I quite liked the Jedi Academy trilogy when I first read it (and it's certainly not the WORST Star Wars tie-ins I've read) but I've had trouble even getting through re-reads. (Especially now that I can just read Stackpole instead when I get to that point in a re-read.) Darksaber was the first SW book I ever read that I actively disliked, though, and I was still a teenager who liked pretty much anything with spaceships when I read it, and his SW short stories were pretty bad.

...I blame my continuing fondness for YJK on the fact that he had a cowriter for those. :P

He must being doing something right, though, or his stuff wouldn't keep selling (and checking out at the library.) I was considering giving the Hugo nom a try just to see what he's been doing lately, but it wasn't going to go above No Award regardless, so based on your liveblogging I think I probably don't need to worry that this one is dramatically better than the others I've read by him. (It's going to be a crunch for me to get through Goblin Emperor + The Three-Body Problem + the short works in time to vote as it is.)