If any of you have read some of these, are they worth reading?

I have gone through the NJO, the hideous and awful Darknest trilogy, the Legacy series [which I though was just kind of sad] and go between, Millenium falcon.

With "Falcon", I can see myself just leaving the new stuff alone. The storyline ends just fine for me. However, is Fate a good enough series to read? I don't want to be ambushed like I was with Darknest. That almost put me off Star Wars forever...

I've read the first book.  It's ok, has an interesting premise to kick off the series, but I'm not sure about where it seems to be heading.  Things could be moving toward a new Jedi purge....  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  But as a die hard fan, I'm still willing to stick with the series.  Even though ever since the success of Vector Prime they seem to have gotten into the habit of killing off popular characters just for the shock value.  Now the shock is starting to wear a bit thin.  Nobody's died yet in this series (of course I've only read book 1) but it is beginning to be a disturbing trend.

I agree about the shock value. When Chewie bit it, I was in an almost literal shock.

Another Jedi purge, eh? Wonder when the Jedi will become the hidden sect and the Sith the transcendant?

Actually, 100 years from now.  If you read any of the Dark Horse comics they have a series Legacy which takes place about a century after the current storylines.  The Sith have conquered the galaxy, and the Jedi are on the run.  The main character is Cade Skywalker, who is the grandson (or maybe great-grandson) of Ben Skywalker, but he's no Luke or even Anakin... in fact he wants nothing to do with the Skywalker legacy.  Of course, neither the Jedi nor the Sith are willing to leave him alone once they find out who he is!  It's a decent storyline, but extremely complicated.  If you're not at least passingly familiar with the entire EU continuity (novels and comics) you could get thoroughly confused as to where all these characters all come from (there are a lot), and trying to keep all the different factions straight as they team up and/or betray each other for control of the galaxy.

Which brings up a pet peeve of mine about the EU... having all these Sith keep coming back negates the entire purpose of Anakin fulfilling the prophecy of the Chosen One, destroying the Sith once and for all and bringing balance to the Force.

ETA - still a fan, though!  I don't think anything they do will stop me from reading!

Which brings up a pet peeve of mine about the EU... having all these Sith keep coming back negates the entire purpose of Anakin fulfilling the prophecy of the Chosen One, destroying the Sith once and for all and bringing balance to the Force.

I don't have a problem with it; mainly because what Lucas wrote seemed to be a bunch of nonsense to add some "mystique" to an otherwise blase storyline. I've seen whole threads devoted to trying to figure out just what "bringing balance to the force" even means. Most people agreed that it didn't mean the destruction of the Sith. And the novels and graphic novels [specially with what you just wrote about the Legacy GN series] bear that out. It just doesn't seem to mean really anything.  Good ol' Lucas screwing up everything, AGAIN ;-)

True, but on the other hand can a creator of a universe truly be considered as screwing it up if it's his own vision in the first place?  If that's the way he wants it to be, as fans maybe we don't like don't like it, but it's his own universe to do with as he wants.  The rest of us are just along for the ride.  Without Lucas we wouldn't even have Star Wars to watch, read or debate.

What I meant was that Lucas had NO idea what HE meant by Anakin bringing balance to the Force. I theorize [along with lots of other Star Wars lover, Lucas haters ;-)] that Lucas just used that line to make Anakin sound REALLY important but had no actual ideas for the working out of it.

So he screwed it up by painting himself into a corner and then just leaving it. Leaving us the fans scratching our heads going "huh?" :-)

Just read Out Cast. Goodness. The Jedi just can't seem to get a break, can they?