BTW, do you ever read the Star Wars novels? Even before Episode I was filmed and Padme made her comment, it was well established that anything "Star Wars" was pretty much set in the same galaxy.
I haven't read them, except for the novelization of Episode I written by Terry Brooks, which I disliked because it was EXACTLY like the movie, so I knew what was going to happen the whole time. That killed it for me.
The main problem for me with reading them is where to begin. There are SO many of them now. You did suggest the "New Jedi Order" series, I know, so maybe I'll start with those.
Were you expecting the novelization to tell a different story and diverge in a different direction? It's a novelization of the movie. Of course it's going to tell the same story as the movie and do it as exactly as possible. Except I wouldn't say that the book was EXACTLY like movie since it added so much more information than the movie did - especially at the beginning with Anakin on Tatooine. Plus as a novel it had the added benefit that a movie can never do and that's give us the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters that in a movie we "hope" to get from the facial expressions of the actors. If you want to talk about a Star Wars novelization that is an EXACT retelling of the movie without much divergence one way or another with things added or taken away, try Donald F Glut's novelization of The Empire Strikes Back - now
that's a straight forward retelling of the movie if I ever read one!
And yeah, I'd suggest starting with The New Jedi Order because it has a definite beginning, flow and ending as well as featuring the characters from the classic trilogy. The only thing about it is that it is set so long after Episode VI: ROTJ that you might feel lost in all the stuff that happened in between that you haven't read. I'll talk about that in a moment.
Even though the main Clone Wars novels have already run their course more Clone Wars novels are still coming out occasionally and popping up in different formats and stuff (not to mention the Dark Horse comics entries that also count in the overall story, and the video games, and now George Lucas is changing things once again with his Clone Wars cartoon on the Cartoon Network), so that's a mess even I have a hard time navigating, and I'm usually pretty durn good at navigating through the different Star Wars eras, so that's not really the era to try to navigate through right now if you're just starting out with the novels.
An individual novel I would suggest reading before you read any of The New Jedi Order novels would be Rogue Planet by Greg Baer. It's set in the Old Republic about two years or so after Episode I. I cannot go into details, but trust me, if you read that before starting to read The New Jedi Order you will be glad you did, but it will be a few books into TNJO series before you see why.
Some of the other good stand alone novels that I recommend:
Cloak of Deception by James Luceno
Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter by Michael Reaves (set right before and leads right into Episode I)
The Approaching Storm by Alan Dean Foster (set right before and leads right into Episode II)
Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry (this tells the complete tale of the first Death Star from when it's created to it's ultimate destruction)
If you read those and the other one I mentioned, then you might as well know this: Cloak of Deception occurs shortly before Episode I and features the "first" appearance of Tarkin who also shows up in Rogue Planet as well as the obvious one of Death Star.
Depending on which era you want to read in, there are several ways to get into the Star Wars books. I've already mentioned the mess of The Clone Wars and the few novels of the Old Republic era that I would recommend (outside of one I'll mention in a moment). And actually, as I said previously because TNJO novels are set so far after ROTJ, you may feel like you're "missing" a lot of info and will have a lot of questions about who certain people are, why they are important to the story, and where they came from and such.
Because of that, you may want to read some of the novels that take place around the original "trilogy" and those that bridge the gap between the movies and TNJO which most of them had all came out in various spurts back in the nineties, even though nowadays there are some more filling in the gaps of those too, so that way you would be more "grounded" coming from the movies to move toward the "future".
Since there are well over sixty of those (and counting), I'll put a list here of ones I find as "essential" starting with one that actually is set before the original trilogy and in between Episode I and II and I do that just because it's written by one of the better authors in the Star Wars alumni and because it ties in with his other novels that I'll be mentioning in the list:
Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn (absolute essential reading)
During or bookending the Original Trilogy:
The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin: (essential reading)
Book 1: The Paradise Snare
Book 2: The Hutt Gambit
Book 3: Rebel Dawn (the last scene in this book directly connects to Episode IV: A New Hope - the original movie!)
Allegiance by Timothy Zahn (absolute essential reading)
Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry (bridges the gap between Episodes V & VI and answers some questions as a result) (essential reading)
The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers (immediately follows Episode VI) (essential reading)
After the movies:
The X-Wing novels starting with:
by Michael Stackpole:
Book 1: Rogue Squadron (absolute essential reading)
Book 2: Wedge's Gamble (absolute essential reading)
Book 3: The Krytos Trap (absolute essential reading)
Book 4: The Bacta War (absolute essential reading)
by Aaron Allston:
Book 5: Wraith Squadron (almost absolute essential reading)
Book 6: Iron Fist (almost absolute essential reading)
Book 7: Solo Command (almost absolute essential reading)
The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton (absolute essential reading)
Tatooine Ghost by Troy Denning (connects events from the "new trilogy" to the "original trilogy") (essential reading)
Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn (absolute essential reading)
Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn (absolute essential reading)
The Last Command by Timothy Zahn (absolute essential reading)
X-Wing Book 8: Isard's Revenge by Michael Stackpole (absolute essential reading)
The Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson (absolute essential reading):
Book 1: Jedi Search
Book 2: Dark Apprentice
Book 3: Champions of the Force
I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole (absolute essential reading)
Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly (essential as it ties in with the next novel)
Darksaber by Kevin J. Anderson (has a scene with one of the most powerful uses of the Force I have yet to encounter!) (absolute essential reading)
Planet of Twilight by Barbara Hambly (essential as it ties in with the previous novel)
X-Wing Book 9: Starfighters of Adumar (almost absolute essential reading)
All of those occuring after the movies basically follow one after the other with some Dark Horse comicbooks taking place in between some of them. Those aren't all of the "essentials" I'm listing, but to keep things in order, I'll now list some "non-essentials" before concluding with the final "essentials".
The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre
The Black Fleet Crisis trilogy by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Book 1: Before the Storm
Book 2: Shield of Lies
Book 3: Tyrant's Test
The New Rebellion by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Correlian Trilogy by Roger MacBride Allen
Book 1: Ambush at Corellia
Book 2: Assault at Selonia
Book 3: Showdown at Centerpoint
All of those are fun reads and definitely move the Star Wars universe along, but are not necessarily "essential" before TNJO except for maybe the last trilogy, but that's debatable.
The following are absolute essential reading:
Specter of the Past by Timothy Zahn
Vision of the Future by Timothy Zahn
Survivor's Quest by Timothy Zahn
Other notable books that occur in between that last book and TNJO series are The Junior Jedi Knights series and The Young Jedi Knights series which are geared for children and YA respectively. They do take place in the timeline and are a part of the Star Wars history, and they were written by the husband/wife team of Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, but since I haven't read them yet, I cannot confirm or deny any real essentialness about them. I'd recommend them though if you can find them (they're hard to find) as Kevin J. Anderson had a hand in them and since it's supposed to show the growth of the New Jedi Knights, so in that way it would probably be an excellent intro to TNJO, but otherwise it's not a big deal if you miss them because so many other people haven't read them and enjoyed the other books and I myself haven't read them yet even though I will sometime soon. You can pick some of the collected volumes here at Kevin's website if you want them:
www.anderzoneshop.comSo that's 31 definite essential novels of varying degrees of essentialness.
Indeed, the new nine book series that started this year called The Fate of the Jedi which takes place after The New Jedi Order, The Dark Nest trilogy, and The Legacy of the Force books is supposed to be "designed" as a jumping on point for new fans of the books so they wouldn't be lost, but really, since they still feature Luke, Han, and Leia and since so much history has taken place, I've got no idea how they intend to pull that off without the reader really feeling like they've missed out on some major stories, so I've listed the various entry points for you above summarized here:
The books during the original trilogy
The books after the original trilogy
The books of The New Jedi Order starting with Vector Prime by R. A. Salvatore
And then the new series The Fate of the Jedi which is supposed to be a good entry point for new fans as I mentioned. Here's the books that are out so far and are to be released next:
Outcast by Aaron Allston
Omen by Christie Golden
Abyss by Troy Denning
Backlash by Aaron Allston (due January 2010)
Allies by Christie Golden (due March 2010)
and four more to be named in time.....
Here's the official website for The Fate of the Jedi by the book publisher, so if you want to keep up:
www.randomhouse.com/delrey/starwars/fateofthejedi/The entry point you choose really depends on personal tastes and whether you want to read things after other things have been established or not. I would say that if you could handle a twenty something year jump from Episode VI, then start with The New Jedi Order, and then move through The Dark Nest trilogy, The nine book Legacy of the Force series and then read Millenium Falcon by James Luceno and move onto the new Fate of the Jedi series. If you think you can handle more than just a twenty something year jump, but also the shattering changes that occur in those other three series and want to read about a totally different Star Wars universe than you've ever experienced before, then start with The Fate of the Jedi. But if you don't think you can handle any kind of jump, then it's just a matter of whether or not you want to read books that are set during the movies or just start on the ones that are set not long after the movies. Of course, you could always try navigating through the Clone Wars novels, but I wouldn't recommend that right away.
If you decide on The New Jedi Order, be sure you get the novels that have the e-book novellas for that series in them: Recovery is found in the paperback version of the TNJO novel Star by Star and Ylesia is found in Book 1 of the Dark Nest trilogy: The Joiner King. If you pick up any paperback copy of TNJO, you should find a timeline of novels at the beginning of the book, but they are usually only good for the time that novel was published. To get the best timeline for TNJO, you should pick up the last one The Unifying Force and the whole series will be listed at the end of the timeline in the correct order including the two e-book novellas.
I hope this helps you out in deciding where you want to start on concerning the Star Wars novels. If you have any additional questions, just PM me or start a new thread in The Space Bar.