I recently learned there will be a Star Wars Legends/EU convention in March about 20 minutes from where I live. Been reading the EU ever since I was 12 when I got Heir to the Empire for my bday. I’m strictly a pre Disney Star Wars fan now. They had a legends convention last year in California with some authors (except Zahn). I’m honestly surprised Disney allows it because they seem petty enough not to.
I remember one of the authors saying that he understood Disney wants to do their own thing but worried about alienating a large group of loyal fans. They could’ve just made more stories in a separate continuity or done some animated adaptations. Looking back I just see it as the normal playbook we see today of telling actual fans to piss off so they can court a new type of fan.
Anyway, I’m really pumped about this
Old EU novels were generally pretty good. I'd rate the average at like 7.5/10. Some real stinkers, but some really good stuff too. Back when people generally cared about things like "canon" or "continuity" or "good writing" or "plots that make sense" or "characters that follow their prior characterization", etc.
Thankfully the Thrawn Trilogy beat Dark Empire, and I'm in the minority of liking Dark Empire (it's so much more enjoyable of a read when you own the physical copies of it), but the Bantum book line is extremely high quality for there being so many authors. I'm a huge fan of the Jude Watson books too, even though they are written for YA and preteens.
Then we saw Abrams rip off Dark Empire. I liked it too