I'm now on book #6 (Balance Point) of the New Jedi Order series of Star Wars books. Only 13 more to go before I finish the series. I have to say that the NJO is a great addition to Star Wars.
When you sit down and think about it, there really isn't much more they could have done with the SW universe as it stood at the end of the Hand of Thrawn books. Even by those books they'd more or less come to a creative dead end as there really weren't many more big bad guys available in the galaxy far, far away that couldn't be dealt with through the use of a well placed lightsaber.
Enter the Yuuzhan Vong. They're from outside the galaxy, they aren't affected by the Force and they detest machines and mechanistic technology. They send shiploads of prisoners into suns as sacrifices to their gods. They use bio-engineered technology to wipe out worlds. Heck, they dropped a moon on Chewbacca!!
There's a real sense of doom and darkness to these books that wasn't really present in the earlier books. The Vong are more or less steamrolling through the Republic and everyone is just trying to stay alive, and they're having a hard time doing even that. Everything about them is so foreign to the SW universe that it forces the writers to actually be creative and not fall into the traps that Lucas has succumbed to with Episodes 1-3.
It's nothing too heady... I mean, it's Star Wars fiction. But they've got some pretty heavy hitters from the sci-fi/fantasy camp writing these things so they're actually up to snuff with other, non-series genre fiction. I mean, they've got R.A. Salvatore and J. Gregory Keyes writing some of the books, for goodness sake. J. GREGORY KEYES!! They've got the author behind The Age Of Unreason writing Star Wars! Gotta love that.
Ok. This post far exceeds the daily allotment of nerdity allowed. I'm going to go play something on the PS2 for a bit.
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