SPOILER Chuck Wendig - Aftermath (Journey to The Force Awakens)

After the latest release of Aftermath: Empire's End, I've heard nothing but good things. Similarly I've heard nothing but bad reviews of it's predecessors. I was tempted to just skip the first two and do my best to catch on by throwing myself right into Empire's End. But I'm a completest, couldn't pull myself to do it

And thankfully I didn't! I'm about halfway thru the First book, Aftermath, and I'm loving it! I've heard complaints about Wendig's writing style, the interludes, the story itself.. on and on. I just don't get it what all the fuss was about? Maybe I'll be disappointed by book's end, but I'm finding myself thoroughly absorbed in it so far. Great stuff and can't wait to see where it leads!

 

Same here, don't know what all the fuss was about. I generally think that the major audience was disappointed that they were treated to new characters rather then the basic famous three. What I like about Aftermath, is that you care more and more about the new characters, even the snobby Sinjir, just as much as Han, Leia, and Luke. We won't discover what the hell Luke was doing, how Ben Solo fell to the Dark side, who are the main players of KOR or FO are, who is Snoke, what really happened to Boba Fett, I could go on... but Wendig's hands were tied and as the story progressed, he changed his writing style. I'm not surprised that the same ppl that hated the first book liked the the second one... Han... Chewie... Life Debt. Anyway I liked Wendig's style interludes and all. Oh yeah, Temmin, the rage, the need to do something...

 

Agree. Regarding the groups you mentioned, I can sort of understand the first because the present-tense writing style might be disconcerting at some point, but in my opinion you get used to. Cannot do anything about the second group, and the third... well, I am aware of the old EU but never been a fan as a matter of fact. Maybe some people is still mourning the loss of characters as Mara Jade, Pellaeon, Talon Karrde, etc and I can try to understand since back in the day, they represented the new stuff for Star Wars - before the prequels, TCW or even a Disney acquisition. But times change and in my opinion, those books were not perfect either.

So even if the Aftermath books are not perfect, I reckon they are a must-read to understand better the Galactic Civil War: if we stick only to the OT, it is not the same to see this conflict from Yavin to Endor than to see it from Scarif to Jakku.

 

no doubt there were long and harried and fraught meetings about the death of the EU but in a way current popular culture has prepared us for this: the way the comic book universe reinvents itself constantly has prepared generations of geek fans for the impermanence of it all. i daresay the older fans who were attached to the EU from the beginning are the most affected. even though i grew up with the EU long before the PT and after, i was never attached to it (and am actually glad it's gone).

Lucasfilm will recycle good stuff from it (they already are). but in an interesting way, killing off the EU leveled the fandom: everyone gets to start at the beginning again and that's actually kind of refreshing even when it muddies the dialogue a bit.

and i wouldn't want them to make a habit of it the way comic books do ~ i hope it never needs to happen again ~ hahahaha

 

The old EU was still never official canon however? There were silly multiple layers but only the movies (and their novelisations) were concrete canon? The rest just a collection of loosely related stories?

Give me a cohesive, connected world anytime

 

Indeed! And we have to acknowledge that there were cringe-worthy stuff from those books. At least now we have a Story Group working in order to try to make sense and to avoid continuity issues.

And in some way I get why these books - the Aftermath trilogy - are not focused on the main characters as the old EU: I reckon it is a great opportunity to see the vastness of the galaxy first hand and to get attached to more fictional characters LOL. Maybe the Big Ones will remain at the top of the list but it is great to have additions like Sinjir, Jas or Mr. Bones.

Exactly! They were never sanctioned officially so anyone could come with their perspective of the characters as they wanted. Seriously, I'm a big H/L fan but I'd have Chuck Wendig and Claudia Gray's depictions of them rather than the old EU books from the same time period.

 

exactly! the free-for all is just too many cooks in the kitchen.

i love, too, how the canonical extended universe really does enrich the movies. sure, you can ignore it and still enjoy the films, but having Aftermath and Bloodline and Rebels, and all the other bits and pieces has been really fun. as fans you can still pick and choose what you read, how deep you go, and everyone gets to experience this galaxy on their own terms.

as much as we can argue in forums like this about the canonical background and influences from media to film, everyone's experience of Star Wars, ultimately is valid. and i think it was very keenly designed that way.

 

I would add another two groups. Those who were OK with Wendig's style but still found the books story and characters underwhelming(the group I fall into) and those who were expecting a book that would focus on Star Wars characters from the movies and were disappointed by all of these new characters that Wendig introduced(such readers were probably brand new to Star Wars books in general).

This is important to keep in perspective. Comics are an excellent frame of reference for something like this. Comic universes have undergone multiple reboots and half reboots through the years. Even when they do so though, the old stories don't disappear. Additionally, something's status as Canon or non-Canon does not determine its quality. Take one of the most famous Batman stories of all time, The Dark Knight Returns. That story was always written as a story separate from the Canon of the main comics, it was never "Canon" to begin with, yet it is still considered one of the best comic book stories ever written. If you are an EU/Legends fan, the stories you loved aren't gone, and LucasFilm isn't coming to burn your book collection or smash your copy of Knight of the Old Republic, in fact, they are still selling all those things.

Well it was official Canon according to LucasFilm, but not according to George, which created all kinds of messiness and retcons that authors constantly had to deal with. It even led to the cancellation of a book series due to TCW making major changes to the Mandalorians history early on. Honestly, the best thing for the EU at that point would have been to make a clean break from Canon and to do their own thing at that point, as the levels of Canon thing just forced authors to constantly edit and change their stuff to fit whatever George was doing at the time. Prior to The Clone Wars, the EU had very little issues with Canon, but it cannot be overstated just how much TCW continued to throw wrenches into the EU from its very first season.

I was reading the Republic Commando book series that got cancelled at the time. That was actually what got me to give up on the EU at the time. I understand that you can't always maintain perfect continuity and I'm fine with that, but I won't put up with having a book series I'm reading cancelled because of changes in a kids television show(which hadn't gotten really good yet). In fact, I pretty much went cold turkey from anything Star Wars related(aside from the films) for quite a while after that.

 

Exactly, if you liked them, there's still out there for your personal enjoyment but there won't be part of the current canon - though their characters might be canonised (like Thrawn).

 

Yeah, I can understand some of the attachment to elements of the old EU. Personally, I wasn't a big reader of the EU books but I loved the story line of Kyle Katarn in Jedi Outcast etc and I absolutely loved the KOTOR series. It's actually good to see that perhaps they're leaning towards canonizing much of the Old Republic, just in their own way.

I'm on Chapter 32 now. I have to say, I've really enjoyed the little side stories of the Interludes. Places like Taris and Vader's lightsabre, mentioning of the Echani.. Tatooine where it looks like they stumbled upon Boba Fett's mandalorian armor. A nice aside with Han and Chewy on their way to Kashyyk. And I do feel invested in these new characters. Almost ready for Life Debt!

 

I'm a firm believer the outcry over the new canon from EU fans would NEVER have happened if Lucasfilm included the Thrawn trilogy into the new canon. Personally, I thought EU was bloated and rehashed the same plot over and over again. I was a fan of the NJO series but hated the Legacy of the Force series. In the end, though, I was a firm believer in starting a new canon and going from there. It made storytelling sense as to keep the EU or any aspect of it would be to narrow to the possibilities for world building and the future of the saga.

Then again, I'm a reasonable, moderate person with an understanding of story structure.