One of the greatest laments I see from fans I meet, or read comments from, is that the voluminous tomes of Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) books were made into Legends…. Thus, forever excluded from canon. Anything published prior to 2014 is just that… only a legend. I wonder if there’s a signed Order 66 on a Disney desk somewhere that purged them all from canon.
The stories still exist, mind you, but as whispers and back-alley tales. They are the stories the kids working the stables on Canto Bight play out with their hand-carved toys. The kind of stories a young Jyn Erso may have heard her father talk about while in service to the Empire. Even Rey had only heard of the Jedi and Luke Skywalker. She didn’t know they were real either.
Disney took Star Wars canon into a new realm, unfortunately leaving some greatest galactic yarns in the cosmic dust. That doesn’t mean you can’t still get your hands on these legends though. Here’s a stab at the top ten brightest of those that, even though some are not canon, are still a fantastic read.
NOTE: There may be SPOILERS AHEAD if you have not read any of these. Read on at your own peril. Now, buckle up back there… here we go.
Best Star Wars books #10 – The Lost Tribe of the Sith: Collected Stories by John Jackson Miller
This book collects all eight parts of the Lost Tribe of the Sith series, along with the Pandemonium novella. It rests squarely on my list of must-read Star Wars material on the ancient Sith. I’ve read this one twice and will still read it again.
Revan starts us off after the events of the Mandalorian Wars, finding a rehabbed Revan back among the Jedi. His fragmented memory haunts him of his days on the dark side as Darth Revan and the Mass Shadow Generator event. Revan is powerful with the Force. Real powerful. At one point, he goes missing, captured by the Sith, Lord Scourge, and a strange alliance forms between them to bring down the thousand-year-old Sith Emperor, Vitiate. In the end, a Sith is gonna Sith, and Scourge betrays Revan to save his own hide, imprisoning Revan again.
Though this is a good book, the story of Revan before this is vastly more interesting. To get that, you’ll need to dust off the old KOTOR and KOTOR II video games. The backstory is great. Now we just need it in book form…
#4 – Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn
Outbound Flight is Timothy Zahn’s first Star Wars novel within the timeline. The reasons it makes my top-10 list is the foreshadowing juggernaut it is. We get to see Thrawn interact with the Republic, pre-Empire, and it brings a revelation, through the insanity of Jorus C’baoth, the hypocrisy of the Jedi that will eventually lead to the fall of the order.
This book ventures into some familiar territory. Horn becomes frustrated with Luke’s tutelage in the Jedi ways, and goes off on his own, all while flirting with the dark side and his family history with the Force. The character has a sense of the same path we see Ben Solo/Kylo Ren on in the current trilogy. Both have famous Force-using ancestors, both learn to become Jedi with Luke, both become disenfranchised with him and his ways… the parallels are all there.
The book does have some timeline flaws, however, and does have some contradicting Legends lore, as many of the pre-1990s books do. Even so, the action is a continuous rush from start to finish. It’s a beautifully told Star Wars tale that deserves a place on any fan’s shelf.
#2 – The Darth Bane Saga by Drew Karpyshyn
Yet another trilogy on the list is the saga of Darth Bane, told in Path of Destruction, Rule of Two and Dynasty of Evil. Bane is another title passed around by fans as a potential trilogy film. His rule of two Sith at a time was made canon in The Phantom Menace, but Bane is not mentioned by name. In these three books, however, you get all the Darth Bane you can handle.
Bane starts out as a miner named Dessel that joins the Sith Army against the Jedi. He proves himself in battle, gaining the attention of his Sith masters. They take him in and teach him at the Sith Academy, only to have him figure out the Sith doctrine of the day is foolish. He takes off on his own after resurrecting the old Sith title of “Darth” and calls himself Darth Bane. He would go on to take an apprentice and begin his devious plan of eliminating the Sith society down to two. Himself and one other.
He has some mishaps on the way… a nasty case of Star Wars bugs and an ambitious apprentice, as well as a turn imprisoned by the Huntress. Like I said, a Sith is gonna Sith, and he betrays his apprentice only to take his captor as a new one. He weaves a tangled web all the way to the end, where his rule of two is finally established. That rule carries on through the ages up to Sidious and Maul, where the current canon picks it up. This trilogy is an important piece of Sith lore that is a must-read for fans of the dark side.
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