Shadows of the Empire - good or bad?

[Atreyu]

I've never read it, but generally I've heard 2 completely different views of it. Some have said it's absolute trash, while others have said it's a great story. Haven't met anybody really that's the the middle category. So which is it?

[Leia Solo]

i too have heard the same thing about it. i have heard people say that it is great, and then others say it sucked, and that it completely ignored the true personalaties of the charactrers. as for my openion... i'm not sure yet. i'm in the process of reading it, but with all the school work i have, i have not gotten far at all. once i actually get in to the story, i'll post a tenetive response. as it is right now all i can say is that i like the picture of leia on the back cover. :)

[Mirax H]

I really like the story, enjoyed the tie in of Black Sun and the stories of the main characters, what happened between the two movies. I thought it filled in the gap very well.

[Atreyu]

I think your opinion on it can also depend on whether you think there was a gap to fill in there ...

[Darth Turbogeek]

It was ok.... I understand its actually canon and used a lot of throwaway ideas of Lucas, like Dash and Black Sun. Its an interesting book as parts could have been ROTJ , sort of like Splinter of the Minds Eye WAS actually going to be the sequel to ANH, but it got ditched and Empire was written in its stead.

[bronto]

Of all the Star Wars novels I've read "Shadows of the Empire" was my favorite one. I thought that it fit in best with the Star Wars movies and filled in nicely the gap between the "Emipre Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi".

[Mara Jades Father]

I liked it a lot. It had a great pace to it. Much like one of the movies. I liked it better than most books because it stayed mostly with original character and you were not overwhelmed by the new ones. I also realized how much I missed having Vader in a novel. It was nice to have him there. I think the the character were more true in this book than in any of the other novels. My only fault with the book is that they tried to tie the ESB and ROTJ too much. Not a big problem though. I read the book when it first came out and I had been away from Star Wars for a while, this book brought me back (I believe that was the whole idea of the campaign anyway).

[Yane]

I really liked Shadows of the Empire. The plot was good, and the characterization of Xixor was so good that I found myself feeling sorry for Vader. I've never been someone to like the bad guys! Vader is AWESOME in it, something the other books don't have. The only thing I didn't like was at the end Luke seemed a bit too strong in the Force. He seeemed to learn too quickly compared to what he knew at the end of ESB and the beginning of the book. But I thought that the two movies were tied together well. One word: Good.

[Bromine]

Does anyone else notice that that seems to be a recurring event in EU? (That is, Luke becoming incredibly strong in the Force and saving the day.) Then by the next book, his powers are toned down again. Just something I noticed in several books.

[Yane]

Yeah, I noticed that too. Espec. in Courtship of Princess Leia. At the end Luke is doing all that amazing stuff all at once and we never see him do anything like that again. Hmmm. I guess it makes a better story, but it's not very consistant.

[Darth Turbogeek]

It's called the Star Trek syndrome. Too many SW books have a disturbing similarity to trek books

[Xizora]

It is a great book!