Republic and Imperial Commando series
These books were a very interesting take on the star wars universe that I had never seen before. From the point of view of a small group of elite soldiers, the Republic Commando books showed the nitty-gritty side of the Clone wars, the perspective of the clones.
Everyone knows how the Jedi fared in the Clone Wars, and we know what happened to the clones at the end, but what about up until that point? Were they just mindless flesh robots unable to emote, or were they something more? It asks questions like 'does a clone have a soul?' and 'does DNA determine your personality?' and answers them quite spectacularly.
It shows how the Clones are treated in day to day life, shows how they are considered expendable, and are sacrificed if their injuries are too severe. It's an amazing set of books that does characterisation really well. After all, if every character looks the same then the character is what has to set them apart.
The books are loosely based on the game of the same name, but focussing on a different squad of commandos (though the squad of one of the characters, Darmun, is mentioned in the first level). The squad from the game show up a couple of times but they aren't the sole focus.
The books follow a squad formed of the survivors of other squads, hastily packed together to form an elite squad right before the assignment and one padawan who doesn't seem very good at anything, though as a Jedi she is put in charge. As the books progress more characters come to the fore front, but for the most part these five characters are the primary focus.
Usually I would take a moment to plead with you to read these books, but I'm not going to do that. They were really good and I wouldn't have missed reading them for anything, but a couple of years ago Lucas arts retro-actively changed everything about a prominent race in these books, making it impossible to continue and making these books non-cannon, all to make a single episode of Star Wars Clone wars cartoon series.
It was awful, they did bad and should feel bad, but regardless Karen Traviss was removed from the star wars writers list and the books stopped without a conclusion.
They were great, but don't bother if you need an ending.
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