I’m gonna punt and say I just love it all. I picked up Thrawn Trilogy when book 2 came out in 1995, and I never looked back. My favorites have jumped all around through out the years, since I ended up picking each one up as it came out. Opinions changed through out time, since for a while lots of books came out out of chronological order before New Jedi Order started. Perfect example is Crystal Star takes place after Planet of Twilight, but it came out years before. That one makes so much more sense when you complete that particular trilogy.
But if I had to pick an all time favorite…..Courtship of Princess Leia. With the exception of the consistent mistake of having Luke’s lightsaber be blue and not green, I just love everything about that book. Even the cheesy line “Kiss my wookie!”
The saddest thing is that I lost my 1st edition a long time ago due to multiple moves and a changes in my family which left the box it was in somewhere in a quansit hut in FL. Such was the fate of half my pre-NJO 1st editions…including my original Zhan Trilogy.