I just finished Heir to the Jedi tonight. It's not my favorite Star Wars book, but it had a lot of the elements of the old Star Wars books I used to read in high school. Definitely one of the better books of the new canon, I think. Though I still enjoyed the short stories more (Weapon of a Jedi, Smuggler's Run, Moving Target, and Before the Awakening).

Heir to the Jedi was the first book I read that was "so bad it's good" in that SyFy movie sort of way. It was bonkers.

So bonkers we did an episode all about it (back before we focused only on gaming).

NOODLE SCOOTING

CHOBB'S KNOB

This book has given me some new favorite Star Wars phrases.

I love what they've done with the new canon, (doesn't mean I don't or didn't like Legends) but this book should have been canned before the switch to Canon (it started production before that whole debacle happened).

So it doesn't really belong in the new canon? Huh. No wonder I liked it so much. But then, Aftermath is a really low bar to jump over, so I'm not really surprised this one was better.

Definitely a "Legends" series now. I'm so leery of buying any of the newer books now. Though, I did enjoy Claudia Gray in Lost Stars. If you don't mind big gaps in time, but it at least fits in with what we know from the films and fills in some gaps while having characters with good internal conflict.

Definitely a "Legends" series now. I'm so leery of buying any of the newer books now. Though, I did enjoy Claudia Gray in Lost Stars. If you don't mind big gaps in time, but it at least fits in with what we know from the films and fills in some gaps while having characters with good internal conflict.

If you liked Lost Stars, I'd recommend Bloodline if you haven't read it. It's a very different book - much more political. I feel it helped flesh out the political situation of the TFA era quite well.

I'm about a quarter of the way into Bloodline and am liking it so far.

Claudia Grey's two books (Lost Stars and Bloodline) are great. Dark Disciple (by Christie Golden) and Lords of the Sith (by Paul S. Kemp) were pretty good. The rest are forgettable. So you've got about a 50% chance in the new canon to find something worthwhile. Those are better odds than the old canon, as much as I loved it.

FWIW this is my ranking of the new novels (I'm omitting Bloodline because I haven't finished it yet, but so far it's good)

• Lost Stars
• Battlefront: Twilight Company
• A New Dawn
• Dark Disciple
• Lords of the Sith
• Tarkin
• Aftermath
• Heir to the Jedi

This list also omits the number of good young reader canon novels (Weapon of a Jedi, Smuggler's Run etc).

When Zahn writes one, I'll give it a try.