I apologize is this gets long, but it's really exciting to share the SW EU with people.
I fell in love with Star Wars during that awkward phase just before the prequels came out, when Star Wars was half of an aisle at Toys R Us and tired old joke on a sketch comedy show. Then I started reading the Young Jedi Knights series, and latched onto the character of Jacen Solo. He was my age at the time, and the stories were exciting. Some of them were surprisingly dark for children's books. One was about an Imperial Remnant pilot crashing his TIE Fighter onto Yavin 8, and his attempt to survive (cough). Another was about Jacen accidentally slicing off his young girlfriend's arm after she rushed through the build of her first lightsaber.
Then the Solo twins became more and more important, and the stories became much darker. A dozen or so of science fiction's best auhtors came togther to write a proper epic about the Star Wars universe trying to handle an invasion of something truly alien and violent. They took these characters to fascinating places, showing what everything in that universe was capable of when they weren't bickering amongst themselves.
Then Legacy of the Force comes along, and Jacen Solo, now extremely powerful Jedi and victim of a POW camp for nearly a year, tries to bring balance to the Force. You know that transition period between III and IV of Vader actually, you know, becoming a terrible thing? You get to watch this character you literally grew up with command a squad of secret police in the dark of the night, rounding up possible Corellian sympathizers in internment camps, torturing and killing Boba Fett's granddaughter during an interrogation, slowly turning Luke's son into his Sith apprentice without the boy even realizing, having his daughter ripped out of his hands by Luke and Katarn...
It was a great ride, and I am very sad to see it go. If any parts of it could be brought into the new movies, and people get even a fraction of the happiness from it that I did as a child, I would be ecstatic.