Star Wars has decades of material to delve into, but it can be overwhelming for a new fan to sift through the franchise's mass amounts of content. Complicating matters is the fact that some of the very best of what the Star Wars universe has to offer is no longer canon. It can be difficult for anyone on their first few visits to a galaxy far, far away to pick through the vast Legends material, so here's a few of the most accessible places to start.
Published during the height of a multimedia zombie frenzy that lasted most of a decade, Joe Schreiber's 2009 novel is a fun horror thriller and a terrific standalone entry to Star Wars Legends. A damaged prison barge takes a chance on scavenging necessary parts from an abandoned Star Destroyer, but things go wrong in a hurry when its undead residents begin to stir. Death Troopers has a simple premise that only hits a snag when certain legacy characters intervene, deflating some of the "who lives and who dies" dynamic that often carries horror novels. Its zombie death troopers are far from canon, but their name lives on in the elite troopers shown in Rogue One.
Available in omnibus editions from Marvel, this Dark Horse comic book series written by John Jackson Miller follows the fugitive Padawan Zayne Carrick as he outruns the grim prophecy controlling his former Jedi Masters. The Old Republic is a winding but easy to follow journey into the Old Republic era, taking place thousands of years before A New Hope, and its protagonist remains unique today. Carrick isn't a Skywalker — he's a clumsy kid whose likability is, literally, his primary Force power. His travels take him through then-unexplored Mandalorian space and explores the ethics of the Jedi in ways that still make for a great, self-contained story, even if most of the history it describes has been shunted aside.
Available on digital services like GOG, Dark Forces is an FPS in the style of Doom. Still great fun to play, the game is structured around a compelling plot with a surprising connection to canon. Kyle Katarn is a reformed Imperial officer working as a mercenary for the Rebellion. A series of missions puts him on the trail of the Dark Trooper project, a deadly new line of cybernetic stormtroopers that received a terrifying role recently in The Mandalorian. Dark Forces spawned its own franchise of video games and made Katarn a popular action game star in his own right. His legacy also gave him a place in the New Jedi Order novels, making this game a good place for fans to decide if they want to explore the complicated Yuuzhan Vong storyline.
Alan Dean Foster's slim novel was published in 1978, making it the first expanded universe novel in franchise history. That tidbit alone makes this an excellent, accessible curiosity for Legends newcomers, but it's also a tautly paced, well-written tale with enough familiar DNA to fascinate any curious fan. The plot is pulp fiction fare, with Luke Skywalker racing Darth Vader for control over a Kaiburr crystal, a gem that could provide its wielder dominion over the Force. Its crystalline MacGuffin has quite the lasting legacy, as it's the genesis of the kyber crystal that now powers every lightsaber found in both Legends and canon.
Also by John Jackson Miller, Kenobi is an easy one-shot slice of the post-Clone Wars wasteland. Though a Legends novel, its sometimes lonely story of a post-war Obi-Wan builds heavily on the personal ties he forged during the canon Clone Wars cartoon. It's also a great place for new fans lured to the franchise by The Mandalorian to begin, as the Tattooine-centric plot revisits humanized Tusken Raiders and encounters some of the same terrifying creatures Din Djarin had to deal with on behalf of its dry, small towns. It's a good read, and a good place to get some idea of where the upcoming Disney+ series with Ewan MacGregor might go.
Created in the mid '90s by writer Tom Veitch and artist Cam Kennedy for Dark Horse comics, Dark Empire is what a lot of old-school fans were hoping for when rumors of Palaptine's resurrection in The Rise of Skywalker took hold. Taking place a decade after Return of the Jedi and cheerfully invested in its own self-contained version of the Star Wars galaxy, Luke Skywalker is seduced to the Dark Side of the Force in a haunting storyline that gives its reborn villain his proper diabolical due. A huge but easy to navigate three-part storyline with characters new and old, Dark Empire is a genuine classic. It'll be easier to navigate than ever with a Marvel omnibus collection due in March 2021.
Bioware'2 2003 CRPG is a must-play even for RPG fans who've never been interested in the Star Wars fandom. A well-plotted exploration of the days when the Sith were still an active force to fear, Knights of the Old Republic's characters, good and evil, have stood the test of time. Worth exploring for the variety of companion characters alone, from the hilariously murderous HK-47 to the complicated but passionate Jedi Bastila Shan, the plot explores redemption as more than a simplistic concept easily achieved. It's also a great story, with a variety of alien landscapes to explore, although it does suffer from some annoying backtracking. Its legacy as one of the very best examples of Legends media has kept it accessible, currently playable on anything from phones to desktops.
Timothy Zahn's initial trilogy easily succeeds at being a great story first and a franchise landmark second. Heir to the Empire introduces a swath of concepts and characters that remain so enduring that Mark Hamill himself sometimes jockeys for a canon Mara Jade for his Luke to long for. Like Dark Empire, the Thrawn trilogy creates a new universe post-ROTJ, but Zahn's vision chews over the realistic but never dull consequences of winning a titanic war against near-impossible forces.
As Leia fights to keep the newborn Republic together and Luke is forging a new Jedi Academy, the threats to the galaxy won't stop coming. Terrifyingly intelligent and thoughtfully evil, Grand Admiral Thrawn is the face of the Legends era, a fictional personage so compelling that the 2016 announcement he was returning not only thrilled long-time fans, but quietly set things in motion for Ahsoka Tano's own long-awaited upcoming journey. While every entry on this list is an excellent place to begin a Legend-ary exploration of Star Wars, Thrawn's original introduction is not to be missed.
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