[Just your average movie goer]

Sure - read the Thrawn Trilogy...

Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command

Enjoy!

[Supes]

Cloning was never an issue in the OT.. not even in Ep. I was it even remotelly portrayed that cloning might be common practice in the SW universe.. Now it seems like every family has a Clone-O-Matic in their household.. soon people in Ep. III will start using rubber headsets to prevent dropping hair folicules that might be used by the Emperor to build clones of themself ..

Yeah as JYAMG said Zahn deal with the cloning aspect really well. Basically the cloning that he has happening is a remenant of the technology used as part of the Clone Wars. In short, it is a secret facility that the Empire has kept so secret that when they are defeated most of the top people that knew of it are killed. It's so remote that they workers at the facility don't now what's happened with the Empire as yet either.

I suppose this sound a little corny also, but they really are worth the read. It's a much better use of the cloning concept than Lucas could come up with in the PT. And given that he had these novels to refer to if he could have been bothered it's an even sadder indictment on the travest he created.

[Just your average movie goer]

Absolutely. George Lucas could have done really well if he had taken some pointers from those books about the Clone Wars. These books would also have been a great reference for helping him make a convincing Imperial Senate and giving Jedis a more purposeful role in the Old Republic.

[Radu094]

Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command

Got them.. thanks... gimme a minute to read them and I'll let you know

[Just your average movie goer]

Excellent! Enjoy them. I'm sure you will.

[The Scornful Roman]

Hey.. no prob... I'm willing!!
Can you give me a few titles from him to start reading?

The Star Wars EU trilogy by Zahn is as follows: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command. He also has a second two-parter SW series that ties in with this earlier trilogy.

If you want to get a little taste of Zahn in Star Wars, check out the short story collections by Bantam. I think that Zahn did several stories for those. Especially reccommended Star Wars short story collections are Tales from the Empire and Tales from the New Republic. They deal with several time spans and a lot of different things. For one of them, Steve Zahn and um... Michael Stackpole (I think) collaborated on a novella that takes place in the Corellian underworld, with a young Corellian police officer trying to take down a sadistic criminal. That one was pretty good.

BTW, in the EU the cloning devices are called Spaarti cloning cylinders. They can pop out a fully-matured clone in a relatively short span of time, but if done too quickly, the clone can become highly unstable and unhinged mentally. This is a major plot point in the Heir to the Empire book, as the remnants of the Empire take on the aid of an insane clone of a Jedi Master who was murdered and then duplicated by Palpatine.

[ernesttomlinson]

"If you are looking for a worse Star Wars writer than George Lucas, the man you are looking for is Kevin J. Anderson." Oh, man, are you right. Ever read any of those new Dune books that he's ghostwritten for Brian Herbert? Dire. Even Terry Brooks's Phantom Menace novelization wasn't that bad.

[CptSeaMonkey]

Zahn's books are pretty well-written, but overall I'm indifferent to them.

Good points:

1) He's pretty true to the original characters, all in all. They're all basically like they were at the end of Return of the Jedi, plus 5 years.

2) The universe is pretty consistent with the original trilogy in most ways -- technology, force powers, size of the universe and size of fleets, etc. It just feels right.

3) One great point -- in the first book it's mentioned that the reason the Empire lost at Endor, was because when the Emperor died, the fleet fell into chaos. Basically he was using "Battle Meditation" for lack of a better word, to command everyone and without it they fell apart. [Note that while in the movie, the Emperor-Vader-Luke confrontation is the last to be resolved of the triple-finale, in the novelization it's the first]. I just liked that because it made that conflict much more meaningful.

On the downside:

1) The net effect of the series is zero. The galaxy ends up exactly the way it began. The Empire in full retreat, the bad guys introduced are now dead, and the original characters more or less exactly the same as the beginning. No character development. At the end of the day, Zahn's books were fun to read, but were really pointless and had no soul.

2) He jocks his own characters. Really bothered me that he implied that had HIS character been there, Luke would have died in ROTJ. Get real dude.

3) Force-resistant field generating space slugs. Almost as bad as midichlorians if you think about it.

4) I always hated the idea that if you cloned Jedi, they'd also be strong in the Force. Cheesy, and very midichlorian-ish. And just an obvious "take over the galaxy" plot waiting to happen that no one ever seemed to think of.

BEST EU books by far? Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy. Can't say enough about it. Han is constantly shooting off one liners, scraping for every penny and trying to trick up the Falcon. Great stuff.

[Otal Nimrodi]

soon people in Ep. III will start using rubber headsets to prevent dropping hair folicules that might be used by the Emperor to build clones of themself .. 

Maybe that's what the things rebel soldiers wear are for. You know... in ROTJ on Endor. But that's just a suggestion.

[Radu094]

Ever read any of those new Dune books that he's ghostwritten for Brian Herbert?  Dire. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

omg.. I just ordered two new Dune books by Brian Herbert and co. !
Which books exactelly are you reffering to ?

I was so happy to find some new Dune out there...