Status Updates From Star Wars: The Mandalorian ...

So once again Jeter seems to believe that the sarlacc pit was very close to Jabba's palace, which is wrong. Either that or he just decided to write it that way for simplicity, and truth be damned. Also there's this weird notion that has been mentioned a few times where he makes it sound like the Empire is a new and recent formation?? It doesn't make a lick of sense.

Claiming that Twi'leks often fulfill majordomo roles, and then naming the Bounty Hunter's Guild majordomo Ob Fortuna, is some of the laziest shit I have seen in any Expanded Universe novel. Wow. Just wow.
In true EU fashion, this author is way overusing the term barve. I know it was introduced in the Jabba's Palace Fett short story, but you don't need to keep harping on it. It makes it look so forced.

I get what's going on here. This was 2 years after Shadows of the Empire, 1 year after Special Editions OT hit theaters. This is cashing in on the popularity of Fett and Xizor. I think there's merit to giving background to HOW Xizor gained the Emperor's favor. But this is doing it horribly. Long-ass boring chapter of talking in circles. Vader, the Emperor, and even Xizor felt terribly out of character. Bad writing.

This isn't terrible, but it's rather uninteresting thus far. Very slow start. I'm beginning to think that perhaps this is a trilogy that had to stretch its content out to fill 3 books, rather than fitting them organically...
It's strange that this is taking place both around the same time as RotJ, but also flashing back to shortly after EpIV. Weird to jump around that much.

Neelah escaped from Jabba's palace, yet she had a sailbarge cloth wrapped around her, and she witnessed Boba Fett's body after he escaped the sarlacc. That doesn't make any sense. Did Jeter not know that the sarlacc is nowhere near the palace? It's why they had to take the sailbarges. It would've taken Neelah days, if not weeks, to reach it by foot. In the open desert, while being injured.

There's already been a couple of differences from two of the Tales stories. Here, the sarlacc is stated to be dead, but in the Jabba's Palace Fett story, Fett specifically kept it alive (but injured) to kill it at a later date. Also how Dengar came across and rescued Fett was different from the rushed version at the end of the Dengar story, but that's not surprising.

I know next to nothing about this series. I remember seeing them quite often on library shelves, but I never read them. I have recently seen some negative reviews of it, but I'm curious to find out what these are all about.