Andrew Wheeler has some thoughts on Tempest and the Things Get Worse-ness of the Expanded Universe, to which I can only say… Yeah. I know far too many people, avid EU readers before the NJO, who now are… not. Wheeler hits on the head one reason some folks (including me) view the Bantam line as more successful, depite the mixed quality of the books themselves – storylines very rarely lasted longer than a trilogy or so. You didn’t have book after book of endless catastrophe. If one book or trilogy bored, the next could be a complete 180 in any number of ways. There was, quite simply, variety.
I have hopes for the Legacy series – I’m generally hopeful, at least in the early stages. At the very least, it doesn’t look to be shaping up to anything on the level of the NJO, where I might have welcomed a book by Kevin J. Anderson if he just made the big bad and incredibly boring Yuuzhan Vong simply go away. (Finally, an acceptable use for those excess superweapons!) LOTF, with the linchpin of a civil war where both sides are populated by ‘good’ guys, and the possibility for main baddies who are, if not totally sympathetic, actually interesting, could avoid the NJO syndrome.
Maybe.
I am much more interested in LOTF than I was in the NJO. You know I gave up completely (with the exception of reading certain authors) on NJO with the death of Anakin Solo. My biggest problem with killing off Anakin wasn’t that I’m this huge Anakin fan, but that they just killed off where all the books had been heading with no end or resolution or anything in sight! FINALLY we were heading in a direction- it was alright, Anakin has a clue, it’ll start picking up from here– and WHAM. ARGH!
Now- I have no problems with killing off characters- it is a necessary evil and can help a story a lot. I just think this was the worst character death of all time for what it did to the storyline.
And you know- if Anakin was still around, Ben would SO be following him around instead. :)
I think the big lesson of the NJO was the length issue. Not everyone is going to enjoy every premise. If you cut them off that long? You’ll lose them.
Still, I applaud LFL for trying to stay away from the mish-mash that results in the Trek franchise where the stories just use the characters and the settings. It feels too much like fanfiction that way.
I hope everyone will give LOTF a chance and consider jumping back in, again. I want the sales to stay up so I can keep reading Star Wars books!