Star Wars has hundreds of tie-in novels, but the Expanded Universe had a slow start. Prior to 1991 there were only the three novelizations and seven continuing (or previous) adventures novels.
1991 saw the novel Heir to the Empire and the first Dark Horse comic series Dark Empire. These, and the hundreds of novels and comics to come, used source material from the West End role playing game to keep continuity straight. These kept the fires burning until the prequel movies, and kept coming out until 2014. At that point, it was declared that the entire body of work was no longer canon in order to give creative freedom for the new movies being produced. Creative freedom which was then used to make big-budget fan-film remakes of the original trilogy, but I digress.
Impressively, in the four years since there have been at least a hundred books written in the new continuity, rewriting the history going back to the Clone Wars era.
My rule with Star Wars had been that it got better the further away from Lucas it got. I've since added J.J. Abrams to that list. This has given me hope that there's a good Star Wars novel out there, but I have yet to find it. In the meantime, try Expounded Universe, a podcast which roasts the worst of the novels.
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