Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
To celebrate their 30,000th Like on Facebook, Star Wars Books thanked fans by releasing an excerpt from Timothy Zahn’s highly anticipated upcoming novel, Scoundrels. Head on over to the official SWB page to see how Han and Chewie deal with a cantina dustup.
Star Wars: Scoundrels is due out on December 26th.
(Originally written 3/13/12, updated 4/4/12)
The long-awaited Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse finally is on bookshelves, wrapping up the nine-book tale and marking the end of the megaseries approach in the Expanded Universe. Does it stack up with the rest of the series? Is it a satisfying conclusion?
Be forewarned, spoilers loom below the cut.
Meet Mara Jade. She’ll be very important in the EU.
I think we all recall how we felt the first time we saw the credits roll at the end of Return of the Jedi. It starts with a moment of satisfaction and content as the credits roll. Then, almost without fail, a moment of dread. It’s over! But I’m not ready for it to be over! What do Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie do next? There has to be more, right? (Ed. note 11/2/12: Ahahahahahahahahah)
Mercifully, there is: the Expanded Universe.
Perhaps you’ve hit up the Internet and have done some preliminary research into the EU, thinking you’ll pick up one of these books to satisfy your hunger for more Star Wars. It seems like a great idea at first, right up until you discover that there are scores upon scores of books, comics, and games featuring different characters and eras. Where do you start?
To preface, this is intended to be a roadmap to becoming familiar with the post-Return of the Jedi EU. This isn’t an official Tosche Station reading guide, just my own suggestions* on what novels will best help a new reader build up the needed knowledge of universe, plots, and characters to understand and appreciate the current state of the Expanded Universe. It is possible to get every bit of information needed from Wookieepedia, but if you’re anything like me, it’s simply more fun and enjoyable to develop this knowledge by reading the novels over reading a dry wiki-style overview.
*But a big, big thank you to my friend Bria for helping me compile this list
Seventeen books comprise this list and are broken into five distinct phases. While that sounds like a lot, it’s a mere drop in the giant Expanded Universe bucket. Some of these novels are optional depending on your preferences and are marked as such.
To the cut!
A funny and rather unexpected thing happened while trudging through the latest entry in a series of Star Wars Expanded Universe novels that haven’t exactly jumped out and grabbed my attention. Somewhere in the middle of reading through Aaron Allston’s Conviction (the seventh entry in the much maligned Fate of the Jedi series), I realized I was feeling a strange sensation. I was having fun with this book. Now, that’s not entirely unusual, I wouldn’t be an EU reader if I didn’t manage to derive some kind of fun from every novel I pick up.
No, I was having a lot of fun with this.