I always thought Timothy Zahn was an above average author, and to wrote more than a dozen of them.

Absolutely. I highly recommend both canon Thrawn trilogies by Timothy Zahn.

Maybe? There are a lot of them and the quality varies depending on the book. You can't go wrong with the original Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and Last Command were considered the unofficial sequel trilogy by some fans and they started off the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe, which got rebranded to the Legends continuity when Disney took over. Besides the Thrawn Trilogy, I'd also recommend the Revenge of the Sith novelization. I went in not expecting much, but it really expands on a lot of things the movie brushes over, and witnessing Anakin's story from his viewpoint was a lot more compelling than what we got in the movie. From there, it really depends on what you want to read about.
The Star Wars book finder is a neat tool that lets you search by author, topic, or genre if you're looking for something specific.

99% Invisible had a mini-episode about movie novelizations. I think the Star Wars novelizations were mentioned in it, and the whole thing was rather interesting. Particularly where the author has limited info and has to guess about what might happen in the movie.

I only ever read the Thrawn trilogy and they were decent.

I read several of the Rogue Squadron books while on a long vacation and enjoyed them a lot, but they weren’t anything life changing.

They aren't going to change you view on life, but most are pretty solid. I highly recommend pretty much any books in the High Republic era, particularly "Light of the Jedi". It's the first of the new era and it's a great introduction to the setting. It's all set a few hundred years before the movies, so the Authors were able to pretty much do whatever they wanted within the basic Star Wars universe.

I remember reading Timothy Zahn as a teen and not being able to put the books down. Tbh I think his plotlines are better than the movies.

I've enjoyed dozens of them over the course of my twenty something years being into SW. Currently I'd recommend the Plagueis, Tarkin, the Thrawn books, and the Bane trilogy. Apparently I like villain books. I've also enjoyed the Karen Traviss Clone Trooper books but they got cancelled for canon reasons due to the TCW series.

Authors have plenty of freedom unless you're talking about novelizations of the films.

I read every Star Wars novel there was in the mid 90s. I don’t regret it. It’s cheap sci fi, in a framework of an established universe. There are some cool stories.

Unfortunately, the stuff I read now isn’t canon (I think?). I read Timothy Zahn’s and Kevin J Anderson’s series, that took place 5 and 7(12?) years after Endor.

The Adventures of Han Solo is dope as fuck, and I still use the dogfighting strategy I learned in that book when I play anything with dogfighting. Same with The Adventures of Lando Calrissian, though it gets a little funkier with the sci fi elements. There’s a whole thing with teleporting space whales talking about pooping in battle.

Tales from Jabba’s Palace, Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, those are fun because they give every character in the background a backstory. All the stories intersect then go their separate ways at the moments appearing in Episodes 4 and 6. Like you learn the happy puppy love between the rancor and the guy in the hood, and it makes it sadder when you see him cry.

Any Timothy Zahn books are quite good. I love Thrawn.

iirc, in the 90's the older books had a set of guidelines they had to adhere to, like no stories that take place before episode 4, or Luke couldn't have sex, I don't remember much more than that, but I think they were pretty free to tell any story if they stayed within the guidelines.

TBH I have no idea what the rules are now.

I've read a few over the years and always enjoyed them. They're never amazing or anything imo, I've never run into one that knocked it out of the park or anything, but I'm not a huge Star Wars fan anyway.

But they also kinda get a baseline level of decent worldbuilding and natural conflict that keeps them from being dull or anything.

If I was, say, in an airport and needed to buy a book, it's exactly what I would reach for if I saw it. Favorite was the one that followed and explained Mace Windu.

Being a star wars fan and avid reader I felt like I should give them a try, did some research and the consensus seemed to be that the thawn trilogy was the best, read book one and hated it for how one-dimensional the characters were, nothing at all noteworthy from a literary perspective

Yes, I recommend the 501st series iirc the first book is called 501 hard contact. Sadly the series was never finished but it is still worth the read.

I really like the complete High Republic series. Adult novels, young adult novels and even the middle-grade novels. Those were the first star wars books I ever read and I loved the complete setting. Also got me into comics

I also read „Catalyst: A rogue one novel“ because I love r1 and that book makes the story even better imho.

I very highly recommend the republic commando series by Karen Traviss. It is so well written and gives a lot of context to clones in general and commandos. Honestly some of my favorite books ever. The game is fantastic too of course.

1. Do you enjoy reading them?
2. Then Yes.

Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye was the original sequel, before they had budget. The Brian Daley Han Solo books, L. Neil Smith's Lando Calrissian books, and Mike Stackpole's X-Wing books, are all pretty good. Daniel Keys Moran of The Long Run and more recently AI War/Time War fame, wrote a few short stories.

Almost everything else I ever even read a couple pages of was so awful I threw it down. These were all written long before Disney got hold of it, and nobody really cared much about canon. Modern stuff would be corporate pablum.

The Darth Bane books are some of my favourite reads ever!

The Expanded Universe was always enjoyable to read, maybe not the greatest works of literature ever, but you got to see how life was progressing post-Return of the Jedi, you got to see how Luke, Leia, and Han's family and friends lived and died.

There were some pretty good authors involved over the years too, like R. A. Salvatore, Timothy Zahn, Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Stackpole, Karen Travis, William C. Dietz, Kathy Tyers, among many others. If you read any other seriailized series like the D&D novels, Battletech/Mechwarrior, Star Trek, Warhammer, and all of the many others that exist, you will probably recognize some of the authors as writers in those series as well.

As for the Prequel books and other novels post cancelation of the Star Wars Expanded Universe there was some quality improvement per novel as the universe became more definitive and more in line with the cinematic universe.

As a lifelong Star Wars fan who read the EU books for around twenty years, I'll say I miss the version of Star Wars they were building, it wasn't always the heroes winning the day, there was plenty of heartbreak and betrayals to go around, but it was familiar and enjoyable.

I started reading the canon novels about the time of TFA. Have enjoyed most of the (read about 20 in total). Some are targeted more towards an audience that I'm not in, but that's understandable. Never felt like the stories were too restricted. If that's your biggest concern I would suggest the high republic books, or the ones around characters that have less storyline in the movies and series.

My favourite is Catalyst: a rouge one story. Like the movies it does a really great job adding to the narrative that follows it.

Yes! Some aren’t as good as others, so I would suggest to read a couple of non spoiler reviews before buying one.

In my country they are also relatively cheap, 8-15 euros. Definitely can recommend the Darth Bane trilogy.

I read the Jedi prince series and then the thrawn trilogy as a kid and teen. Jedi Prince does not hold up as an adult lol but was really good for my age at the time.

One thing I will say about reading EU novels is that it made hate the sequel movies when they came out for just throwing away the beloved characters instead of the expanding on them.

Lando Calrissian and the Mindsharp of Sharu is basically Shakespeare

Wheel of time should be long enough.

No, not a single one.