I know they're not canon anymore, but after reading about the invasion in some of the Star Wars D20 rulebooks I have, it seems like a dark and interesting time period. So, how good are they?
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Very-very uneven. Stackpole is good. Others are mixed.
It's fascinating - I was just reading this d20 book yesterday.
Most people viewed the series ununfavorably. A major character was given a ridiculous death and replaced readily, and the alien race introduced seemed to fit poorly into the universe.
See, that's the exact opposite of my experience, Freehold. (Bizarro Freehold rides again!)
From those I've spoken to, there's a relatively small group of outspoken fans who greatly dislike the Vong and/or the books they're in, but otherwise they're considered one of the best of the EU series, often second only to the Thrawn series which is pretty universally considered the best the EU has to offer.
I've not had opportunity to read all that much of the EU myself, but it's something I'm planning to work on.
?!
Nutty. Just plain nutty.
I'm just wondering how biotech trumps what the Republic has.
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I loathed them. They went to so many lengths to show how the Vong were ridiculously overpowered and so immune to anything the Republic (and the Imperial Remnant) could do, including the ability to drop a moon out of orbit on a planet, and then basically relied on multiple ass-pulls to try to get Our Heros to pull out victories.
And yes, as noted,
I'd rather re-read Darksaber again rather than read the Vong books, and that book was better recycled as toilet paper and firestarters.
(I may have strong opinions on the matter.)
I thought the Vong series started off well and generally worsened over time. HOWEVER, Anakin Solo has one of the coolest and most inspiring arcs throughout and I'd go so far to say as the series is worth reading just for him.
The thing about the Vong is that they're creepy, utterly alien and mysterious when the series starts and that makes them rather compelling as villains/antagonists. As the series progresses and we're able to see "behind the curtain" more into their society, the less mysertious and dangerous they become. We loose everything that makes them horrifying and alien, which was a misstep in my view.
There's a great deal in the series that's been criticized, some I agree with and some I don't (I thought, for instance, Chewbacca's sacrifice was AMAZING and suitably big for such a well loved character), but overall I think it's a series worth checking out if you've enjoyed any of the EU at all.
And it bears repeating: Anakin Solo is incredible. Holy crap, man. Awesome.
I'm gonna jump in with Dal and say that the Anakin Solo arc was really really good. It was like a reverse of his namesake.
Contrast that with the Jacen Solo series of books, which I did not like.
I ran a d20 Star Wars campaign during the Vong invasion and it went pretty well. The players truly hated the Vong by the end of the campaign, including the Jedi Counselor going dark due to it, fun times!
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I don't have the problem with the vong, despite not fitting the Star Wars so much. The rather unimpressive writing style, exaggerated by changes of authors between books (a chronic disadvantage of Star Wars Extended Universe), and some rather unimpressive solutions.
Still, there are worthy moments...
Wedge Antilles.
The final books were rather unimpressive. While there are hints of that, they fail to properly emphasize that the war was actually won by logistics: Alliance superior resources spread across the galaxy, their technological development and superior ability to adapt to enemy's exotic technologies and tactics, and Vong's overspreading their limited numbers by grabbing too much at the too short time.
Did not enjoy them.
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That's what makes them ALIEN in a Galaxy full of different species. And I think Chewbacca died the way he would have wanted to, fulfilling his life debt, and protecting Solo's children.It's fascinating - I was just reading this d20 book yesterday.
Most people viewed the series ununfavorably. A major character was given a ridiculous death and replaced readily, and the alien race introduced seemed to fit poorly into the universe.
there's an unusual alien race, and then there's setting breaking concepts. These guys in the star wars universe made about as much sense as putting getter robo in the UC gundam universe.
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Way too grimdark for Star Wars. Horrible plotting and little coherency between authors. That said, it had some great books (both Allston books, the one by Stackpole, and Greg Keyes did one great book and one good one, both featuring the best young character of his generation, Anakin Solo (and Tahiri Veila, also a very good character). Whom then was killed off in the most stupid Star Wars editorial decision since, I guess, the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Beyond the NJO books, the book series writing was mostly left to Troy Denning, who is a mediocre to bad writer for Star Wars, since he likes to darkify everything. At the point the books left off (several trilogies later), there were a lot of bitter fans.
If you want to check out an awesome Star Wars series set after the movies, check out the Star Wars: Legacy comics by John Ostrander and Jan Durseema. Best Star Wars product of the last two decades.
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LEGACY RULES!
Yeah, now that I think back. I believe I liked the series despite the Denning novels. It was the others, especially the Allston books, that carried it IMHO. I stopped caring about the EU after the Joiner Series. The next one ?Legacy of the Force? I might have read one novel. And I think there was another series after that one? Or maybe I have them mixed up.
Did someone talk about the Vong...
Ah, yes...that...and how they killed a major character...
And now you know one of the biggest reasons they invalidated the entirety of the EU.
Yes...that bad.
They want freedom with the major characters to do as they want...not have to lose the ability to use them because some stupid book planner put it that way.
PS: I really didn't read EU books. Star Wars fan, but not that big of a fan or that type of a fan. I did read the Heir to the Empire trilogy (was that what people refer to as the Thrawn trilogy?). I tried a few others but they were all dross...all of them. Not the type of book I read or was interested in.
Then they killed Chewie and I lost any remote interest I may have had ever.
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I'll echo what some others have said; overall, I didn't like the YV arc. There were a couple good books, some really awesome moments, and then the rest of it was just a long, depressing, "we need to make Star Wars uselessly grim/gritty for reasons!" slog. I didn't even finish the series because I was bored and tired of it. Even though I had read basically every SWEU book up to that point, I haven't picked up a Star Wars novel since. That should tell you something.
Yeah, they managed to make me totally apathetic to the book series. that it took them about ten years to do so probably speaks to how much of a Star Wars fanboy I am, but still.
I hope the movies bring back my enthusiasm.
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There were some good moments, even some entire books were good (Traitor, as others have mentioned, is excellent), but mostly I found it to be depressing dross.
It also didn't "feel" like Star Wars to me - too many problems were solved by Star Trek style technological tinkering.
Again, Star Wars Legacy rules. It's available in both dead tree and electronic formats. Please read!
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Bought 2 of the Vong books. I hated them immensely. Hard to finish, just didn't feel like star wars. Much preferred the 12+ books of the rogue squadron series.
That being said, really liked how the Legacy comic series incorporated the Vong impact
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I echo with those that did not like the Vong books. Up until the Vong series I had purchased (and read in sequential order) all the EU books and like most of them. (There were a few of the trilogies that I rolled my eyes at a little, but most were good.) I picked up the first Vong book, read it and then never bought another one after.
I agree, it did not feel like Star Wars. I felt that the authors needed some new all-powerful enemy that could commit genocide on a higher level scale to defeat the Sun Crusher (We one-uped you suckers!).
After that much bashing, I'll have to defend the series somewhat.
Yes, it's definitely not the best series in the EU, and Yes, it differs strongly from your average Star Wars thematics.
But that doesn't make it a bad series. It's just different (a bit like Star Trek TNG vs. Star Trek DS9 different).
And it wins hands down in almost all aspects against the "Darth Caedus" series that came afterwards.
I really loved the first book, as well as the Anakin Solo story arc and I found it nice to see the Force-trumps-anything system turned upside down, at least for a while.
So if your're looking for a looong story arc with Jedi action but are tired of always the same enemy (Sith), it's definitely worth a try.
If you're looking for something closer to the "classic" Star Wars, you could look towards the "Fate of the Jedi" series (I love Vestara), even though that one has quite an unsatisfactory ending, or check out the Darth Bane books (probably even better than FotJ, but without Jedi).
The problem is that, by introducing grim dark into the setting, the editorial changed the setting and made it deal with the repercussions of the NJO until the entire series was ended by Disney's acquisition of the franchise.
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It helps to see the NJO in the context of when it came out. For almost decade beforehand, Bantam had run the book franchise into the ground. They got off to a brilliant start with the Thrawn books, but then hired Kevin J. "Franchisekiller" Anderson who dealt a series of blows to the franchise with some beyond-awful novels. Allston and Stackpole did some good work, but the books descended into horrible, repetitive messes with rogue Imperial generals, Force-using bad guys and superweapons tougher than the Death Star showing up on a near-monthly basis.
When Bantam lost the licence, the new guys decided, supported by Lucasfilm and even Lucas himself, that they were going to shake things up. Lucas had decided that Eps 7-9 were never, ever going to happen so he gave the writers permission to really go nuts with the setting and do a really big story and they went for it.
In that context the NJO worked, at least to start with. It was different, it genuinely developed and changed characters and events rather than returning to a status quo at the end of every book, and it had some different and interesting ideas. It eventually went too far into grimdark territory, with the war against the Vong eventually killing dozens of times the combined casualties of the Galactic Civil War and the Clone Wars combined, which was totally insane. Some of the books were also really bad, though quite a few were pretty good.
Also, fun trivia: Mark Hamill's sole appearance as Luke Skywalker post-Ep. 6 and pre-Ep. 7 came in TV spots for the first NJO book coming out.
Also, the senior editor on the NJO was James Luceno, possibly better-known as one half of the writing team Jack McKinney who wrote the ROBOTECH novels. There are some very strongly ROBOTECH-like aspects to the NJO that are quite amusing to ponder, from the massive fleet battles involving thousands of ships to the fact that the Vong feel like being somewhere between the Invid and Zentraedi, and the Force occasionally feels treated like a less corporeal version of protoculture. The parallels are certainly interesting.
Matthew Stover's "Traitor" is worth the entire series all on its own, one of the best SW books written.
TRAITOR is one of the best bits of STAR WARS in existence. The only things batting at the same level IMO are KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and, on a good day, Ep 4. Ganner Rhysode's last stand is jaw-dropping stuff.
In fact, it's so good it even got George Lucas (who is apathetic about most of the EU) to hire Stover to write the Ep. 3 novelisation, which just about everyone seems to agree is vastly superior to the film itself.
That said, it had some great books (both Allston books, the one by Stackpole, and Greg Keyes did one great book and one good one, both featuring the best young character of his generation, Anakin Solo (and Tahiri Veila, also a very good character). Whom then was killed off in the most stupid Star Wars editorial decision since, I guess, the Star Wars Holiday Special.
This was down to Word of Lucas. The original plan was to kill Jacen and keep Anakin. And then Lucas decreed that it was too confusing to have two Anakins running around (the NJO books came out alongside the prequel trilogy) and ordered him killed off. It apparently threw the plans for the series and the following books off-kilter, and it shows.
Weird. My experience is totally different. I had no interest in reading the EU stuff as the little I took a look at seemed rehashed, seen this already, and some of it was poorly written. Then the YV stuff came out.
I don't think there's a YV book I didn't enjoy to some degree. Tahiri easily became my favorite SW Universe character. And this from a guy who's favorite character prior was Chewy, so I dunno. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
This was down to Word of Lucas. The original plan was to kill Jacen and keep Anakin. And then Lucas decreed that it was too confusing to have two Anakins running around (the NJO books came out alongside the prequel trilogy) and ordered him killed off. It apparently threw the plans for the series and the following books off-kilter, and it shows.
There is some dispute if that actually is what happened. While I don't have the exact narrative at hand, IIRC this story was disavowed by the Del Rey editors after it came out. Of course they have a vested interest to protect Lucas, although the way fans hate the guy at this point, it wouldn't really matter anyway.
While I don't have the exact narrative at hand, IIRC this story was disavowed by the Del Rey editors after it came out.
The Del Rey editors themselves confirm the story in the interview published at the end of THE UNIFYING FORCE itself, so there's not much wriggle room for misinterpretation.
If I recall, wasn't there also talk of killing Luke off right out of the gate? It got shot down and another major character bit the cosmic dust instead (poor Chewie!). Most tragic though was the vitriol and backlash the author, R.A. Salvatore, received from a very vocal portion of the fanbase. Things escalated to the point where he was receiving death threats, all over a decision that wasn't even his to make!
=(
I shudder to think what would have happened if the call to off Luke hadn't been shot down =( =( =(
My hatred for Salvatore is considerable.
The artemis series is perhaps the most tolerable.
While I don't have the exact narrative at hand, IIRC this story was disavowed by the Del Rey editors after it came out.The Del Rey editors themselves confirm the story in the interview published at the end of THE UNIFYING FORCE itself, so there's not much wriggle room for misinterpretation.
Well, that interview apparently was on the CD-ROM which is conspicuously missing by now in my book, so I can't confirm or deny. I only know that I was an active member on the TheForce.net messageboards at that time and I distinctly remember several reliable people pointing out that the editors at Del Rey did not confirm the story.
From the horse's mouth:
DR: How much of a role did George Lucas play in shaping the series?
Lucy Wilson (Director of Publishing at Lucasfilm): George Lucas has been involved in all of the spin-off Star Wars publishing, but only on big concepts or plot points. The initial five-year NJO plot outline and early thoughts on who might die were sent to him in the form of a Q&A memo and subsequently discussed by phone.
Shelley Shapiro (Editorial Direct at Del Rey): I would characterize his role as limited but important. He's the one who said the alien invaders could not be dark side Force-users, that we couldn't kill Luke, that we had to kill Anakin instead of Jacen(we had originally planned it the other way around). Other than that, he occasionally answered some basic questions for us, but that was rare. Mostly he leaves the books to his licensing people, trusting them to get it right.
Part of what made the series so ridiculous to me.
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That the Vong knew the Republic better than the Republic knew itself plus needless infighting in the face of an enemy that really wants to destroy everything (I consider the type of biotechnology the Vong implement to be a form of scorched earth tactics) isn't even barely plausible to me.
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That the Vong knew the Republic better than the Republic knew itself plus needless infighting in the face of an enemy that really wants to destroy everything (I consider the type of biotechnology the Vong implement to be a form of scorched earth tactics) isn't even barely plausible to me.
I have to completely, thoroughly agree with this.
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That the Vong knew the Republic better than the Republic knew itself plus needless infighting in the face of an enemy that really wants to destroy everything (I consider the type of biotechnology the Vong implement to be a form of scorched earth tactics) isn't even barely plausible to me.
Why? The Vong had been scouting the Star Wars galaxy for c. 60 years before the main invasion fleet arrived. The amount of intelligence they had gathered themselves was enormous, and then of course they captured Vergere and extracted a vast amount of info from her, particularly about the psychology of the various races working together.
It's also said, quite a few times in the series, that the Vong got lucky in that the New Republic was undergoing some serious democratic crises when they arrived (although some of them had been instigated by the Vong's agents). If the unified Empire had faced them, especially with a Death Star or two (to one-shot the worldships from millions of miles away, which would have made life a hell of a lot easier), the outcome would have been dramatically different. The Imperial forces smugly point that out a lot.
As for the infighting, that is completely plausible. Even in the face of overwhelming threats, vested interests continue to fight one another. You can see that right now, from nations shying away from dealing with terrorists or rogue states because they don't want to pay the price, or governments and corporations choosing to continue (or even accelerate) wrecking the planet in the interest of short-term monetary gain. Quite a few of the races in the NJO don't believe in the Vong until they're quite far advanced, and then consider themselves out of the firing line as they're too far away, or can barter with the invaders, or benefit whilst the invaders and the Republic fight one another to mutual destruction.
From the horse's mouth:
DR: How much of a role did George Lucas play in shaping the series?
Lucy Wilson (Director of Publishing at Lucasfilm): George Lucas has been involved in all of the spin-off Star Wars publishing, but only on big concepts or plot points. The initial five-year NJO plot outline and early thoughts on who might die were sent to him in the form of a Q&A memo and subsequently discussed by phone.
Shelley Shapiro (Editorial Direct at Del Rey): I would characterize his role as limited but important. He's the one who said the alien invaders could not be dark side Force-users, that we couldn't kill Luke, that we had to kill Anakin instead of Jacen(we had originally planned it the other way around). Other than that, he occasionally answered some basic questions for us, but that was rare. Mostly he leaves the books to his licensing people, trusting them to get it right.
Again, I remember people saying that the editors later disavowed that quote on TheForce.Net. I'm really not in the mood to try to hunt through a backlog of 10 years, though, not even to mention that they moved sites and the structure of the boards isn't the same as it was.
So, point to you. At this point, I am past caring, but, man, I was angry as hell about the entire disaster of killing Anakin for several years.
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Why? The Vong had been scouting the Star Wars galaxy for c. 60 years before the main invasion fleet arrived. The amount of intelligence they had gathered themselves was enormous, and then of course they captured Vergere and extracted a vast amount of info from her, particularly about the psychology of the various races working together.
It's also said, quite a few times in the series, that the Vong got lucky in that the New Republic was undergoing some serious democratic crises when they arrived (although some of them had been instigated by the Vong's agents). If the unified Empire had faced them, especially with a Death Star or two (to one-shot the worldships from millions of miles away, which would have made life a hell of a lot easier), the outcome would have been dramatically different. The Imperial forces smugly point that out a lot.
As for the infighting, that is completely plausible. Even in the face of overwhelming threats, vested interests continue to fight one another. You can see that right now, from nations shying away from dealing with terrorists or rogue states because they don't want to pay the price, or governments and corporations choosing to continue (or even accelerate) wrecking the planet in the interest of short-term monetary gain. Quite a few of the races in the NJO don't believe in the Vong until they're quite far advanced, and then consider themselves out of the firing line as they're too far away, or can barter with the invaders, or benefit whilst the invaders and the Republic fight one another to mutual destruction.
All of that is reasonable to a point, and the base concept is fine with me, but the idea that the Vong could get that much intelligence on the rest of the universe without anyone else finding out and moving to counter it is a bit much for me. And it's emblematic of the entire issue I have with the whole Vong storyline; everything is so blatantly over the top "we are stirring up the universe for the sake of stirring up the universe regardless of whether or not it's the best story we could come up with" that all of the in story explanations ultimately fall flat for me. They are simply too perfect of an enemy with too few weaknesses and they have too many readily available answers to anything that anybody could throw at them. There's no real story there to me; it's too obviously a setup that the powers in charge would fix and end when they felt like doing so and there was nothing in story to suggest that the protagonists could do anything but constantly retreat and hope for a miracle before the Vong took over the entire universe. There's nothing to get excited or invested in because any solution was obviously going to come out of nowhere and when it did, the invasion would be over in the course of a single book (or at best, a half way decent trilogy) and the rest of the books in the middle had virtually no impact on the storyline whatsoever.
I didn't mind the base concept, but the execution was way too far over the top for me. If they really wanted something that world shattering, they needed to come up with a better concept or a better implementation of the whole Vong invasion.
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but the idea that the Vong could get that much intelligence on the rest of the universe without anyone else finding out and moving to counter it is a bit much for me.
The Empire did get wind of the Vong, although not the size of their invasion force or their true objectives. It was enough for the Emperor to prepare contingency plans. Unfortunately, he didn't tell anyone (possibly apart from Vader) so those plans were lost when he died.
there was nothing in story to suggest that the protagonists could do anything but constantly retreat and hope for a miracle before the Vong took over the entire universe.
That's not quite what happened. The Vong had limited military forces. They only succeeded as much as they did because they made use of conquered/allied forces, used blitzkrieg tactics and used diplomacy to keep the Empire and the Hutts out of the war. Once that failed and the Empire and Hutts entered the fight, the Vong became both seriously outnumbered and out-resourced economically. There was also the fact that the Vong were counting on a knockout blow. The heavily centralised Empire half-collapsed when the Emperor was killed and most of the reset followed when Coruscant fell and then Thrawn died. The New Republic, OTOH, was much more decentralised and Coruscant's capture did not have the same impact on the organisation, which the Vong were not expecting.
Ironically, the Vong's major advantage - their invulnerability to the Force - was completely useless because the number of Jedi and other Force-users around opposed to them was so tiny that it mostly fell back on traditional fighting, and in that arena the Vong's lack of numbers was always going to result in their defeat.
There's nothing to get excited or invested in because any solution was obviously going to come out of nowhere and when it did, the invasion would be over in the course of a single book (or at best, a half way decent trilogy) and the rest of the books in the middle had virtually no impact on the storyline whatsoever.
Again, that didn't really happen. STAR BY STAR, in the middle of the series when Coruscant fell, also showed the New Republic and their allies the way of fighting back. It was in that book that the Vong suffered a calamitous defeat and the Republic discovered that the Vong had lost over a third of their forces just getting to Coruscant, and then a hideous number more taking the planet. For much of the second half of the series the Vong are stalled because of their lack of numbers, allowing the new Galactic Federation to gain the initiative and then win. By the final couple of books, it's clear that the Vong are doomed, and Zonama Sekot showing up and convincing them to surrender simply prevents a final Gotterdamerung annihilation of the species (oddly similar to the Dominion's final defeat in DS9, actually).
There were spots where the execution of the story was good, unfortunately, there were far too many spots where it was still too far over the top for most people to really get into it. As a whole, it suffered tremendously from it's very poor execution; a few good spots and an overall plot that was actually fairly decent were not in the end generally enough to counteract all of the bad writing it had.
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The Empire did get wind of the Vong, although not the size of their invasion force or their true objectives. It was enough for the Emperor to prepare contingency plans. Unfortunately, he didn't tell anyone (possibly apart from Vader) so those plans were lost when he died.
What about every single intelligence agent that was involved in gathering the intelligence about them and bringing it to the emperor? did all of them die too?
I did not read the series but this is not an appealing explanation. Seems somewhat oversimplified.
a few good spots and an overall plot that was actually fairly decent were not in the end generally enough to counteract all of the bad writing it had.
Yeah, but a good plot and some cool scenes overcoming bad writing is pretty much what the entirety of STAR WARS is :) If superb prose and dialogue was a requirement to enjoying the franchise, the only things that people would like about it would be EMPIRE, KotOR II, maybe some of Zahn's stuff (although that's more good-pulp than actual good writing) and Matt Stover's TRAITOR, the finest piece of prose writing in the franchise. And of course, part of the NJO :)
What about every single intelligence agent that was involved in gathering the intelligence about them and bringing it to the emperor? did all of them die too?
I did not read the series but this is not an appealing explanation. Seems somewhat oversimplified.
There's actually an entire prequel-era novel - Greg Bear's ROGUE PLANET - which features information on this. It's not tremendously convincing, being a retcon, but the initial Vong scouting incursion was extremely limited and no-one believed the reports of some extragalactic fleet that was still decades away. For some reason Palpatine took it a bit more seriously and filed it away in his, "Things to look out for 60 years down the line" pile of things to do, firmly low-priority at that point.
The Republic military officer who was actually on hand for that limited encounter was, IIRC, Tarkin, which may explain why he was later able to convince the Emperor to go for the Death Star project. A couple of Death Stars running around when the Vong showed up would have made it a very different (and far shorter) conflict.
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I read about 2/3 of the books. I don't remember which book I stopped at, but I do know it was before
The thing that got to me was they were just too powerful. Nobody could win against them. There were never any victories, only defeats or stalemates. It got depressing.
I hate to say it, but I have not read any Star Wars books since. That includes the prequals.