The NEW Star Wars Expanded Universe
 Out with the old and in with the new. Yesterday, Lucasfilm confirmed that the Expanded Universe would no longer be considered canon. And then scarcely hours later at C2E2, the Chicago Comic-Con, Del Rey books announced the next four Star Wars titles they would be publishing, carefully planned to fit into Disney's new continuity.
That's not to say the old universe is completely dead; Disney is now repackaging them as "Star Wars Legends", thus marking them as clearly separate and, um, fictional.
Beginning with John Jackson Miller's Star Wars: A New Dawn, to be released in hardcover and ebook on September
2, 2014, the Universe expands again. Written in consultation with Star Wars: Rebels executive producers Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg and Greg Weisman, A New Dawn will lay the groundwork for Rebels, explaining how the two characters currently planned to be the focus of the series first crossed paths. Rebels takes place in the roughly twenty year period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.
That seems a pretty logical first choice, tying directly into the animated project that's partially biding time while we wait for Episode VII. It will provide material likely to be tapped upon by the series itself, and features a Twi'lek heroine. If you mumble that thing about Twi'lek and "new dawn" in the same sentence, you might even draw in some Twilight fans.
The next three books, however, are the ones that fans will probably be scrutinizing more closely.
On November 11th, Del Rey will release Tarkin, likely set in that same gap, covering that character's rise to power and journey toward the Death Star. It could be interesting, but it's also an idea that could be a good story with no actual impact on canon whatsoever.
We already know what happens to Tarkin. The people he stepped on in his rise? Well, history is written by the winners, and as far as we know from A New Hope, nobody was lurking in the shadows to get revenge or anything. So this novel could carve its own little corner of Star Wars continuity.
Slated for "early 2015," we shall see Heir to the Jedi, following the adventures of Luke Skywalker, and Lords of the Sith, which pretty much speaks for itself, especially with that cover image.
Likely Lords of the Sith will run in parallel to Tarkin, but it's Heir to the Jedi that already has the community buzzing a bit. If the new regime wants to cherry pick the best of the old Expanded Universe, then this could be the novel that establishes Mara Jade. Well, that's what the buzz is. My guess? With the image of Mark Hamill in a black shirt, and calling him "Heir" and not yet "actual Jedi", it's set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, thus Mara, even if Disney does plan to recreate her, will not be in this book.
Sight unseen, these feel kind of rote, though A New Dawn has me most interested. The thing about the Expanded Universe that attracted fans was that sense of anything could happen as the books progressed, even when going into the past which the movies had not explored. All of these titles fit too neatly within an established and small continuity to hold much excitement. They're looks back, not forward.
Still, it is time to introduce these characters to a new generation of readers and fans, and along with the books Disney announced two weeks ago, this could be the way they create the heirs to Star Wars fandom.
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