Star Wars Station Dispatch: The Best Star Wars Books You Should Be Reading

By Carter Estes  ·  May 28, 2026

I'll say it plainly: the best Star Wars storytelling happening right now isn't on a screen. It's on the page.

If you've been a Star Wars fan for any length of time and haven't picked up a novel since the old Bantam paperback days — or worse, since the Disney acquisition reshuffled the deck and made you swear off the books out of spite — I believe you owe it to yourself to give the literature another shot. I co-host the Star Wars Station Communication podcast with Colin, and between the two of us we've put more hours into chasing down the corners of this galaxy in print than we'd care to admit. Some of it is filler. Plenty of it isn't. The good stuff is genuinely great — better, in many cases, than the streaming shows people are arguing about on Twitter.

Here's where I'd start in 2026, and why.

Start With Thrawn. Both Trilogies.

Timothy Zahn's original Thrawn trilogy — Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command — is the foundation of modern Star Wars publishing. It's also the reason a lot of us grown adults are still here at all. Without those three books, the franchise probably stays dormant after Return of the Jedi and we're not having this conversation.

Zahn came back to write a second Thrawn trilogy in the canon era (Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason), and I'll go to the mat for it. The canon Thrawn books are smarter, tighter, and more politically interesting than the originals. If you only watch Ahsoka and The Mandalorian and find yourself wondering why everyone in the comment section seems to know things you don't — read these. You'll catch up faster than you think.

Go Deep With The High Republic

Lucasfilm's High Republic publishing initiative is the most ambitious thing they've done with the printed word in twenty years. Set roughly 200 years before the Skywalker saga, it builds a Jedi Order at its peak — explorers, peacekeepers, frontier diplomats — and then methodically breaks it.

If you want a single entry point, read Charles Soule's Light of the Jedi. It's Phase I, book one, and it lands like a thunderclap. From there the publishing path branches out: Cavan Scott's The Rising Storm, Claudia Gray's Into the Dark, and Justina Ireland's Out of the Shadows are the next stops I'd put in front of a new reader. Phase III wrapped recently, and the Trials of the Jedi omnibus and the Adventures collections coming this year are a clean way to catch up if you'd rather binge than chase floppies.

I believe The High Republic will be remembered, ten or fifteen years from now, the same way the old Expanded Universe is remembered now — as the era where Star Wars literature went swinging for the fences.

The 2026 Releases I'm Watching

Three books on my radar this year:

Star Wars: Outlaws — Low Red Moon by Mike Chen (released this past February) is a prequel to the Outlaws video game, focusing on ND-5 and Jaylen Vrax. Chen writes character-first, and the book moves. If you played Outlaws and wished you got more time with the crew, this is your fix.

Star Wars: Legacy by Madeleine Roux drops July 28. It's set between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, following Rey and Leia on a quest to repair Rey's lightsaber and rekindle the Jedi. This one matters. Disney has needed an in-canon bridge between Episodes VIII and IX for years now — Roux is the writer they trusted with it. I'm cautiously optimistic, and I rarely use the word cautiously.

Edge of the Abyss by Rebecca Roanhorse is the next entry in the Reign of the Empire trilogy, picking up after Alexander Freed's The Mask of Fear. Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, Saw Gerrera — this is political Star Wars at its sharpest. Andor fans should pre-order without thinking twice about it.

A Word for the Skeptics

I know the line. "I've tried Star Wars books. They're not for me." Fair enough — some of them aren't. But the median quality of Star Wars publishing right now is higher than it has been in any era I can remember, and the ceiling is genuinely literary. Roanhorse, Soule, Chen, Roux, Claudia Gray — these are working novelists who happen to love this galaxy. They aren't phoning it in.

We carry a curated selection of Star Wars novels at The Game Station — the ones I'd put in a friend's hands, not the deep cuts that require a wiki tab open. Come by the shop, ask for me or Colin, and we'll point you at the right starting line for the kind of Star Wars story you actually want to read.

And if you want our weekly takes on what's worth your shelf space, the Star Wars Station Communication podcast is where Colin and I do this in long form.

May the Force — and a decent reading lamp — be with you.