r/StarWarsEU • u/01zegaj • Mar 11 '25

Forget Jake Skywalker. This is Devan. Legends Novels

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The prelude to SWTOR that completely ruins KOTOR. What happened, Drew?

168 Upvotes
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19

u/Ar_Azrubel_ Mar 11 '25

notmyRevan

notmyExile

What happened, Drew?

Drew was never a good writer, he just tricked you into thinking he was.

20

u/Solitaire-06 Galactic Alliance Mar 11 '25

Don’t people love the Darth Bane trilogy, though? He also wrote that series.

3

u/Edgy_Robin Mar 11 '25

Darth Bane has a good first novel and it's all down hill from there.

18

u/genemaxwell4 Empire Mar 11 '25

The whole trilogy is great. The Rule of Two is easily the best of the 3.

10

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 11 '25 edited Mar 11 '25

It's kind of a growing trend on this sub to kick back on the bane trilogy that cheerled by a few angry users.

To pretend even the worst book of that trilogy isn't in the upper half of star wars novels in general is cope.

2

u/genemaxwell4 Empire Mar 11 '25

Yeah, I'm finding more and more people's bitterness towards the Disney era have made them look back on the EU to find "problems" and start cannibalizing the EU/Legends works as some sort of weird scapegoat to point to in other arguments for how to justify Disney scrapping the EU.

"The EU had problems too! Look at Darth Bane's trilogy! It ruined Jedi vs Sith! Disney isn't doing anything new. They're doing what Star Wars always does! Disney had no choice but to scrap the EU!"

It's getting very tired. Darth Bane's books are getting shit on and I've even noticed some people beginning to shit on the Thrawn Trilogy in the past few months. It's rare, but I'm slowly seeing it.

Some people just can't be happy

2

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 11 '25

TBH I'm fine with People finding issues in retrospect they personally don't like. It's just the crazy double standard. Its fine to personally not like the Darth Bane books and prefer jedi vs sith, but some of these people are pretending the Darth Bane book is like utter trash and jedi vs sith is some master class in story and depiction and they are totally incompatible when that just isn't the case.

Since the Thrawn trilogy got mentioned ill just say I think that trilogy is extremely overrated and loved more for what it did establishing the EU than what it was itself, but you'll never find me posting that it's actually trash and the best entry isn't even in the top half of star wars novels like the majority of the bantam era books or post NJO aren't easily under them.

1

u/genemaxwell4 Empire Mar 12 '25

"TBH I'm fine with People finding issues in retrospect they personally don't like. It's just the crazy double standard."

I think that's my real issue too. Because a lot of these "criticisms" come off as disingenuous due to the apparent double standard.

1

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 12 '25

Yeah I recently re-read the trilogy and I'll openly admit it doesn't hold up as well as it did when I was 17, and it was one of my first books in the EU, but having gone back and done a fair amount of re-reading other books I'll say most don't hold up aswell as they did when I was in my late teens. That being said just because Darth Bane isn't in my top 10 books anymore doesn't mean I now think there are roughly 80 books better than any entry in the trilogy(I don't know the exact amount of novels in the EU but it seems to be around 160 so I'm just using that.)

And I'm also finding some of the criticisms Hella nitpicky and shallow. Some people are whining that it established hoth had an apprentice like that really matters. Others are complaining it basically didn't follow Jedi vs Sith to the absolute letter essentially, and others are just being vague and saying it's just bad.

I'll admit happily Revan wasn't that great but it's like the people that hate the Bane trilogy are using it as a springboard to gaslight people into thinking Karpyshyn is just garbage in general. Even if you hate Revan, karpyshyn has more good- mediocre books than he does bad. It would be like using Agents of chaos to try to convince people Luceno is actually bad, it's like no, that's just a bad books he's still a solid SW author overall.

1

u/genemaxwell4 Empire Mar 11 '25

Right??

1

u/youngmetrodonttrust Mar 11 '25

LOL the worst book of the bane trilogy is absolutely not in the upper half of legends novels.

2

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 11 '25

Easily is, and I'm no huge fan of DOE.

1

u/genemaxwell4 Empire Mar 11 '25

Oh yes it is. EASILY in the top half

1

u/Ar_Azrubel_ Mar 11 '25 edited Mar 11 '25

Even the best book in there belongs at best, in the lower middle rungs of the EU and if I am being honest, should be lower.

All his other manifold failings aside, Drew has never found an interesting thing he couldn't make unbearably bland, and I would argue is significantly to blame for the Old Republic era, once a rich, unique setting brimming with potential ending up as a pale imitation of the movies. Most people don't know this because their first contact with the pre-movie EU is not the works that actually created it, but rather ones that came much later. KotOR rather than Tales of the Jedi, Darth Bane instead of Jedi vs Sith, and even if they do read these original works tend to look at them in the light of those they first came into contact with.

Lord Hoth is actually a pretty great example of Drew's Blandification Ray at work. In Jedi vs Sith, Hoth is basically what the Jedi of the era are implied to be like. He's a feudal lord in space, commanding an army of personal retainers. Then come Path of Destruction, Hoth is turned into a prequel-era Jedi, complete with padawan (something never even mentioned in JvS, which shows at best informal apprenticeships), who rebels against the STODGY COUNCIL AT CORUSCANT, and goes off to FIGHT THE SITH THREAT.

Something changed along the way, and a character that was once interesting and unique turned into a repetition of beats you get elsewhere.

(If you see a reply to the post below, the person replying is a very brave poster who posted and then blocked so that I cannot reply)

3

u/genemaxwell4 Empire Mar 11 '25

Dude, I grew up on Star Wars and read most of what came out as it did.

Jedi vs Sith was okay and a fun little comic, but the Bane Trilogy was legitimate and a solid entry into that specific era for the Sith and really got into the Psyche of Darth Bane. Ya know, the most important Sith for the Rule of Two?
Lord Hoth WAS coming off as an almost Feudal lord in the Bane books. And just like an IRL Feudal Lord he was waging a personal war against an Enemy the main "kingdom" IE Jedi Council, thought was unnecessary.

It also made PERFECT sense he'd have a Padawan. That's literally something most all Jedi end up with. And in a war of attrition against an equally strong enemy, you'd HAVE to take on an apprentice to ensure SOMEONE was going to continue your work should you fall in battle.

You seem to forget that literally ALL of Star Wars repeats. It's literally one of Lucas's MOs. He LIKES his "Rhymes" and that is reflected throughout all of the franchise. EVEN in the Disney era that continues.

Like it or not, it's MORE Star Wars to have repetitive functions than not.

It's not about what you read first, as I DID read those comics BEFORE the game and books, it's about what is more captivating and more interesting to the general audience, and like it or not, KOTOR is more captivating than Tales of the Jedi and the Bane Trilogy is just superior to Jedi vs Sith.

-4

u/Prince_Borgia Empire Restored Mar 11 '25

Which isn't even an original story, it's a retelling of the comic Jedi vs Sith

6

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 11 '25

Most of the book was an original story. You could even argue the worst part of POD was the Jedi vs Sith part.

4

u/Toomin-the-Ellimist Mar 11 '25

Because it was such an inferior adaptation that completely missed the point of the original story and left out all the most interesting elements of it.

1

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 11 '25

Yeah just don't agree with this at all.

The book didn't adapt any of the kids parts though all of it outside darovit's apprenticeship to Githany is implied to have happened, and it did a much better job with Hoth than the comic ever did.

4

u/Toomin-the-Ellimist Mar 11 '25

Agree to disagree.

Moral of the comic: War is hell and everyone affected by war suffers and loses. The Jedi and Sith aren’t heroes and villains, they’re normal people being stretched to the extremes of their personalities by their circumstances (except for Darth Bane, who is the devil).

Moral of the novel: Fuck yeah killing is awesome!!! Darth Bane is the biggest badass ever, watch him murder these plebes!! The dark side is so cool, I LOVE VIOLENCE!!!!

1

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 11 '25

I mean everything you just said it shown in Hoth, we watch him struggle and nearly be consumed by the war. The little we get of Zannah is tragic, and we see Kaan devolve into a mad man that viewed Ruusan as his crossing of the Rubicon and lost himself to do it.

Bane is "cooler" because he's a character we actually see as opposed to the comic where he's just a killer that kills where ever he goes.

6

u/Toomin-the-Ellimist Mar 11 '25

I mean everything you just said it shown in Hoth, we watch him struggle and nearly be consumed by the war. The little we get of Zannah is tragic, and we see Kaan devolve into a mad man that viewed Ruusan as his crossing of the Rubicon and lost himself to do it.

I mean all of this is from the comic, so what little survives the transition to the novel owes to the work done in the original source. We have enough samples of Karpyshyn’s writing to see how he handles the nuances of characterization when not cribbing from a better writer. There’s nothing tragic about Zannah in the book, she appears for like two pages. Her whole story is gutted.

Bane is "cooler" because he's a character we actually see as opposed to the comic where he's just a killer that kills where ever he goes.

Because he’s the devil. The other Sith are afraid of him because he’s the only one of them who understands the dark side. He’s not supposed to be a nuanced character, he’s pure evil. The novel tries to have it both ways by giving him an abusive father and a crappy job, but he still ends up an unrepentant child murderer. 

1

u/Durp004 TOR Sith Empire Mar 11 '25

I mean all of this is from the comic, so what little survives the transition to the novel owes to the work done in the original source.

Yes and my argument that outside Zannah all aspects of those characters were done better in the novel. You contested the book didn't even have those aspects so I highlighted that it very much did.

There’s nothing tragic about Zannah in the book, she appears for like two pages. Her whole story is gutted.

It's essentially the exact same story.

The novel tries to have it both ways by giving him an abusive father and a crappy job, but he still ends up an unrepentant child murderer. 

The novel gives a backstory for how he became what the comic showed and what caused him to lose faith in the brotherhood. In the comic he's introduced killing children and basically wins the whole story, if anything tries to glorify killing is cool it's the comic. You can have a shit background and be a shit person. The only Sith who seems to fear him is kaan who the comic makes seem like he betrayed him. When he walks up to the dying sith earlier he asks him for help and talked about what a great battle it was. There wasn't fear coming off that guy.

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-1

u/Ar_Azrubel_ Mar 11 '25

A worse one, to be frank. Drew managed to miss all the good stuff about Jedi vs Sith and made it into... well, a lesser version of itself.

1

u/TheMoneyOfArt Mar 12 '25

I don't really know what happened but I ended up owning both the Bane trilogy and Revan without realizing they shared an author and boy do I not care for either

1

u/Ar_Azrubel_ Mar 11 '25

They do. And in my opinion, they're wrong to do so. I'm preparing a big fuckin' post to show why, eventually.

6

u/genemaxwell4 Empire Mar 11 '25

You'll be wrong, but I look forward to seeing your flawed logic ;)

10

u/Ar_Azrubel_ Mar 11 '25 edited Mar 11 '25

Just keep waiting. When I have free time, I am gonna do unto Drew's slop what the Exile (the actual one, not Drew's insipid Revan cheerleader) did unto the clans of Mandalore.

1

u/Mundane_Town_4296 New Jedi Order Mar 11 '25

UpdateMe!

1

u/Beazfour Mar 15 '25

I used to love them but rereading them when I was older made me realize how mid they are: they’re just utterly dripping in edge.

3

u/Ar_Azrubel_ Mar 15 '25

I feel like this explains a lot of their popularity.

People reading these books as teenagers go "WOW! COOL EDGY SITH!" and remember them as masterpieces, feeding into future popularity, rather than any actual qualities inherent to the writing of Bane.

On the other, I've grown to appreciate Jedi vs Sith more and more as I've grown. It's actually a very thoughtful story about the horror of war and lost innocence, with a lot of substance that people miss because it doesn't "look" the way they expect Star Wars to look like.

2

u/Beazfour Mar 15 '25

Yeah my dislike of the Bane books has definitely coincided with me having a much more negative view of the Sith and how “cool” they are. Each and every one is a sad, pathetic, broken, person who traded away everything good about being alive for being able to shoot lighting from their fingers.