Star Wars Books: The Best Of The Best Top 10 List

#3 – I, Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole

This book featured a lot of Star Wars firsts, most notable being the first EU book to be told from a first-person perspective. It also features a character not seen in a feature film at that time. It follows the adventures of Rogue Squadron pilot and Jedi pupil Corran Horn, and his desperate attempt to rescue his wife from the Invids pirates. The story mirrors the events in another great series, The Jedi Academy by Kevin J. Anderson, but tells it from Corran’s first-person point of view. It also thrusts the heroes of the Rogue Squadron comics into the EU forefront, like Wedge Antilles, who appears in many canon and non-canon material.

This book ventures into some familiar territory. Horn becomes frustrated with Luke’s tutelage in the Jedi ways, and goes off on his own, all while flirting with the dark side and his family history with the Force. The character has a sense of the same path we see Ben Solo/Kylo Ren on in the current trilogy. Both have famous Force-using ancestors, both learn to become Jedi with Luke, both become disenfranchised with him and his ways… the parallels are all there.

The book does have some timeline flaws, however, and does have some contradicting Legends lore, as many of the pre-1990s books do. Even so, the action is a continuous rush from start to finish. It’s a beautifully told Star Wars tale that deserves a place on any fan’s shelf.

#2 – The Darth Bane Saga by Drew Karpyshyn

Yet another trilogy on the list is the saga of Darth Bane, told in Path of Destruction, Rule of Two and Dynasty of Evil. Bane is another title passed around by fans as a potential trilogy film. His rule of two Sith at a time was made canon in The Phantom Menace, but Bane is not mentioned by name. In these three books, however, you get all the Darth Bane you can handle.

Bane starts out as a miner named Dessel that joins the Sith Army against the Jedi. He proves himself in battle, gaining the attention of his Sith masters. They take him in and teach him at the Sith Academy, only to have him figure out the Sith doctrine of the day is foolish. He takes off on his own after resurrecting the old Sith title of “Darth” and calls himself Darth Bane. He would go on to take an apprentice and begin his devious plan of eliminating the Sith society down to two. Himself and one other.

He has some mishaps on the way… a nasty case of Star Wars bugs and an ambitious apprentice, as well as a turn imprisoned by the Huntress. Like I said, a Sith is gonna Sith, and he betrays his apprentice only to take his captor as a new one. He weaves a tangled web all the way to the end, where his rule of two is finally established. That rule carries on through the ages up to Sidious and Maul, where the current canon picks it up. This trilogy is an important piece of Sith lore that is a must-read for fans of the dark side.