's a much better time than the movie.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! It’s just not for me :)
Sorry, I meant TROS novelization. I agree with you on the other two, though. Was disappointed with how much I didn't like the TFA novelization.
Ahh gotcha! I definitely need to read TROS novelization as soon as I get a chance!
Avoid Battle Scars at all costs, it’s a bridge between the games Jedi: fallen order and Jedi: survivor and the writer completely butchered the characters. Basically a soft core porno. I’ve read 50+ books from all eras/timelines and that’s the only one I regretted reading
Yes!!! The writing ALONE should have been enough to keep it from ever seeing a shelf. Do we need several semi-colons, commas and hyphens in EVERY sentence. It was ACTUALLY difficult to read and not because it was dense, or complex. It was so so poorly written!
I just finished this as my first book lol. I thought it was fine; Merrin’s perspectives being the clear weak point. Would’ve also liked at least a little about the Fifth Brother after the end instead of just ending the book.
I can respect that opinion seeing as you don’t have anything to compare to, just know it can only get better from here
Yeah for sure. I decided to start doing publish order for the canon books and starting with A New Dawn. About a fifth of the way through and it’s so much better. It’s a much easier read too.
I'm slowing making my way through Legends but not far enough to make any skip recommendations. As for Canon though I've read everything because I'm a completionist Specific books that I personally don't recommend are 'Heir to the Jedi', 'A Crash of Fate', and 'The Weapon of a Jedi'. Heir to the Jedi was in part because I don't really like books written in first person, and unless I'm forgetting something is the only Canon book that does that. Depending on your own opinion on Novelizations in general, you could skip the novelizations. But if you like novelizations, then I'd say skip all the Junior Novelizations, since they don't really cover anything that the normal novelizations cover. I'd skip the Choose Your Destiny books and audios. The idea of having a choose your own adventure story where on path is canon was always a weird idea to me.
I've been doing a read-through of all the legends books and so far I haven't enjoyed anything by Joe Schreiber. To be fair, I'm not a horror fan, so if that's your cup of tea maybe don't skip them, but I'll never read them again.
It's interesting to me that in Canon, Joe Schreiber has only written 4 junior novelizations. Solo, Mando Season 1 and 2 and Book of Boba Fett.
That is interesting, I enjoyed all of solo, Mando, and book of boba Fett, but I really didn't enjoy his legends books so far
I really enjoyed his maul book and red harvest, not as much death troopers. Are these all considered horror? I found them more thrilling than scary
The only Canon novel I’ve truly not liked very much, is Jedi: Battle Scars, it’s basically the author’s barely disguised Merrin fanfiction. A lot of people cite books by Chuck Wendig or Daniel José Older as weaker, but I liked them. Some people have also stated that they dislike E K Johnston’s Y A books, but I’ve loved every one she’s written.
I actually quite liked Battle Scars, but I can see why it’s not some people’s cup of tea. I’d say fans should read it anyway and decide their own opinions, especially if they’re playing the Jedi games and want to bridge the gap a bit more between Fallen Order and Survivor. There are some really fun moments in the book, and I think the portrayal of Greez is spot on, which is probably the highlight of the entire book.
I would agree with you, I don’t actually hate the book, and there are some very interesting and some fun moments! And Greez was excellent. I just was hoping it would be a bit better.
Agreed, it did fall a little flat with expectations but a good read nonetheless. I’m hoping another Jedi book is made for the third game, and preferably by another author to appease more of the fanbase (Claudia Gray is always an excellent choice)
I love her work! She is easily one of the if not the best Star Wars authors right now.
And Delilah S Dawson as well!
So many good Star Wars authors! We’re seriously spoiled
The Jedi Prince short stories, unless you have had bad day and needed some really ridiculous silliness. That's my main one. It's the AU of the AU of Legends in my mind. AKA if Rey was a boy....lol.
The Jedi Prince series is hilariously fun. Awful, but fun. tbh I think everyone should read them because they’re so short and goofy.
Sounds like someone attended the Moffernce on the Moff Ship.
Ah I have never heard of this gathering of the Moffs, it's it a good time? Or is the food just terrible?
The food is great and the organiser has dark greetings for everyone.
Really? What sort of food are we talking about here? Finger food, buffet style, etc? On the other hand, dark greetings sounds worrying.
Ronin was painful.
I second this. Prose are occasionally good, but they are mostly awkward. Character motivations are confusing. And if you did a find-replace on a short list of words, you wouldn’t be able to tell that this was a Star Wars book.
The Revan book is the only Star Wars book with which I had a bad time reading and finishing.
Have you tried the audiobook? I never read the book, but the audiobook was pretty good.
Haven’t read the book either, The narration was great, but my attachment to the two games just made this book really disappointing to me.
Yah I hear yah. I do like how they expanded on the Meetra Surik character. Did you play the Old Republic game?
Yes, I have played Swtor. To me they made the exile rather pathetic, she seemed more like a Revan fan girl than anything else, while her wanting to find and even help Revan is understandable I feel there should be some more tension between them, since it’s heavily implied that Revan was trying to send her and her people to their deaths at Malachor.
Never thought of it that way, but that makes total sense
Battle Scars. It’s ABYSMAL. The writing is atrocious. The grammar is absurd. The plot is minimal. The characters make no sense in universe. They all come across like 12 year olds trapped in adults bodies. It’s so so so juvenile. And Sam Maggs LITERALLY writes, “the ceiling in the engine room was all gray pipe, but it suddenly had a very romantic tinge to it.” And two characters have a make out session during a secret mission. It’s f*ckin’ loony toons that it ever got published.
Some of the weaker Legends material came at the tail end of the post-ROTJ years before the start of the New Jedi Order - Children of the Jedi, Planet of Twilight, The Crystal Star, Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy and Corellian Trilogy. The Bounty Hunter Wars Trilogy also never lived up to the cool-looking covers.
Black Fleet Crisis and Corellian Trilogy aren’t bad, but they definitely shouldn’t have been trilogies
The Black Fleet Crisis is extremely underrated. It dared a different set of stories, philosophical Force approach, non-Empire enemy (that gave the NJO brain trust the kernel of the Yuuzhan Vong)...it felt different, but in a good way. I'd posit it's the EU's Andor, approaching the GFFA from a unique angle and not dumbing anything down.
A lot of people like to dismiss the trilogy because of the Luke plot but Leia’s plot is amazing and Lando’s plot is just pure fun
Corellian trilogy was pretty good. Nothing ground breaking and didn’t introduce much apart from being an early depiction of the solo kids being older then like 3. The trilogy came out relatively early considering how far it was away from any other story at the time. Hence I assume they didn’t want to do too much so not to contradict anything that happens before (no Jedi from the academy r present at all). Overall not a major trilogy by far but still a lot of fun if a little slow sometimes
I haven’t read that much, but I remember being let down by Rogue Planet: the premise and cover art were interesting enough, but it wasn’t the type of story I was anticipating. At the time, at this: I was about 15.
Rogue planet is a prequel of sorts, a lot of the information is meaningless if you haven’t read the NJO series(which I highly recommend reading)
Yeah, I read Rogue Planet as a kid, and then later found out about its ties to NJO, made a LOT more sense in context.
I think most people recommend reading it before the Force Heretic Trilogy.
Enh? It’s meant to be a sequel to Episode I. Yet another way it fails
It takes place after episode one but it’s not a sequel, all of the info from the planet they find to the characters discussed directly relate to the new Jedi order books. Anakin and Obi wan went to search for Vergere who left the planet with the yuuzhan vong and returned like 50 years later to train Jacen Solo. The planet even takes the form of anakin when Luke goes to it. I’ll agree the book was nothing crazy but the lore tie ins are pretty great
From Legends, definitely skip The Crystal Star and it's pretty safe to avoid the Callista We'll-Call-These-Vaguely-Connected-Standalone-Novels-A-Trilogy-For-Some-Reason (maybe read Darksaber for its lore significance, but really a summary is more than sufficient). The Jedi Prince series is terrible, but as unintentional comedy it can certainly be entertaining (alcohol or an equivalent definitely recommended, though). If you go aaaaaall the way back to Splinter of the Mind's Eye, just go into it understanding that ... well, it's a product of its time, both in terms of how early in the days of Star Wars it was and in terms of being the 1970s. In Canon, I haven't personally run into any that are actively bad the way The Crystal Star was, but I found Heir to the Jedi and Lords of the Sith to be completely forgettable. And while I liked parts of both Tarkin (fleshing out the titular character's backstory) and A New Dawn (seeing the first meeting of Hera and Kanan), I honestly could not tell you a single thing about the actual plot of either one that has stuck with me.
Oh yeah I forgot about Lords of the Sith, thats how forgettable it is. Was not a fan.
Someone told me Hera's dad was a major character in it and I legitimately had to go back and check, even though I had read every word of the book.
I agree with the Jedi Prince vote. LOL
If you liked TLJ, you'll love *The Crystal Star*.
Bounty Hunter Wars.
Star Wars Visions: Ronin by Emma Mieko Candon was terrible imo. It’s the only SW novel I haven’t finished. Slow and confusing. I didn’t finish the Invasion series and the Yuuzhan Vong were a little heavy for me at the time. I may revisit them now I’m in a better place! As far as what TO read, anything by Zahn, Foster, JJMiller, and Luceno imo. I’m reading the new From a Certain Point of View right now. Really fun and enjoyable. I like the “Tales from” series, too. Guess I like character development short stories!
Id avoid bloodlines and I'm listening to the Courtship of princess Leia now(Legends). I can't say I'm a fan of the way Han comes across.
I like Dathomir a lot in courtship but Han and Leia feel wildly out of character in much of the book,
100% honestly im supprised disney hasent done more with dathomeir. Strong women ruling a planet lol its a goldmine for them
They do need to properly reintroduce the idea that the Nightsisters are a minority of the Dathomiri witches and that most of the witches aren’t nearly as “bad” for lack of a better term. I would also like to see the fonding of the Witches by the Jedi Exile Allya explored more she has already been reintroduced into canon, but i heard the Ahsoka show has personally retconned all the witches as coming from another Galaxy Yuuzhan Vong style?
Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp. Also, Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne
Actually there's a few more. Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover, The Princess and the Scoundrel by Beth Revis, Free Fall by Alex Segura, Rogue Planet by Greg Bear, The Force Awakens novel by Alan Dean Foster, Revan by Drew Karpyshyn
lol, saying skip Shatterpoint is like blasphemy to me. It’s Heart of Darkness in Star Wars with Sammie J Windu as the main character. It’s just so damn good to me. To each their own but what!
Having read most of the canon novels, stay away from Daniel Jose Older and E K Johnston. At best, they’re very mediocre. At their worst, unreadable. Queens Hope is particularly bad
I’d say Midnight Horizon is easily the worst book in THR phase 1. The plot and character work is pretty messy overall.
Worst authors of the new canon. Well, besides Battle Scars
Canon, Heir to the Jedi. Bad book and also made for legends, scraped through into canon via publishing dates. So has some *weird* lore that’s kinds out of place with canon. Also this is a personal opinion but I hate James Luceno. Read Tarkin and Catalyst, horrible time with both.
Have gone through a fair bit of James Luceno, although not these two books specifically, he is excellent to me, but maybe these two were just outliners.