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Personally the Bantam Era is my favorite era. It seems that while Bantam was very "safe' with their storylines and some of them were downright generic, it felt like Bantam took way more chances when it came to minor characters and subplots and stories not involving the Big 3.
Del Ray has not done anything like Bantam did in terms of the "Tales Of" series, or the X-Wing series, the Mandalorian Wars, I Jedi, or A.C. Crispin's Han Solo trilogy. Del Ray is not willing to really write books about non-major characters. The plotlines weren't as intertwined. The Bantam era was a lot of different authors doing a lot of experimentation, when there wasn't a lot of information available. The Star Wars universe was basically an open book.
When Del Ray took over, it seemed like they were out to do everything Bantam wouldn't. Dark storylines, someone other than the Empire as the villain, and killing off major characters. And that kind of confined the EU. With the exception of the upcoming Scoundrels and X-Wing novel, there hasn't been really anything much novelwise concerning the time period after the Clone Wars and before the Yuuzhan-Vong. Not as many one-shot novels either. But in reality they just replaced the Empire with another large-scale villain and wrote about them for as many books as possible.
Now I haven't read all of the Bantam books, and very few of the Del Ray novels so my opinion isn't as well-informed as some of your guys. But I do miss the feel of Star Wars being a sort of just quick adventure novel. Stories where the fate of the universe and everything WASN'T on the line. The universe is still vast, and there is still many, many places to explore and many characters to create and advance. Why not take the advantage to do it? Write more books that don't involve the Big 3, or the Empire. The only character that's gotten any attention is Mara Jade.
How about a novel about Dash Rendar? Or Boba Fett? Lando Calrissian? Guri? The numerous amount of Smuggers on Nar Shaddaa? Talon Karrde? Kyle Katarn? Corran Horn? Early life of Chewbacca? Rogue Squadron during the Galactic Civil War (I mean look at all the missions they went on in the Gamecube games!), 4-LOM and Zuckuss, Bossk, Dengar? etc etc
The possibilities are ENDLESS! There are other characters out there in the universe. I'm tired of reading about Han, Leia, and Luke, their kids, their kids' kids, their decendants, the new Empire, the old Empire, Sith Vs. Jedi, the same kind of plots.
Hell, I would read a book about Luke Skywalker's adventures at Tosche Station with his friends at this point if it was exciting. Just give me something that's not so heavy with the same characters. Flesh out some backstory.
I'm looking forward to Scoundrels very much though by Zahn. Hopefully Del Ray will get back to that simple "dime-adventure" feel that more of the early Star Wars novels had, and get to writing about some different characters.
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