My wife said she wants to read a starwars book.

And now I need to start her somewhere.

She doesn't have a lot of background knowledge outside of the OT. Where's a good place to start her?

Heir to the Empire series by Timothy Zahn remains my favorite.

Lost Stars. Its a **** good book and very romantic, so she'll dig that.

well do you want something Cannon or Legends?

Lost Stars. It covers most of the known period. I hear good things about

bloodline

Lost Stars is a great introduction. It starts before the original trilogy so will deal with events she'll be familiar with (Hoth, two death star destructions, etc) and is very easy reading. Highly recommended.

Awesome. Thanks for the help. I've actually got lost stars coming already for myself. That's an easy one to pass right along to her. I'm trying not to giver her anything too meaty though. It's hard to find a Star Wars book that doesn't need a fair amount of star wars knowledge.

Yeah, Lost Stars would be good for her.

Aftermath.

Aftermath.

No! Nononononononono! No!

No!

No.

Aftermath is not well written. It is a jumbled mess of characters and the writer can't resist describing how exotic everything is, how the characters drink their space-coffee while riding in a jubznubspeeder past the frumious momraths.

This is just a small collection of the first mentioneds and appearances, the new additions to the universe, in this book:

I'll echo others and suggest Heir to the Empire. If she's in to Audio Books, Audible has a really good recording, with this dude doing all the voices perfectly well. Honestly any Star Wars audio book is done well, they put in music, sound effects, droid noises, X-Wing Engines humming, etc.

Haven't read Lost Stars yet. It's on my list though. Reading bloodline right now and it's alright.

And for the love of Yoda, PLEASE don't give her Aftermath. It's not even a Star Wars book. Nothing in there feels like Star Wars at all. It's the worst written book of all time as well! It doesn't make you care about any of the characters, it is constantly confusing you with these things that SEEM like chapters, but have nothing to do with the book's story in any way, shape, or form.... only by the 5th or 6th one do you realize that the author puts in these mini-chapters on purpose, and they exist only to tell a small story about some family having dinner on some planet, reading a newspaper, saying "Hey, it says here the Emperor is dead..."... "...oh does it?"....':hmmm, yes it does"...... And that is put right smack in the middle of another plot...

The ONLY mildly interesting thing about Aftermath is that they tease a "Thrawn-like" character at the very end.... but honestly by the end of the book you are praying that it's not Thrawn, because having this author write Thrawn would be the worst possible thing for Star Wars.

The Tales of Anthologies might be worth a look as well. Each of the three books takes a scene from one of the OT movies and explores the backstories of the characters.

So there's the Tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina, where every story features the same Han/Greedo Obi-Wan and the Doctor encounter. Then there's Tales of the Bounty Hunters. It turns out you do need that scum. And finally Tales of Jabba's Palace, which I think I enjoyed the most.

I'm actually waiting for a Tale of Maz'

I'll echo others and suggest Heir to the Empire. If she's in to Audio Books, Audible has a really good recording, with this dude doing all the voices perfectly well. Honestly any Star Wars audio book is done well, they put in music, sound effects, droid noises, X-Wing Engines humming, etc.

Haven't read Lost Stars yet. It's on my list though. Reading bloodline right now and it's alright.

And for the love of Yoda, PLEASE don't give her Aftermath. It's not even a Star Wars book. Nothing in there feels like Star Wars at all. It's the worst written book of all time as well! It doesn't make you care about any of the characters, it is constantly confusing you with these things that SEEM like chapters, but have nothing to do with the book's story in any way, shape, or form.... only by the 5th or 6th one do you realize that the author puts in these mini-chapters on purpose, and they exist only to tell a small story about some family having dinner on some planet, reading a newspaper, saying "Hey, it says here the Emperor is dead..."... "...oh does it?"....':hmmm, yes it does"...... And that is put right smack in the middle of another plot...

The ONLY mildly interesting thing about Aftermath is that they tease a "Thrawn-like" character at the very end.... but honestly by the end of the book you are praying that it's not Thrawn, because having this author write Thrawn would be the worst possible thing for Star Wars.

I pretty much shouldn't post anything here because it will sound exactly like Crabbok's post above, but I'll post anyway.

I totally agree that Heir to the Empire is a great place to start. My wife read it and she enjoyed it a lot. She felt like it was exactly the sort of trilogy you'd expect to see following Return of the Jedi. The Thrawn trilogy spoiled her so much that she really can't get into The Force Awakens. Now, if your wife has already seen The Force Awakens, you just want to make sure she understands that Heir to the Empire is following a different timeline now.

I also need to echo that Aftermath was possibly the worst Star Wars book I've ever read (along with anything Paul S. Kemp has written). Aftermath is a mess and I feel like there are better-written fan-fictions out there.

I haven't read Lost Stars. After reading an Amazon review that said,

I decided it was beneath my level. That's not the kind of Star Wars book I want to read.

That review is wrong though, give it a shot, even the audio version is only 12 hours.

As others have said, Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy is a good series (though now, sadly, non-canon) which does a pretty good job of capturing the feel of the original movies.

Another series I've always liked is the X-Wing series (the ships have always been my favorite things about Star Wars). It definitely feels more like a spin-off, as the main characters from the movies make appearances, but are not the main characters of the series.

Thrawn trilogy is a great read! Mara Jade, Talon Carrde, Thrawn... some amazing EU characters. Aftermath was pretty good, a touch YA-ish, but most SW books are. I'm reading Bloodline right now and having a real hard time with it. First three chapters were pure snoozefest about galactic politics (think Phantom Menace level of boring). But it's getting better from there. Hopefully redemption at some point.

May I also suggest the Dark Lord Trilogy: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dark_Lord_Trilogy Labyrinth of Evil is one of the best SW books out there. Sith is pretty good (better than the movie which is the best of the prequels IMHO), as well as Dark Lord . Luceno is a great writer, I like him a lot.

I'd actually tell her to not bother with SW books and instead read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time or Raymond E. Feist's Daughter of the Empire series.