I'm looking for the suggested order in which to read the canonized EU books. I'd prefer chronologically, but if the early books suck too much, it might turn me off altogether. Please list your suggested reading order, and why.

I know nothing of the order in which you should read them, but Vector Prime was one of my favorite books of the Star Wars universe. R.A. Salvatore is a more established fantasy writer than most and you can tell based almost solely on the character development of the Yuzong Vong in the book.

Are any of them really canon? I know a lot of the ones I read in like the mid-late 90s were screwed over by the prequel trilogy.

I've listed most of the post OT books in order, and starred the "important" ones. More stars is more important, in my opinion. This is excluding X-Wing books, which I think can be read on their own. Books marked with # are ones that I haven't read but I've always heard sucked.

1. *The Truce at Bakura
2. *The Courtship of Princess Leia
3. **The Thrawn Trilogy
4. **The Jedi Academy Trilogy
5. *I, Jedi
6. #Children of the Jedi
7. #Darksaber
8. #Planet of Twilight
9. #The Crystal Star
10. The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy
11. #The New Rebellion
12. The Corellian Trilogy
13. *The Hand of Thrawn Duology
14. **The New Jedi Order series
15. The Dark Nest Trilogy
16. Legacy of the Force series

I also didn't include the Junior Jedi Knights and Young Jedi Knights series which take place before NJO, but they're young adult books at best, and aren't that important, nor that good. I'd just read the Wookieepedia entries on them.

I've also not read the Black Fleet Crisis or Corellian trilogies, so I don't know much about them. However they don't seem to be mentioned much in NJO, so you could probably skip them if you want to dig into NJO that much sooner. A lot of people don't like NJO because of its premise, but I think they're very well written, regardless.

I haven't finished NJO yet so I don't know about the latter two. Legacy of the Force isn't even fully written yet.

Proper order:

Trashcan -> Burnination

Or so I've heard. Shadows of the Empire was neat, though.

The Corellian trilogy is kinda mentioned. Later on, in the NJO series, they use Centerpoint station. You forgot a few things though..

15 Dark Nest trilogy (a must if you read the next entry)
16 Legacy of the Force series (up to book 7 right now)

I've been reading the LotF series and so far, its really good. I recommend it

JACEN SOLO KILLS MARA JADE

Don't bother with the Han Solo trilogy. It's bad. The guy can't write to save his live.

Ha ha ha, yeah. Right on!

I seem to recall that the older ones used to have a sort of timeline of the books in them....do they not do that anymore? Or was that just a certain series?

fump fump fump

Pretty much just read the newest set, Betrayal, Bloodlines, Tempest, Exile, Sacrifice, Inferno, and Fury, the last two aren't out yet and i want to read them reaaaaaally badly

why?
Kyle **********ing Katarn is in all of them

Start of with the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command) cos they're by far the best.

i think ive read most of the EU books up until a few books into NJO. man that was a looooong time ago

Everything except Dark Nest since it has nothing to do with the other books except a stupid love connection with Jaina and a crazy b**** who doesn't do anything worth reading.

Young JK were pretty good too.

The best way to read the extended universe books is to not read them at all.

Depends on which Han Solo Trilogy you mean. There are two. The one by Ann C. Crispin was decent, IMHO.


I'd say you should start off with the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn. They're more or less the best you can read in that timeframe and as they were the first books to be published back then, they can't spoil anything from the earlier books.

The Dark Nest books are important because they set up the Legacy of the Force series.

The Jedi Academy trilogy unfortunately is very important, but not very good.

You should read I, Jedi, one of the better books, after you've read the first four X-Wing books. The X-Wing series is always good if you want to read a good non-Jedi book.

And the Corellia Trilogy is very important for the Legacy of the Force series.

In the prequel-era some gems include Shatterpoint (Shaft in space) and the Republic Commando trilogy. The latter is a little relevant for the Legacy of the Force.

Oh, and you should read Rogue Planet when you're about halfway through NJO.

I always had the feeling the comics conveyed the better part of the EU.

although Cade Skywalker is kind of a silly name, the character works...

Well tbh I wouldnt rate the bulk of the NJO as its honestly crap except the latter parts where the Empire gets involved. Lots of teen emo jedi and appalling attempts at romantic bits. The Vong themselves are arguably cool but if I'm honest I wanted the jedi to die because they were utter crap compared to yoda et all. Dark Nest starts the "what the hell does it take to kill that character" idea to levels I have never seen. I actualy stopped at the legacy stuff because at that point the plots and characters went mental and stopped making any but the most rudimentary sense.

The list of nearly every SW novel in chronological order:

Courtesy of theforce.net

You have never read the NJO series if you think that. Either that or you're daft.

Read Zahn, Allston, Stackpole and maybe Kube-McDowell (if you skip huge sections of his books). Then stop.

I'm sorry but Jacen and Jaina arent characters I can say I like. Neither are alot of the "Jedi" involved.

The extra work on Han Solo and some of the other characters is good though.
But the 1st half of the NJO is very hit and miss.

The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn
X-Wing Books 1 through 7 by Micheal Stackpole and Aaron Allston (Skip 8 and 9)
The Han Solo Trilogy by Brian Daley
The Lando Calrissian Trilogy by L Neil Smith
The Bounty Hunter Trilogy by KW Jeter

The rest at your discretion, but I honestly really can't recommend any of them.

What I've just done is read Zahn's "Outbound Flight" book starring a prequel-era Thrawn, and now I'm reading Heir to the Empire again.

It kind of seems like Zahn's changed his conception of who he wants Thrawn to be, as it's pretty difficult to reconcile his characterizations of Thrawn in the two books.