The Del Rey and Dark Horse Comics panel for Star Wars has just taken place at the San Diego Comic-Con, with two new novels being announced (and official confirmation of a third).
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, by Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, would appear to be the final installment in the Coruscant Nights series, but oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be any connection to the series in the title or on the cover art, and it is being billed as a stand-alone in the official blurb.
Ever since Emperor Palpatine’s Order 66 – which called for the execution of all Jedi – Jax Pavan is the last Knight around to fight the dark side of the Force. Together with his droid I-5, Jax has eluded Vader time and again, all the while wreaking havoc against the Empire through the underground resistance on Coruscant. But now the Rebel’s leader on the city-planet has been captured, and it’s up to the Last Jedi to ride again… possibly for one final adventure.
We reported on Twitter last week that Last of the Jedi was already in the editing stages, but this serves as an official announcement from Del Rey.
The unexpected announcement came in the form of a connection between Dark Horse Comics and Del Rey. Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void will tie into the comic series (from John Ostrander and Jan Duursema) that wrapped up its first arc recently. The novel will be written by Tim Lebbon, who has written award-winning novels and worked for Dark Horse on comics before.
Current cover art for Crucible
The final announcement was that Troy Denning will be penning the first post-Fate of the Jedi novel, titled Star Wars: Crucible. The official blurb follows:
Han, Luke, and Leia are back in action–older and wiser, but as ready as ever to leap headlong into adventure!
Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia have spent a lifetime fighting wars, bringing the Jedi back from extinction, raising families, and saving the galaxy more times than they can count. They’ve earned the right to rest on their laurels and let the younger generation shoulder the burden–but fate has another adventure in store for our heroes, a quest only they can tackle and hope to survive…
More details on the novel, from Troy Denning -
- Lando will be involved, but grandchildren will not.
- The Jedi find they have bigger things to worry about than the possible fate of Abeloth and the Sith.
- There are new villains that connect to the West End games.
Here are some further tidbits on future Dark Horse and Del Rey titles -
- There are no plans for a prequel to Darth Plagueis.
- There are no plans for further Star Wars: Invasion stories. 2013 is too busy – they may be able to return to that comic in the future.
- A new project that was initially rejected by Lucasfilm 10 years ago is currently in the works. Dark Horse is being very quiet about it.
- More will be revealed by Dark Horse and Del Rey at Star Wars Celebration VI.
Sources: Big Shiny Robot, Fangirl Cantina
Austin Blankenship is the webmaster of EUCantina. He is a host of our official podcast, EUCast, and also founded our sister website, SoloSound.net. Austin helped turn EUCantina from a forum into a website in 2007, and continues to operate the site and the EUC social media accounts. Austin works as a librarian in a small town above Atlanta, Georgia. 
The news about Invasion really irks me. REALLY IRKED….
I can’t wait for the first post-FotJ novel but I don’t like: “The Jedi find they have bigger things to worry about than the possible fate of Abeloth and the Sith.” Making the fate of arguably the biggest threat the Star Wars universe has ever known something not to be worried about?
I have to agree with Darjetii. Let’s forget Abeloth and the Sith, THE SITH, for now? (sigh) I really don’t like the handling of the FotJ era. It’s amazing how much higher quality many of the prequel EU novels have been than the post-movie EU books. One of the reasons is that it feels like each post-movie novel has to one up the villian, one up the threat to the Universe and not disturb The Formula. And they’re going to do plot gymnastics again to shoehorn in Lando? (groan)
The prequel novels, by contrast, are generally smaller, more self contained, more personal tales less constrained by formula and are often much better for it. Not really that excited about Crucible right now…
Oh, and by the way, I hope that’s no Darth Plaqueis novels *for now*. The backstory to the Sith (and the Galaxy We Know, for that matter) is the best thing every to happen to the Star Wars Universe in my opinion and is far more interesting than the formulaic and dull Jedi and the cookie cutter Empire.
I’m personally hoping that TPTB earmark a book about each Sith from Bane to Plaqueis over that 1000 years of EU history that could be written and developed over about the next 20 years. I’ll preorder all those books right now…
ok so they can start a completely different stand alone title with jax pavan but cant at least tie up the loose ends coruscant nights patterns of the force left dangling in the wind. ive emailed but gotten zero reply about it