i've finally read and finished heir to the empire, abt a third through dark force rising now! what am i doing after the og thrawn trilogy though am i meant to attempt to read like. all of everything in legends in order after this or is there a recommended certain set of books to get through? help me legends girlies you're my only hope
Here's a very rough outline of my suggestions as an old legends fan. I'll give general outline first, then explain some terms and give a bit more detail.
Broadly speaking, you can read a lot of books in whatever order you want, just stick to order within subseries. For post-RotJ set books, read Bantam before Del Rey, I, Jedi will make more sense if you've already read the Jedi Academy trilogy and the first four Rogue Squadron books, leave Hand of Thrawn for last of the Bantam books, read Del Rey in publication order since they're mostly big series with tighter continuity, and ignore everything from Del Rey set after The Unifying Force (slightly kidding on that last one, I personally hate Legacy of the Force, but read it and make up your own mind). For the Clone Wars era Del Rey, again order outside of subseries doesn't really matter.
As an aside, I was reading Star Wars as a kid and teen in the 2000s, and my reading order was pretty much whatever I could find at various city libraries along with occasional purchases of recently released books or secondhand from used book stores.
For context, there were basically three publication periods for Legends: early tie-ins published by Del Rey released alongside or immediately after the Original Trilogy films were released, the 90s EU revival published by Bantam Spectra and bookended by Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and Hand of Thrawn Duology, and then the second Del Rey era which included Prequel Trilogy tie-ins as well as larger series continuing on from where the Bantam era left off. Concurrent with all of these were assorted comic book runs that I'll touch on a bit at the end.
The original run is a bit of a mixed bag: a lot of the books were written before the OT was complete, so there's lots of early installment weirdness and some bits that end up almost immediately retconned. That said, most of the books are decently engaging, the weirdness can be a draw on its own, and there's historical interest in some of them. Brian Daley's Han Solo Adventures helped lay the groundwork for a lot of what would come and introduced various elements that became Legends staples, while Splinter of the Mind's Eye is based on an early concept for a sequel to A New Hope, and gives a glimpse into where Lucas could have taken things, especially if he'd had to film on a more modest budget (notably, this was written before Luke and Leia were officially siblings, so it has some bits that are kind of squicky in retrospect). Generally, these books can be read whenever, or skipped entirely without too much loss.
The Bantam era was characterized by something of an editorial juxtaposition. On the one hand, continuity still wasn't super tight, authors were pretty free to introduce concepts as they wanted, and style and tone (and, to be honest, quality) could vary pretty significantly between works. On the other hand, Lucasfilm had certain blanket restrictions in place to keep things open should they decide to create a prequel trilogy (as they eventually did), so authors were barred from writing anything set in the Clone Wars, or about the fall of the Old Republic, or featuring young versions of Anakin Skywalker pre-Darth Vader, or Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Luke and Leia's mom. The big three to read to really grasp this era are Zahn, Stackpole, and Anderson, although I don't guarantee the quality of all their writing. My personal recommendations include Crispin's Han Solo trilogy, Allston's Wraith Squadron trilogy, and the various Tales anthologies of short stories published during this timeframe. The rest vary in quality and significance, although you can pretty safely skip The Crystal Star and The New Rebellion. While technically published by Berkley Boulevard, I do include the Young Jedi Knights and Junior Jedi Knights series with the Bantam era, and it's worth reading at least a few of them since they establish characters who become important in the Del Rey sequel series.
When Del Rey regained publication rights in 1999, it saw an almost exact reversal of the editorial situation under Bantam. The Clone Wars, Obi-Wan, Anakin, the newly introduced Padme, etc., were all now not only fair game, but a major focus of writing and publication, and authors were otherwise fairly free to set their stories whenever they could get an editor to sign off on. At the same time, the Prequels meant that Lucasfilm was much more involved, and the first Bantam continuation series would become the longest and most involved in all of Legends publication (19 full-length novels written by 12 authors, plus extra supplemental material), so continuity and editorial control were much tighter. Otherwise, the prequel-timeline books followed more in the Bantam spirit, mostly standalones and 2-3 book miniseries written by various authors that can be consumed in pretty much any order, and which aligned much more closely with the contemporary Prequels than the existing EU. In contrast, the post-Hand or Thrawn set books drew much more heavily from the EU canon, but were mostly grouped into larger series: first the New Jedi Order dealing with an extragalactic invasion by a fully unknown alien species, then Legacy of the Force focusing on a second (albeit shorter) galactic civil war 11 years after that invasion, and Fate of the Jedi dealing with the immediate aftermath of said civil war, although there are also a few standalones and at least one trilogy that were set in this timeframe. These will generally be best read in publication order for maximum comprehension. Major authors during this period are Traviss (both prequel and continuation), Denning (major influence on continuation), and Allston (continuation). My personal recommendation here is Stover: Traitor rewired my brain, Shatterpoint is phenomenal, and his novelization of Revenge of the Sith is better than the movie (Zahn's books in this era are mostly solid as well, and can be read whenever).
Finally, to touch on the comics briefly, Marvel published a tie in series from '77-'86, with a couple spin offs running through '87, mostly focusing on post-ANH content. As expected of an early run, there's lots of weirdness, but there are some characters and settings introduced here that become significant later on in the novels. Starting in the '90s, and continuing on until the Disney acquisition, Dark Horse had the publishing license and put out a number of series and miniseries of varying quality, continuity, and impact. Again, the earlier works are more likely to have weirdness and inconsistency, but also more likely to introduce elements that were adopted by later authors.
