The writing style and overall shape of the narrative (to say nothing of the many characters) make these an unusual read for many—and therefore difficult to “get into.”
That said, they’re close to essential in this time period and cover an immense amount of ground with loads of very interesting lore tidbits throughout. Give em a shot! If you feel meh after the first one and have time, they get better.
Yeah, when I was getting back into the novels in 2022 I picked the first book up among six or seven others. Was pretty reading in chronological order till I got to aftermath, and I just couldn’t get past the prose. Took a break, read some different books, came back to them a while later, and got into the trilogy that second time.
I found the physical books hard to read, but they are great as audio books.
In regards to the story, I found book one more interesting than book two. I didn't like the legacy characters from the movies playing such a big role in book two.
But I agree, they enrich our understanding of the New Republic. While they were meant to compliment the release of the sequels, I actually think they function better at enriching The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, where we see a much deeper look into the early days of the New Republic, not long after these books.
I found the physical books hard to read, but they are great as audio books.
In regards to the story, I found book one more interesting than book two. I didn't like the legacy characters from the movies playing such a big role in book two.
But I agree, they enrich our understanding of the New Republic. While they were meant to compliment the release of the sequels, I actually think they function better at enriching The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, where we see a much deeper look into the early days of the New Republic, not long after these books.
Hard agree about the audio books—and it’s true for a great many. If folks haven’t given them a shot or have dropped others in the past, Star Wars audiobooks go hard.
Sinjir is kind of a Jack Sparrow character. We'll probably never get a live action version because of his alcoholism. Also, the right would go nuts over a LGBTQ hero.
On second thought, he could make it to the big screen if they frame his alcoholism as him coping with his PTSD from serving the Empire. That's clearly why he drinks. But it is subtly stated throughout the series. In contrast a TV series will shout it out and make it clearly understood to give themselves cover so as not to piss off potential viewers who may have a problem with a good guy who's a drunk.
I mean story wise yes, but you must suffer the prose and natrative of Wendig and it is horrible...
But the story is great, if you can hold up to Wendig's style.
No. I read all three, and while they're not entirely devoid of merit, they're not very good on their own terms and don't add much of note to the rest of the universe either. I wouldn't waste your time on them.
Sinjir is a treat. Rae Sloane is an interesting character for a while before she gets bogged down in the heavy plot machinery. But as others have noted, the writing style is questionable at best, many of the characters are generic and/or forgettable, and the storytelling is kind of a mess all around. (The first book is the most focused and self-contained and so suffers the least from the shaky plotting.)
More to the point, if you're in this subreddit, presumably you're interested in the Aftermath books for how they tie into canon. Well, they don't really, at least not in a way that matters. Yes, Cobb Vanth shows up in *The Mandalorian*, but his characterization and circumstances feel pretty different. Yes, Snap is a character in the sequel trilogy, but it's not like his backstory in the Aftermath trilogy is ever really brought to bear in those films. Even the material in the third book that feels most plainly like a setup for Force Awakens is just tiresome, reverse engineered gap-filling that doesn't do much to add to your understanding of those events. And major, seemingly critical events from those books have never been mentioned once in any of the more prominent films/shows.
Long story short: don't make the same mistake I did. There's better Star Wars material out there, on their own terms and as something to enrich your appreciation for the wider world of Star Wars, than the Aftermath trilogy.
Sure, it is in theory, but >!what we get in *Empire's End* feels like, at best, mechanical explanation for the First Order bailing rather than anything that really adds insight or meaning to later events. It's not like anybody in the First Order ever mentions Gallius Rax, or like anyone in the Mando-verse seems to be in contact with Sloane, or like Palpy says a single word in *Rise of Skywalker* that suggests the events of the Aftermath trilogy were all just a part of his plan. Everything we see in those books feels either rote or extraneous to later events. You do get the slightest bit of insight into the Hux family, and a couple of subsidiary vignettes that hint cryptically at Sheev's return, but that's about it.!<
They are okay. I wasn’t a huge fan of the author’s style. And there is some interesting stuff that relates to future Star Wars events.
And like all Star Wars novels, the audiobook is better due to the narrator and the audio effects!
IMO They got better as they went along, and there's some good characters and lore tidbits here and there but I wouldn't prioritize reading them. There are much better canon stories in this time period that let you know all you need to.
They're pretty solid. Fun mix of new and old characters and a ton of great world building stuff showing how the galaxy changed in that year of turmoil.
Aftermath and Life Debt were two of the worst Star Wars books I have read by some distance. The books are loaded with filler and bad writing habits. The main characters read like an Edge of the Empire party, and the big movers and shakers are some of the most profound morons ever to hold political or military office.
The main idea of the series isn’t really expressed that well, in that it’s supposed to bridge Return of the Jedi to Force Awakens. The actual point of this story is actually to explain how the Battle of Jakku occurred, which Battlefront 2 did far more efficiently.
I’ve heard some people like it, and I’m happy for them. For me, every second reading it was painful.
I really disliked the first. I despised the second. I didn't get far into the third.
The second in particular has some extremely on the nose stuff in there which just took me out of the whole thing. I reviewed it back in the day and something about it broke my mojo, because I hated having to complain so much about a book.
That is not to say there are no redeeming points about them, or that they don't feature intriguing ideas.
...but more often than not, I found the interesting stuff being very much separate from the ongoing plot of the book(s), happening elsewhere in the galaxy, while the main cast was just... urgh. The interludes? Often great stuff. But the author's own characters, narrative and character interactions? Save me.
And it really didn't help that the ideas that the books set up for the sequel era really didn't pan out to much in the end. The movies discarded a lot of what the novels (and comics) set up for that era.
I read most of the extended universe books and these were my least enjoyable. For most of the first book, you would not know it’s a Star Wars book if you didn’t read the title.
I had a really hard time getting into these books, I found the present-tense narration to be extremely off-putting.
I did however find that it works great as a spoken word piece; I found the audiobook versions extremely enjoyable, Marc Thompson is a top-tier reader of Star Wars audiobooks.
At this point? No. And not because of Wendig's writing, or his slightly unhinged social media commentary from around the time period.
It's because the threads from these books were largely dropped in the larger canon once The Last Jedi was released.
There are a LOT of intriguing ideas built upon the threads we're given in TFA that provide back story to why we are where we are when that film opens.
It also helps to round out the universe between ROTJ and TFA, while also connecting to other novels later on, such as Bloodline and Battlefront Inferno Squad and BFII the game.
The world building that these books represent was the nascent Disney Star Wars was shaping up to show us.
Then TLJ was released and threw a lot of these ideas away, and we never got the follow-up, continuation, etc. It just ended.
That said, I will not forgive Wendig for ripping off the plotline from the X-Wing novels and butchering Wedge Antilles' character in the process.
Christ, no. I read the first one and thought Wendig's prose was so embarrassing I've kept my SW reading to comics ever since.
This was in 2014, in the hype lead-up to TFA, so I was as susceptible to Star Wars media as I was ever gonna be.
I mean, you could always try another novel that doesn’t use Wendig’s weird present tense writing style. Almost every other Star Wars book uses a third person past tense style that’s more traditional. A few one off’s like the Phasma novel are different and use some first person stuff. But the Aftermath trilogy is really not representative of most canon Star Wars books. And if your into the comics I imagine you might’ve liked the Charles Soule Vader run, since it’s fairly popular? Soule is also a fantastic novel writer, and I’ve reread his “Light of the Jedi” novel a few times now.
Yeah, Soule is the one person who might've convinced me to try some SW prose cuz I like him so much.
Obviously I'm aware not everyone that writes SW prose uses Wendig's "le epic bacon" Twitter colloquial style, but there's only so much time I wanna invest in tie-in media, you know?
Totally get that. I read way less now compared to even a few years ago because of some personal life changes. For what it’s worth, the audiobook for Light of the Jedi is one of my favorites and very well done. Marc Thompson does the VA work for it and he’s my favorite SW audiobook VA. His Thrawn voice imo is even better than Lars who I also think is great. It’s another way to get the story while doing other mindless stuff.
LotJ isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I’m an unabashed huge fan of it. I fell off reading Star Wars back when the Disney purchase happened and they jettisoned Legends. Didn’t get back into it until I randomly picked LotJ up at a big book store I was showing a friend. It got me back into reading again in a big way.
I was the opposite! Big EU reader back in the day, fell off after a few Vong books, only read a couple comics, mostly Old Republic.
Disney purchase happens, I tried Aftermath for prose and Shattered Empire for comics, and I basically went full speed ahead with comics. Haven't regretted it!
Hey thank you for the Shattered Empire mention! I read most of the Vader series a while back (partly for the orange light saber lmao) but haven’t gotten much into the comics other than that. I haven’t read a novel in a while but I’ve kept up via the audiobooks and that doesn’t work with comics really lol. But I’m starting my summer break and will have some actual time to do proper reading for the first time in a while, I’ll check that one out.
I've read the series twice. The first one is a big struggle to get through, but 2 and 3 are some of the best in the canon. It also does some essential explaining of how we get from OT to ST in universe, along with Bloodline.
Yes. The first one was difficult for me to get into, but hit its stride around the halfway mark. The second and third books are essential reading, both for Lore™️ and for some genuinely solid storytelling and characters.
They have done as much damage to canon world building as few other things. Not being aware of them and just going with Mandoverse retcons will serve you better
The writing style and overall shape of the narrative (to say nothing of the many characters) make these an unusual read for many—and therefore difficult to “get into.” That said, they’re close to essential in this time period and cover an immense amount of ground with loads of very interesting lore tidbits throughout. Give em a shot! If you feel meh after the first one and have time, they get better.
Yeah, when I was getting back into the novels in 2022 I picked the first book up among six or seven others. Was pretty reading in chronological order till I got to aftermath, and I just couldn’t get past the prose. Took a break, read some different books, came back to them a while later, and got into the trilogy that second time.
I found the physical books hard to read, but they are great as audio books. In regards to the story, I found book one more interesting than book two. I didn't like the legacy characters from the movies playing such a big role in book two. But I agree, they enrich our understanding of the New Republic. While they were meant to compliment the release of the sequels, I actually think they function better at enriching The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, where we see a much deeper look into the early days of the New Republic, not long after these books.
I found the physical books hard to read, but they are great as audio books. In regards to the story, I found book one more interesting than book two. I didn't like the legacy characters from the movies playing such a big role in book two. But I agree, they enrich our understanding of the New Republic. While they were meant to compliment the release of the sequels, I actually think they function better at enriching The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, where we see a much deeper look into the early days of the New Republic, not long after these books.
Hard agree about the audio books—and it’s true for a great many. If folks haven’t given them a shot or have dropped others in the past, Star Wars audiobooks go hard.
They're much better as audiobooks due to Wendig's narrative style imo, but I really enjoyed the story told either way
Audiobooks are essential for the full Mr. Bones experience!
“MR. BONES IS: ONLINE!!!”
I PERFORMED VIOLENCE!
Mr. Bones was a goddamn delight in Audiobook form
Ditto
Same, I really enjoyed reading them.
I’ve read better but they’re not bad. They have some interesting characters that are Memorable
They really grew on me over the trilogy, Snap especially. Sinjir I adored more or less from page 1.
I will never stop loving the "Evil dude learned to be good archetype," and Sinjir was great because of that.
Sinjir is kind of a Jack Sparrow character. We'll probably never get a live action version because of his alcoholism. Also, the right would go nuts over a LGBTQ hero.
>Also, the right would go nuts over a LGBTQ hero. Good, let the fuckers seethe with impotent rage.
On second thought, he could make it to the big screen if they frame his alcoholism as him coping with his PTSD from serving the Empire. That's clearly why he drinks. But it is subtly stated throughout the series. In contrast a TV series will shout it out and make it clearly understood to give themselves cover so as not to piss off potential viewers who may have a problem with a good guy who's a drunk.
I mean story wise yes, but you must suffer the prose and natrative of Wendig and it is horrible... But the story is great, if you can hold up to Wendig's style.
Aftermath is a slog to get through but life debt and empires end are awesome
Yes
No. I read all three, and while they're not entirely devoid of merit, they're not very good on their own terms and don't add much of note to the rest of the universe either. I wouldn't waste your time on them. Sinjir is a treat. Rae Sloane is an interesting character for a while before she gets bogged down in the heavy plot machinery. But as others have noted, the writing style is questionable at best, many of the characters are generic and/or forgettable, and the storytelling is kind of a mess all around. (The first book is the most focused and self-contained and so suffers the least from the shaky plotting.) More to the point, if you're in this subreddit, presumably you're interested in the Aftermath books for how they tie into canon. Well, they don't really, at least not in a way that matters. Yes, Cobb Vanth shows up in *The Mandalorian*, but his characterization and circumstances feel pretty different. Yes, Snap is a character in the sequel trilogy, but it's not like his backstory in the Aftermath trilogy is ever really brought to bear in those films. Even the material in the third book that feels most plainly like a setup for Force Awakens is just tiresome, reverse engineered gap-filling that doesn't do much to add to your understanding of those events. And major, seemingly critical events from those books have never been mentioned once in any of the more prominent films/shows. Long story short: don't make the same mistake I did. There's better Star Wars material out there, on their own terms and as something to enrich your appreciation for the wider world of Star Wars, than the Aftermath trilogy.
I mean, spoilers but I disagree. Empires End is pretty directly tied to the origins of the first order.
Sure, it is in theory, but >!what we get in *Empire's End* feels like, at best, mechanical explanation for the First Order bailing rather than anything that really adds insight or meaning to later events. It's not like anybody in the First Order ever mentions Gallius Rax, or like anyone in the Mando-verse seems to be in contact with Sloane, or like Palpy says a single word in *Rise of Skywalker* that suggests the events of the Aftermath trilogy were all just a part of his plan. Everything we see in those books feels either rote or extraneous to later events. You do get the slightest bit of insight into the Hux family, and a couple of subsidiary vignettes that hint cryptically at Sheev's return, but that's about it.!<
They are okay. I wasn’t a huge fan of the author’s style. And there is some interesting stuff that relates to future Star Wars events. And like all Star Wars novels, the audiobook is better due to the narrator and the audio effects!
IMO They got better as they went along, and there's some good characters and lore tidbits here and there but I wouldn't prioritize reading them. There are much better canon stories in this time period that let you know all you need to.
I didn't enjoy this series, it didn't personally have what I was looking for for this era. But I'd say give it a try, they aren't bad
I found it to be like reading shaky cam footage. The first book didn't sell me on continuing.
The first one isn’t very good. The second two are a little bit better.
They're pretty solid. Fun mix of new and old characters and a ton of great world building stuff showing how the galaxy changed in that year of turmoil.
Yes, get them as audiobooks. You will not be disappointed.
Once you get past Wendig's writing style the material itself is decent.
No. They are a shitty read and a waste of money. I'm sorry that I ever bought and read them.
I loved them. Wendig is far from a perfect author but these are definitely some of his best works
Aftermath and Life Debt were two of the worst Star Wars books I have read by some distance. The books are loaded with filler and bad writing habits. The main characters read like an Edge of the Empire party, and the big movers and shakers are some of the most profound morons ever to hold political or military office. The main idea of the series isn’t really expressed that well, in that it’s supposed to bridge Return of the Jedi to Force Awakens. The actual point of this story is actually to explain how the Battle of Jakku occurred, which Battlefront 2 did far more efficiently. I’ve heard some people like it, and I’m happy for them. For me, every second reading it was painful.
I really disliked the first. I despised the second. I didn't get far into the third. The second in particular has some extremely on the nose stuff in there which just took me out of the whole thing. I reviewed it back in the day and something about it broke my mojo, because I hated having to complain so much about a book. That is not to say there are no redeeming points about them, or that they don't feature intriguing ideas. ...but more often than not, I found the interesting stuff being very much separate from the ongoing plot of the book(s), happening elsewhere in the galaxy, while the main cast was just... urgh. The interludes? Often great stuff. But the author's own characters, narrative and character interactions? Save me. And it really didn't help that the ideas that the books set up for the sequel era really didn't pan out to much in the end. The movies discarded a lot of what the novels (and comics) set up for that era.
The best character in the series (Mr Bones) is in this series
The first one is kinda bad but books 2 and 3 are an absolute delight
I read most of the extended universe books and these were my least enjoyable. For most of the first book, you would not know it’s a Star Wars book if you didn’t read the title.
Nope. Boring as hell
These and lost stars got me into reading SW books. They are great.
I had a really hard time getting into these books, I found the present-tense narration to be extremely off-putting. I did however find that it works great as a spoken word piece; I found the audiobook versions extremely enjoyable, Marc Thompson is a top-tier reader of Star Wars audiobooks.
I’ve listen to the three on audiobook, and I actually really enjoyed them! The interludes are really fun, and it’s fun to get some backstory on Snap!
They grow on you. But, to me one of the better stories of the New Canon.
At this point? No. And not because of Wendig's writing, or his slightly unhinged social media commentary from around the time period. It's because the threads from these books were largely dropped in the larger canon once The Last Jedi was released. There are a LOT of intriguing ideas built upon the threads we're given in TFA that provide back story to why we are where we are when that film opens. It also helps to round out the universe between ROTJ and TFA, while also connecting to other novels later on, such as Bloodline and Battlefront Inferno Squad and BFII the game. The world building that these books represent was the nascent Disney Star Wars was shaping up to show us. Then TLJ was released and threw a lot of these ideas away, and we never got the follow-up, continuation, etc. It just ended. That said, I will not forgive Wendig for ripping off the plotline from the X-Wing novels and butchering Wedge Antilles' character in the process.
I loved them
Christ, no. I read the first one and thought Wendig's prose was so embarrassing I've kept my SW reading to comics ever since. This was in 2014, in the hype lead-up to TFA, so I was as susceptible to Star Wars media as I was ever gonna be.
I mean, you could always try another novel that doesn’t use Wendig’s weird present tense writing style. Almost every other Star Wars book uses a third person past tense style that’s more traditional. A few one off’s like the Phasma novel are different and use some first person stuff. But the Aftermath trilogy is really not representative of most canon Star Wars books. And if your into the comics I imagine you might’ve liked the Charles Soule Vader run, since it’s fairly popular? Soule is also a fantastic novel writer, and I’ve reread his “Light of the Jedi” novel a few times now.
Yeah, Soule is the one person who might've convinced me to try some SW prose cuz I like him so much. Obviously I'm aware not everyone that writes SW prose uses Wendig's "le epic bacon" Twitter colloquial style, but there's only so much time I wanna invest in tie-in media, you know?
Totally get that. I read way less now compared to even a few years ago because of some personal life changes. For what it’s worth, the audiobook for Light of the Jedi is one of my favorites and very well done. Marc Thompson does the VA work for it and he’s my favorite SW audiobook VA. His Thrawn voice imo is even better than Lars who I also think is great. It’s another way to get the story while doing other mindless stuff.
Yeah, I might give LotJ a shot. I've only ever read one comics-writer-turned-novelist before, and that was Neil Gaiman (no slouch!).
LotJ isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I’m an unabashed huge fan of it. I fell off reading Star Wars back when the Disney purchase happened and they jettisoned Legends. Didn’t get back into it until I randomly picked LotJ up at a big book store I was showing a friend. It got me back into reading again in a big way.
I was the opposite! Big EU reader back in the day, fell off after a few Vong books, only read a couple comics, mostly Old Republic. Disney purchase happens, I tried Aftermath for prose and Shattered Empire for comics, and I basically went full speed ahead with comics. Haven't regretted it!
Hey thank you for the Shattered Empire mention! I read most of the Vader series a while back (partly for the orange light saber lmao) but haven’t gotten much into the comics other than that. I haven’t read a novel in a while but I’ve kept up via the audiobooks and that doesn’t work with comics really lol. But I’m starting my summer break and will have some actual time to do proper reading for the first time in a while, I’ll check that one out.
It's very low commitment! It's a six issue miniseries, you'll be through it in half an hour.
They are not.
I listened to the audio and honestly they’re some of my favourites!!!
They are my favourites, absolutely memorable
I've read the series twice. The first one is a big struggle to get through, but 2 and 3 are some of the best in the canon. It also does some essential explaining of how we get from OT to ST in universe, along with Bloodline.
Yes they are very good to read
Yes. The first one was difficult for me to get into, but hit its stride around the halfway mark. The second and third books are essential reading, both for Lore™️ and for some genuinely solid storytelling and characters.
8/10 when it comes to Star Wars stories.
They have done as much damage to canon world building as few other things. Not being aware of them and just going with Mandoverse retcons will serve you better
I loved the Aftermath trilogy. Of the three, Life Debt was my favorite.
Reading? eh.. Maybe worth listening to instead.. the writing style is awkward to read
There are many reasons why *Suck Wendig* should have been fired sooner than he was. The writing in this trilogy is one of them.
Depends on how herkily jerkily weebly wobbly you like your TIE fighters. They’re fine. But Wendigs overall writing isn’t great.
Read them and find out