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Anyone read them? are they worth reading?

I am not what you call a "Star Wars Geek" but I do enjoy the universe.

I am not one of those people who will claim it is the worse book ever written because it was not as good as something else or should have been better or different.

As long as I can read through it without any struggles, excessive plot holes, or excessively predictable I fairly happy and content as a reader.

I'd say go for it. I read almost all of them up to the end of the 2nd Galactic Civil War, and found them to be mostly entertaining.

I would recommend the Thrawn Trilogy as a starting point.

Do I have to read them in order to understand them?

Or are the books split up into a small series of books (trilogies) where they have no dependency on each other to understand the story line?

 Piston Honda wrote:
Do I have to read them in order to understand them?

Or are the books split up into a small series of books (trilogies) where they have no dependency on each other to understand the story line?

You don't have to read them in order, but it can be confusing if you don't. I started reading the EU with the New Jedi Order series, which began roughly 18 years after Jedi, and well it confused me a bit and made me go back and read other books.

Seconding the Thrawn trilogy (yes, these have to be read in order).

As for the rest, I've only read a small fraction of them, and tend to avoid the "new jedi" stuff.

I do have the original Han and Lando trilogies somewhere (which, like "splinter of the mind's eye" have events that have been largely retconned).

One more for the Thrawn Trilogy here.

If you fancy something in the Original Trilogy timeline, read Shadows Of The Empire, set between TESB and ROTJ, brilliant book

I've read a ton of the SW EU (expanded universe). The Thrawn Trilogy, Death Star, Tales of the Bounty Hunters are probably some of my favorite items. I actually haven't read a single book from the New Jedi Order series, though.

I recommend you start off with Death Star. It's set in a time you'll be familiar with, and just covers a bunch of characters who worked in and around the Death Star during the events from A New Hope. It goes into detail about people's day-to-day lives on the station, some covert stuff happening unrelated to the rebellion, perspectives from Imperial Officers on-board, and just other average Joe stuff that give you insight into how a civilian's life might be like just 'working' for the Empire. A fun read tbh, and you won't need all kinds of extra EU knowledge to enjoy it.

Specific EU books chosen based on recommendations by people you trust with similar taste in books? Sure. A few of them are alright and good entertainment if you don't expect great literature. The Thrawn trilogy and the first Han Solo trilogy (the one from 1979, not the newer one) are pretty good, and the X-wing books are the literary equivalent of a fun-but-mindless action movie with the major redeeming factor of not spending any time on the same old overused main characters from the movies.

The EU as a whole? Not at all. The majority of it is just milking the cash cow with mediocre books that wouldn't sell without "Star Wars" on the cover. Unless you're a dedicated fan (and you say you aren't) and desperate to get every bit of Star Wars you possibly can there's really no point in reading most of them. It won't be "worst book ever" bad, but you aren't going to get much out of the experience.

If you want a general rule to follow stuff set in the era of the original trilogy and shortly after has a much higher chance of being good, while later books suffer from the problem that the Empire has been destroyed (and the plausible "cleaning up the leftovers" battles have been fought) but the cash cow still needs to be milked. So you either get yet another "minor Imperial governor tries to rebuild the Empire" story that milks the cash cow again without doing anything innovative or interesting, or the idiotic "bio-tech aliens from outside the galaxy" storyline that should never have made it past licensing approval. And book after book the franchise keeps going long past the point where a sensible author would have realized that there are no more stories left to tell and it's time to move on to something new.

As has been said, the Thrawn books are worth a read, I also enjoyed the Rogue Squadron books.

I really enjoyed the Thrawn novels, so add my recommendation onto the pile for those.

The rest are a mixed bag. Some were pretty great (part of the NJO, if I'm not mistaken), some were utterly terrible (I recall hating Darksaber), many fell somewhere on the spectrum.

I've pretty much read up to the Yuuzhan Vong series...

Thrawn series is my favorite.

Yuuzhan Vong series isn't bad...

If you can, I'd try reading them in order, but that's a ton of time/money.

I've also been interested in the EU novels, but never knew where to start. Thanks for the comments!

And I thought the Yuuzhan Vong series sounded pretty interesting...I'm guessing it's not that great?

 mega_bassist wrote:
I've also been interested in the EU novels, but never knew where to start. Thanks for the comments!

And I thought the Yuuzhan Vong series sounded pretty interesting...I'm guessing it's not that great?

I liked the Vong series... but, you really need to at least read the Thrawn Series first and maybe a few series where the Solo/Skywalker kids are still kids before tackling the Vong series.

The Vong series has some major "shifts" in the storyline.

One thing to keep in mind.

For the amount of writers in the Star Wars series, Lucas Arts mandated that the previous books in the timeline are canon. That's the one thing that impressed me with the whole thing.

 Peregrine wrote:
Specific EU books chosen based on recommendations by people you trust with similar taste in books? Sure. A few of them are alright and good entertainment if you don't expect great literature. The Thrawn trilogy and the first Han Solo trilogy (the one from 1979, not the newer one) are pretty good, and the X-wing books are the literary equivalent of a fun-but-mindless action movie with the major redeeming factor of not spending any time on the same old overused main characters from the movies.

I agree with this.

The Thrawn Trilogy is very similar in tone and concept to the original trilogy, adds well liked new characters, uses old characters in good ways, and avoids much of the goofy stuff that plagued the later books.

The X-wing books, especially the ones by Mike Stakepole, are closer to military sci-fi, and show a much less "Fantasy" story. Rather, it's about dogfights in deep space. They're page turners, if not incredible.

The EU as a whole? Not at all. The majority of it is just milking the cash cow with mediocre books that wouldn't sell without "Star Wars" on the cover. Unless you're a dedicated fan (and you say you aren't) and desperate to get every bit of Star Wars you possibly can there's really no point in reading most of them. It won't be "worst book ever" bad, but you aren't going to get much out of the experience.

If you want a general rule to follow stuff set in the era of the original trilogy and shortly after has a much higher chance of being good, while later books suffer from the problem that the Empire has been destroyed (and the plausible "cleaning up the leftovers" battles have been fought) but the cash cow still needs to be milked. So you either get yet another "minor Imperial governor tries to rebuild the Empire" story that milks the cash cow again without doing anything innovative or interesting, or the idiotic "bio-tech aliens from outside the galaxy" storyline that should never have made it past licensing approval. And book after book the franchise keeps going long past the point where a sensible author would have realized that there are no more stories left to tell and it's time to move on to something new.

There are dozens of books in the EU, and simple math assures you that most aren't great. Some are terrible (I tapped out after the Black Fleet Crisis), some are actually young adult novels, and some are set in basically a completely different paradigm (the latter super invation books).

If you want to read some good books that are familiar, I'd recommend starting with one of the "tales" collections of short stories. I'm partial to "Tales from the Mos Eisly Cantina," but they all have the advantage of telling small stories, and none of them are too big of an investment.

After that, the Thrawn Trilogy is legitimately good, but it's a pretty heavy read. After that, YMMV, although as stated I enjoyed hte hell out of the Rogue Squadron books.

I'm a sucker for anything Star Wars... but the NJO (Yuuzhan Vong series) really was hard to read, imho. A single plotline for...23(?) books is a bit much. Anything by Timothy Zhan is good, the second galactic civil war was good too, but the Fate of the Jedi actually defeated me. I can't get myself to read the last two.

The X-wing series is awesome. Go read it. I, Jedi and "Darksaber" are also good.

...the Vong series was 20+ books? Are you serious? That's kinda crazy.

Thanks everyone.

Sounds it seems like I should avoid Thrawn series all together.

I just ordered 2 books.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
The X-wing series is awesome. Go read it.

Yeah, I believe I only read the first half dozen or so, but I recall enjoying them. Pretty straightforward reads, nicely in setting while using other characters.

I, Jedi

Can't recall if I've read this one.

and "Darksaber" are also good.

Darksaber was a crime against humanity.

... okay I can't back that up, but off hand it stands out as one of the few Star Wars books I read that I thought was outright bad, and the bar is set pretty low to begin with.

And yeah, the NJO series is a hell of a stretch. A friend loaned them to me over the course of a couple months, and while the premise as a whole was okay, there were times when it came across as simply trying too hard, a few utterly amazing scenes, and a couple of books in the middle I've been meaning to pick up based on how much I enjoyed them outright, including one bit where the allied forces introduce the antagonists to how The Empire did/does business. It's... not a pretty sight.

Another vote for the Thrawn Trilogy.

 Polonius wrote:

If you want to read some good books that are familiar, I'd recommend starting with one of the "tales" collections of short stories. I'm partial to "Tales from the Mos Eisly Cantina," but they all have the advantage of telling small stories, and none of them are too big of an investment.

After that, the Thrawn Trilogy is legitimately good, but it's a pretty heavy read. After that, YMMV, although as stated I enjoyed hte hell out of the Rogue Squadron books.

+1 to all of these in addition to my previous on Thrawn.

The "tales from" series are enjoyable stories. I've got "tales from Jabba's palace", "tales from the Mos Eisley cantina", "tales of the bounty hunters" (iirc).
The Stackpole X-wing books weren't bad - but Mike Stackpole is a gamer as well as a writer, and he's been doing game tie-ins for decades as well.

I started with the Han Solo Trilogy. It was awesome, and explains how he met Chewie, why Lando was mad at him, and why Boba Fett hates him so much. Also explains how he knows so much about the Empire (beyond common knowledge) and how he won the Falcon. I also enjoyed the Yuuzhan Vong (NJO) series, but many people hate that series, so YMMV.

Darksaber is literary gold next to http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Crystal_Star.

Honestly, any of the Star Wars Tales series are great points of entry into the EU. And if you do like Michael A. Stackpole's X-Wing series, he does tons of novels for Battletech.

If you want to enjoy a really great book, slog through the Jedi Academy Trilogy- then read I, Jedi. It is very good, but suffers from serious plot armor. The trilogy adds a great deal of context, and makes the plot armor on Corran much less obvious.

They're a bit of a mixed bag, as others have said.

The Thrawn trilogy and Timothy Zahn's other books are a good read, although there are some inconsistencies caused by new information from the prequels.

The X-wing books are a fun read, if a little pulpy.

I enjoyed the Vong saga, although with all the jumping between authors, the Vong and Legacy books get a little irritating as the various authors can never seem to agree on just how badass Luke is supposed to be... He alternates between kicking butt, and lurking about doing nothing in alternate books.

For the older stuff, some are good, some not so much. There are a lot of plot holes due to them not being as heavily vetted for consistency in the early days (Han being surprised by a space station the size of the Death Star in Episode 4 makes much less sense when one of the books reveals that there was a bigger space station in his home system, for example) and quite a bit of stuff that has since been retconned by the prequels.

But if you can approach them as light-weight entertainment, and don't expect them to be fully canon, there are some good reads scattered through there.

I would skip the Courtship of Princess Leia, That one was just painful.

While not "books' per se, the Legacy era graphic novels are really cool, and have a much more believable story than "governor wants to restart the Empire". Also gotta love a Skywalker descendant that smokes death sticks, totally ignores Luke as a Force Ghost trying to get him to do good, and sneers at R2 as a "family heirloom".

 AegisGrimm wrote:
While not "books' per se, the Legacy era graphic novels are really cool, and have a much more believable story than "governor wants to restart the Empire". Also gotta love a Skywalker descendant that smokes death sticks, totally ignores Luke as a Force Ghost trying to get him to do good, and sneers at R2 as a "family heirloom".

Also Darth Talon.

 PrehistoricUFO wrote:


I recommend you start off with Death Star. It's set in a time you'll be familiar with, and just covers a bunch of characters who worked in and around the Death Star during the events from A New Hope.... and just other average Joe stuff that give you insight into how a civilian's life might be like just 'working' for the Empire.

This reminded me of this:

I'm a huge fan of the books. I've read all the ones I can get my hands on. My fav are the ones set during the Sith wars. They mostly go over how the Sith were first set on the "Rule of two" path. Also the ones from a group of Clone Commandos point of view during the Clone Wars.

Only EU book I've read was something called "death trooper" or something like that.


it had its cool moments, but was ruined by a ham fisted attempt to shove recognizable characters in and the biggest cop out ending I've ever seen.

I never liked the Jedi, and always wanted to read more about the "grunts" on both sides. Your rebel troopers, stormtroopers, etc. Are there any good books or graphic novels that follow them?

I've also heard there was some rebellion after the movies that involved remnants of the empire fighting each other. Anyone have an idea of what that would be? If I remember correctly a friend of mine told me there's a comic series about it.