Favorite New Canon Novel so Far

I liked it. It's first person Luke, so it's a bit bizarre, and he does seem off a bit, mostly because this was a Legends book allowed to become canon IMO. But once the story gets rolling, it's pretty interesting.

I think your list is pretty spot on, @Hard Case. I just happen to think Tarkin is better than Lords of the Sith and Heir to the Jedi underrated and misunderstood. Here is my list, from what I've read.

1. Lost Stars (Surprising YA novel that is breathtaking)
2. Dark Disciple (TCW! Voss merged with old Legends darkness, and Asajj and Boba!)
3. Tarkin (So you're telling me this guy was a bloodthirsty hunter and flew with Vader... WICKED)
4. Lords of the Sith (Confusing at times, but Vader, Palpatine, and some clones vs Syndulla was awesome)
5. Twilight Company (Goes through the war like Lost Stars, is gritty, has a Dexter-alien! Almost done with it)
6. Aftermath (Bones = B1 Battle Droid with built in wacko and General Grievous fighting AI, and Temmin "Snaps Wexley" of TFA X-Wing Pilot! Has potential to get even better, great interludes, extremely scrutinized because of a 2 line scene regarding sexuality)
7. Heir to the Jedi (Interesting story, decent romance, bizzare worlds, first TFA hints, etc)
8. A New Dawn (Basic Story, Kanan has the hots for Hera LOL. First Rae Sloane scenes before Aftermath!)
9. The Weapon of a Jedi (Luke, Magnaguard Staffs, Jedi Temples, and good ol' fun. Wish we got to see more of Sarco in TFA )
10. Smuggler's Run (Han, Chewie, Rebellion, smooth-talking, casino, clones and stormtroopers, and good fun)
11. Moving Target (Leia had a decent story, liked it a wee bit more than her comic miniseries. Also, bounty hunter Embo from TCW has his home
planet and lifestyle shown. Good explanations leading into ROTJ with Strike team, etc.)

I'm going to read Before the Awakening soon, as well as the TFA novelization, which has the JOURNAL OF THE WHILLS! I will edit soon.

 

Children of the Jedi and The Truce at Bakura huh, I never cared for those books take on Luke Skywalker either, you've only convinced me further to not even bother with HTTJ.

I completely agree on Aftermath, as a matter of fact, Sinjir was actually one of the only likeable characters in the book IMO. At the end of the day, I disliked like Aftermath for the main reason that I disliked the PT, a failure to connect with the main characters and story. Just like the PT I went in really wanting to like it, and even convinced myself for a little bit, but reading Lost Stars really put into perspective just how inferior of a book Aftermath really was.

Just like the PT however though, not everything in Aftermath was terrible. I liked what little development we got on Sinjir, I liked Rae Sloane, but I liked her in previous material as well, I liked some of the discussion between the different Imperials in the meeting and I liked the glimpses of the galaxy that we got in the interludes. But those things I listed were not what we got for most of the book, instead we got one of the more generic and boring accounts of a ragtag team of misfits coming together to stop the Empire. The idea in itself is already a little cliched, but can still be done well if handled by a more competent writer.

As for Wendig's writing style, I'll just paste one of the better Amazon reviews that tackles that subject.

The Force is not with this one. 2 Star Review
ByEvil Ottoon September 7, 2015
Format: Hardcover

"The TIE wibbles and wobbles through the air, careening drunkenly across the Myrrann rooftops - it zigzags herkily-jerkily out of sight."

And that was the moment when my eyes started bleeding.

Numerous other reviewers have noted the poor writing style of Chuck Wendig. Those other reviewers are correct. This book is horribly written, with a jarring present-tense narrative. The characters are dull and formulaic... the tech genius teenager and his estranged mother, the regretful drunken ex-Imperial, the hard-as-nails bounty hunter. As I read, I found myself not caring what happened to any of them. Whether they lived or died made no difference to me, and that's a bad sign.

The descriptions of the environment and the action reminded me of the narrative of a game master describing something to his players in a role-playing game. "It's a spare, severe room - red walls lined with manacles. In the middle, a desk whose surface is made from some Sullustian frozen in corbonite. On that desk is a blaster, a collection of quills in a cup, a bottle of ink. The room features only one other piece of furniture: a tall black cabinet, sealed tight with a maglock." (p. 142) I half expected Wendig to add "So, what do your characters do? Roll a perception check."

What really depressed me about the whole mess was that there were moments I enjoyed, moments I wanted to see more of... only for the book to go back to the boring main story line about the cliched-band-of-motley-rebels-coming-together-reluctantly-to-stop-the-Empire. The interludes, which had nothing to do with the main plot, showed the effect of the Empire's fall on planets across the galaxy. While they weren't written any better than the rest of the book, they showed the reactions of people to the collapse of Imperial rule. A family dinner gone awry as siblings argue. Bounty hunters realizing they may not have much of a future. Politicians arguing the course of the future government. I found myself wanting them to continue, to see what might happen only for the chapter to end and the interlude characters never to be mentioned again.

The only other exception was Admiral Rae Sloane, first introduced in "A New Dawn." I wanted to see more of her... an intelligent, reasonable (but loyal) Imperial who wasn't a stock character like the others. I'd like to see a novel about her, something written from the Imperial side as things fall apart.

This is not a good start to Disney's new Star Wars post-RotJ universe. The company needs to hire a new writer who will write stories about characters and events that people actually care about. One with writing talent would be preferred.

You'll notice that even though the reviewer didn't like Wendig's writing style, even he wanted to see more of the more interesting parts of the book's story.

Additionally, even though it didn't personally ruin the book for me, Wendig's writing style is definitely not good either and it certainly didn't help when reading the books more boring portions. Although certain lines in the book are definitely atrociously written, almost humorously so at points.

At the end of the day, most of the bad reviews were like this one, not even including a single reference to the gay characters in the book, nor did most them bemoan the fact that the book wasn't Heir to the Empire. But when you look at a lot of the 5 star reviews written for the book, most of them more recent, you see people harping on the gay thing implying that that was the only reason that people didn't like this book, despite the fact that hardly any of the reviews even mentioned that aspect of the book. Ultimately, I see it as people just using that as a smokescreen to obscure the real reasons that people didn't connect with this book, namely, bad writing, generic and boring story, plus poor development of the new characters.

That being said, do I consider Aftermath to be the worst Star Wars book that I've ever read? Of course not, but it is one of the only ones where I've had to force myself to pick it up and keep reading, and considering its important place in the new canon, that's a sad thing to have to say about it.

Another issue that I've noticed with it was the unprofessional somewhat childish way that Wendig himself responded to criticism of the book. Someone says the book is bad, Wendig says that he is an acclaimed and respected writer who's sold such and such amount of books, as if that excuses the poor story in Aftermath. Or he hides behind the gay thing implying that that's the main reason people didn't like his book. Worse yet, he says that people simply hated it because it isn't Heir to the Empire, even using the term "weaponized nostalgia" at one point.

But here's the thing, as others have already pointed out. Wendig's book isn't the first Star Wars book to have gay character's, as a matter of fact, there were gay characters in the EU series Legacy of the Force and then in the new canon novel Lords of the Sith, no one batted an eye about those books having gay characters. As for his book not being Heir to the Empire, we have a number of new canon books so far and that doesn't seem to hinder their reviews either.

Are there certain people that would hate Aftermath regardless of its quality because of the reasons listed above? Sure, but those people are an extreme minority among the number of people that didn't like this book. If Aftermath was a well written book, overall perception of the book would be way different than it is now.

All of that being said, he can still makeup for some of the issues that Aftermath had in his follow up, primarily by actually developing his new characters into interesting people and focusing on a more interesting main plot next time around.

 

Well, I wouldn't say that I'm waiting for it with bated breath , but seeing as how it seemingly follows the plot thread setup in one of Aftermath's interludes, it at least has the potential to be a more interesting read. Although I'm not going to be pre-ordering it like I did with Aftermath, if the reviews are just as bad and the other users here in the forums say it is no better than Aftermath I'll probably just pick up the cliff notes later.

 

Totally agree about how Luke's Heir to the Jedi served no real purpose and all, but I do feel it was modified a bit and was a decent enough story. I figure we'll get these types of novels in a few years more frequently, but seeing how I was pleased with the effort, I wouldn't mind it. I do agree on the writing style of Aftermath. I just mentioned the scene because I saw it too many times on Amazon. The writing was a bit weak, but I felt it worked well when the story really got moving. I'm still looking forward to Aftermath: Life Debt with the same fervor I had for Aftermath, just hopefully it'll blow me away like Lost Stars, but if not, if it lands middle of the list, I'll be really pleased. Words alone do not describe just how good that was, and the new excerpt from New Republic: Bloodline is making me feel like Claudia Gray could be the Timothy Zahn of canon Star Wars novels!

 

lost stars is my favorite so far, but what a surprise Twilight company was. such a great a war novel and like lost stars gave a different perspective on the events of the OT which i love. on the other side i got to say that dark disciple was a disappointment. i loved the CW and ventress and vos are great characters but it really felt by the last third that it was a tv script stretched into a novel. i do hope they go back to clone wars well in the future and continue to bridge the gap left between the show and RotS after it was cancelled by disney.

 

I mean it was a TV Script stretched into a novel! But yes, at the end it felt kinda rushed and a bit think on depth, so I get what you mean. Still didn't disappoint me. Welcome to The Cantina btw!

 

After finally reading them all (just finished Dark Disciple), Lost Stars still remains my favorite but I have to say I loved Dark Disciple it would be my second on the list. I sort of wished I read it before TFA because of the psychometry.

 

Well, I tried to give it a chance to "Heir to the Jedi" and I had to put it down since it was taking me a while to get engaged into the book. I started reading "Before the Awakening" and "Lost Stars" afterwards and each book took me a day to read it through! Both were quite good and way better than Heir to the Jedi.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 6, 2016, Original Post Date: Mar 6, 2016 ---

So far I have read most of the new canon and the most recent one has been "Lost Stars" and definitely loved it! I truly enjoyed the perspective of seeing the main story we all know by heart but narrated from two different perspectives: two young cadets that at the beginning see the Empire as an organization worthy to be part of. (Aside of it, love how endearing they even portray certain Empire characters - won't say anymore to avoid spoilers!). Loved it and I'm still wondering about the end.

 

Tarkin and A New Dawn are my two favorites that I've read so far.

 

read Lost Stars and its amazing.... best book since Thrawn trilogy
give it a A++***********

 

welcome to the Cantina, @Celinna!

 

thx Fn-3263827 wrote a bit about the book in the other thread

 

I'm wondering what people like about Lost Stars so much?
Not saying it's not good, I haven't finished it yet. So far the plot has been pretty good. But I get a bit annoyed at some things, e.g I like the idea of seeing what the other side of the story think but having the characters crammed into several of behind-the-scene film moments is tiresome. Tarkin seemed unbearably out of character to me, but... Idk, he's not in it much. And I don't like how the author uses regular profanity such as "crap" instead of fictional ones they've used before to get away with a more family-friendly image (kriff, I think is one, or e chu ta in the films). Then again I never liked when the same thing happened in one or two EU books before.
Still the book has been good at keeping me hooked. I'm just hoping the rest will change my mind. But I've got to say that all the hype over it has left me underwhelmed.

 

Really liked the characters in Lost Stars and cared about them. The writing was pretty good and it was in familiar territory without taking away from things we already know and love. That is what it was for me. Some of the EU books make me cringe a bit as they would try too hard, or overuse catch phrases trying to stay with the character. I liked Moving Target, but there were some things that seemed out of character, to me. Like dwelling too much on stuff. Not something I would think Leia would do. I like the others like that as well, even if written for YA, they were compelling and good stories.

 

I'm curious as to how Tarkin seemed out of character to you, not criticizing you, just interested to hear your thoughts on the matter. I personally thought Tarkin seemed like Tarkin in his appearances in the novel. As for the using of words like crap, that is unfortunately something that we are seeing a great deal of with the new canon books, I assume it must be an edict from on high, because things like that are popping up far to much in the new canon for it to be a coincidence. I think maybe the story group thinks we aren't smart enough to piece to together the use of to many non-earth words or something like that .

 

I thought it was weird for Tarkin to pay attention to a couple of outer-rim kids. I imagined him as a "get these street rats away from me" kind of guy. Having him remember Ciena, I get, because I liked the reasoning of an excellent memory. But that moment with Tarkin at the start was just to cheesy and strange to me. Not at all like the cold, heartless villain we knew in A New Hope.
Again, just my opinion really.