They're better than Legacy of the Force, but still not great. The best part of the story by far is Luke and Ben Skywalker's journey up until the end of book 5, then it basically starts to get really stupid. With whole plotlines getting rushed or basically written off with terribly out-of-character choices. Which is very typical of Troy Denning.

The books start with a Luke and Ben Skywalker family roadtrip... which is actually an idea these books stole from Timothy Zahn. As he was supposed to get the book after Legacy of the force, which was to be a Luke, Mara Jade and Ben Skywalker family roadtrip story. However Troy Denning and Karen Traviss purposefully didn't tell him what they were gonna do in the book Sacrifice, so Zahn couldn't rework his plan fast enough (nor fast enough before the EU ended, so he never got to publish his conclusion to Vision of the Future and Survivors Quest that he set up in those books) and thus Denning had them steal Zahn's long publicly talked about plotline.

It's basically what-if we forced the old Republic era and Mortis arc from TCW to happen simultaneously in Luke's post RotJ era. Also Troy Denning taking malicious actions against Karen Traviss's plotlines from Legacy of the Force (so expect all Mandalorians to become suddenly very stupid and evil). Denning will also try endlessly to retcon his own events from Legacy of the Force too, but here it's crazy attempts to fix things fans complained about and often only makes it worse.

The second best plotline is Allana Solo. So if you notice the pattern, it's the new characters who had no character journey to ruin (at least until the end of these books, where they will ruin some of the new characters) that work the best. You're often gonna be face palming at Luke, Leia, Han, Jaina, and other reoccurring characters for making absolutely bonkers choices. Heck even dead characters (force ghosts) will be bizarrely out of character. Also except lots of Troy Denning implying lots of sex happening when he can... because that's what Denning does with Star Wars books.

The best 3 books by far are Aaron Allston's with Christie Golden coming in after that. Though again, their final 2 books aren't as good as their first 2 by a significant margin. Especially Christie Golden's 3rd book, my god does that have an off the grails plot induced stupidity arc (not chapter but an entire arc)

Anyways, I think these books would have been a TON better if two situations happened.

1. Legacy of the Force never happened

2. Troy Denning wasn't on the team but Timothy Zahn was instead (or James Lucenio)

^Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Luke and Ben’s road-trip on account of the New Republic holding Luke responsible for Jacen’s downfall?

@Swatteam123 In Fate of the Jedi that is correct. Luke does get exiled from the Galactic Alliance by Daala for Jacen's actions and Ben Skywalker tags along.

With Timothy Zahn's planned series though it was supposed to be because of the dangers Thrawn feared in the unknown regions and the possibility of another Thrawn clone (which was implied in both Vision of the Future and Survivors Quest). So basically the Skywalker's were supposed to set out to finish the journey they started in previous stories. Zahn talked about these planned books from 2005 (when Dark Nest was being released) in conventions. So it's a very publicly known thing.

^Ah so Troy ripped that story off and essentially made the Skywalker family exile a legends version of Luke’s canon exile. No wonder I didn’t care for it. Jacen made his own decisions and he killed Luke’s wife/Ben’s mother. On top of that it was another jedi (Jacen’s sister no less) who put him down so that should’ve earned the jedi some kind of favors with the galactic alliance.

^^appreciate the insight, bummer that there continues to be some inconsistent writing and such.

^to be fair, at least in Legends the exile would come from some place of logic. There’s not a big Empire to defeat, and it’s not really his choice.

Also, just making sure, isn’t Crucible the follow up to this series and then the Skywalker story line, aside from Legacy, essentially ends? I know they were planning on making a Sword of the Jedi trilogy about Jaina until the acquisition. But is that essentially it? Don’t remember if there was more.

^^Yeah, Troy Denning was basically one of those writers so caught up in doing shocking things, he basically completely ignored the premise of what to do next when he had no characters left.

Worse he was basically just a recycler. Who could only redo prior plotlines. Dark Nest was basically just mixing the Geonosians with Yuuzhan Vong (plus Falleen sex pheromones), Legacy of the Force was essentially just a Prequel redo that he stole from a planned Old Republic era storyline (more details below), and Fate of the Jedi was basically just an Old Republic era storyline but now making the Mortis family like Cthulhu (Abeloth's name literally comes from HP Lovecraft Cthulhu lore).

Anyways as to Legacy of the Force, the editors of Lucasfilm have publicly confirmed the series was originally planned as an Old Republic era storyline about the fall of a force sensitive family dynasty. They showed it to Troy Denning when he pitched basically redoing the Prequels so they could bring back the Empire and kinda reset the galaxy back to how it was.

As to Mara Jade, the planning of the early Legacy of the Force was outlined by Tory Denning and Aaron Allston... and it wasn't Mara who died. As Aaron Allston has stated very publicly he was left out of that change and it happened with Troy Denning and Karen Traviss, it was also "too late" to change it when he finally found out they switched who was to die on him. Aaron then demanded they inform Timothy Zahn and the editors promised they would. They never did. Zahn only found out when he called the editors when working on his books to ask a question and caught them in a lie. He found out only a few weeks before Sacrifice was released. Zahn was pissed. He actually has a few interviews where he stated if they wanted Mara Jade to die he should have been the one to do it. Also it was an insanely dirty backstabbing to everything he had done for Lucasfilm over the years, as she was his character and had setup plotlines for her.

@KristianwithK Crucible was supposed to be setup for another series but was rushed to be the conclusion to the EU and Skywalker storylines. It's a pretty terrible conclusion.

Read them, theyre brilliant