It is finally March and that means it is time for brackets. All kinds of brackets from College Basketball to dessert toppings and everything in between. With that in mind this blog will be doing a Star Wars authors bracket.

I am taking on the Vince McMahon role for this endeavor. That means I picked the authors who I felt most qualified to be considered. I don’t think I made any huge omissions but some of you may…This is the 32 authors I think have had the most impact on the Star Wars book universe and more importantly have entertained all the Star Wars book readers. They will be broken into four brackets; Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Yoda, and Grand Moff Tarkin. The Authors have been seeded  1 through 8 again most due to my own personal judgement while taking into consideration how the authors works are viewed by the readers at large.

With that being said I give you the first seed in the Darth Vader Bracket:

Troy Denning

Troy Denning has written 12 Star Wars novels, along with a few ebooks and 2 short stories. He earns the number one seed in the Darth Vader bracket because he is the only author that has killed off one of Han and Leia Solo’s children. In fact he has killed two of them. Which makes him a huge part of the darker tone the Expanded Universe books took on once the license was moved to Del Rey.

His first EU book was the ninth book in the New Jedi Order series entitle Star by Star. In that very entertaining book young Anakin Solo meets his end and what follows throughout the rest of the old EU is how the Star Wars Universe deals with that loss, spoiler they don’t deal with it very well. However, Star by Star is one of the best NJO books and is probably top five of all the old EU books.

His next two works in Star Wars were directly connected. The ebook A Forrest apart and the novel Tattoine Ghost (which appear together in paperback form) are direct sequels to the novel The Courtship of Princess Leia. While a lot of Star Wars book fans grew tired of how books would go back to ret-con the timeline I think this is the best example of that. Even though I found the constant need for Star Wars to link Original Trilogy characters to Prequel Trilogy Ghost remains an excellent read. He would also lay the groundwork in that book for his next Star Wars project.

That project would be The Dark Nest Trilogy and in the Legends Timeline it is the only stand alone trilogy publisher Del Rey produced. That was something of old hat as the previous publisher had built its timeline around stand alone trilogies.

The Dark Nest trilogy is the bridge from NJO to the Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi series. It is very dark and lays a lot of the groundwork for Jacen Solo’s fall to the Dark Side. Many of the characters featured in the NJO return in the Dark Nest and several of them die. Most notable this trilogy explains the story of Raynar Thul who had been assumed dead after the events depicted in Star by Star. Thul would return in the Fate of the Jedi series.

Denning would write three books in the Fate of the Jedi series and the Legacy of the Force series including the final book in each series. His final Star Wars work would be Crucible the final novel of the EU.

Since both James Luceno and Timothy Zahn have been brought back to pen novels in the new Disney timeline Lucasfilm and Del Rey should consider bringing back Denning as well. The new canon has a darker feel to that most of the EU did and that is Denning’s Star Wars speciality. They may be saving him for a particular dark moment but he has more than earned the right to pen a novel in the new cannon.

Help Support this blog and pick up a copy of the Dark Nest Trilogy for your collection by using the following link:
Star Wars Dark Nest (Dark Swarm Trilogy 3 in 1, 1, 2,&3)

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