Star wars books...where to start?

There is only one place to start when it comes to the Star Wars EU (Expanded Universe of books) and that place is The Thrawn Trilogy. The titles are "Heir To The Empire", "Dark Force Rising", & "The Last Command". They were brilliantly written by Hugo Award winning author Timothy Zahn. Here is a time line from Del Rey books:

http://suvudu.com/files/2010/07/starwarstimeline.p...

This time line does leave out some of the "lessor" books but as an overall starting point it is pretty good. Many of the newer books have time lines similar to this in the front pages of the book. When you look at this time line you will see that there are books set before the Thrawn Trilogy, "The Truce At Bakura" is set the day after the events of ep VI but as a starting point it doesn't work as well as the Thrawn Trilogy. It is the 3 books of that trilogy that brought the SW story back from the dead. These books were so loved by fans that in 1995 Lucas was giving serious thought to making them into the fabled ep 7 - 9. One call to Harrison Ford killed that idea as he told Lucas that he would not be able to reprise his role as Han Solo because he was too busy with other projects at the time. This led to Lucas turning his attention to the OT and making the SE & DVD versions of the movies and what ultimately led to his decision to make the prequel movies. Although these books will never be made into movies Lucas has given them the tag of "official continuation of the Star Wars story".

The Thrawn Trilogy is set 5 years after the events of ep VI. The Rebellion has defeated the Empire in every major battle since the Battle of Endor and has driven them to the backwater spots in the galaxy. A New Republic has been declared over 2/3s of the galaxy after the Rebellion drove the Empire from Coruscant with Mon Montha as Chief Of State of the New Republic. Han & Leia have married and Leia is pregnant with twins. Luke continues to scour the galaxy for records of the Old Jedi so that he can create a new Jedi Order from the ashes of the old. The main reason to start with the Thrawn Trilogy and not other books set before them is that this is the trilogy where about 95% of the new characters that will play huge roles in the new stories are introduced. We are also introduced to two new "bad guys" ... Grand Admiral Thrawn & Jorrus C'boath, a very powerful Jedi Master who was thought to have died before the Clone Wars. It's totally ironic but the best "reason" for starting with these books was given by a critic, imagine that, when he said that "Zahn captures the "feel" of Star Wars so well that you can almost hear the soundtrack of John Williams playing in the back of your head as you read".

After that I would recommend the X-Wing series written by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston. In these books we are introduced to the other "new" characters that will play huge roles in the upcoming stories.

Feel free to message me with any other questions you might have and as always ...

May The Force Be With You ...

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