Taking the X-Wing name off the cover is… frustrating though.

I resisted the Thrawn-full ones (also I was in the bookstore and they only had one copy of each and I didn’t NEED them) but this time… Maybe? We’ll see.

By the time Dark Force Rising came out, I had prevailed upon my mom to buy these Star Wars books in hardcover even… and so has been my custom basically to this day (In the past five years I haven’t been first day, but I pretty much have first edition.) I’ve picked up the new Thrawn and I enjoy it.

As for the new stuff… I have mixed emotions. I know the Legends stuff, especially the non-Zahn of the Bataam Era wasn’t always the most brilliant (and the cavalcade of Luke’s non-Mara love interests were just by in large dumb)… but it was fun. It was meant to be entertaining fun adventures.

Star Wars publishing has gotten darker. Both grimmer and grimier. Heroes are scarce, and most are anti-heroes, it seems. They have flaws not to grow beyond them but to just show that they are flawed. And often they come across as (if the member of the clergy may use this in a derogatory fashion) preachy.

As I love Club Jade (and miss reading the articles) I’m sure you can guess where I put the crux for that twist and decline as starting. Yet, even now there are books I love. Claudia Grey is up there with Zahn and Stackpole and Allston – my big three is now a big 4. And I’ve enjoyed the High Republic stuff I’ve read – the Jedi are actually heroes again – open, unabashed heroes.

But I still end up rereading the Original Thrawn Trilogy around once a year.

I read it in hardback (can’t find it anywhere though, but I do still have a replacement paperback + the second and third volumes in hardback) when it was first published (I recall the copies we had here in the UK were ‘Bantam’ so presumably imported USA editions). I think I bought it with my pocket money from a bookshop while on a school holiday and read the whole thing very quickly.

For me, at that point Star Wars had never really gone away… This was just the next part of the adventure and launched me into reading the EU books as they were released.

PS
Great to see a notification of a blog update here, and an excellent excuse for a post

Anyway, my other silly kid mistake was tying my enjoyment of Star Wars too closely to writing Wookieepedia articles. So when I stopped being able to stomach contributing there “for good” some time around the Disney buy-out, I stopped following Star Wars. Now there’s just a tear in me. There’s my lingering desire to engage with Star Wars like I used to, as a database animal over-invested in the EU, which isn’t possible after a recent Wook permaban for supporting trans people too angrily. Then there’s my faint but distinct desire to read any of the new stories because there’s the chance they might not be mostly about white space guys, which would require a level of context-free detachment I doubt I’m capable of. Either way, it couldn’t be like the Good Old Days, I guess, haha. I’ll just play Star Wars by ear, as ever.

Happy to see this post, Dunc! Marking this occasion was a great idea!

Thank you! I still may be around, and I might write occasionally – I’m not sure if it’ll be here – but right now I’m just enjoying freedom.

Thank you!