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masterghandalfNote: As with Part I, this post was originally written and posted on the Force.net forums in the fall of 2021; I've reposted it here as it was, with no significant changes because I thought people here might be interested, especially in light of my potential re-read of the later Legacy-era novels. As it was written for the Force.net EU Literature forums, this recap presumes a basic knowledge of the New Jedi Order saga's premise and narrative arc; if anyone reading this here has any questions or needs clarification, feel free to ask! This retrospective was originally written in two parts; I'll post the second part tomorrow. Thank you for reading!
So, for the second part of my retrospective (I apologize for the delay; this is rather later than I mean it to be!) having recapped my feelings on the individual books/arcs of the NJO, I’d like to take a bit to dig into the series as a whole. I want to do this in three parts, looking back at the Bantam era to try and get a sense of what was going on in the world of Star Wars literature at the time that the NJO grew out of (and in many ways, was a reaction against), looking at the NJO itself, its structure, and its themes to try and see some of what it did right and what it did wrong overall, and finally looking into the future at the subsequent Dark Nest/Legacy of the Force/Fate of the Jedi/Crucible mega-arc and how it in turn seems to have represent a reaction to the NJO (and maybe get into the current Disney era a little too, especially the current big story arc, the High Republic).
Before the NJO: The Bantam Era
Before I begin, I’d like to note that I wasn’t involved in the fandom during the Bantam era and have no personal memories of what fan discourse and reaction were like at the time. I have read most of the Bantam-era novels (still haven’t gotten around to the Corellian Trilogy) though for most of them it’s been a while; this overview will be general, but if anyone more knowledgeable wants to step in and correct me on anything, feel free. Note that this will be focusing on the post-RotJ Bantam novels.
Looking back, I think the biggest and most obvious aspect of the Bantam era compared to the Del Rey and Disney eras is the seeming lack of much in the way of coordination and oversight. Sure, the different storylines referenced each other, sometimes built on each other, but there wasn’t really much of a cohesive overall direction for the franchise. Instead, the focus was mostly on relatively small-scale adventures that might impact the overall state of the galaxy but were mostly resolved at the end of the novel or trilogy. This also carried over to villains; the ‘warlord of the week’ description, after all, had its start from this era. Frankly, for much of the post RotJ Bantam era, the franchise lacked a strong overarching villain or villainous faction. The Empire, of course, remained the franchise’s default antagonist, but they were mostly played out after Thrawn and the cloned Palpatine were defeated (not counting stories like the X-Wing novels that filled in the gaps rather than carrying the story forward). Honestly, it kind of shocked me to realize that the last major Imperial leader chronologically to represent a genuine threat in their own right was… Admiral Daala, the epitome of making a lot of noise while accomplishing very little. Subsequent antagonists included a variety of antagonist types, including neo-Imperial factions (like the Empire Reborn or Second Imperium), criminal gangs, local warlords, and alien threats (including the Yevetha, who would weirdly foreshadow the Vong in some, though not all, ways) with dark siders – including fallen students of Luke’s – sprinkled throughout. None of them made much of an overall impact. Except, arguably, Thrackan, who stuck around like a bad penny until LotF.
This is not to say that the era was entirely standalone; the early novels especially introduced a lot of elements that would carry on throughout the EU. The Thrawn Trilogy, as one would expect, introduced a number of iconic characters to the franchise, including Thrawn himself (easily the most memorable of the “warlord of the week” villains), Mara, Pellaeon, Karrde and his crew, Borsk Fey’lya, Garm bel Iblis, the Solo twins (albeit as infants) and so on, as well as plot elements like the ysalamiri, battle meditation, Noghri and Spaarti cloning that would also see further use. Oddly, one of the most significant works plot-wise was also one that often gets ragged on – the Jedi Academy trilogy, which featured the rebirth of the Jedi Order and introduced a lot more iconic Legends characters, including Luke’s entire first generation of students. But it does feel like the later novels largely fell into a rut, not really rocking the boat too much or risking changing the status quo and rarely introducing characters other authors felt like picking up on (the YJK and JJK novels obvious introduced many more Jedi students, but by their nature as YA or kids’ books with younger protagonists and smaller-scale conflicts didn’t really affect the overall state of the galaxy that much).
A lot of the Bantam books are also weird in hindsight because of how the franchise’s lore has evolved, and even the best installments aren’t immune to it (the Thrawn trilogy, coming as early as it did, sometimes barely feels like it takes place in the same universe as later-written works, albeit largely down to forces – namely, Lucas himself – beyond Zahn’s control). Obviously, the novels weren’t allowed to delve into the Clone Wars or Palpatine’s rise to power much until Lucas took his own crack at them, and when they did get into the GFFA’s past it was often overwritten (Zahn’s version of the Clone Wars) or an outright fakeout (the search for Luke’s mother in Black Fleet Crisis). Lore surrounding the Jedi was also mostly lacking, and so a lot of the trappings of rank, philosophy and structure that characterized the prequel-era Jedi were conspicuous by their absence (though admittedly, Luke’s order was never meant to be a carbon-copy of the Republic-era Jedi anyway). Also different was a lot of the lore surrounding the dark side, which tended to get depicted as something like demonic possession (or, in Kyp’s case, literal demonic possession) rather than a passive corruption that had to be voluntarily embraced – and as for its wielders, the Sith too were mostly absent and consigned to the setting’s dim past (though Exar Kun’s claim in the Jedi Academy books to having been the greatest of the Sith would become increasingly hilarious in hindsight as more ancient Sith factions and wars were retconned into being; even before Legends got declared non-canon, the dude would’ve been lucky to crack the top ten). This depiction of the dark side in particular would, for good or ill, be pushed back on hard by the NJO.
I say this not to rag on the Bantam Era (which produced some really great books, albeit alongside some… not so great ones) but to highlight the scenario that the NJO was growing out of. In some ways, the Bantam approach worked well – it was easy for new readers to jump on, for example, since the books were largely self-contained and new readers could quickly be brought up to speed without needing to read a dozen other books if they didn’t want to. However, it also produced an environment where, aside from some running elements like the Solo kids growing up and beginning their training as Jedi that mostly played out in the background, it could often feel like there wasn’t much at stake and the status quo (Empire in retreat, New Republic ascendant, Luke is training Jedi, Leia may or may not currently be Chief of State, Lando has zany get-rich-quick schemes) never really shook up. All of that came to an end with the Hand of Thrawn duology, which definitively ended the era by tying off a number of what major plot threads there were – the Empire and the New Republic were at piece, effectively removing the former from play as the franchise’s main antagonists going forward, Luke and Mara were getting married, Thrawn was still dead but feared threats from beyond the known galaxy pointing towards a source for new antagonists, and so on. At the same time, the prequels were about to come out, and regardless of quality would end up codifying a lot more lore and opening up new realms of both direct storytelling and backstory for “present-day” works to build on. The stage was set for a new publishing house to take the reins, with a new approach to storytelling…
The New Jedi Order As A Whole
Nineteen books over four years; the NJO represented a major paradigm shift in how Star Wars fiction outside the movies was structured, and its aftereffects are still felt in the franchise to this day. Rather than a bunch of smaller, self-contained stories, it was a major ongoing arc that dominated the post-RotJ era while ongoing. Instead of being the creation of one author, it involved many authors collaborating. The Empire (and Sith) were ditched as villains in favor of the Yuuzhan Vong (partially, IIRC, because Lucas rejected the initial pitch for them to be Sith exiles, since he was using the Sith in the prequels), who were specifically designed to be unlike anyone or anything else in the franchise. And, most of all, the series was designed to shatter the status quo into tiny pieces, starting with the killing of a beloved major character. The result was a series that was praised and criticized in equal measure. So, let’s take a look at some of the defining aspects of these books overall, and get more of a sense of what worked at what didn’t.
Let’s start off with our villains, whose image, for better or worse, has become largely synonymous with the NJO – the Yuuzhan Vong. With the Empire increasingly defanged during the Bantam era, and finally removed from play entirely by Hand of Thrawn, a new big villain faction was needed, and an invasion from beyond the known galaxy was an obvious choice – indeed, the original Marvel comics run did something similar in the eighties after RotJ with the Nagai/Tof arc. And though I said previously the Vong were designed to be unlike anything else in the franchise, they did have their precedents – the aforementioned Nagai and Tofs, the Ssi-ruuk, the Yevetha (indeed, it occurs to me that if you combined elements of the latter two species – religiously-motivated invaders with a strict caste system and weird technology from the former, and gaunt, creepy-looking bloodthirsty humanoid xenophobes from the latter – you’d get something not unlike the Vong). But throw in their organic technology, ritualized body modification and, of course, disconnect from the Force and you have something much more striking. Whether this works or not was and remains somewhat divisive (it works for me, personally, and I always found it a bit weird that the Vong were criticized for feeling like they didn’t fit in with the setting when, well, that’s the point; they don’t) but it was definitely a departure from the criticized “warlord of the week” format. I’ve also seen comparisons of the Vong to villainous factions from other settings, including the Borg (which has always been weird to me, and not only because the Vong would be reduced to frothing rage by the comparison; a clearer Star Trek parallel always seemed to be the Dominion – ruthless alien empire from a remote region of space invades the protagonists’ territory leading to a lengthy and dark war arc; said aliens are internally divided into different classes including a vicious warrior class, a slimy political class, and mysterious godlike ruler(s) – which I don’t think I’ve ever seen brought up) the Zerg, or various factions from Warhammer 40K (of which I think “Tyranids if they were run by the Dark Eldar” probably feels most appropriate).
Personally, I’ve always found the Vong compelling (though I’ll admit the “dark elf” archetype – which the Vong as a whole are at least adjacent to, though their warrior caste is also rather orc-like – has long been a guilty pleasure of mine, and I enjoy invasion and culture clash stories as well) and I’ll talk more about their “grimdark” elements and why I think they work for this series in particular when I get more into themes in a bit. I think the Vong work best when we’re given a chance to see them as somewhat “humanized” for lack of a better word – as much of a nightmare as their society is, the individual Vong are still just people, for better or worse. Nom Anor is probably the best example, with a whole arc being built around his schemes to rise to power and the conflict between his personal cynicism and the culture of wide-eyed fanaticism he moves through that, though it leaves no doubt that he’s evil, also makes him feel very real. Of course, we get other examples too (Nen Yim and Harrar being the next biggest after Anor) and in general the series devotes a lot of time to fleshing out the Vong as a culture and a people (something later works could have stood to remember with their antagonist factions… more on that later). That said, there were some definite stumbles, especially early on as our first major introduction to the Vong comes from two factions (the Praetorite Vong and Domain Shai) that are distinct from their “mainstream” culture and gives some distorted views as to what the Vong are really about; they also spend a lot of the first have of the series steamrolling their way to victory a bit too easily, with the plot (especially in Jedi Eclipse and Balance Point) feeling like it’s going out of its way to hand them victories, before we get to the back half of the series where the Vong become much more fallible (Destiny’s Way and Final Prophecy do address this somewhat, pointing out that Tsavong Lah had favored successful but costly strategies early in the war that, by the later stages, the Vong no longer had the numbers to continue to employ).
Moving on for now from villains to formatting, the NJO probably does the best job of the various multi-author series of making use of its rotating creative team. By largely dividing the series up into mini-arcs, the individual authors are given a chance to play with their personal favorite characters and set-ups while also resolving their storylines so that subsequent authors don’t have to pick them up if they don’t want to – ie, Stackpole can do an arc that’s heavy on Corran and the Rogues, Luceno can do a Han arc, Keyes an Anakin and Tahiri arc, Allston a Wedge arc, etc. This overall gives the NJO the vibe of being a series of linked stories, which helps contribute to its overall epic scale, though the initial plan of having the paperbacks be more like side stories while the hardbacks were the core story basically fell by the wayside immediately; the hardbacks may be the big “event books” but every book advances the main plots to some degree (yes, even Refugee). The downside to this format, though, is that sometimes plots and characters get lost in the shuffle, as one author will introduce something or someone important that never gets followed up on, such as the Great River or the Insiders; Greg Keyes introduces Anakin’s vision of Tahiri’s destiny that nobody else seemed much interested in doing anything with, while Danni Quee wandered around the series in various roles as various authors used her but nobody seemed to have a good grasp on what to do with her overall or what her arc should look lie (I partially blame the cancellation of the Knightfall trilogy for this, since that was supposed to be Danni-centric). And there were some major shifts in the narrative that occur so suddenly it smacks of behind-the-scenes issues to me. Zonoma Sekot becoming critical to the plot in the last third of the series when it had never even been mentioned before is a big one (yes, there was Rogue Planet which was clearly an NJO tie-in from the beginning, but it should have been worked better into the main series). Jacen and Jaina as sacred twins is another, coming as it does completely out of nowhere in Star by Star and being critical for the rest of the series (it just seems… really implausible that Nom Anor missed a trick that big). Finally, we get a lot of Vong lore and backstory regarding Quoreal, the original Yuuzhan’tar, the war with the Abominor and the true nature of the gods and the Vong’s relationship with the Force dropped on us in TFP and TUF that really should have been foreshadowed earlier, which makes me wonder if someone had been putting off answering those questions for as long as they could. On the other hand, foreshadowing for some twists is very clearly laid out (ie, it’s pretty obvious in hindsight that Onimi was always meant to be the real mastermind, IMO). So, the multi-author format worked in some ways but still had bugs to be worked out.
Next up we have characters; the NJO was supposed to be the torch-passing from one generation to the next (at least, it was…) and thus on the heroic side we mostly have our focus split between the Big Three + Mara and the Solo Kids. Though I think all the main leads’ arcs ultimately worked out (at least as of TUF) I can definitely see why they got criticisms at the time, mostly because of how everyone gets shoved into the deep end (problems including Luke’s passivity, Han’s rather self-destructive grieving and relationship troubles with Leia, Jacen’s dithering and so on). We also have some characters who ended up being written rather inconsistently (mostly new characters) due to the multi-author format, especially on the Vong side. Tsavong Lah is probably the worst victim of this, with every major appearance of his by a different author seeming to have a different idea of what he’s like, ranging from crafty zealot to bloodthirsty moron. Nom Anor’s characterization is more consistent (at least once Luceno establishes it in Agents of Chaos) but his competence level fluctuates, though it mostly evens out to “slippery schemer who may not always win but is frighteningly good at landing on his feet.” And of course, there’s Vergere, the NJO’s big enigma and one of its most important characters thematically… who would also become the victim of one of the biggest post-series retcons. On a related note, the NJO also developed a reputation for killing off major characters – I can see where this is coming from, but it’s also somewhat overstated. The NJO really only kills off two characters I’d consider “main” (not counting major villains) – Chewie and Anakin. Both of which were mandated, ironically, from Lucas himself (and which did, admittedly, serve their narrative function of making it feel like nobody was safe – there were moments when I first read TUF that I genuinely feared for both Luke and Han). Of the other major deaths, Elegos was killed off by Stackpole but he was also Stackpole’s character to begin with; Vergere, as a mentor, basically had a flashing death sign above her head from the get-go; Ackbar got to die peacefully in his sleep after a celebrated military career. Most of the others were of NJO-original characters (Ganner being probably the most prominent). I do think Star by Star probably did more to contribute to the perception of the NJO being a bloodbath than any other book, though, the way the strike team drop like flies plus several YJK-JJK era characters biting it off-page to prop up the Voxyn. But mostly I think the shock of an EU series killing any major characters (including movie characters) made it seem like a bigger deal than it was.
Thematically, the NJO is interesting to me because I think it ultimately works in a way that may very well have not ultimately been intended. A criticism I’ve encountered of the series is that it’s too un-Star Wars-y, with its high level of darkness, heroes spending much of the series on the back foot as the bad guys rack up win after win, and the Vong themselves seeming like Warhammer 40K escapees that don’t mesh with the rest of the setting. Personally, I disagree with that interpretation (and I think the post-NJO series are far more un-Star Wars-y anyway, for different reasons) but reflecting on it has led me to an interpretation of the series that makes a lot of sense to me. Basically, in this view, the NJO is ultimately about the clash between idealism vs grimdarkness on a meta level, with the Vong – dark, violent, edgy, playing by different rules both narratively and metaphysically from anyone else – not only being invaders to the Galaxy Far Far Away in the story itself but thematic invaders to the more old school pulp sci-fantasy of the Star Wars universe. On the other side of things, we have factions within the galaxy (represented by Scaur and Alpha Red, and ultimately Kre’fey) who become a different face of the same threat, essentially giving into the Vong’s narrative and seeking to win and any cost by using their own methods – galactic genocide – against them (though this aspect of the series, sadly, isn’t as developed as I would’ve liked). Ultimately, rather than submitting to the Vong or lowering themselves to their methods, victory is won as a spiritual victory which transforms the galaxy and redeems the Vong themselves from the wrong path they took long ago – idealism triumphing over darkness. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but that’s how I’ve tended to read the series, and why I think the “NJO is too grimdark to be Star Wars” bit is superficial at best and dead wrong at worst. Otherwise thematically we have the big in universe questions of “what is the dark side?” and “can there be life without the Force?” which mostly hinge on Traitor – and, okay, I’ll admit religious studies is my academic area in real life and I could probably write a whole paper just on Traitor, but it’s a fascinating book that, at least from my reading, seems to incorporate elements of Christian, Buddhist and Daoist mysticism (and possibly other elements from traditions I’m not well-versed in enough to pick up on). As for the “dark side” question, I’ve always wondered how much of its depiction here was specifically a response to how the dark side often got depicted in the Bantam era rather than a renunciation of the idea of evil at all the way some people seemed to take it (I mean, when Jacen is terrified he’s fallen partway through the novel, Vergere’s response is more “take responsibility for your own actions and don’t blame them on an external force of evil” with a side of “Jedi dogma can be a bit too strict for its own good” rather than “evil doesn’t exist,” at least as I read it).
For my final section before moving on, I wanted to look at some things I’d have done different if I was given the opportunity to go back in time and have editorial control over the series. I’ve mentioned before that in some respects I think the NJO has a sort of “first draft” vibe that probably comes from the multiple authors and it being the first big series of the Del Rey era, and so while I like the series overall, I mostly feel like it needs some tightening up and to be made more consistent. There are a lot of plot threads that are introduced late that needed to be foreshadowed better, for one – sacred twins, Zonama Sekot (hey, Danni’s an astronomer – even if she doesn’t believe in Sekot, Force Heretic establishes she’s heard of it, so there’s a place to drop some references!) Vong backstory from the last few books, etc. Alpha Red, IMO, is very important thematically but needed more focus, as does the Bothan ar’krai, and as the ultimate antagonist of the “fight fire with fire” plotline Scaur needed a bigger role from the get-go (seriously, guy’s in only a couple of scenes in the whole series which is tiny compared to his overall importance) and more definitive comeuppance. They really needed to decide on a characterization and competence level for Tsavong Lah and stuck with it, and I think Nom Anor needed a bigger role in the first half of the series too, or at least a revised one (seriously, in the first few books he’s mostly just a recurring villain who shows up on different planets to cause trouble in the name of the Vong; it’s really only from Star by Star on that he really becomes one of the core protagonists – despite being a villain – of the series in terms of how much focus his arc and his personal struggles get). In terms of non-Vong villains, the Peace Brigade kind of need an overhaul, as they’re boring as written and don’t add much to the story and barely have any major named characters to make them interesting. Something that occurred to me while writing this was that they could be cut entirely and replaced with the Hutts as the Vong’s major collaborators within the galaxy, with the Hutts of course actually trying to play both sides for their own gain (basically, an extension of their plotline from Jedi Eclipse, which I always thought wrapped up too soon, but expanded on further).And while TUF is a great ending on the whole, I think it needed a bigger role from Tahiri (sorry, my pet peeve) and I still think Jacen and Jaina should have defeated Onimi together rather than Jaina getting damselled. I’d also, frankly, have made the Vong a bit less invincible in the early books; I think the writers were trying to make it clear that they were absolutely the big threat and not minor pushovers or one-and-done arc villains but overdid it a bit, with the New Republic winning no victories that weren’t pyrrhic while the Vong take planet and planet; it’s not only Enemy Lines that this really starts to change.
After the New Jedi Order
In the end, I think the NJO had a profound effect on the franchise for good and ill, in terms of providing the template for big ongoing stories that weren’t the movies. I’d like to take a look at some of the later series and see where I think they followed on from the NJO, where they learned the wrong lessons, and how they compare. Note, I haven’t read LotF and FotJ in years, so my impressions there are mostly based on my memories of the experience of reading them as they came out and I apologize if I miss or misrepresent anything too badly. Crucible I’ll only reference briefly, as by that point I was burned out on the post-NJO Legends continuity and never got around to it at all.
The Post-NJO Legends novel line contained various long series, a trilogy, and standalones, but I think in many ways it’s most helpful to think of its core arc – Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, Fate of the Jedi, and Crucible – as one big series. Plot wise, it really does feel like an attempt to hit a reset button on the NJO and its aftermath; I’m not privy to any behind-the-scenes info, but I always figured it was probably a response to the NJO’s polarizing reaction, resulting in a desire to get away from the NJO’s controversial aspects and give the fans what (Denning et al thought) they wanted. And, IMO, it didn’t really work. From a pure storyline perspective, you had the Vong War being mostly swept under the rug with the galaxy mostly back to normal (even Coruscant, whose reconstruction TUF projected would take decades at least) and the Vong themselves mostly ignored (Denning even dropped a bridge on the poor World Brain). Vergere-was-really-a-Sith-and-so-everything-she-ever-said-can-be-safely-ignored is an obvious and clumsy retcon that mostly just provides an easy excuse for not engaging with her philosophy but throwing it out anyway. And, ultimately, someone for some reason thought a prequels-rehash was the way to go (because everyone loved them so much the first time?) complete with easily the most boring antagonist faction in the whole franchise, the Confederation, who are just the Separatists shorn of anything actually interesting and who I don’t think even the authors much cared about. Aside from the content being a big reset button, the attempts to streamline the NJO’s multi-author format didn’t really work either and contributed to the problem. Fewer authors might seem like a good thing but ultimately resulted in there being fewer authorial voices in the series, and making individual authors’ more problematic traits a lot more obvious (you probably know what I’m talking about), while the rotating authors format actually made the series feel more choppy than the NJO’s arc-based format – to use Traviss as an example, rather than having a Fett arc that can be over-and-done with, we instead had Fett showing up every three books out of the blue and being irrelevant the rest of the time. Basically, I think LotF (and Dark Nest, which is basically a lead-in to LotF) tried to course-correct the NJO’s plot and streamline its format and ended up not managing either. And then FotJ ended up having to try to course-correct LotF and falling into the same problems. Though at least one area where it at least tried to do better was villains; the Lost Tribe may have played into the glut of Sith the franchise was going through at the time, but at least they weren’t a rehash of a movie faction (though alas, they didn’t get anywhere near the same development as the Vong, with only Vestara and her dad getting much focus among the individual characters) while Abeloth was a decent idea but unfortunately nobody on the writing team seemed to have much of an idea of how to write a chaos god in the context of Star Wars. And ultimately all of these series seemed to have a mean-spirited cynicism and fatalism bubbling under the surface, characterized by among other things killing characters for shock value (a bad lesson they learned from the NJO), the Jedi constantly being at odds with everyone else, and the Jedi-Sith conflict being presented as a never-ending constant; though I don’t assign him all the blame, I do think Denning takes the lion’s share for this since he was the main story person at the time (he was certainly the most prolific writer of the period, having written the largest share of “main arc” books), IIRC, and I think these sorts of things were most prominent in his books.
One problem that plagued the post-NJO era in particular that I’d like to pull out and discuss is the issue of politics, especially the relationship between the government and the Jedi. This is one area where the NJO had a problem that later series made worse. In the NJO, for the first two thirds of the series, the Jedi are mostly at odds with the government, until the election of Cal Omas. Now, in the context of the NJO, this is mostly laid at Borsk Fey’lya’s feet, with it being the result of Borsk’s personal enmity for Luke and Leia (and anyone else he sees as a rival) and the culture of corruption he creates around himself and is carried on by Pwoe and Rodan after he dies. Ultimately, though, once Omas is elected and we actually have a competent chief of state, the Jedi vs. the government problem mostly goes away and Omas’s administration and the reorganized Galactic Alliance gets a positive portrayal. The post-NJO, alas, takes the conflict and runs with it (likely also influenced by the prequel-era, where the government corruption was in that case the result of Palpatine undermining democratic institutions to seize power). First we have Omas turned into Borsk lite, then he dies and we get Niathal, then Daala of all people – and, well, it just creates the implication that the GA government is inherently corrupt and obstructionist and inherently anti-Jedi, and that sends a (hopefully unintentional, considering) ‘democracy is bad’ message. Again, I think this is an example of taking the wrong lesson from the NJO (and the prequels). Ultimately, I’ve seen it noted that because democratic governing is a long, difficult, technical process, if your story involves a democratic government but isn’t about how that government works (and, once Leia is no longer CoS, then post-RotJ Legends novels largely weren’t) then it’s easier to either shove the government to the side or make it an obstacle than actually delve into the process of how it works. But in the context of Star Wars that seemed to start in the NJO and get much more problematic afterwards, and I feel like I had to note it. The fanon that “the Empire could’ve totally stopped the Vong!” (which is brought up repeatedly – and repeatedly mocked – in the NJO itself) certainly doesn’t help matters.
Interestingly, I think the two strongest examples of long-form, non-movie epic storytelling in Star Wars after the NJO are outside the novels – the Legacy comics and the Clone Wars animated series (I’m not counting the video games for personal reasons, namely that I’m a very casual gamer at best and haven’t spent the same amount of time analyzing them). Legacy, though certainly not without its own faults (not the least of which is the rushed ending – I always got the feeling that several arcs ended up getting compressed into the War miniseries that finished the run) is IMO much stronger than any of the post-NJO novels and actually feels in some ways much more like a sequel to the NJO than the chronological-closer LotF, with the galaxy actually still feeling the impacts of the Vong war a century later and Vong characters and influences popping up in various places. Clone Wars, with its arc-based format and war epic focus, actually in some ways feels more like the NJO than anything else, despite the difference in medium. I’ve also noticed that there’s a number of parallels among the leadership of the major villainous factions – Separatists and Vong – of the two series which kind of amuse me, even if they’re probably unintentional. Seriously, you’ve got the charismatic evil overlord who’s the public leader of the enemy – Dooku and Shimrra – the secretive true master mind – Sidious and Onimi – the heavily-augmented military commander with a vendetta against the Jedi – Grievous and Tsavong Lah (admittedly, Lah would hate this comparison) – and the spy/assassin who abandons the bad guys partway through the series to do their own thing – Ventress and Nom Anor. Seriously have no idea what to make of it, but now that I’ve seen it I can’t un-see it.
Once the Disney Era started and the sequel trilogy became the main focus, we didn’t really have another big arc outside the movies for a while, but just this past year we ended up starting the High Republic, which feels a bit like the NJO in some ways, with the big, sprawling story, the new era, a deliberately “different” villain faction, etc. Unlike the NJO it goes more for optimism and idealism rather than darkness, and it’s decentralized in a way that recalls some of the early ideas for the NJO’s structure that never really materialized. And I’ve wondered if the High Republic itself may turn out to be a trial run for similar multimedia projects in other eras, but, well, we’ll have to wait and see. As for elements of the NJO that have made their way into the new canon – I don’t expect we’ll ever see the Vong themselves show up again, but the Grysks have some Vong-like elements and fill a similar niche, if anyone but Zahn ever ends up using them. The sequel trilogy itself seems to have taken more inspiration from Dark Empire, LotF and even a bit from The Glove of Darth Vader and sequels, while the post-RotJ Disney+ series seem to be building to an arc that looks like it will take inspiration from the Thrawn Trilogy, so we may yet see some more NJO influences eventually as well, though I couldn’t say when or how.
The divisive reaction to the NJO itself seems to have cooled over the years. I think there’s several reasons for this. One is just time – like the prequels, the NJO just isn’t the “in” thing the franchise is doing, so people aren’t spending as much time getting worked up about it anymore. Related is the fact that it’s done and so arcs that people complained about when they were in progress aren’t in progress anymore and we know how it ends – and the series as a whole got a well-received finale with The Unifying Force, and a strong (or weak) ending can make or break any series. And of course, we then got LotF and FotJ, which took attention away from the NJO by getting a much more negative reception. Personally, looking back I see the NJO as a flawed gem – you can’t deny its ambitions and scope, exceeding almost anything else in the franchise, and though it definitely had some bad moments and aspects, it also produced some of the most magnificent installments in all of Legends. And so, even with its canon status being overwritten by the Disney era, it will continue to hold a special place in my heart, warts and all.
Again, I apologize for the amount of time it took me to get here, and I’d like to thank anyone who stuck around for the whole length of my ramble. I hope my thoughts were at least interesting, and I’m curious if anyone has any response to some of my moments that may have been a bit more of a stretch. Until we meet again, may the Force be with you!
So, for the second part of my retrospective (I apologize for the delay; this is rather later than I mean it to be!) having recapped my feelings on the individual books/arcs of the NJO, I’d like to take a bit to dig into the series as a whole. I want to do this in three parts, looking back at the Bantam era to try and get a sense of what was going on in the world of Star Wars literature at the time that the NJO grew out of (and in many ways, was a reaction against), looking at the NJO itself, its structure, and its themes to try and see some of what it did right and what it did wrong overall, and finally looking into the future at the subsequent Dark Nest/Legacy of the Force/Fate of the Jedi/Crucible mega-arc and how it in turn seems to have represent a reaction to the NJO (and maybe get into the current Disney era a little too, especially the current big story arc, the High Republic).
Before the NJO: The Bantam Era
Before I begin, I’d like to note that I wasn’t involved in the fandom during the Bantam era and have no personal memories of what fan discourse and reaction were like at the time. I have read most of the Bantam-era novels (still haven’t gotten around to the Corellian Trilogy) though for most of them it’s been a while; this overview will be general, but if anyone more knowledgeable wants to step in and correct me on anything, feel free. Note that this will be focusing on the post-RotJ Bantam novels.
Looking back, I think the biggest and most obvious aspect of the Bantam era compared to the Del Rey and Disney eras is the seeming lack of much in the way of coordination and oversight. Sure, the different storylines referenced each other, sometimes built on each other, but there wasn’t really much of a cohesive overall direction for the franchise. Instead, the focus was mostly on relatively small-scale adventures that might impact the overall state of the galaxy but were mostly resolved at the end of the novel or trilogy. This also carried over to villains; the ‘warlord of the week’ description, after all, had its start from this era. Frankly, for much of the post RotJ Bantam era, the franchise lacked a strong overarching villain or villainous faction. The Empire, of course, remained the franchise’s default antagonist, but they were mostly played out after Thrawn and the cloned Palpatine were defeated (not counting stories like the X-Wing novels that filled in the gaps rather than carrying the story forward). Honestly, it kind of shocked me to realize that the last major Imperial leader chronologically to represent a genuine threat in their own right was… Admiral Daala, the epitome of making a lot of noise while accomplishing very little. Subsequent antagonists included a variety of antagonist types, including neo-Imperial factions (like the Empire Reborn or Second Imperium), criminal gangs, local warlords, and alien threats (including the Yevetha, who would weirdly foreshadow the Vong in some, though not all, ways) with dark siders – including fallen students of Luke’s – sprinkled throughout. None of them made much of an overall impact. Except, arguably, Thrackan, who stuck around like a bad penny until LotF.
This is not to say that the era was entirely standalone; the early novels especially introduced a lot of elements that would carry on throughout the EU. The Thrawn Trilogy, as one would expect, introduced a number of iconic characters to the franchise, including Thrawn himself (easily the most memorable of the “warlord of the week” villains), Mara, Pellaeon, Karrde and his crew, Borsk Fey’lya, Garm bel Iblis, the Solo twins (albeit as infants) and so on, as well as plot elements like the ysalamiri, battle meditation, Noghri and Spaarti cloning that would also see further use. Oddly, one of the most significant works plot-wise was also one that often gets ragged on – the Jedi Academy trilogy, which featured the rebirth of the Jedi Order and introduced a lot more iconic Legends characters, including Luke’s entire first generation of students. But it does feel like the later novels largely fell into a rut, not really rocking the boat too much or risking changing the status quo and rarely introducing characters other authors felt like picking up on (the YJK and JJK novels obvious introduced many more Jedi students, but by their nature as YA or kids’ books with younger protagonists and smaller-scale conflicts didn’t really affect the overall state of the galaxy that much).
A lot of the Bantam books are also weird in hindsight because of how the franchise’s lore has evolved, and even the best installments aren’t immune to it (the Thrawn trilogy, coming as early as it did, sometimes barely feels like it takes place in the same universe as later-written works, albeit largely down to forces – namely, Lucas himself – beyond Zahn’s control). Obviously, the novels weren’t allowed to delve into the Clone Wars or Palpatine’s rise to power much until Lucas took his own crack at them, and when they did get into the GFFA’s past it was often overwritten (Zahn’s version of the Clone Wars) or an outright fakeout (the search for Luke’s mother in Black Fleet Crisis). Lore surrounding the Jedi was also mostly lacking, and so a lot of the trappings of rank, philosophy and structure that characterized the prequel-era Jedi were conspicuous by their absence (though admittedly, Luke’s order was never meant to be a carbon-copy of the Republic-era Jedi anyway). Also different was a lot of the lore surrounding the dark side, which tended to get depicted as something like demonic possession (or, in Kyp’s case, literal demonic possession) rather than a passive corruption that had to be voluntarily embraced – and as for its wielders, the Sith too were mostly absent and consigned to the setting’s dim past (though Exar Kun’s claim in the Jedi Academy books to having been the greatest of the Sith would become increasingly hilarious in hindsight as more ancient Sith factions and wars were retconned into being; even before Legends got declared non-canon, the dude would’ve been lucky to crack the top ten). This depiction of the dark side in particular would, for good or ill, be pushed back on hard by the NJO.
I say this not to rag on the Bantam Era (which produced some really great books, albeit alongside some… not so great ones) but to highlight the scenario that the NJO was growing out of. In some ways, the Bantam approach worked well – it was easy for new readers to jump on, for example, since the books were largely self-contained and new readers could quickly be brought up to speed without needing to read a dozen other books if they didn’t want to. However, it also produced an environment where, aside from some running elements like the Solo kids growing up and beginning their training as Jedi that mostly played out in the background, it could often feel like there wasn’t much at stake and the status quo (Empire in retreat, New Republic ascendant, Luke is training Jedi, Leia may or may not currently be Chief of State, Lando has zany get-rich-quick schemes) never really shook up. All of that came to an end with the Hand of Thrawn duology, which definitively ended the era by tying off a number of what major plot threads there were – the Empire and the New Republic were at piece, effectively removing the former from play as the franchise’s main antagonists going forward, Luke and Mara were getting married, Thrawn was still dead but feared threats from beyond the known galaxy pointing towards a source for new antagonists, and so on. At the same time, the prequels were about to come out, and regardless of quality would end up codifying a lot more lore and opening up new realms of both direct storytelling and backstory for “present-day” works to build on. The stage was set for a new publishing house to take the reins, with a new approach to storytelling…
The New Jedi Order As A Whole
Nineteen books over four years; the NJO represented a major paradigm shift in how Star Wars fiction outside the movies was structured, and its aftereffects are still felt in the franchise to this day. Rather than a bunch of smaller, self-contained stories, it was a major ongoing arc that dominated the post-RotJ era while ongoing. Instead of being the creation of one author, it involved many authors collaborating. The Empire (and Sith) were ditched as villains in favor of the Yuuzhan Vong (partially, IIRC, because Lucas rejected the initial pitch for them to be Sith exiles, since he was using the Sith in the prequels), who were specifically designed to be unlike anyone or anything else in the franchise. And, most of all, the series was designed to shatter the status quo into tiny pieces, starting with the killing of a beloved major character. The result was a series that was praised and criticized in equal measure. So, let’s take a look at some of the defining aspects of these books overall, and get more of a sense of what worked at what didn’t.
Let’s start off with our villains, whose image, for better or worse, has become largely synonymous with the NJO – the Yuuzhan Vong. With the Empire increasingly defanged during the Bantam era, and finally removed from play entirely by Hand of Thrawn, a new big villain faction was needed, and an invasion from beyond the known galaxy was an obvious choice – indeed, the original Marvel comics run did something similar in the eighties after RotJ with the Nagai/Tof arc. And though I said previously the Vong were designed to be unlike anything else in the franchise, they did have their precedents – the aforementioned Nagai and Tofs, the Ssi-ruuk, the Yevetha (indeed, it occurs to me that if you combined elements of the latter two species – religiously-motivated invaders with a strict caste system and weird technology from the former, and gaunt, creepy-looking bloodthirsty humanoid xenophobes from the latter – you’d get something not unlike the Vong). But throw in their organic technology, ritualized body modification and, of course, disconnect from the Force and you have something much more striking. Whether this works or not was and remains somewhat divisive (it works for me, personally, and I always found it a bit weird that the Vong were criticized for feeling like they didn’t fit in with the setting when, well, that’s the point; they don’t) but it was definitely a departure from the criticized “warlord of the week” format. I’ve also seen comparisons of the Vong to villainous factions from other settings, including the Borg (which has always been weird to me, and not only because the Vong would be reduced to frothing rage by the comparison; a clearer Star Trek parallel always seemed to be the Dominion – ruthless alien empire from a remote region of space invades the protagonists’ territory leading to a lengthy and dark war arc; said aliens are internally divided into different classes including a vicious warrior class, a slimy political class, and mysterious godlike ruler(s) – which I don’t think I’ve ever seen brought up) the Zerg, or various factions from Warhammer 40K (of which I think “Tyranids if they were run by the Dark Eldar” probably feels most appropriate).
Personally, I’ve always found the Vong compelling (though I’ll admit the “dark elf” archetype – which the Vong as a whole are at least adjacent to, though their warrior caste is also rather orc-like – has long been a guilty pleasure of mine, and I enjoy invasion and culture clash stories as well) and I’ll talk more about their “grimdark” elements and why I think they work for this series in particular when I get more into themes in a bit. I think the Vong work best when we’re given a chance to see them as somewhat “humanized” for lack of a better word – as much of a nightmare as their society is, the individual Vong are still just people, for better or worse. Nom Anor is probably the best example, with a whole arc being built around his schemes to rise to power and the conflict between his personal cynicism and the culture of wide-eyed fanaticism he moves through that, though it leaves no doubt that he’s evil, also makes him feel very real. Of course, we get other examples too (Nen Yim and Harrar being the next biggest after Anor) and in general the series devotes a lot of time to fleshing out the Vong as a culture and a people (something later works could have stood to remember with their antagonist factions… more on that later). That said, there were some definite stumbles, especially early on as our first major introduction to the Vong comes from two factions (the Praetorite Vong and Domain Shai) that are distinct from their “mainstream” culture and gives some distorted views as to what the Vong are really about; they also spend a lot of the first have of the series steamrolling their way to victory a bit too easily, with the plot (especially in Jedi Eclipse and Balance Point) feeling like it’s going out of its way to hand them victories, before we get to the back half of the series where the Vong become much more fallible (Destiny’s Way and Final Prophecy do address this somewhat, pointing out that Tsavong Lah had favored successful but costly strategies early in the war that, by the later stages, the Vong no longer had the numbers to continue to employ).
Moving on for now from villains to formatting, the NJO probably does the best job of the various multi-author series of making use of its rotating creative team. By largely dividing the series up into mini-arcs, the individual authors are given a chance to play with their personal favorite characters and set-ups while also resolving their storylines so that subsequent authors don’t have to pick them up if they don’t want to – ie, Stackpole can do an arc that’s heavy on Corran and the Rogues, Luceno can do a Han arc, Keyes an Anakin and Tahiri arc, Allston a Wedge arc, etc. This overall gives the NJO the vibe of being a series of linked stories, which helps contribute to its overall epic scale, though the initial plan of having the paperbacks be more like side stories while the hardbacks were the core story basically fell by the wayside immediately; the hardbacks may be the big “event books” but every book advances the main plots to some degree (yes, even Refugee). The downside to this format, though, is that sometimes plots and characters get lost in the shuffle, as one author will introduce something or someone important that never gets followed up on, such as the Great River or the Insiders; Greg Keyes introduces Anakin’s vision of Tahiri’s destiny that nobody else seemed much interested in doing anything with, while Danni Quee wandered around the series in various roles as various authors used her but nobody seemed to have a good grasp on what to do with her overall or what her arc should look lie (I partially blame the cancellation of the Knightfall trilogy for this, since that was supposed to be Danni-centric). And there were some major shifts in the narrative that occur so suddenly it smacks of behind-the-scenes issues to me. Zonoma Sekot becoming critical to the plot in the last third of the series when it had never even been mentioned before is a big one (yes, there was Rogue Planet which was clearly an NJO tie-in from the beginning, but it should have been worked better into the main series). Jacen and Jaina as sacred twins is another, coming as it does completely out of nowhere in Star by Star and being critical for the rest of the series (it just seems… really implausible that Nom Anor missed a trick that big). Finally, we get a lot of Vong lore and backstory regarding Quoreal, the original Yuuzhan’tar, the war with the Abominor and the true nature of the gods and the Vong’s relationship with the Force dropped on us in TFP and TUF that really should have been foreshadowed earlier, which makes me wonder if someone had been putting off answering those questions for as long as they could. On the other hand, foreshadowing for some twists is very clearly laid out (ie, it’s pretty obvious in hindsight that Onimi was always meant to be the real mastermind, IMO). So, the multi-author format worked in some ways but still had bugs to be worked out.
Next up we have characters; the NJO was supposed to be the torch-passing from one generation to the next (at least, it was…) and thus on the heroic side we mostly have our focus split between the Big Three + Mara and the Solo Kids. Though I think all the main leads’ arcs ultimately worked out (at least as of TUF) I can definitely see why they got criticisms at the time, mostly because of how everyone gets shoved into the deep end (problems including Luke’s passivity, Han’s rather self-destructive grieving and relationship troubles with Leia, Jacen’s dithering and so on). We also have some characters who ended up being written rather inconsistently (mostly new characters) due to the multi-author format, especially on the Vong side. Tsavong Lah is probably the worst victim of this, with every major appearance of his by a different author seeming to have a different idea of what he’s like, ranging from crafty zealot to bloodthirsty moron. Nom Anor’s characterization is more consistent (at least once Luceno establishes it in Agents of Chaos) but his competence level fluctuates, though it mostly evens out to “slippery schemer who may not always win but is frighteningly good at landing on his feet.” And of course, there’s Vergere, the NJO’s big enigma and one of its most important characters thematically… who would also become the victim of one of the biggest post-series retcons. On a related note, the NJO also developed a reputation for killing off major characters – I can see where this is coming from, but it’s also somewhat overstated. The NJO really only kills off two characters I’d consider “main” (not counting major villains) – Chewie and Anakin. Both of which were mandated, ironically, from Lucas himself (and which did, admittedly, serve their narrative function of making it feel like nobody was safe – there were moments when I first read TUF that I genuinely feared for both Luke and Han). Of the other major deaths, Elegos was killed off by Stackpole but he was also Stackpole’s character to begin with; Vergere, as a mentor, basically had a flashing death sign above her head from the get-go; Ackbar got to die peacefully in his sleep after a celebrated military career. Most of the others were of NJO-original characters (Ganner being probably the most prominent). I do think Star by Star probably did more to contribute to the perception of the NJO being a bloodbath than any other book, though, the way the strike team drop like flies plus several YJK-JJK era characters biting it off-page to prop up the Voxyn. But mostly I think the shock of an EU series killing any major characters (including movie characters) made it seem like a bigger deal than it was.
Thematically, the NJO is interesting to me because I think it ultimately works in a way that may very well have not ultimately been intended. A criticism I’ve encountered of the series is that it’s too un-Star Wars-y, with its high level of darkness, heroes spending much of the series on the back foot as the bad guys rack up win after win, and the Vong themselves seeming like Warhammer 40K escapees that don’t mesh with the rest of the setting. Personally, I disagree with that interpretation (and I think the post-NJO series are far more un-Star Wars-y anyway, for different reasons) but reflecting on it has led me to an interpretation of the series that makes a lot of sense to me. Basically, in this view, the NJO is ultimately about the clash between idealism vs grimdarkness on a meta level, with the Vong – dark, violent, edgy, playing by different rules both narratively and metaphysically from anyone else – not only being invaders to the Galaxy Far Far Away in the story itself but thematic invaders to the more old school pulp sci-fantasy of the Star Wars universe. On the other side of things, we have factions within the galaxy (represented by Scaur and Alpha Red, and ultimately Kre’fey) who become a different face of the same threat, essentially giving into the Vong’s narrative and seeking to win and any cost by using their own methods – galactic genocide – against them (though this aspect of the series, sadly, isn’t as developed as I would’ve liked). Ultimately, rather than submitting to the Vong or lowering themselves to their methods, victory is won as a spiritual victory which transforms the galaxy and redeems the Vong themselves from the wrong path they took long ago – idealism triumphing over darkness. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but that’s how I’ve tended to read the series, and why I think the “NJO is too grimdark to be Star Wars” bit is superficial at best and dead wrong at worst. Otherwise thematically we have the big in universe questions of “what is the dark side?” and “can there be life without the Force?” which mostly hinge on Traitor – and, okay, I’ll admit religious studies is my academic area in real life and I could probably write a whole paper just on Traitor, but it’s a fascinating book that, at least from my reading, seems to incorporate elements of Christian, Buddhist and Daoist mysticism (and possibly other elements from traditions I’m not well-versed in enough to pick up on). As for the “dark side” question, I’ve always wondered how much of its depiction here was specifically a response to how the dark side often got depicted in the Bantam era rather than a renunciation of the idea of evil at all the way some people seemed to take it (I mean, when Jacen is terrified he’s fallen partway through the novel, Vergere’s response is more “take responsibility for your own actions and don’t blame them on an external force of evil” with a side of “Jedi dogma can be a bit too strict for its own good” rather than “evil doesn’t exist,” at least as I read it).
For my final section before moving on, I wanted to look at some things I’d have done different if I was given the opportunity to go back in time and have editorial control over the series. I’ve mentioned before that in some respects I think the NJO has a sort of “first draft” vibe that probably comes from the multiple authors and it being the first big series of the Del Rey era, and so while I like the series overall, I mostly feel like it needs some tightening up and to be made more consistent. There are a lot of plot threads that are introduced late that needed to be foreshadowed better, for one – sacred twins, Zonama Sekot (hey, Danni’s an astronomer – even if she doesn’t believe in Sekot, Force Heretic establishes she’s heard of it, so there’s a place to drop some references!) Vong backstory from the last few books, etc. Alpha Red, IMO, is very important thematically but needed more focus, as does the Bothan ar’krai, and as the ultimate antagonist of the “fight fire with fire” plotline Scaur needed a bigger role from the get-go (seriously, guy’s in only a couple of scenes in the whole series which is tiny compared to his overall importance) and more definitive comeuppance. They really needed to decide on a characterization and competence level for Tsavong Lah and stuck with it, and I think Nom Anor needed a bigger role in the first half of the series too, or at least a revised one (seriously, in the first few books he’s mostly just a recurring villain who shows up on different planets to cause trouble in the name of the Vong; it’s really only from Star by Star on that he really becomes one of the core protagonists – despite being a villain – of the series in terms of how much focus his arc and his personal struggles get). In terms of non-Vong villains, the Peace Brigade kind of need an overhaul, as they’re boring as written and don’t add much to the story and barely have any major named characters to make them interesting. Something that occurred to me while writing this was that they could be cut entirely and replaced with the Hutts as the Vong’s major collaborators within the galaxy, with the Hutts of course actually trying to play both sides for their own gain (basically, an extension of their plotline from Jedi Eclipse, which I always thought wrapped up too soon, but expanded on further).And while TUF is a great ending on the whole, I think it needed a bigger role from Tahiri (sorry, my pet peeve) and I still think Jacen and Jaina should have defeated Onimi together rather than Jaina getting damselled. I’d also, frankly, have made the Vong a bit less invincible in the early books; I think the writers were trying to make it clear that they were absolutely the big threat and not minor pushovers or one-and-done arc villains but overdid it a bit, with the New Republic winning no victories that weren’t pyrrhic while the Vong take planet and planet; it’s not only Enemy Lines that this really starts to change.
After the New Jedi Order
In the end, I think the NJO had a profound effect on the franchise for good and ill, in terms of providing the template for big ongoing stories that weren’t the movies. I’d like to take a look at some of the later series and see where I think they followed on from the NJO, where they learned the wrong lessons, and how they compare. Note, I haven’t read LotF and FotJ in years, so my impressions there are mostly based on my memories of the experience of reading them as they came out and I apologize if I miss or misrepresent anything too badly. Crucible I’ll only reference briefly, as by that point I was burned out on the post-NJO Legends continuity and never got around to it at all.
The Post-NJO Legends novel line contained various long series, a trilogy, and standalones, but I think in many ways it’s most helpful to think of its core arc – Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, Fate of the Jedi, and Crucible – as one big series. Plot wise, it really does feel like an attempt to hit a reset button on the NJO and its aftermath; I’m not privy to any behind-the-scenes info, but I always figured it was probably a response to the NJO’s polarizing reaction, resulting in a desire to get away from the NJO’s controversial aspects and give the fans what (Denning et al thought) they wanted. And, IMO, it didn’t really work. From a pure storyline perspective, you had the Vong War being mostly swept under the rug with the galaxy mostly back to normal (even Coruscant, whose reconstruction TUF projected would take decades at least) and the Vong themselves mostly ignored (Denning even dropped a bridge on the poor World Brain). Vergere-was-really-a-Sith-and-so-everything-she-ever-said-can-be-safely-ignored is an obvious and clumsy retcon that mostly just provides an easy excuse for not engaging with her philosophy but throwing it out anyway. And, ultimately, someone for some reason thought a prequels-rehash was the way to go (because everyone loved them so much the first time?) complete with easily the most boring antagonist faction in the whole franchise, the Confederation, who are just the Separatists shorn of anything actually interesting and who I don’t think even the authors much cared about. Aside from the content being a big reset button, the attempts to streamline the NJO’s multi-author format didn’t really work either and contributed to the problem. Fewer authors might seem like a good thing but ultimately resulted in there being fewer authorial voices in the series, and making individual authors’ more problematic traits a lot more obvious (you probably know what I’m talking about), while the rotating authors format actually made the series feel more choppy than the NJO’s arc-based format – to use Traviss as an example, rather than having a Fett arc that can be over-and-done with, we instead had Fett showing up every three books out of the blue and being irrelevant the rest of the time. Basically, I think LotF (and Dark Nest, which is basically a lead-in to LotF) tried to course-correct the NJO’s plot and streamline its format and ended up not managing either. And then FotJ ended up having to try to course-correct LotF and falling into the same problems. Though at least one area where it at least tried to do better was villains; the Lost Tribe may have played into the glut of Sith the franchise was going through at the time, but at least they weren’t a rehash of a movie faction (though alas, they didn’t get anywhere near the same development as the Vong, with only Vestara and her dad getting much focus among the individual characters) while Abeloth was a decent idea but unfortunately nobody on the writing team seemed to have much of an idea of how to write a chaos god in the context of Star Wars. And ultimately all of these series seemed to have a mean-spirited cynicism and fatalism bubbling under the surface, characterized by among other things killing characters for shock value (a bad lesson they learned from the NJO), the Jedi constantly being at odds with everyone else, and the Jedi-Sith conflict being presented as a never-ending constant; though I don’t assign him all the blame, I do think Denning takes the lion’s share for this since he was the main story person at the time (he was certainly the most prolific writer of the period, having written the largest share of “main arc” books), IIRC, and I think these sorts of things were most prominent in his books.
One problem that plagued the post-NJO era in particular that I’d like to pull out and discuss is the issue of politics, especially the relationship between the government and the Jedi. This is one area where the NJO had a problem that later series made worse. In the NJO, for the first two thirds of the series, the Jedi are mostly at odds with the government, until the election of Cal Omas. Now, in the context of the NJO, this is mostly laid at Borsk Fey’lya’s feet, with it being the result of Borsk’s personal enmity for Luke and Leia (and anyone else he sees as a rival) and the culture of corruption he creates around himself and is carried on by Pwoe and Rodan after he dies. Ultimately, though, once Omas is elected and we actually have a competent chief of state, the Jedi vs. the government problem mostly goes away and Omas’s administration and the reorganized Galactic Alliance gets a positive portrayal. The post-NJO, alas, takes the conflict and runs with it (likely also influenced by the prequel-era, where the government corruption was in that case the result of Palpatine undermining democratic institutions to seize power). First we have Omas turned into Borsk lite, then he dies and we get Niathal, then Daala of all people – and, well, it just creates the implication that the GA government is inherently corrupt and obstructionist and inherently anti-Jedi, and that sends a (hopefully unintentional, considering) ‘democracy is bad’ message. Again, I think this is an example of taking the wrong lesson from the NJO (and the prequels). Ultimately, I’ve seen it noted that because democratic governing is a long, difficult, technical process, if your story involves a democratic government but isn’t about how that government works (and, once Leia is no longer CoS, then post-RotJ Legends novels largely weren’t) then it’s easier to either shove the government to the side or make it an obstacle than actually delve into the process of how it works. But in the context of Star Wars that seemed to start in the NJO and get much more problematic afterwards, and I feel like I had to note it. The fanon that “the Empire could’ve totally stopped the Vong!” (which is brought up repeatedly – and repeatedly mocked – in the NJO itself) certainly doesn’t help matters.
Interestingly, I think the two strongest examples of long-form, non-movie epic storytelling in Star Wars after the NJO are outside the novels – the Legacy comics and the Clone Wars animated series (I’m not counting the video games for personal reasons, namely that I’m a very casual gamer at best and haven’t spent the same amount of time analyzing them). Legacy, though certainly not without its own faults (not the least of which is the rushed ending – I always got the feeling that several arcs ended up getting compressed into the War miniseries that finished the run) is IMO much stronger than any of the post-NJO novels and actually feels in some ways much more like a sequel to the NJO than the chronological-closer LotF, with the galaxy actually still feeling the impacts of the Vong war a century later and Vong characters and influences popping up in various places. Clone Wars, with its arc-based format and war epic focus, actually in some ways feels more like the NJO than anything else, despite the difference in medium. I’ve also noticed that there’s a number of parallels among the leadership of the major villainous factions – Separatists and Vong – of the two series which kind of amuse me, even if they’re probably unintentional. Seriously, you’ve got the charismatic evil overlord who’s the public leader of the enemy – Dooku and Shimrra – the secretive true master mind – Sidious and Onimi – the heavily-augmented military commander with a vendetta against the Jedi – Grievous and Tsavong Lah (admittedly, Lah would hate this comparison) – and the spy/assassin who abandons the bad guys partway through the series to do their own thing – Ventress and Nom Anor. Seriously have no idea what to make of it, but now that I’ve seen it I can’t un-see it.
Once the Disney Era started and the sequel trilogy became the main focus, we didn’t really have another big arc outside the movies for a while, but just this past year we ended up starting the High Republic, which feels a bit like the NJO in some ways, with the big, sprawling story, the new era, a deliberately “different” villain faction, etc. Unlike the NJO it goes more for optimism and idealism rather than darkness, and it’s decentralized in a way that recalls some of the early ideas for the NJO’s structure that never really materialized. And I’ve wondered if the High Republic itself may turn out to be a trial run for similar multimedia projects in other eras, but, well, we’ll have to wait and see. As for elements of the NJO that have made their way into the new canon – I don’t expect we’ll ever see the Vong themselves show up again, but the Grysks have some Vong-like elements and fill a similar niche, if anyone but Zahn ever ends up using them. The sequel trilogy itself seems to have taken more inspiration from Dark Empire, LotF and even a bit from The Glove of Darth Vader and sequels, while the post-RotJ Disney+ series seem to be building to an arc that looks like it will take inspiration from the Thrawn Trilogy, so we may yet see some more NJO influences eventually as well, though I couldn’t say when or how.
The divisive reaction to the NJO itself seems to have cooled over the years. I think there’s several reasons for this. One is just time – like the prequels, the NJO just isn’t the “in” thing the franchise is doing, so people aren’t spending as much time getting worked up about it anymore. Related is the fact that it’s done and so arcs that people complained about when they were in progress aren’t in progress anymore and we know how it ends – and the series as a whole got a well-received finale with The Unifying Force, and a strong (or weak) ending can make or break any series. And of course, we then got LotF and FotJ, which took attention away from the NJO by getting a much more negative reception. Personally, looking back I see the NJO as a flawed gem – you can’t deny its ambitions and scope, exceeding almost anything else in the franchise, and though it definitely had some bad moments and aspects, it also produced some of the most magnificent installments in all of Legends. And so, even with its canon status being overwritten by the Disney era, it will continue to hold a special place in my heart, warts and all.
Again, I apologize for the amount of time it took me to get here, and I’d like to thank anyone who stuck around for the whole length of my ramble. I hope my thoughts were at least interesting, and I’m curious if anyone has any response to some of my moments that may have been a bit more of a stretch. Until we meet again, may the Force be with you!
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Date: 2025-05-16 07:54 am (UTC)(1) Present company excepted. The fans that put me off to the franchise are the ones that consider the Original Trilogy (and only the original theatrical releases of such, at that) to be Holy Writ and everything else to be blasphemy at best.
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Date: 2025-05-18 02:42 am (UTC)As for the post-NJO novels, I'm inclined to blame a lot of the problems (not all, but a lot) on Troy Denning, rather than Lucas - iirc, he replaced James Luceno as the head of the creative team for LotF/FotJ, and definitely wrote more books in that era than any other author, and I think the whole era reeks of his interpretation of the franchise (which seemed to skew a lot more gritty, cynical and depressing than was usual). If I get around to my reread (which I'm increasingly thinking I will do) I'll probably talk more about that.
As for Lucas, I mostly think of the three major things he mandated for the NJO itself - that the Vong couldn't be Sith, that Chewie and not Luke should die in Vector Prime, and that Anakin and not Jacen should die in Star by Star.