It probably helped sales. I liked Stackpole's attempt to make them more militarily coherent, but then they nuke Ithor anyway.
What was militarily incoherent or strategically unwise about nuking the one planet that creates a pollen that can be used as a lethal exploit in your military's chief means of armor?
I don't agree, some of that is just a natural difference in opinion. I don't like the immunity to the force/outside the galaxy thing. I thought it was distracting to me personally.
I can't really tell you how to feel, and you're certainly not alone in your sentiment, as it seems to be a personal hang-up with the Vong that a lot of people have (among other things).
I suppose all I can say is that for me, it was one of the things that made the Yuuzhan Vong terrifying. It forced the Jedi to essentially be as helpless and reliant on their wits as normal people around them, and thrust them into arguably the worst moral dilemma the Jedi has ever had to face. It made for many great narrative opportunities, many of which the authors definitely made use of.
When it comes to the ultimate revelation of why the Vong are immune to the Force, it's not just the turning point for the main characters...it's a turning point for many of the Vong characters as well, when they realize in that horrible moment that their religion, their culture and sense of honor, is all a shallow lie. And the characters react to that lie in different ways, generating new goals and motivations for them, as
The Final Prophecy very compellingly shows.
It was something that in lesser hands, probably could've been handled terribly. When introducing something as game-changing as immunity to the Force, you need to be careful in how nuanced your explanation is and how you economize it in the narrative. To me, that's the difference between something like the Vong's twisted origins, and the complete wave-away concept of the Force Dyad in TROS that the writers had no interest in fleshing out or nurturing as a part of the lore. It's there for one-time use, to necessitate shallow pay-offs, and that's it.
As for individual Vong? I found Tsavong Lah obnoxious with a handful of exceptions that happened post Star by Star. Yim and Harrar didn't appeal either. Nom Anor was always interesting, but they didn't give him the chance to really shine until later. I liked what they did with him in the end.
I didn't see the Vong as sympathetic or interesting thru the whole thing. They were obnoxious invaders who committed genocide on the regular. Palpatine could have come back and super weaponed them all to hell and I would have been fine with that outcome.
I can't say I agree at all. Part of my big complaint with
Dark Nest as a follow-up to NJO was the complete lack of interesting, varied and developed characters. The second the Vong characters were gone, I wanted them back. Tsavong Lah was a cunning and calculating villain, one I didn't find obnoxious at all---he symbolized a lot of the Vong's cruel religious fanaticism, and a threat that the story treated as deathly serious to the main characters. I even liked the way the writers showed his adherence to the caste and family traditions of the Vong culture, as demonstrated with his interactions with his father Tsulkang in
Enemy Lines. He's pretty much everything I wanted from the Vong species when they were first introduced. On Harrar, while I feel he was actually underused and not that well-developed early on in the series, I really like the way he was used in the later books as one of the first Vong insurrectionists, and how he shows a remarkable amount of philosophizing and perspective once he's forced to confront the truth about his religion's falsehood, which he shares with Corran Horn (I also love his confrontation with Nom Anor in
Final Prophecy). But Nen Yim was by far the biggest surprise, and my favorite Vong character by far---because she wasn't some hulking warrior or lethal assassin. She's introduced as an everywoman of the Vong culture, a young wide-eyed Shaper who's obviously been conditioned by the culture around her, but is actually motivated by her love of her craft and loyalty to her people....even to the extent that she's willing to face charges of heresy and execution if it means keeping them safe. We rarely see that kind of characterization for anatgonists of Star Wars, not without some larger redemption arc tied to them, or being a kind of combatant or large player in the military conflict at hand. Nen Yim's risking a lot, even though she likely can't do anything to save herself...she doesn't have the strength or training to avoid being killed, but she soldiers on anyway. And in spite of all of her efforts to save the Vong Civilians residing on the worldship she's frantically trying to fix, they're all mercilessly killed by Kyp Durron...leaving Nen Yim utterly and emotionally devastated, and filled with the kind of motivation to have a more vested interest in the defeat of the New Republic. It's one of the rare moments in Star Wars where the antagonist has a very rational and warranted reason to want the main characters dead, beyond the usual reason of them being "pesky, meddling Rebels". I think Greg Keyes was onto something when he introduced this character, and while I don't think all of her narrative potential was realized in the books, I still adore the role she played in the Vong's redemption as a species, and her position as the sole relatable and down-to-earth Vong character amongst a well-spring of what are essentially faith-blind, ruthless Knight Templars smearing the galaxy with the blood of perceived infidels.
I guess what I'm saying with all of this is that what kept the Vong from appearing in my eyes as just a "group of spikey-armored, uber-evil alien conquerors" was that on top of being one of the EU's finer examples of villains being driven not by simple conquest but by strong investment in their own morals (with the Vong literally believing that the GFFA populace, with their lifestyle and culture of debauchery and vile disrespect to the gods, are creating a taint on the galaxy for which the Vong are the only moral cure), but also because the specific Vong characters ushered to the forefront were multi-layered, and played a different role in the species' trajectory to redemption. Even as I go back and read books/comics about the Empire, I only rarely get flashes of the same satisfaction I had reading the constant exploits of these Vong characters, and their perspective on the war being fought. It's one of things that will keep me going back to NJO for years, and make it a highlight of the Expanded Universe for me.
But I'm enjoying LOTF tremendously for
its main villain, so the Vong certainly have competition for their placement on my list of all-time great threats of the EU.
