Good Star Wars EU (old) books?

[Ibrinar]

The rather poor* continuation of the story in the new movies made me interested in how the old EU continued it. But it is something written by many authors so at least half of it is probably not worth bothering with and there are many books so I have no idea where to start. So any recommendations? (I could google for lists I guess there are probably plenty but felt like asking here.)

*Yes I know some here like it.

[Yora]

I assume everyone here will recommend the original three Thrawn books, which start with Heir to the Empire. These books are what really made the Expanded Universe a thing instead of just cheap movie tie-ins. Read them again two or three years ago, and they are pretty good.

My other favorites are the first four X-Wing books. The later ones with a different cast by a different writer were also decent, but I liked the first four more.

I believe the Jedi Academy series by Anderson also had a pretty big impact on the history of the Jedi. I believe they are not regarded as especially great, but I remember them as one of the big three series that defined the EU in the 90s.

I will also mention the 2006 Knights of the Old Republic comic series. I think it's really good. (The Tales of the Jedi series from the 90s that also has a Knights of the Old Republic storyline not so much.)

[Mightymosy]

Yes, the Thrawn trilogy is good.

Also the Jedi Academy trilogy.

Thrawn is a little more epic and "classic" than Jedi Academy, but both have their advantages and their flaws as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

Anything by Zhan is good (he wisely avoided the New Jedi Order onwards); the aforementioned X-Wing books are all good (I like the Allston ones almost as much as Stackpole's).

The first Thrawn trilogy is notable because a) it is really good (in my opinion the bets of Star Wars period yes including the films) and b) was one of the first ones to come out and so set the stage for the rest of the later EU and so is unburdened by continuity (it has a few little points which you have to put down as unreliable narrators, because it was written before the prequels). I strongly recommend you start with that first.
I recall the Correllian Trilogy not being bad.

I never thought much of the Kevin J Anderson stuff (though that first triology serves as a backdrop to the very much better I Jedi, which is Stackpole and features one of the characters from X-Wing, so therre is that.)

The rest ranges from (what I recall as) quite good (the old Han Solo trilogy - anpother not bad place to start, they're pre-New Hope) to okay (Courtship of Princess Leia (post RotJ, pre-Thrawn), Truce at Bakura) to kinda eh (Black Fleet crisis, notable for essentially trying to reedfine how starship combat worked which is very jarring) to pretty dreadful (New Jedi Order and onwards, which are bad, even the ones which have the good auhors tackling them (like Stackpole or Allston), so much so I dropped them entirely after the first three books; or Crystal Star, which was just straight awful on both the techinical and character level, as well as just thematically).

[Saintheart]

Pretty much similar recommendations. The Heir to the Empire series oozes the feel of OT Star Wars for the most part, right down to each volume commencing with a Star Destroyer overflight just as the movies do.

A vehement disagreement, though, with any recommendation of Kevin J. Anderson's "contributions" (putting it kindly) to the series. You go direct from Zahn's trilogy to Anderson's Jedi Academy series and the comparison is glaringly apparent.

The Han Solo trilogy by Brian Daley is solid but "dated" - in the sense that it was produced back in 1979, i.e. after ANH was first released but before ESB came out, so it speaks with a voice that's, I dunno, more out of the Brian Aldiss or Robert Heinlein science fiction mould. Makes it interesting, though; Han Solo at Star's End is the first volume of the anthology and takes the reader (probably due to Lucas's fiat) to an area of the galaxy called the Corporate Sector, some years prior to ANH.

Similarly, and I see it hasn't been recommended as yet but I'll put it in there: Splinter of the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster, who's one of my favourite 'tie-in' authors in that he wrote most of the Alien novelisations (as well as the original ANH novelisation that first gave us the name of Emperor Palpatine) and at least tried to do right by the concept. Foster's story was basically going to be ESB until George Lucas decided to go in a different story direction, so it has a couple of odd moments that you have to squint at in order to suspend disbelief, but the atmosphere of the book is great and it's a Luke and Leia story.

[Dragonus45]

Once you have read a bit of the other Classic Cannon stuff and won't be spoiled by it you should really check out Star Wars: Legacy, provided you are cool with comic books. Its without a doubt one of the best things attached to the Star Wars name, but its takes place well after most of the rest of the Classic stuff so it spoils a lot of things like how the New Republic does and so on.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Only four Star Wars books (beyond the OT tie-in novels) have survived in my collection: The Thrawn Trilogy and The Courtship of Princess Leia.

I strongly recommend the Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command). Thrawn is a great antagonist (his method of understanding his opponents was original, to say the least), and a New Republic that is struggling because, well, running an empire or republic is actually difficult, and the book puts this in as part of the plot.

The Courtship of Princess Leia, on the other hand, was just fun to read. You have Han trying to get Leia out of a politically arranged marriage (by kidnapping her), then Luke and the prince she is supposed to be marrying (who is not the antagonist, either) going after them. Then they all get stuck on an interdicted planet and have to ally with a bunch of Matriarchal natives, at which point Han, Luke and the Prince all end up with engagements (or offers) from the locals.

I may possibly have Splinter of the Mind's Eye somewhere as well, but I don't remember keeping it. I remember thinking that it was OK, but not spectacular. But then, at the time it was the only "official" Star Wars book beyond the adaptatation of ANH.

[Peelee]

My wife asked me for my recommendation for Star Wars books for a friend a few months back. I'm going to just copy/paste my response, which also has some new Canon material. I'll go into detail if you'd like.

Legends/Old EU

Coruscant Nights series (very pulp noir style)
A. C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy (simplistic but still good)
X-Wing series, books 1-4 (complete story)
X-Wing series, books 5-7 (separate complete story)
Thrawn trilogy
X-Wing series, book 9 (separate complete story)
Thrawn duology

Canon

Lost Stars (YA novel, basically Romeo and Juliet in space, best Canon book so far despite having no reason to be so good)
Bloodlines

Hell at this point whatever Claudia Gray puts out since those are both hers, just stick with her and you can't go wrong.

That's my list of favorite SW books, sorted by Canon or not, and then arranged chronologically.

[GrayDeath]

Fithing the Thrawn Trilogy and Duology.

They are simply put the best the old EU managed to do in respect of feel, and actual writing quality.

The X-Wing Series (early more than late) is also a recommendation for offering a very different (stackpole-typical rather military) view on the conflict.

The Jedi Acedemy has a on itself rather itneresting and EU Canon defining story, but the writing ranges from ok to ugh.
Stillr ecommend to read them if you can get them cheaply, and then compare them to I, Jedi (which has some of the same plot but from a totally different and in my view much better angle).
The alst book might be controversal as it does some Luke Bashing, but I think its worth it.

The BLack Fleet is good regarding showing the flailing New Republic and the obvious flaws they engineered into it, but offers a one dimensional villain (race) and as said above suddenly changes Star Wars Starship Combat rather drastically.

The Corellian Trilogy is nice regarding writing and background Info, but not a must.

The Rule of 2/Darth Bane Series gives a very interesting look on the alst big Jedi/Sith War and the reasons for the following changes. Wellw ritten, msotly, and I tend to like Evil Protagonists. ^^




Now, as they tend to be lying in bargain book areas: avoid the Yuzhan Vong Books until you have read everything before and even then only go for them if youa re open to a lot of Old Stuff being deconstructed (once or twice in a good, msotly in a bad way).

Havent read legacy, as the Vong books managed to make me stop reading star wars.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Saintheart
The Han Solo trilogy by Brian Daley is solid but "dated" - in the sense that it was produced back in 1979….

Similarly… Splinter of the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster…it has a couple of odd moments that you have to squint at in order to suspend disbelief, but the atmosphere of the book is great and it's a Luke and Leia story.

I grew up on these and loved them, and while they’d probably seem rather slim now, they were wonderfully imaginative and great fun.

In particular I remember the rich detail of the worlds the characters visited, especially in the Han Solo trilogy. There’s also a great moment in one of the Han Solo novels in which Chewie gets a rare chance to shine:

Spoiler: Chewie's Moment

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He’s crash-landed without working modern technology, so he shoots a giant pterodactyl and uses spare parts to rebuild it as a hang-glider, which he then flies off a mountainside.

One of the most awesome Chewie moments ever, and it gave him real credibility as an independent character rather than just Han’s shaggy sidekick.

Spoiler: Han's Nemesis

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Also, these novels gave us Gallandro, a classic western gunfighter who was a rival to Han Solo and a significant threat.

As for Splinter, I'm not sure it was ever planned as the second movie, although that was the persistent playground rumor when it first came out. It seems more likely that Alan Dean Foster had his own creative ideas after ghostwriting the novelization for the original Star Wars movie (not then called A New anything) and he gathered up some unused concepts and stirred them into a world of his own creation. Alan Dead Foster has always had a flair for building memorable worlds (Icerigger and Sentenced to Prism in particular) and he did a lovely job in Splinter.

For another classic trilogy, slightly less great than Daley’s Han Solo novels, you can read the Lando Calrissian trilogy, which is a little slick and superficial—but that matches Lando’s personality pretty well. Not great science fiction by any means, but good freewheeling entertainment.

Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander
…Crystal Star, which was just straight awful on both the techinical and character level, as well as just thematically….

Please, anyone who sees this, please don’t read Crystal Star.

I would also avoid Courtship of Princess Leia, which was contrived and silly. Truce at Bakura is also completely forgettable.

[The Glyphstone]

I have a soft spot for Truce at Bakura only because it was the first EU novel I ever read. But it has zero long-term consequences to the universe and is indeed fairly forgettable once it's included in the background noise of the entire canon.

[DataNinja]

Most of what I'd've said (primarily anything by Zahn - Thrawn Stuff, Outbound Flight/Survivor's quest, Allegiance, etc.) has already been said.

Also, as a note: There are two "Han Solo Trilogies". The originally released one, which everyone's talking about, is the Han Solo Adventures trilogy (I haven't actually read that one). There was another, later released, called the Han Solo Trilogy (which I rather enjoyed), in which the former chronologically takes place in a timeskip about... three chapters in to the third book, IIRC. And the Lando Calrissian Adventures take place sometime in there, too. The books in the Lando Trilogy are... very, very weird ones. Very weird.

[Dragonus45]

Now, as they tend to be lying in bargain book areas: avoid the Yuzhan Vong Books until you have read everything before and even then only go for them if youa re open to a lot of Old Stuff being deconstructed (once or twice in a good, msotly in a bad way).

Havent read legacy, as the Vong books managed to make me stop reading star wars.

The Vong stuff was so much wasted potential. You didn’t miss much after the Vong stuff.

Spoiler

Show

Darth Caedus was cool if a half baked idea left over from editorial mandate demanding they kill if Anakin Solo long before his time and cutting short the foreshadowed stuff of him turning dark side himself. The idea of the republic collapsing back into a different variety of empire after 5 to many world shaking catastrophes could have been more interesting if it were better handled. Exploring the long term ramifications of that does turn into one if the best parts of Legacy though. Sadly the Mandalorians all turned into insanely strong ubermensch Mary Sues though and that just drained the life out of things towards the end of the EU though.

That said I still can’t reconnect Legacy strongly enough.

[Dire_Flumph]

Read the Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command) which are a well regarded story set five years after Return of the Jedi and can be seen as a sequel trilogy. I still consider them Episodes VII-IX. They are self contained and if you've seen the OT, you are good to go.

If you want an overview of what comes afterwards, the way the books shake out is this:

There was the Bantam-Spectra era of books. After the Thrawn Trilogy books came out by different authors in either single novels or trilogies. Books were generally set a year or two after the last one, but there's little attempt at a continuous storyline. Books in this era have wildly varying reader opinions, but the most well regarded are probably the X-Wing books.

The X-Wing books focus on Wedge and his efforts to run two different fighter squadrons Books 1-4 (Rogue Squadron, Wedge's Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War) by Michael Stackpole are a continuous story about Wedge reforming Rogue Squadron during the push by the fledgling New Republic to retake Coruscant and take place between Return of the Jedi and the Thrawn Trilogy. Books 5-7 (Wraith Squadron, Iron Fist, Solo Command) by Aaron Allston are about a 2nd squadron designed to be more about covert ops missions and take place shortly after Stackpole's books. Book 8 (Isard's Revenge) is a follow up to the Rogue books and is the weakest in the series. Skip instead to Book 9 (Starfighters of Adumar) a stand alone novel that's just great. The books have best been described as competence porn, people who are very good at the jobs they do getting things done.

The other Bantam-Spectra books get very mixed reviews depending on who you talk to. I don't think they hold up much, but the main ones are: (tldr: Jump to the Hand of Thrawn duology, you haven't missed much)

Jedi Academy by Kevin J. Anderson (Jedi Search, Dark Apprentice, Champions of the Force) set up a lot of things other authors expand on later and are largely about Luke starting a new academy and finding students (natch). Personally I find them just awful, and possibly the worst take on Luke as a character I've read. Michael Stackpole later writes a whole novel (I, Jedi) just to let one of his characters call out all the problems with the Jedi Academy books in universe.

The Corellian Trilogy by Robert MacBride Allen (Ambush at Corellia, Assault at Selonia, Showdown at Centerpoint). Political maneuvering and a lot of backstory on Corellia. I found these ok at the time, but it's been years since I read them.

The Black Fleet Trilogy by Michael P Kube-McDowell (Before the Storm, Shield of Lies, Tyrant's Test). All...over...the...place. Luke looks for his mother, Leia does politics, Lando searches for a lost fleet. If it was just about Lando's story this would have been a lot better. And I take back what I said earlier. This is probably the worst take on Luke as a character I've read.

The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin (The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, Rebel Dawn) About Han Solo's backstory, natch. Covers from his childhood to him sitting in a Mos Eisley Cantina desperate for money. I enjoyed these, a fun light read.

And a bunch of standalones, Darksaber (Kevin J. Anderson) shows you what the opposite of competence porn is when the Hutts try to build a Death Star. It's entertainingly bad. The Crystal Star (Vonda McIntyre) is quite possibly the worst Star Wars book I've read, about the Empire kidnapping the Solo kids (again!). Most of the rest are just forgettable.

This era was capped by the Hand of Thrawn duology (Spectre of the Past, Vision of the Future) which brought Timothy Zahn back to a very good book dealing with what's left of the Empire and their attempts to create (literally!) a new leader for the Empire to rally around. It's quite good, and is a solid cap to the Thrawn novels.

Del Rey then took over publishing Star Wars and their books mainly fall into one of two categories, stand alone Clone Wars era books, or Sweeping Multi-book epics set after the Bantam novels. Opinions are all over the place on these but given that they tend to be huge scale stories written by multiple authors, quality is inconsistent.

You asked about post OT stuff specifically, so the highlights are:

The New Jedi Order (19 Books!, plus tie-in short stories and novellas). The biggest Star Wars Saga there is, about an extragalactic invasion. It is a more or less continuous storyline that needs to be read in order and is of wildly varying quality. I think I have a better opionion of these than most Star Wars fans, but the big problem is that the new villains just aren't very good. I hate to throw the whole series out though, because some very good books do live here. The Enemy Lines Duology (Rebel Stand, Rebel Dream) by Aaron Allston are about Wedge Antillies having to hold a planetary system soon to be under overwhelming assault and are probably my favorite Star Wars books ever. Only read the whole thing if you are looking to deep dive. If you've finished the X-wing books and want more, consider reading just the Enemy Lines books, and check online for a summary of the other ones.

The Dark Nest (The Joiner King, The Unseen Queen, The Swarm War) by Troy Denning are about an insectoid race that can telepathically join other aliens into their hive. It's okay. We go into a weird place where Luke is convinced that using the Dark Side is okay now (doesn't last), and since this came out just after Episode III, R2 finally fesses up and tells Luke who his mother was.

Legacy of the Force (9 books!) Groups pushing for Independence in the Corellia system are acting up again, and the galaxy looks to be headed for Civil War. And one of the Solo kids falls to the Dark Side and maneuvers himself into control of the New Republic. Again, uneven, but I liked this one. If you want to see a different take on Kylo Ren, this is the place.

Fate of the Jedi (9 books!) Somehow it's determined that the last books were all Luke's fault and he's exiled until he can find out what caused his nephews fall. Stakes are raised when the children of other Jedi start going insane. As an adventure largely about Luke and his son travelling the galaxy, it's a fun read. Ends setting up a potential ongoing storyline that never went much of anywhere as this is where the EU pretty much ended.



TLDR...Thrawn Trilogy, X-Wing Books, Thrawn Duology. Anything else depends on how deep you want to dive.

[Yora]

It seems I am not the only one who puts Thrawn and X-Wing into "definitely worthwhile" category and everything else into "maybe" and "don't".

One thing to note is that the X-Wing books take place before the Thrawn books, but are written to match with what the Thrawn books say about the time since Return of the Jedi. So reading X-Wing first and then Thrawn does have some merit.

But then, this is Star Wars, where everything has always been out of order. Reading Thrawn first and then deciding if you want to read X-Wing also works perfectly well.

[Daimbert]

Definitely start with the Thrawn trilogy and the X-Wing series, up to Mercy Kill (it's set after almost everything else in the Legends EU). I liked Truce at Bakura, but it isn't important. If you read I, Jedi, you probably don't need to read the Jedi Academy Trilogy, but only do that if you end up liking Corran Horn.

Once you've read all you want to out of the things that came before New Jedi Order, you can read that series. You don't need to read everything, actually. If you skip a book or set of books, the later ones summarize the main events well enough so that you can get the gist of what happens. I, for example, never read the first one -- Vector Prime -- and had no problems following the story or the events from that one that were referenced later.. The single books tend to be more important and the duologies less, but if you liked the X-Wing series you'll want to read Stackpole's and Allston's, at least, and Agents of Chaos is a good look at Han Solo.

Legacy of the Force is a redo of the PT and now could be seen, in hindsight, as another take on Kylo Ren. It's better than all of them, but there are things you might not like in them and have to struggle through the books anyway (unlike with NJO, where if you don't like Corran or Wedge you can skip their books).

The Dark Nest Trilogy is terrible in my opinion. It undoes a challenge to Luke from the previous books (I forget which one specifically) and isn't a very good story. It also participates in the long-running battle in the Star Wars universe over love interests, this one being over Jaina Solo. I don't recommend reading it, as it mostly gets ignored in what comes next anyway.

The Corellian Trilogy is pretty good, but again not all that important.

I recommend skipping Fate of the Jedi, as it's not very good and is likely to annoy you with various threads that run through it.

There are a number of prequel era things as well. Most of the ones I've read haven't been bad. Outbound Flight is the most memorable one, though.

EDIT: I forgot about Shadows of the Empire, set after TESB and before RotJ. I also liked the Bounty Hunter Trilogy. And the collections of shorts stories -- Tales of -- aren't bad, or at least the ones I've read have been pretty good.

Since you were talking about wanting to get into it because of issues with the ST, I'll summarize things this way: almost everything in the EU is better than the ST is, even those that might try to subvert things. I'd personally say that the Dark Nest Trilogy is worse, and Fate of the Jedi is pretty close, for similar reasons. Some will say that the Jedi Academy Trilogy isn't much if any better than the ST. Anything else should be uncontroversially better, even if some of it, nevertheless, isn't that great.

[Rogar Demonblud]

In addition to the novels, you also have the comics, most of which ended up in graphic novels. The X-Wing ones flow pretty well into the X-Wing novels, since Stackpole was a writer for both.

[Zevox]

Yeah, there's a bit of an echo in here, but the big ones to start with if you've read none of them are definitely the original Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command) and X-Wing series. They're the two biggest standouts of the EU, and take place not to long after Return of the Jedi, so they're the perfect starting point too.

After those, the Hand of Thrawn duology (Spectre of the Past, Visions of the Future) is solid, and covers the actual conclusion of the Galactic Civil War (meaning the war between the Rebel Alliance/New Republic and Empire/Imperial Remnant). Anything by that author, Timothy Zahn, is generally solid, with other novels he wrote being Survivor's Quest, Outbound Flight, Allegiance, Choices of One, and more recently the new-canon Thrawn series (Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, and Thrawn: Treason - though I haven't yet read that third one, just got it as a gift recently) that puts that character as its protagonist. Bonus points, the first of that new series fits just easily into the old EU as it does into the new canon.

Honestly, it's been so long since I read most of the other EU novels that I can't recall enough to give many thoughts or recommendations about them. I do recall liking I, Jedi, which stars Corran Horn, one of the main characters of the X-Wing books, and is probably the only Star Wars novel written in the first-person. But even that I couldn't much say why I recall liking it beyond that I liked Corran. I also recall enjoying the Junior Jedi Knights series, which were children's books about Anakin Solo's training as a Jedi at Luke's Jedi Academy, but I did read them back when I was still in their target demographic age range, which is quite young IIRC.

Beyond that, well, the books are actually fresh in my mind are the more recent ones, from after the New Jedi Order series, which were... not great. Only recommend those if you want to read everything.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Hmmm...I would recommend the 'Tales from..' series for a lot of solid to great short stories. Whenever people say 'every character you see was given a detailed background and story', I imagine its the Tales From series that they are referring to. From the Cantina scene to the other bounty hunters in Empire Strikes Back to Jabba's palace, it gives you a lot of insight into the other things going on with those characters if you were curious.

The Bounty Hunter Trilogy was also a fun read though the main villain of it...well...I'm not sure where you would read/play/watch to find out more about Prince Xivier(sp) since I sure as hell wasn't able to find out. If you aren't a fan of Boba Fett though (note: NOT Mandalorians), it will mostly fall flat for you.

The Courtship of Princess Leia I'd also recommend because its honestly just good fun and contains an element in it that persists even in current Star Wars (albeit in a different form) in the Nightsisters of Dathomir. That story honestly also just has the right..feel to it honestly? Hard to explain, it did well in making me wonder what else was out there in the Star Wars galaxy.

I, Jedi is probably my favorite Star Wars book but I sadly wasn't able to get the books before and after it in its series. Despite that though, the book does a good job of conveying everything that came before it so it works as a standalone novel.

Other people have already recommended the Thrawn Trilogy so I won't, but also because I wouldn't recommend it personally. Its well written but there's just a certain...dissonance in it that didn't ring right with me and I'm not a big fan of the main villain in the Trilogy. That said, that's very much a personal opinion and overall those books are received very well by most Star Wars fans so give it a look if you're looking for a full Trilogy to read.

[The Glyphstone]

The Bounty Hunter Trilogy was also a fun read though the main villain of it...well...I'm not sure where you would read/play/watch to find out more about Prince Xivier(sp) since I sure as hell wasn't able to find out. If you aren't a fan of Boba Fett though (note: NOT Mandalorians), it will mostly fall flat for you.
.

If you mean Prince Xizor, the only other book I know he appeared in is Shadows of the Empire. I actually had the collectible toy for his spaceship+minifig when I was a kid, but darned if I knew anything about him either.

[DataNinja]

If you mean Prince Xizor, the only other book I know he appeared in is Shadows of the Empire. I actually had the collectible toy for his spaceship+minifig when I was a kid, but darned if I knew anything about him either.

Shadows of the Empire is, I believe, the only other book that he appears in - though he has mentions in Darksaber, and at least indirect mentions in the Han Solo Trilogy. He's the biggest fish that never appears.

[Dire_Flumph]

I forgot all about the Bounty Hunter Wars Trilogy. I think I liked them, but I can't remember a single thing about them.

Hard to recommend Shadows of the Empire. For those who weren't there for it, Shadows of the Empire was an attempt at a multimedia event with a novel, comics, and a video game that were all supposed to tie together to make the story of what happened between Empire and Jedi. It even had a soundtrack CD which I actually own because circa 1996 I was an even bigger Star Wars nerd! The novel works by itself, and it's not bad, but not that great either, for me particularly because I wasn't a fan of Captain "I Can't Believe it's Not Han Solo".

And for those who say Crystal Star can't possibly be as bad as (Attack of the Clones/Last Jedi/Rise of Skywalker), this might be worth a read: https://io9.gizmodo.com/crystal-star...ver-1788426849

[Ibrinar]

Thanks. Thrawn Trilogy seems to be the way to go according to most, so I will start there and then if I am still in the mood for star wars EU I will check out other recommendations.

[KatsOfLoathing]

Seconding the recommendation of the Darth Bane trilogy. Bane and his apprentice Zannah are both really great and complex characters even despite (or maybe because of) their unabashed evilness, and the series goes really deep into the lore of the Sith and the Dark Side in ways few other novels do.

The MedStar duology, set during the Clone Wars and starring Barriss Offee, is another of my personal favorites. It's very character-driven and has exactly zero lightsaber fights (and only one Jedi present at all, for that matter), but if you like the more mundane side of the SW universe it's a lot of fun.

[Zevox]

Seconding the recommendation of the Darth Bane trilogy. Bane and his apprentice Zannah are both really great and complex characters even despite (or maybe because of) their unabashed evilness, and the series goes really deep into the lore of the Sith and the Dark Side in ways few other novels do.

Ah, right, I forgot about those. Yeah, those are probably the only more recent old-EU novels I remember clearly and would recommend. Pretty good reads.

[Saintheart]

Also, one technical entry into the list since we're only here talking about EU books generally: if you're into EU worldbuilding, you could do worse than to leaf through the Imperial Sourcebook and the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook for the old West End Games Star Wars RPG.

Normally worldbuilding fluff is so much 'meh', but I found these to be really interesting and fairly in-depth takes on how the Rebel Alliance and the Empire actually worked from a structural and organisational point of view. Zahn borrowed or repurposed a fair amount of material from those books for the Heir to the Empire series, and even when I was reading them as a much younger sprog I found they gave you a nice feeling of immersion into the galaxy far, far away.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by The Glyphstone
If you mean Prince Xizor, the only other book I know he appeared in is Shadows of the Empire. I actually had the collectible toy for his spaceship+minifig when I was a kid, but darned if I knew anything about him either.

I still have a number of the plastic model kits of his custom fighter, the Virago, which came out in stores in the mid-90s. I’ve tried selling them at yard sales, but since the fighter never appeared on-screen no one knows what it is.

As for Shadows of the Empire itself, the book was so terrible that I actually returned it to the store, which is unheard of for me. But after thirty pages of stunted, dismal writing I just wanted my money back.

Originally Posted by Dire_Flumph
For those who weren't there for it, Shadows of the Empire was an attempt at a multimedia event with a novel, comics, and a video game that were all supposed to tie together…

….I wasn't a fan of Captain "I Can't Believe it's Not Han Solo".

The transparent copy of Han Solo was bad enough, but what was really frustrating was that he always died in the video game, no matter what you tried.

Originally Posted by Dire_Flumph
*Star Wars nerddom*

Ahh, but did you have the Star Wars screensaver, ca. 1994?

[Saintheart]

Ahh, but did you have the Star Wars screensaver, ca. 1994?

Goddamn Jawas always stealing bits of my screen.

[Dire_Flumph]

Ahh, but did you have the Star Wars screensaver, ca. 1994?

Yes, I had that one. The Jawas were the best! I loved it when two of them made off with the taskbar.

[Velaryon]

Legacy of the Force is a redo of the PT and now could be seen, in hindsight, as another take on Kylo Ren. It's better than all of them, but there are things you might not like in them and have to struggle through the books anyway (unlike with NJO, where if you don't like Corran or Wedge you can skip their books).

The Dark Nest Trilogy is terrible in my opinion. It undoes a challenge to Luke from the previous books (I forget which one specifically) and isn't a very good story. It also participates in the long-running battle in the Star Wars universe over love interests, this one being over Jaina Solo. I don't recommend reading it, as it mostly gets ignored in what comes next anyway.

I agreed with most of your post, but very much disagree on Legacy of the Force. In my opinion, LotF alone justifies Disney's decision to scrap the EU; it's really that bad. No redeeming features whatsoever.

And since the Dark Nest trilogy is A) written by Troy Denning who is among the worst authors to ever touch Star Wars, and B) effectively a prologue for Legacy of the Force, it's also terrible.

Personally I like (parts of) the New Jedi Order series more than most here, but definitely acknowledge their flaws. However, if OP does decide to read NJO, I recommend they stop after that series because AFAIK there's not a single book set after it that's worth reading.