Is the Zahn trilogy really that great?

Felt the same about the Ysalamiri. Never liked Talon Karrde neither. And what about this clone evil Jedi confunsed weird bearded guy...Johrous Cbaoth..or something.


But I liked Mara Jade and Thrawn.

 

I think the comic book adaptations are so much better. They feel more like actual movies.
Only that all the three books condensed will make a cool one episode of Star Wars in my opinion.
I got all the three books for christmas as a kid in 3rd class of elementary as they were release in Czech. Fell in love with them as a continuation of the Movies and being marketed as canon here.

But I didn't like them that much, as they weren't that fun as the movies were. No Sith Lord against Luke, only the dying remnants of Empire and crazy Jedi clone.
As I read them later after being seasoned sci-fi fan, I enjoyed them a lot more.
Also, funny relation to Prequel Trilogy, with the politics of the New Republic being mentioned and having some space in the books.

 

BLASPHEMY!

 

Yeah, maybe. But Zahn is darn good writer. He has the simmilar ZING! I get from A. C. Clarke for example.
I was able to imagine all he writes pretty vividly and it is what drawn me deep into his books.
I even read Hand of Thrawn, but wasn't able to get the second book - it had the awesome storytelling still, but not much interesting story for me to follow.

 

My biggest complaint with trying to find StarWars books to read is all of them read like heavy SciFi StarTrek fan fiction and less like pulp adventures.

I started reading A New Dawn with high hopes to get in on new StarWars EU adventures on the reboot ground floor but it is a real slog... Confirming what I long feared about EU novels being too dry.

I always see the Zahn novels held up as the standard but it sounds like they aren't any different

Do any of the StarWars books read like pulp adventures?

Edit: I've decided the only way forward is to get what I think a StarWars novel could be, published. Wish me luck because I'm going for it.

 

Well, thumbs up with that. After reading Zahn and Shadows (which are best EU works in my opinion), I had sparse sparse experience with EU books,
and they were pretty poor in my opinion. That one about Mace Windu was probably the worst. Some time later, I couldn't resist and bought Darth Vader from James Luceno. I was looking forward to read some III-IV story about Vader not long after his transformation. Most of the books was about some, sorry for being so harsh, Jedi losers, for which I didn't had any sympathy. One of them was a Jedi gardener?! And I said, never more!
It is just cash-in for hardcore fan boys, that milks the walets thanks to the Star Wars name slapped on the book. Most of them are written by mediocre authors.
There are nice touches here and there in-universe, but no one literate who enjoys reading can't take this seriously.

As a huge fan of DC Comics and of course, Batman - I did enjoyed the SW comic books a lot more. The Clone Wars series was a blast and I really enjoyed this Purge short with Vader. It just goes straight to the adventure we know from TV show and movie (probably mostly thanks to it being simmilar medium in not having to incorporate vastness of info, just story as the base and rest is done visually).
The comics are not afraid of going to the core and introduce something more radical, as the SW books to me feel more like a filler to read in a train, when you are unfortunate to get better book.

And I asure you, that I am no comic book freak, and did read and love works of Dick, Clark and Asimov (anyone else being curious about the upcoming HBO Foundation adaptation?) and classic romans and beletry (huge fan of horror also). When you compare most of the franchise titles and fantasy titles to those, it doesn't hold up at all.

But I would really love if someone did read some great SW book (wasn't much) I didn't, and will recommend it to me

 

I got into the EU around 2005. The "timeline" and more established EU trilogies were well outlined by then. I went into Thrawn Trilogy with very high expectations based on its reputation. It was a good read and overall captured the spirit of SW but there were major shortcomings I couldn't get into.

- CLONES, it's always an excuse for coming up with a great villain. I never want to see a clone of major cast in any of my books.
- The concept of diminishing force control based on distance, later on when the concept of "battle meditation" is introduced and how
it's affected by distance in space. This is nonsense, the way force is described in OT is a spiritual or magical concept. It has nothing
to do with the distance between the users, at least in my mind.
- Thrawn was a very interesting villain but the way his story completes in the trilogy was very weak to me.

I'd recommend this series to any SW fan but there are better novels out there that nail SW feel.

 

Which are the better novels that nail the StarWars feel?

 

@Vagabondarts To answer your question, I'll define what my interpretation of that "feel" is first. A comparison to SW films and their plot structure is useless because you can re-use the same formula only so much before it becomes tiring. What I feel a good SW novel should have is:

- Strong archetypes who are thrown against insurmountable odds and grow through their personal journeys
- Epic mass scale action scenes/duels that describe battle strategies clearly & vividly (not a small task, particularly w. space battles)
- Characterizations, if I'm reading Han's character it has to feel like him. Fan service lines are ok in my book but you should get
under his skin and feel with him. And when those familiar cast act we shouldn't be dumbfounded by their decisions but half guess
them because it's what Han, or Luke would do!
- Exotic locations and interesting alien species that have a place in and contribute to overall plot and aren't there as an afterthought.
- Lastly, a powerful human conflict & resolution. I'm not saying all the books must follow the same "hero's journey" formula but
there must be a link that grounds a sci-fi or fantasy world to reality, something we all can relate to. (Star Wars: Medstar books are a prime ex.)

With that in mind, these following trilogies in my mind stand above T. Zahn's books:

THE BLACK FLEET CRISIS
-Before the Storm
-Shield Of Lies
-Tyrant's Test

THE CORRELIAN TRILOGY
-Ambush at Corellia
-Assault at Selonia
-Showdown at Centerpoint

THE JEDI ACADEMY TRILOGY
-Jedi Search
-Dark Apprentice
-Champions Of The Force

I'm also a big fan of both "NEW JEDI ORDER" & "LEGACY OF THE FORCE" arcs. The latter being a very dark, almost perverse version
of the SW universe, still I felt it worked well and explored the familiar characters psychologically in a way other title's haven't. BLOOD TIES
in the LOTF in particular! The fantastic rendering of Mandalorians and Boba Fett will always stand as THE definitive source for me.

 

I didn't like the Thrawn Trilogy. I thought they were boring, complicated, and it's like you never know what the characters are doing! They're on some planet, then in the next chapter, they're somewhere totally different! There was only ONE lightsaber duel, and don't get me started on how many times Zahn wrote "she threw him a sideways glance" or " for a handful of heartbeats" or "cocking an eyebrow" or "her stomach tightened". But that's just what I think! I'm sorry if I offended anyone that loved these books, but to me, they just don't feel like Star Wars.

 

The Thrawn Trilogy while it hasn't aged the best is still one of my favorite arcs out of all the Star Wars novels. Thrawn was a super interesting character and it continued the Star Wars that we all loved when there was none left.

And to be completely honest after reading half of Aftermath I do not think this opinion will be changing anytime soon.

 

I personally really enjoyed Zahn's Star Wars work, felt much more Star Warsy to me than anything in the new canon thus far. That isn't meant to knock the new canon novels(which I am enjoying for the most part), in fact, the Zahn trilogy felt more like Star Wars to me than a great deal of the old EU as well. I personally find the Heir to the Empire series to be very cinematic. That isn't to say that it is without its flaws, or even my favorite SW book series for that matter.

As for whether a book feels like SW or not, that largely depends on the reader, and their personal interpretations of what makes something SW, not to mention their favorite aspects of Star Wars. Being as how Star Wars is such a personal thing for so many fans, their opinions of what is and isn't Star Wars are bound to vary a great deal. While I love the mythology of good versus evil that is embodied by the force, one of my favorite things of all in Star Wars is the star fighters and the dog fights from the OT. Therefore, I tend to gravitate towards material that focuses more on that aspect of Star Wars, which in turn tends to feel more like Star Wars to me.

In addition to that thought, I think that often one may enjoy a lot of the Star Wars books more if they table their expectations somewhat, namely in regards to the books feeling just like the movies. One of my favorite things about the EU was that we didn't just get stories about the heroes from the OT, but we also got all kinds of tales from the perspectives of all kinds of different characters in the Star Wars universe. See Tales from Jabba's Palace or Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina for some excellent examples. These stories weren't meant to feel like the movies per se, which focus on larger than life heroes struggling against larger than life villains, with similarly larger than life stakes. Instead, a lot of these books were able to explore things that the movies only touched on, like the lives of the characters in the military on both sides of the conflict, or even the perspective of the bounty hunters, or in some cases, the regular guy just trying to make his way in the galaxy.

Its understandable that a lot of readers want to read something that feels just like one of the movies, which some of the novels did with varying degrees of success. However a great deal of the EU also explored the SW universe from all kinds of angles that we would never have time to explore in the films. For SW nerds like myself, that's exactly what we wanted.

It is understandable that some people aren't interested in all the small details of the SW universe though, preferring to keep some of the mystery from the films. Honestly, with the vast number of SW fans out there, there are some who will love most of the novels, some who will like some of them and vastly more who will never have the interest to even pick up a SW novel, being content with the films.

Really, the only one who can really tell you whether or not a SW novel really feels like SW, is yourself . That being said, here are some of my favorite picks for EU books.

My personal favorite series of novels are the X-Wing novels, particularly the one's written by Michael A. Stackpole(my favorite SW author). These led to my overall favorite SW novel, that being I, Jedi. One of the reasons I love those books so much is because they introduced my favorite EU character, Corran Horn(another plus, they also feature quite a bit of Wedge Antilles). He is basically fills the role of the common man in Star Wars, a very talented and force sensitive common man, but still quite ordinary in comparison to the heroes of the OT. I, Jedi in particular shows the Star Wars universe from his perspective. His character is never really presented as someone who is destined for great things in the same way that someone like Luke Skywalker is for example, but that's part of what I like, seeing the Star Wars galaxy through the eyes of the everyday people like ourselves.

The Black Fleet Crisis, really? I personally hated that trilogy, had to force myself to finish reading it, however I'm open to hearing what you and others liked about it. I do like your other picks however.

 

That's because it followed the original concept of The Clone Wars.
Before Zahn wrote his story he was given access to Lucas' notes. Back in the 70s/80s 'The Clone Wars' was a war against dissident Clones... not a Clone Army fighting separatists and droids.

Zahn originally wanted Joruus C'baoth to be a clone of Obi Wan but Lucas put the kibosh on that.

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I got an advanced copy of Heir to the Empire when it came out. Being a huge Star Wars fan and avid sci-fi reader I was stoked. I read it and was completely underwhelmed. It ended on a cliffhanger that left me uninterested to continue. I never went back. To each his own though. If you like them more power to you.
I disliked the books (as sci-fi) so much i actually used to buy them for my friend who loved them and she would read them and then i would take her out for coffee to tell me about them so i didnt have to waste my time reading them (this was before the interwebs were a thing when you could just look up a comprehensive article on wookiepedia) >_>

 

Not be a complete Negative Nancy - I do understand the fan appeal of Mara Jade and Thrawn and do hope disney eventually works them in for their fans.

I'm a big fan of the 'proto-Mara Jade' - Shira Brie aka Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith that originally appeared in the Marvel comics run- at the time that was an official outlet for star wars lore given out by Lucasfilm to mention things that didnt make it into the movies because it upset the flow of the story

But then again, I also liked Kiro and his B-team crew of smugglers Rick, Dani the Zeltron and Chihdo the Rodian.

 

You know, it's quite honestly been years since I've read it. I'll have to get back to you on that since I'm planning to re-read it. At the time I was very impressed with the naval/space combat and how each of the main characters had their own missions throughout the plot.

 

This is a really surprising thread. I've always thought that Star Wars fans "universally" loved the Thrawn books. I'm personally a big fan, though I will admit up front that it's not what I would consider to be the best contemporary literature. What I liked:

• New bad guy I could actually admire/sympathize with. Before these books, there wasn't a single antagonist that I felt posed a serious threat, or who wasn't "pure evil". It gets old reading about this or that squabbling, selfish warlord who thinks they can defeat the "upstart rebels" on their own, despite the dirty things that New Republic had done to every single one of their predecessors. Thrawn was a truly interesting villain compared to pretty much all of the others in the EU, up until the Vong hit. What was that book with the random hutt jedi that Leia had to kill? /wrist
• Zahn did a good job characterizing Han. As a Han Solo fanboy with my own interpretation on how Han "should" be written, it has always galled me that other authors don't quite have a solid take on Han. Pretty important to me, heh.
• It introduced new and lasting characters, rather than fully relying on the Big 3. Sure, Luke, Leia, and Han all played important roles in the trilogy, but the fact that Zahn created Karrde, Jade, Thrawn, and a bunch of other minor characters that stayed with the EU for a long time. I actually think this is one of the reasons the EU gained a little more popularity after the trilogy - as great as the Big 3 are, we wanted new characters.
• Compared to a bunch of other SW books at the time (and really, compared to most of the EU books afterward), these were really well written. Maybe not compared to the best stuff out there, but... seriously had to work HARD to get through a few of those trilogies.

Sure, it had its flaws, but as far as written Star Wars goes, I still think this trilogy was (and still is) the best written out there. Obviously, that's just my opinion, and I'm sure nostalgia also plays a large part in it.

I agree - X-Wing novels by Stackpole were GREAT. I, Jedi was/is my favorite book in the EU, and as an audio book fan, I really wish they would do a non-abridged re-reading of those books. Probably not much chance now that it's no longer canon though :-/

 

I liked Aftermath a lot better than The Thrawn Trilogy, even though it didn't have anything to do with the movies except *SPOILER* Supreme Leader Snoke possibly at the end of the book as the Fleet Admiral Snoke.

 

I think the story is great, but it was limited in it's breath, if that makes sense. One thing the PT and the new direction that Star Wars has taken is to not be entirely limited by how the movies were made, like A-Wings only coming after the TESB. It was so big because it was great writing, and because of Thrawn and Mara Jade. Those two characters were written about for YEARS after that, simply because they were that good. The Joruus C'Baoth thing was bad IMO, and reading about the Outbound Flight, again, only made Thrawn better, not the character or his original. Mara was just the greatest feminist character ever in Star Wars - she quickly took over Leia's role in the story IMO, and was a better fit. The stories were wild, yes, but they were good reads and reignited that awe and wonder in Star Wars that was lost because of TV Shows for Toys like Ewoks and Droids. I think that why the quality of the book is both exaggerated and understated all at once. Also, I think the Fleet Admiral is Thrawn brought in line with the new canon, the mannerisms were so much like the introduction to Thrawn in Heir.