I have only recently started reading Star Wars novels. My first book - Darth Plagueis - was utterly phenomenal, perhaps the best book I've read in years.

I just need some guidance from the old guard who have been reading the books for a while. Where might be a good place to start?

I have heard good things about it. Perhaps I will go there next.

I understand there is some dislike for the post-ROTJ books. Why is that?

Post-ROTJ will either be your favourite era or your worst, I'll tell you that right now.

But I agree with the first poster, you should definitely read the Darth Bane trilogy if you liked Plagueis, IMO Darth bane trilogy together still isn't as good, but it's definitely worth the read.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_books

Start from the top, work your way to the bottom.

Bane trilogy is good (kind of over rated on these forums I think but not by a whole lot).

If you like Plagueis I recommend other Luceno books (thats the author). Labyrinth of Evil does for Ep3 what Plagueis did for Ep1. Its not as good, but its still great and gives that deep insight to the movies that really do wonders to flesh out the story more. Rise of Vader is also good. I'm only half way through it but its pretty interesting. Haven't read Cloak of Deception yet. Plagueis is still my favorite though, of all SW books not just Luceno. You may have cursed yourself by reading that first, if your like me you will find every other book just not quite good enough and yearn for that bar to be reached again. *shrug*

Speaking of Ep3 before, the novelization of that movie is amazing. It makes the story so much better, I can safely say going by the written version of Ep3 makes it my favorite episode of at least the PT if not perhaps the entire saga despite the movie version actually coming in a distant laughably dead last. If your the kind of person who hates the PT but wishes they didn't I'd really recommend that. If you like the PT, idk maybe reading it will make you realize how bad the movie is lol.

Sorry for such a long post, but here's my take on the Old Republic era and post-RotJ era(s):

Books set in The Old Republic:

Fatal Alliance you can totally skip unless you're a huge fan of this period, it doesn't add much to the TOR story. The only big-name character is Satele Shan and it doesn't even flesh her out too much as a character. The overall plot is mediocre.

Deceived and Revan are both interesting in that they develop some of the major figures from KOTOR/TOR, but neither is stellar storytelling on its own merits (Deceived is probably the best of them)

Haven't read Annihilation so can't comment on that.

Darth Bane Trilogy: If you like villain protagonists, the Sith, or dark/twisted characters and philosophies in general, these are definitely a good read. Some people complain that Bane himself is a "Mary Sue" character in them, but I think that's overstating it. I enjoyed the heck out of these books and definitely recommend them.

Post-RotJ Era:

Courtship of Princess Leia: I haven't read this myself, so I can't really recommend one way or the other, but it continues Han and Leia's romance arc from the movies and introduces the Hapes Consortium and Dathomir, which are two locations that come up almost as much as the movie locations in future books. Worth reading a synopsis even if you don't read the whole thing.

Thrawn/Heir to the Empire Trilogy: A must-read for a SW book fan. They're well-written and really feel like they progress the story of the major Star Wars characters. (Just ignore some time-line issues regarding Vader/the Clone Wars since these came out years before the Prequels.)

Jedi Academy Trilogy: Kind of a love-it or hate-it series. Not nearly as well written as Zhan's Thrawn trilogy, but noteworthy in that they progress the main story of the characters and set up a lot of the new characters who play a role in this and future eras. An OK read overall. (Some of the plot is set up by the Dark Empire I-III comic series, if you don't feel like reading comic books or don't take to these in particular, you might want to read a quick synopsis of them on wookieepedia first.)

X-Wing Series: A good military Sci-fi series, without as much focus on Jedi/Sith. These books are well-written, develop some interesting and likeable characters, and tell solid stories. If you're ok with Star Wars without lightsabers, they're worth the read.

Children of the Jedi/Darksaber/Planet of Twilight/The Crystal Star/The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy/The New Rebellion/The Corellia Trilogy: In my opinion, these 11 books are probably not worth your time. They fall into the "Status Quo is God" trap in that they really don't feel like they make any sort of impact on the characters or progress their stories. All of them can be summed up as: Random Imperial Warlord/new Alien enemy/Han's evil cousin shows up -> causes trouble (probably kidnapping Leia's kids in the process) -> is defeated; rinse and repeat. If you're going to read any of the books set after these, I'd just skim through a quick synopsis online somewhere (again wookieepedia is good) to get the jist of what happened.

Young Jedi Knights Series: This is a Young Adult Series, so an adult reader may or may not care for them. If you enjoyed the first couple Harry Potter books though, they're about on that level. They introduce and start to develop a slate of characters who become very important in The New Jedi Order series and beyond.

Hand of Thrawn Duology: Another series by fan-favorite author Timothy Zahn, so worth a read on that alone. They also established the Chiss species and act as a kind of capstone for the New Republic era of books before the license went to a new publisher and The New Jedi Order started really shaking things up. Definitely worth reading.

This is already a huge block of text, so I'll put my take on the New Jedi Order and beyond in a separate post so you can read or skip over at your convenience.

Kathrine Travis's Republic Commando novels will make you weep.

Republic Commando - Hard Contact

Triple Zero

True Colors

Order 66

Imperial Commando - 501st

The names of the books alone are enough to make me tear up. I never thought I would grow so attached to 10+ identical grown men. Mando pride, a rare, objective view of the Jedi and the Republic (in a rather negative light) as well as the Sith and the Empire later. Incredible. Would recommend to anyone who enjoys Star Wars. You get plenty of Jedi and non-Jedi action.

Did I mention Mando Pride? Because Mando Pride.

New Jedi Order: There are an insane 19 books in this series all telling the story of a massive alien invasion of the galaxy. It is very much a love-it or hate-it series. Some people love the way it shakes up the galaxy, is willing to kill off major characters, and starts to share the focus with a new generation of heroes (most from the Young Jedi Knights series). Others say it doesn't feel like Star Wars at all, hate the Yuuzhan Vong (the alien invaders), or hate that it killed off some of their favorite characters.

On the writing quality, its major problem is that there are so many different authors that a lot of plot-lines and characterizations feel all over the place. The way Han acts in one book may be completely different from how he acts in the next.

I agree with that last complaint, but still like the series as a whole for how it was willing to actually move things forward in the Star Wars mythos again. The story of the invasion is definitely epic, both in its impact on the galaxy and on the major characters. Given how many books there are, the quality definitely varies over the course of the series, though.

Dark Nest Trilogy: Coming between the New Jedi Order and the Legacy of the Force series, this trilogy is kind of easy to skip over and forget, the stakes just never feel as big as in those other series. I'd go so far as to say there's just not enough story to justify a full trilogy of books. The best parts of this trilogy are really just the way it sets up the characters and plot lines of the Legacy of the Force series. The writing isn't bad though, and the premise is interesting - it just would have been better in one or at most two books.

Legacy of the Force: Another series that, while some people enjoy, others loath. I liked it for telling a much more gradual and believable story of a Jedi hero falling to the dark side than we got on-screen in Episode III, and creating a credible enemy, who is not only a physical threat, but also one the characters and readers emotionally care about. Critics of the series, on the other hand, felt that it completely derailed that character and didn't buy the fall-from-grace.

I do agree with critics that telling this story involved some ridiculous oversights by the main characters, who absolutely refused to see what was right in front of them during the early books. It really did strain credibility at times and could have been written a lot better.

I'm going to keep the next two complaints vague and not name names of the characters involved, but I'll put them under a Spoiler just to be on the safe side, one relates to the ending of the series, so you've been warned:

The series also tried to address some of the problems from the New Jedi Order having too many different authors. They had only three authors- one book by Aaron Allston, the next by Troy Denning, then Karen Traviss, then Allston again- repeating through all nine books. Personally, I feel like this only ended up making the problem even more pronounced. The Traviss books just feel completely different from the Allston and Denning books. Each author had pet characters who were much more prominent in their books and characterizations of shared characters would change and then snap right back from one book to the next.

This problem with consistency is my only real complaint about the series, I like that it was willing to push the characters forward and shake things up even if it meant seeing characters I loved going down dark paths.

Fate of the Jedi: Another attempt at three alternating authors, writing three books each for a nine-book series. The consistency problem was a lot less pronounced than in Legacy of the Force, though it was still there. The series brought in a new Sith threat, brought back Admiral Daala from the Jedi Academy series to give the Jedi major political problems, and introduced an incredibly powerful alien enemy.

Some fans cannot stand Daala, and find it completely ludicrous to have her elevated to the level she is in this series. Others didn't like the new alien and felt she just didn't fit at all in a Star Wars story. I sympathize with the Daala-hate, but it didn't ruin the series for me, and I actually liked the new alien since it gave a plausible threat to Luke. I also really enjoyed the new major Sith character who shows up in book two and her story arc throughout the series. If you didn't like the major dark-side character arc from Legacy of the Force, this series also adds some extra justification for it. Some of the middle books were definitely weak, though, with subplots being drawn out when it would have been better to resolve them earlier in the series. Also, if you haven't read the Star Wars: Legacy comic series or seen the Mortis arc of The Clone Wars TV series, the final book in the series loses a lot of its punch.

Courtship of Princess Leia: I haven't read this myself, so I can't really recommend one way or the other, but it continues Han and Leia's romance arc from the movies and introduces the Hapes Consortium and Dathomir, which are two locations that come up almost as much as the movie locations in future books. Worth reading a synopsis even if you don't read the whole thing.

I have read it and it's awful. Avoid it unless you really really want to fill in the backstory there and don't feel like looking through a synopsis in the Essential Reader's Companion or Wookieepedia.

Jedi Academy Trilogy: Kind of a love-it or hate-it series. Not nearly as well written as Zhan's Thrawn trilogy, but noteworthy in that they progress the main story of the characters and set up a lot of the new characters who play a role in this and future eras. An OK read overall. (Some of the plot is set up by the Dark Empire I-III comic series, if you don't feel like reading comic books or don't take to these in particular, you might want to read a quick synopsis of them on wookieepedia first.)

Oh, and I hated this, too. There are some authors whose works just aren't worth the time, and most of them published during Bantam's Star Wars publishing run in the nineties. Kevin J. Anderson was responsible for the Academy books, did significant writing for the awful Tales of the Jedi comics, wrote Darksaber, and did the terrible Young Jedi Knights series as well. Not a fan. You touched on most of the other authors that wrote boring/bad/unreadable books later in your post, like Vonda McIntyre (The Crystal Star) and Barbara Hambly (Children of the Jedi/Planet of Twilight), but KJA deserved special mention.

Now, on to some more positive things.

X-Wing Series: A good military Sci-fi series, without as much focus on Jedi/Sith. These books are well-written, develop some interesting and likeable characters, and tell solid stories. If you're ok with Star Wars without lightsabers, they're worth the read.

This. So much this.

The X-wing books can be divided into two informal series by author. Michael Stackpole wrote the first four books in the series, and the eighth. He mostly shot straight with beige prose and military science fiction, with a few PoV characters (e.g. Wedge Antilles and Corran Horn). They're fun enough reads, they reference a lot of the rest of the EU, and they tell a fairly important story - the events surrounding the New Republic's conquest of Coruscant.

But the other books are far better. Aaron Allston wrote the fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, and tenth X-wing books, and they are just phenomenal. First of all, Allston's hilarious. Every one of those books has plenty of jokes, and even some laugh-out-loud stuff. Starfighters of Adumar, the ninth book, is unquestionably the funniest Star Wars work ever. Second, Allston also gets deeper into pilots' feelings. The effect can cause a bit of emotional whiplash, between the humor, the battles, and the drama. But I'll take Allston's writing any day over the relatively wooden characters in three-quarters of the EU. There's one scene in Iron Fist that's widely regarded as one of the most gripping, emotional events to ever happen in the EU. Then there are the battles, which Allston writes just as well as Stackpole, with special focus on interesting or inventive tactics. And finally, Allston doesn't focus on one or two PoV Mary Sueish characters like Corran Horn; he gives everybody in the squadron their due with a real personality and backstory - making it all the more jarring when some of them don't make it.

Actually, one of the few drawbacks of Allston's books is that they made other parts of the EU look bad. Three of Allston's X-wing novels focused on the New Republic's campaign to take down an Imperial warlord who carved out a sizable empire for himself in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor, Zsinj. Zsinj was sort of a shadowy, barely-there antagonist in The Courtship of Princess Leia that Allston thought deserved a lot more backstory. But the way Zsinj was portrayed in Allston's books - as a cunning admiral and worthy foe who regularly matched wits with General Han Solo, Wedge, the Rogues, and the Wraiths - made his final appearance in Courtship look ridiculous. He's there for about five minutes, acts like a total buffoon, and then gets blown up off-screen. Oh well.

So yeah. Read the X-wing books. You will enjoy them.

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I also want to second various other recommendations. Everybody knows about the Thrawn trilogy, so I don't need to waste words blowing Zahn here, although I very well could, because he's a fantastic author and his Star Wars books are top-notch.

James Luceno's already been mentioned, and he usually writes very well, yeah. I enjoyed his entries in the New Jedi Order. Darth Plagueis, Labyrinth of Evil, and Cloak of Deception were all very good, too. Luceno had a longtime collaborator, though, Brian Daley, who passed away in the nineties. In addition to writing the script of the Star Wars radio drama on NPR, Daley wrote some of the very first EU books: the Han Solo trilogy. All three of them are fantastic, and they're not even all that dated: Daley had to leave most of canon alone, and so barely referenced things like the Empire. He "settled" for writing tales of crime bosses, outlaws, and the Corporate Sector Authority, that still rank among the best stories ever told in this universe. Daley is almost universally revered by fans and by the EU's authors, and there's a good reason for that.

I do want to give a shout-out to another author, Matthew Stover. Stover's probably better known for his fantasy works, like the Acts of Caine, but he's written some of the best of the EU as well. His Revenge of the Sith novelization was already mentioned. It fills in all the holes that the movie had, makes the various characters' motivations - especially Anakin's - much more understandable, and features an impossibly cool writeup of the duel between Dooku, Anakin, and Obi-Wan aboard the Invisible Hand near the beginning of the movie.

Stover also wrote one of the first Clone Wars books, Shatterpoint. Think of it like this: it's basically Apocalypse Now (or Heart of Darkness), crossed with Star Wars, and the main character is Mace Windu. Samuel L. Jackson. There's really not much else that needs to be said. It's great.

There's also his entry in the New Jedi Order series, Traitor. I personally believe that Traitor is the best Star Wars book ever. It's kinda short. There aren't a whole lot of fight scenes. No space battles. Relatively few characters. But that's one of the things that's so great about it. It's distilled down to the most fundamental, basic elements. What you have left is basically Dante's Inferno set in the EU: a journey of learning through a world turned to hell, with a fair bit of philosophizing about the Force. And if you're itching for battle scenes, well, there's a truly massive balls-to-the-wall fight at the end that'll do more than scratch that itch. That list of the twenty most memorable scenes in the EU I linked earlier? Yeah, Traitor owns an unprecedented two of them, and that fight at the end is one.

There's also [Matthew Stover's] entry in the New Jedi Order series, Traitor. I personally believe that Traitor is the best Star Wars book ever. It's kinda short. There aren't a whole lot of fight scenes. No space battles. Relatively few characters. But that's one of the things that's so great about it. It's distilled down to the most fundamental, basic elements. What you have left is basically Dante's Inferno set in the EU: a journey of learning through a world turned to hell, with a fair bit of philosophizing about the Force.

Completely agree here - Traitor is probably my all-time favorite SW book.

That being said, it is one book that I can't really argue with anyone who complains that it doesn't have a very Star Wars feel to it. For some people the black and white, Light Side/Dark Side dichotomy is an important part of what Star Wars is all about, and this book is all about deconstructing and questioning that.

Also, just in terms of writing, the heavy philosophizing and paced character development that I absolutely loved in it are probably not everyone's cup of tea.

There's also the small matter of (Spoilers for Legacy of the Force):

There are some authors whose works just aren't worth the time.... Kevin J. Anderson was responsible for the Academy books, did significant writing for the awful Tales of the Jedi comics, wrote Darksaber, and did the terrible Young Jedi Knights series as well. Not a fan.

Here, we're going to have to agree to disagree. KJA is by no means a great novel writer (I remember cringing when I heard he was going to be writing the Dune prequels). That being said, he maps out a decent story and tells it competently. And the Jedi Academy series is just too major a piece of the rest of the EU to pass over; Daala, Kyp Durron, the Yavin Academy, the depiction of Kessel, the Maw- these are characters and locations introduced in these books that end up playing as big a role in the EU as Lando, Mon Mothma, Tatooine, and Hoth. Zahn's books are the only other novels that had that far-reaching an impact before New Jedi Order.

I'm actually a big fan of the Tales of the Jedi series, and the Dark Empire series that KJA also co-wrote. Anderson's writing works much better in comics than in novels. The only gripe I have with these comics at all is that they're really out of synch with other Star Wars fiction in terms of just how powerful Force Users are. Even this can kind of work for the Tales series though, since it's set in the distant past it gives the characters and events a larger-than-life feel even by Star Wars standards; they're the Greek myths of the Galaxy Far, Far Away. (A personal pet peeve: the Tales comics do fall into the trap of having these galaxy-shaking, major wars seem like they consist entirely of two or three pitched battles taking place over a few months. But that seems to be a problem found in 95% of fantasy and sci-fi fiction, which is why I love the scope of TOR's backstory for the Great War.)

I also think Young Jedi Knights was a good series as far as Young Adult books go. Sure an adult reader might see them as cliche-filled, but I don't think they're nearly as shallow as a lot of YA fiction out there.

Darksaber really is complete crap though, just read a synopsis to get the political shakeup in the Empire covered and skip the rest.