To be fair though, while ‘Outcast’ isn’t the easiest of books to get straight into there are enough familiar faces to make things a little bit easier going. Failing that, Wikipedia could very well be your friend.

At the very least, you probably need to have read the ‘Legacy of the Force’ series first and probably the ‘Yuuzhan Vong’ books (can’t remember the actual name of the series) as well.

If you’re anything like me then you just read this blurb and thought, “Violent civil war? Darth Who?” The simple fact is that, despite some background filling in ‘Outcast’ is definitely not the place to start for anyone picking up a Star Wars book for the first time or for those looking to get back into the swing of things. There will be no return until Luke can uncover why one of his own family turned to the dark side of the force and that he can prevent such a thing from ever happening again. The citizens of the galaxy now have more than one reason to doubt the Jedi and in order to safeguard their reputation (and the Jedi’s future) Luke Skywalker will go into exile from Coruscant. In a shocking move, Luke Skywalker is arrested for failing to prevent the rise of the Sith Lord at the same time as a prominent Jedi suffers a psychotic breakdown and goes on the rampage. Given the nature of Caedus’ rise to power, the Jedi are an easy target. The galaxy is slowly recovering and a bewildered populace is looking for people to blame. ‘Outcast’ (to be published by Del Rey on March 24th) seemed like a great place to start as it is the beginning of the new ‘Fate of the Jedi’ series and the best place to start is always at the beginning, right? Well, maybe not in this case.Ī violent civil war has just come to end and Darth Caedus is now dead. Karen Traviss’ ‘Clone Commandoes’ books completely changed my way of thinking last year (they’re really good, check them out) and I found myself wondering if it was time to give the Star Wars series a go again.

As time went on (and the number of published Star Wars books grew) I just knew that there was no way back, there was too much continuity to catch up on and it wasn’t as if I didn’t have other things to be doing in the meantime. Not only that but a large number of the Star Wars books I’d already got weren’t that good (‘Planet of Twilight’ and ‘Darksaber’, I’m looking at you in particular). It was about the time that I started running out of shelf space, in our old flat, that I realised it was time to stop collecting Star Wars books.

Outcast aaron allston