I'm on my 6th book and have read about 50-60 of the comics, I've watched the Clone Wars in numerical order then chronological order, I've followed Rebels, though I don't think it lives up to the quality of the Clone Wars.
It is interesting, loved the scene when Vader comes to know the surname of the young X-wing pilot that destroyed the Death Star. However, some scenes were depicted in a much too violent way, I don't think consistent with the movies. I am thinking of a particular Mos Eisley scene with Bobba Fett, but there are a few more, many of them related to the droids that travel along with Dr. Aphra. Do like the lovely doctor though, and her interaction with Vader is interesting, because Vader is Vader and that's something they do get 100% right.
The bits of that Arc that deal with characters we know are great (Vader, Luke, Boba etc.) - I have to admit though, I'm not yet an Aphra fan, and I find the psychotic droids (I forget their names) quite annoying. I've not yet read any of the Doctor Aphra comics, so I only know her through her appearances in the Vader comics.
I read the first Timothy Zahn SW novels in the early 90's - now known as the Thrawn Trilogy. They were really the first new licensed Star Wars material after the OT. Don't know if they're classed as canonical or not. I know Thrawn the character probably is now due to his appearance in Rebels, but the books go into stuff that probably clash with both the prequel and sequel films.
The old Thrawn trilogy stories are no longer canon, though elements of the character and his background have carried over. I've not yet read Zahn's new-canon Thrawn novel.
Anyhow, the reason why I mentioned it is because I was going to have a small complaint about the sequel trilogy so far...
Obviously TLJ is going to cover a lot of Jedi/Force related stuff, but on the First Order side of things, I'd quite like to see more references back to the fall of the empire and the rise of the first order. There's a lot that happened during that time and TFA didn't really address that, simply requiring you to mentally substitute Snoke for the Emperor and the First Order for the Empire. Now their primary weapon is destroyed and we get to see more of their hardware and infrastructure I think it leaves the door open to introduce some of the back story - even if it's just fan service references. The same too with Leia, she went through a lot between RotJ and TFA, I think it would be nice if a few of those events got a mention. The Star Wars story is becoming quite an extensive one, and I think the films are the weak point in tying things together.