Buck Compton said:
I've never read a Star Wars book, but may be open to starting.
Where is the best place to start? Is there any website or timeline that shows when each one is taking place or which are most critical?
I have mentioned it in one of these Star Wars thread before (and given my review), but I would recommend the
Darth Plagueis book. It takes us through the rise of Palpatine, right up to the end of Episode 1.
A few months ago, I posted here about how I thought this would be a really important book for building the backstory of TROS. From the rumors we have heard, Ep9 will involve our heroes looking for something in the Death Star. Not sure if its true, but I kind of figured it had something to do with Darth Plagueis' lab... which could explain a clone or Rey, or Reys backstory. Just a lot of guessing on my part. But if your a SW fan, this is a good one to read since it fills in a lot of gaps in the story.. and it might come up useful for TROS.
As a side note, I'm starting to think the Clone Wars may play an even more important role. The Darth Plagueis book isn't well known among the general public, and I think they have to explain this whole series off with a well known backstory. I'm starting to think they will depend on that quite a bit. One thing that has bugged me is how do they get all those ships we see in the trailer. After all, the entire Rebellion fit on the Falcon at the end of the last atrocity. This is just my guess and I am purposefully staying away from spoilers, but if people dont want to even think about possibilities, here is what I'm thinking / kind of hoping happens:
If Rey / Finn / Poe are on a quest, and are searching for it in the remnants of the Death Star... how about they are looking for some secret pointing to the Kamino cloning facility. They find the secret which leads them to the ability to clone, or a set of ready to go clones. And this is who is partially manning the ships we see in the trailer. I guess another possibility is they are able to resurrect a droid army. I think a few re-purposed droids were shown in Rebels. It would be awesome if they could bring back Rex from Rebels. I so love that they retro placed him into ROTJ as the bearded guy.