Review: Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel

Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel by James Luceno
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading this, Rogue One, and Tarkin, I have one thing to say to the Star Wars creative group: stop trying to make Tarkin happen. It will never happen.

Neither Catalyst nor Rogue One feel like a fully complete story to me. What happens in this book is basically just backstory for Rogue One and nothing really happens. But without any of the context provided by this story, Rogue One feels like an empty adventure with no stakes or connection to reality.

Catalyst is the story of Jyn Erso's parents. One is a crystal scientist, the other is a surveyor. Both are manipulated by the wannabe-mastermind Orsin Krennic, though how they're susceptible to his clumsy plotting is a mystery to me. The story is really heavily invested in convincing the reader that Krennic and Tarkin are two distinct characters who are fighting for influence in the new Empire but honestly, emphasizing their rivalry makes it very obvious that they could've been collapsed into one character and everyone would've been better off.

The most positive thing I got out of this book was an eerie comparison between the nascent Empire and today's world/US politics. Lots of people burying their heads in the sand and denying the possibility of anything bad happening despite power-hungry men taking over the government.

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Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Wanna hear something shocking? I haven't seen Rogue One. Me, the chick who's read nearly every Star Wars book to date, who saw Revenge of the Sith in theaters three times (and cried through each one, mourning the End of Star Wars Movies), who has dressed as Darth Vader and/or Padme Amidala for numerous Halloweens and costume parties, has not seen the most recent Star Wars movie and has no plans to do so. The new canon books started weaning me off Star Wars and The Force Awakens made me go cold turkey. I lapsed a bit last fall and read the first two Thrawn books from the old canon, and I've considered reading the entirety of the old canon again from start to finish, but I just couldn't muster any interest in the new stuff.

But audiobook pickings are slim and typically Star Wars audiobooks are fun, at least, so I checked this one out. My feelings: a resounding "meh."

Freed tries to make you care about these characters. You have to care about them, right? Because we know they get the plans in the end, we need to have something to care about, and they wanted it to be the fate of these characters. But as with so, so many movie-to-book translations, generating internal thoughts and feelings that genuinely motivate the characters' on-screen actions fails in one of two ways. The internal lives of the characters are incoherent, largely because the on-screen action is driven by plot necessity and consistency of character is sacrificed. Or they are wildly grandiose and mercurial, because all the emotion that is typically expressed on screen by slight movements and glances must (for some reason) be explicitly stated, several times, and without any ambiguity or nuance.

Some illustrative, but not literal, examples: "He winced" is my least favorite set of words in this book because it's rarely used in any context where someone would actually wince, and it's never given any space to breathe or left on its own. 'He winced and tried to explain his actions' (nb: not an actual quote) just doesn't work. You don't do those things in the same breath. Or 'Jyn gave a genuine smile. It was the first time Cassian had ever seen her smile for real, and it was so honest and real it made him happy' (again, not a real quote). Also not necessary. There was (again, as typical of movie novelizations) way too much telling instead of showing.

I do appreciate the attempt to show that Jyn really does suffer due to her traumatic upbringing. I think it's a failed attempt (because the book, more than Jyn, seems to fixate on that cave imagery), and a melodramatic attempt, but I like that they tried.

And can we talk about the weirdly homogeneous cast of this story? I know Star Wars Brand is trying so desperately hard to get any points in the representation department - look, they cast pretty fair-skinned brunette white girls as leads for two new movies! - and this one does better than most. I love that Cassian gets to keep his actor's Mexican accent. I love that most of the rest of the main cast are people of color. So good on that front, Star Wars Brand! But it's weird, right, that outside of Mon Mothma, Jyn, and Jyn's mom, there are literally no other women in the story? Right? And that there are like, no non-human characters in this science fiction story set in a universe where there are lots of non-humans? And that Chirrut and Baze are definitely romantic partners but the story never explicitly says it?

Anyway, this didn't make me want to see the movie at all. The ending was a surprise but it didn't pack an emotional impact like it was trying to do.

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Review: Star Wars: Darth Vader, Vol. 1: Vader

Star Wars: Darth Vader, Vol. 1: Vader by Kieron Gillen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I loved the Star Wars EU, so I was pretty sad when they de-canonized them (for months, I teared up every time I saw a bunch of them on a shelf at the library or bookstore). But I was also cautiously hopeful - maybe we'd get new stories that were more inclusive, or maybe as fun as the old ones with a more professional shine to them! Then we'd have two great universes to read in! But honestly, the tone of the EU that I loved, the craziness and campiness and never-ending space opera, was the result of individuals who loved Star Wars. There were some real out-there stories, some terribly bad stories, but they were usually bad because people took risks and they failed. It was fans who made the old EU happen, because they loved it, and the EU grew from the bottom up. And the new novels are entirely the result of top-down story direction, with Disney deciding what plots and character types to include so they can market the books to as wide an audience as possible, and "obsessive, life-long, passionate Star Wars fans who loved the EU" is a very niche audience. You can see it in the recurring bland character types they use for every truly new character. They won't have any Starcaves or MindHarps or Sun Crushers (oh wait...), but I think it will take a while for the books to get back to the beloved, well-worn feel of the old EU, if they ever do. I think it would require Star Wars falling out of the public consciousness for a long time, and there's no way Disney's going to let that happen if it can still make them money.

(Above taken from a comment I made on reddit.com/r/StarWars to provide some context for my feelings).

So, obviously, I've been disappointed by so much of the new EU. But this first volume of the Star Wars: Darth Vader comic has finally given me a new hope for the future of the new canon! For the first time, we get some crazy, strange ideas that aren't slick, consumer-tested plots and characters guaranteed to offend no one, or re-packaged ideas from the original trilogy. And, like in the old EU, I'm not sure these ideas do work - but I'm so excited to see how they work out! There's a woman who's draws heavily on Indiana Jones, an archaeologist-turned-thief who gets recruited to work for Vader himself. And on top of all of that, they're mucking about in the plotlines directly relevant to the original trilogy! Palpatine has a secret group of apprentices(? maybe?), beings trained and scientifically augmented to be weapons that don't necessarily draw on the force. There are psychopathic twins, a person who controls a swarm of flying robots - this is weird shit, folks, and it's all happening during the original trilogy. It's glorious. I want all Star Wars to be like this again.

The story also continues the new EU theme of Vader's ambivalence toward his role as Palpatine's apprentice, and his constant memories of the life he lived before. I don't know yet how I feel about this. In some ways, it makes his conversion in Return of the Jedi make a little more sense, and it provides some character continuity; Anakin doesn't immediately become the monster Vader and change personalities. In others, though, it kind of cheapens the work Luke does throughout the original trilogy. If Vader is doubtful, if Vader has always questioned his choice to embrace the dark side, then Luke's job wasn't actually difficult at all (or at least not as hard as it was made out to be). It definitely works better than in Lords of the Sith, because at this point, Vader's old life has been forcibly re-awakened by Luke's entrance into his life.

I'm not a huge fan of the artwork, though. It stays in incredibly safe, well-trodden territory. I like my art weird and symbolic and colorful and abstract, and Star Wars comic art has generally always been fairly iconic and strictly representative (though I like the strange color palettes for some of the pre-Republic tales in the old EU).

I will gladly keep reading this series, because it's kickass. I want to see more of Indiana Jones-lady. I want to see more of Palpatine's insane kill squad. I want more risky, strange, fun stories in the Star Wars universe.

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Review: Tarkin

Tarkin by James Luceno
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This probably rates 3.5 stars for me - I liked it and think it's much better than almost every other Star Wars book out right now (with the exception of Dark Disciple), and there was nothing hugely wrong with it, but I just wasn't thrilled. The first half of the book gives us Tarkin's surprising (but very severe) backstory via a sort of flashback formula, while the second lets us see Tarkin in action and working with Darth Vader.

Tarkin's backstory is almost laughable, and I don't necessarily believe that it would realistically result in the Tarkin we know and love to hate. It's certainly dramatic, though - his family, from a half-wild planet that they were forced to tame over generations, sends a prepubescent Tarkin with distant relatives into the wild jungle for three months out of the year, where he must catch and kill his own food and fend for himself. The point is to show his mastery of inferior beings by showing his superiority and forcing order upon the wild. To me, it's a little contrived, but hey - they took a risk, and it didn't entirely fail. We return to this story throughout the novel, but it doesn't get any more rewarding - just reiterated. We also get a brief history of Tarkin's career up until the time of the novel.

The actual story has us meet Tarkin shortly after he is put in charge of building the Death Star. A base under his command is attacked, and he realizes there are some sort of insurgent forces at work using 1) stolen or smuggled Imperial ships/materials and 2) really advanced communications-hacking tech (the latter of which he is familiar with, and gives us plenty of callbacks to the Clone Wars series, as in every new SW novel). He and Vader are tasked to find the villains, who eventually steal Tarkin's ship. Spoiler alert: in the end, Tarkin figures everything out and the Imperials win. There are some half-hearted attempts at characters, especially in the insurgent forces, but given that everyone has a tendency to monologue about Tarkin's history as if they know it as well as he does and also monologue about generic Empire Is Bad But Maybe Everyone Is Bad things, I didn't really feel much of anything for anyone. The plot is neither compelling nor surprising, just like the characters. All in all, pretty okay book that at least kept me vaguely interested.

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Review: Aftermath

Aftermath by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

What in the galaxy was the Star Wars Story Group thinking when they okay'd this book for publication?? I actually thought the story was great (compared to other Star Wars new EU books) and the characters were pretty solid. This could've been the best Star Wars novel for the new canon. But if I actually read the sentences, like actually paying attention to the words, it was painful and distracting and very slow going so I ended up skimming/slurring my way through it. Much has been said about what makes the prose unreadable, but I do feel the need to explain because it's so infuriating. Wendig doesn't like verbs, and he loves colons and question marks. So here's some imitative examples:

The writing? Like this. A sentence without verbs, then another.
Sometimes: like this, because colons are preferred.
And another line break. Dramatic.

Some people have claimed that this is just a writing style, and that people who don't like it are just angry because it's not grammatical and instead "colloquial." Um, no. This is not the way people speak. And in fact, Wendig doesn't generally use this style in dialogue. It's just how every character thinks and how the narrative voice functions. People who listened to the audiobook say they didn't notice the weird punctuation, probably because if the punctuation is completely ignored, most of the sentences would actually make sense. Unfortunately, when you're reading the book, the punctuation is very visible and shapes how you parse the sentence. I did several dramatic readings for my boyfriend of sections that were particular stumbling blocks, because this writing works better as a joke than as serious prose. For future writers who want to avoid these mistakes, here are some general rules: don't let your use of colons exceed an average of one per paragraph (and preferably keep it lower); use verbs in at least two out of every three sequential sentences; if you're going to use the format of "Here: something happened. There: something else" actually use the colon both times (not, say, a colon and a comma), because Wendig can't even be consistent in his use of colons. I don't even know whether I blame Wendig or the editors more, because he may have written the sentences, but ANYONE at Disney should have read this and told him, "hey dude, these aren't sentences, try again."

So, that rant aside, there are several other good and bad things about this book. Not all the writing is terrible, and if you listen to the audiobook (as previously mentioned) you might skip the bad writing entirely.

The story focuses on a large and unwieldy cast of characters, some of whom have potential. The planet Akiva, never officially under Imperial rule but still feeling the oppressive taxes and legislation via the satrapy of the planet, is host to a secret meeting of the remaining high-ranking Imperials. Rae Sloane, who made her appearance in A New Dawn, is the lead here, and probably the most empathetic and fleshed-out character in the story. Wedge Antilles discovers the meeting and does exactly one plot-relevant action through the rest of the book. A rebel pilot named Norra Wexley comes home to Akiva to finally be reunited with her teenaged son, Temmin, who has become a tech salvager and seller (and stereotypical Star Wars fan self-insert character!!) in her absence. Temmin has a battle droid named Mister Bones who is comic relief and might be the best part of the book (but comes dangerously close the Jar Jar side of the comic relief spectrum). We also meet Jas, a Zabrak (or something similar) bounty hunter, and Sinjir, a former Imperial loyalty officer (who apparently briefly saw each other on Endor in the very moment they were both having conversion experiences with respect to their Imperial/Rebel alliances? That's a convenient coincidence). About 2/3 of the way through the book there's also a character named Jom who, like Wedge, is introduced and forgotten until the one plot-related action he must perform for the story to work. On the Imperial side, Rae Sloane's assistant also weirdly gets some POV action, but so little and for so little payoff that I honestly can't remember her name. There's also an awesome old female general who gets a pretty powerful speech and then is promptly forgotten, as well as a Sith cultist who does interesting things and then is also forgotten. Instead, the focus goes to Rae (which is well-deserved) and the very bland Panidion (Empire is good, power is necessary, let's attack everyone), and Crassus & the satrap, who are not even Imperials and are both basically the same character.

So some of my problems with the characters should be obvious: there are a hell of a lot of them, and several only exist so that some of the extremely convoluted plot elements can go as Wendig wants them to. But there's another weird quality that I'd like to draw attention to. The main cast of characters (Norra, Temmin, Jas, Sinjir, and Mister Bones) are strikingly similar to the cast of Rebels. Norra and Hera are both Rebel pilots who serve in a motherly role toward the younger characters, keep the group together, and have actual passion for their mission. Temmin and Ezra are both scrappy 15-year-olds who are street-smart petty criminals and whose (taken from the description of Ezra on the Wiki page for Rebels) "eyes get opened to what the Empire's capable of, his eyes are opened to the fact that there are people who care, who are trying to fight the good fight..." Jas and Sabine are both tough (and relatively young, as we see Jas is still thinking about her mom and aunt throughout the story), and rebellious beyond Rebel-type rebellious-ness. Sinjir is less a direct mapping onto Kanan as the rest of the characters, but both are the reluctant hero stereotype who come to see the moral right of the rebellion/New Republic. And Mister Bones, like Chopper, is (again, description of Chopper from the Wiki page), "an older model that they patched up with replacement parts, making a finicky but at least functional droid." And, SPOILER ALERT, after their mission, the ragtag accidental team gets a ship and goes out on missions throughout the galaxy together, which is one of the least realistic endings to a story I've read, even in Star Wars. These characters do not gel. The book is interesting because of that hodge-podge nature of their personalities, but it's completely ridiculous to have them be a permanent team at the end.

Also in terms of character development, Jas has some weird fucking dialogue about wanting to "couple" with Sinjir that is completely unprompted (either in subject matter or in word choice) that serves only to explicitly mention Sinjir's homosexuality, which was already referenced clearly enough that I got the picture. I am 150% behind the inclusion of LGBT characters in Star Wars but 1) you don't have to make it awkward like that and 2) you don't have to follow the awkward up with a joke about how "hur dur you're gay you must be into the 15-year-old boy" because that's honestly just gross and homophobic.

And my last comment on character development for now is that having Ackbar concerned about traps one time is maybe funny, but verging on overdone. Having him worry about whether "it's a trap" every time we see his character is boring and tired.

Now, the structure of the book has three chapters of story followed by one-chapter "interludes," aka potential spin-off stories that focus on normal people in the wake of the fall of the Empire. And this is a pretty cool idea, though it makes the story feel choppy and even further exacerbates the sheer number of characters in this story, especially because the interludes aren't quite evenly spaced so it feels uneven. But my critique of this part is a little more nuanced. There are 15 interludes in the story. Three focus on Mon Mothma's female PR representative at an interview with a female TV personality. One focuses on Mon Mothma. The rest are all male-led, and generally are all about either young boys (between 9 and 14) or middle-aged men. In fact, there are only three female characters with lines in the rest of the 11 interlude chapters (7, counting the Mon Mothma & PR chapters), where there are at least 24 male characters who both have lines and perform significant actions. This probably seems nit-picky to people, but to me, it reveals how strongly Disney is committed to the *appearance* of diversity over actual diversity. It's even more frustrating that even among the male characters we get very little deviation in personality - hardened middle-aged men and spunky young boys are basically all we get, with some variation in whether the middle-aged men are tired of war or invigorated by the victory of the New Republic.

As for story, there's a pretty interesting plot that kept me interested. The Ragtag Group of Rebels is trying to let the New Republic know that the Empire is on Akiva, and trying to either kill or capture the Imperials in the process, while the Imperials are trying to figure out what to do with the Empire. But the execution is at points excruciatingly convoluted and unnecessary. here's a little bit of a spoiler-y list.

-Wedge is sneaking around the Imperial stronghold after escaping, and nudges a vase and almost gets caught. But wait!!!! The vase opens a secret tunnel!!! Like, why not just have him successfully hide? He could have completed the same very specific plot action that way.

-We also get so many scenes of Jom trying and failing to shoot a ship before he successfully shoots a ship - and those are basically the only scenes he has in the entire book. Just have that go on in the background and attribute it to the general uprising going on, there's no need to add in a character and 6 extra scenes to explain a single shot.

-And speaking of Jom - both Jom and Jas get RIDICULOUS scenes where they kick a blaster out of someone's hand/holster with "the tip of [their] boot", catch it, and shoot someone dead in one motion. As a bonus, Jom, whose arm is broken, soon after picks up a blaster AND a person's body and shoves them into a locker. With one arm. This kind of absurdly lucky/unrealistic action is pervasive throughout the novel - see my next example.

-Temmin pole-vaults from a wall onto a flying shuttle - why is the shuttle flying so close to the wall, which is being swarmed by dissident locals? It must be within, say, 10 feet of the wall, which seems a bizarrely low flight path even on a normal day.

-Similar to Wedge's miracle tunnel, there happens to be HUGE air ducts on the shuttle, large enough for Temmin to crawl around in, which again, is strange, because you'd think ships would use their space more efficiently than that.

A lot of other people have complained about the insertion of real-world terms into the Star Wars universe - specifically pointing out that satraps are real things and wouldn't be in the Star Wars world. But we have an Empire and and Emperor, so like, yeah? Sometimes real words are used in Star Wars, and that's okay. I'll agree that Wendig doesn't have a grip on how to translate things into Star Wars-ese - why the hell would any character use the term "space diapers" and not just diapers? And the blatant insertion of Settlers of Catan (only using "space highways" instead of roads) was cringeworthy.

Another complaint a lot of people have is that this wasn't what was marketed, since it barely has any traditional Star Wars characters in it. I disagree. I thought it was a pretty smartly situated story and the interludes, at least, gave us a fuller view of the world post-ROTJ. And the best part...

MAJOR POTENTIAL SPOILER FOLLOWS HERE:
I'm very very excited about the epilogue, which features Rae Sloane talking to a mysterious, eccentric Imperial Admiral. Please dear god let it be Thrawn, but also please dear god let it not be Thrawn-written-by-Wendig.

To the Star Wars story group: please, please put anyone but Chuck Wendig on the next novel. I know he's supposed to write all three, but I am not going to spend money on anything else he writes. If you have to, get a ghost-writer or at least edit the book before you put it out.

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Review: Star Wars: Scoundrels

Star Wars: Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As far as Star Wars EU goes, this is one of the gems - but that is to be expected from Timothy Zahn, whose Heir to the Empire trilogy is often cited as the best Star Wars EU material ever written. I don't think I would go that far with this book, but it's certainly a fun ride.

The story is a grand heist a la Ocean's 11, with Han and Chewie assembling a team of rogues and scoundrels (hence the title) to steal credits - and later, other sensitive materials - out of an extremely well-protected vault. Because this is Star Wars and these are criminals, Black Sun and the Falleen are involved, and there are other cameos from Winter and Lando. It's a well-structured heist and it did a good job of unfolding the plan to us without ever saying it outright until the plan was happening, but I also feel like there was a lot of deliberate obfuscation in order to do that, and a lot of characters only existed so that this plan could happen successfully. I'm not even talking about the team - the character of Deja, the Imperial spy, only exists so that his connections can make sure that certain characters escape capture.

One of the biggest things that is often lacking in Star Wars is the worldbuilding. People tend to rely on the Force and the Skywalkers and the sheer immensity of the universe and don't bother to add much further. I thought Zahn's idea of elemental festivals was really cool (although, again, they seemed to exist mostly to make Han's plan feasible) and his descriptions were beautiful.

I cared absolutely zero about any of the characters, though. Winter was an interesting touch, but as much as her sadness about Alderaan and what she believes happened to Leia is played up, it never really connected. I liked Bink and Tavia and Rochelle as ideas but wasn't invested, though I'd be interested in seeing them fleshed out the future (though that's not gonna happpen now). Zerba, Kel, and Dozer were all bland at best and annoying at worst. Even Han, Chewie, and Lando were not particularly compelling, so all this book really had going for it was the heist story - which was serviceable, but not my thing. None of the characters go through any changes, and (spoiler alert) they don't even get the financial payoff they expected even though the heist goes exactly according to plan.

My main motivation for reading this - other than it being a Zahn story - is that there are rumors of a Han Solo/bounty hunter collaboration/heist movie coming out as one of the Star Wars: Anthology films, and I suspect that this might be the inspiration. I'd be interested in seeing a different draft of this filmed (I'm particularly antsy to see a Star Wars bounty hunter film where the gender divide is actually almost at parity like this one!!), though I'd be disappointed if they kept the same backdrop (though I doubt this will provide anything more than ideological inspiration). And hopefully, they don't keep the ending - though knowing Star Wars, they probably willE
Pretty big spoiler directly below.
And WHY IS THE CLIMAX OF THE BOOK AN INDIANA JONES JOKE?? HAN RUNNING FROM THE GIANT SPHERICAL SAFE WHILE WAVING A LIGHT WHIP IS RIDICULOUS AND HILARIOUS BUT LIKE THAT'S ACTUALLY ONE OF THE MOST PLOT-SIGNIFICANT EVENTS.

Spoiler alert. Very very significant spoiler follows. Do not read unless you want the whole book spoiled.

So the reveal at the absolute end of the story in the last several lines of the book cheapened a lot of it for me. I laughed out loud on the treadmill while listening to it. Inger was an annoying, suspicious, groveling character for the whole story and while I know Boba Fett is a great bounty hunter, there's very little in his character that suggests he would be such a good actor. An assassin, yes, but one that acts by brute force more than deception and intrigue. I like that his plan is actually quite elegant with a potentially huge payoff for him, but it seems incredibly overcomplicated to bring in so many excess people for two kills. Again, he's a killer, not a spy. It just doesn't feel realistic and is only there for shock value. If Inger was any other bounty hunter, I'd believe it and think the main twist (that Inger is not who he says he is) was actually pretty cool. As is, it feels silly and forced - but hey, Star Wars is supposed to be fun, I guess.

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Review: Dark Disciple

Dark Disciple by Christie Golden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finally, out of all the unreadable muck that Star Wars has been publishing this year, comes a decent book. It's not a great novel, but it is on par with and has the same slightly-cheesy action/character drama combo flavor as the Star Wars novels of the late EU. And, again, it was actually pleasant to read, unlike every other book to come out of the franchise in the past year.

The story is adapted from unproduced scripts for episodes of the Clone Wars TV series (which were originally penned by Lucas's daughter, I believe). It features fan favorite Jedi-turned-Sith-turned-bounty hunter Asajj Ventress alongside Jedi Master Quinlan Vos, with appearances from the versions of Obi-Wan, Anakin, Count Dooku, Commander Cody, and comically stupid combat droids that viewers of Clone Wars will recognize. It definitely reads as if it were the show on paper; there is a lot of cheesy banter and exasperated-but-loving sighs and constant acknowledgment of the endearing character flaws of other characters, and reading it was like watching the show come to life in my head (although I'll confess I've watched less than a season of it - I'm trying, though, now that it's one of the only pieces of SW canon!). Usually, this tv-melodrama feeling is enjoyable and doesn't take away from the story, though there are a lot of sequences where long periods of time are squished into a chapter or a paragraph, as if some episodes were skipped or condensed into a montage. Those sequences usually serve to shortcut character development, and while it feels a little clumsy, the characters are consistent enough that I can suspend my disbelief and roll with it.

The plot is pretty contrived, though. (Lots of spoilers follow.) It seems like every step along the way was a terrible idea that could have been done any number of better, simpler ways but for the sake of the plot (spoilers follow) and for the sake of putting Vos and Ventress together the writers complicated things beyond what any of those characters would reasonably do. Okay, the Council decides to assassinate Dooku. I can believe that; I'm actually surprised that any of them would object to it, because I don't think assassination of the enemy commander is such a huge crime in the middle of a war. And they want Vos to go undercover... okay, and get close to Dooku? I guess I can get that. Oh, wait, he's not undercover with Dooku, but with Dooku's former apprentice Ventress who has tried (and failed) to kill Dooku twice? And he's not allowed to tell her that killing Dooku is his goal or that he's a Jedi? So... he's just going to roll with the whole "you need to use the dark side to be able to kill Dooku" thing, no questions asked... And when they do try to kill Dooku they don't try to do it subtly but instead take him head-on in combat, exactly the way that Ventress (and many others) have failed to do it before? And when they suspect that Vos has turned, they think the best way to test him would be to send him into combat against Dooku with Ventress, AGAIN. Where is the famous Jedi wisdom? I get that this would be a much more believable plot if played out over the course of a season of episodes, but even some minor tweaks would've closed some of the giant holes.

The Vos/Ventress relationship was cheesy - like many things in this story - but so are most Star Wars romances, and it was fun and adorable to watch. I cared about them, wanted them to work out. But god fucking damn everyone involved because like every other god damned female character in Star Wars aside from Leia herself, Ventress dies so that Vos (and the all-male Jedi Council) can have Important Character Development (her death turns Vos back from the dark side and the Council realizes how they have strayed from their mission, if even Ventress was a better example for Vos than they were). What the fucking hell. They used this device in one of the other four books to come out this year, Heir to the Jedi, and it was gross and predictable then, too (especially since Luke has chronically had a problem of his love interests dying tragic deaths since the dawn of SW books). If anything, Ventress's death should have turned Vos AWAY from the Jedi because his connection with her (explicitly forbidden by them) was what saved him.

Ventress was fucking awesome. She is one of the only characters who has walked both light and dark paths and decided to stay pretty neutral on the whole thing, and defeated the weird magical grip the dark side seems to have - which is another gripe I've always had with Star Wars, regarding their insistence on a dichotomy where one side is so obviously evil and warps the mind but the other is perfect and those are the only two ways to use the Force and not allowing any moral ambiguity to exist. Almost 100% of the time, any character shown to be interested in something other than the light side of the Force - even going to places where Force sensitives have completely different ways of accessing the Force outside the light/dark dichotomy - turns evil. Ventress didn't, which is a good step for the EU to take. But she died because it was important that she die for Vos's character development, and that's another tired pattern they need to end, stat.

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Review: Lords of the Sith

Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This isn't the worst Star Wars book to come out of the new canon, but that's only because "Heir to the Jedi" exists. The story is one (or maybe two connected) large action sequence(s). Palpatine and Vader get wind of a large Twi'lek resistance movement that is actually causing some problems for the Empire, so they decide to visit in order to draw the resistance out and make them expend all of their resources before they can get any more problematic. And that's exactly what happens. V+E show up, the Twi'lek try (pretty successfully, actually) to destroy their Star Destroyer, but V+E survive and land on the surface of Ryloth, the Twi'lek homeworld, where they are chased by both the resistance and a swarm of giant, man-eating bugs. Spoiler alert: Vader and the Emperor both live.

Things I really didn't like:
The whole tension of the book was "will Vader and Palpatine live?" and the answer, from the beginning, is OF COURSE THEY FUCKING WILL, because this is set prior to Return of the Jedi. There is never any doubt at all that they will win.

The leader of the Twi'lek resistance is the father of Hera from Star Wars: Rebels. Because, again, of course he is. Star Wars has always been about marketing their merchandise, but at this point, they're sacrificing quality for name-dropping.

All of the characters were pretty damn forgettable. There's like half a dozen Twi'lek rebels and I can't remember a single one's name. Two (Mr. Hera's Dad and his angry second-in-command lady) have kind of memorable character traits.

The pacing is awful. Two chapters of introduction to the situation and the Twi'lek characters, then like 8 chapters of space battle, another chapter or two of "okay so what's the situation now" then another 8 chapters of ground chase and battle.

Things that were actually kind of okay:
Paul Kemp did a pretty good job of salvaging a few characters. Every scene that wasn't part of the interminable battle sequences was interesting. The main female Twi'lek has a scene in a city on Ryloth where she rescues an enslaved Twi'lek woman, which was cool because it showed us more about her character and more about the world. There are a few decent scenes where Vader is kind of conflicted about his identity and starts remembering what it was like to be Anakin (though again, it seemed like these existed largely to name-drop characters from The Clone Wars). But it was a realistic conflict, since Anakin did a lot of freedom fighting in his day, and because he's on the front lines, flying ships and fighting a war, for the first time since becoming Vader.

Moff Mors, the first LGBT character in the new canon (and like the third in Star Wars ever), isn't totally sucky. Her main characteristic is that she's terrible at her job, but it's conveniently explained about halfway through the book that it's because she became despondent and spice-addicted when her wife died. It's pretty okay representation, and hopefully it will get better.

That's basically my feelings on this whole book: it's pretty okay, and hopefully all of this new stuff will get better. Because if it stays this bad I'm gonna have to just stop entirely.

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Review: Heir to the Jedi

Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is one of the worst Star Wars-branded books I've ever read (and I read the Lando Calrissian trilogy, along with the vast majority of SW books in existence). I don't even know where to start. As another reviewer has mentioned, I was initially put off by how large the typeface was - it made me feel like this book was written for the 12-16 age group, and what I read really just confirmed that impression.

1) The idea of a first-person book narrated by Luke Skywalker is fantastic. Get inside the head of the character everyone loves, see what motivates him and drives him, change up the typical format for Star Wars novels and how that the new EU is gonna be different. But it fails so, so hard. First-person narration gives a lot of opportunity for characterization, but it also demands an actual character that has a particular perspective and doesn't automatically know everything. This book felt like it was originally in third person and then they changed all of the instances of "Luke" to "I." When the author DOES try for characterization, Luke ends up being a clueless caricature of ANH!Luke and also using the word "awkward" six times a page. HEY I'M SO AWKWARD WITH GIRLS. I WISH I WAS LESS AWKWARD. WOW IT TURNS OUT THIS GIRL MIGHT BE INTO MY AWKWARDNESS?? Luke sounds like a 14-year-old boy who's never spoken to a girl before. Part of this may be due to how naive Luke is in ANH, and how bland he tends to be as a character in general, but I'd definitely blame the execution over the source material in this case (because I actually LIKE Luke in the original trilogy). There's just no subtlety in any of the characterization or dialogue (when Luke meets Nakari, he almost literally says 'Wow, we're both from desert planets and we both like ships. She understands that I like ships because ships take you away from desert planets').

(There were also some weird places where it changed tense. Things like starting a sentence with "I think" or "I believe" and then commenting on what's happening in the plot, with the rest of the sentence in past tense. Like, what? I guess Luke is telling the story to us at some point in the future? Even though that's not explicitly stated or even implied anywhere except in those weird, out-of-place sentences?)

2) The pacing was terrible, from the arc of the novel as a whole to individual scenes. The story arc felt more like a video game than a novel - Luke starts with small missions, basically gaining XP, a party, and weapons upgrades before going off on the main quest. Every time he leaves the Alliance base, Leia runs after him and tells him something he needs to know right before he leaves (why didn't she tell him in the briefing, which was the previous scene, if this is so vital to the mission??). There is literally no time unaccounted for from the start of the novel to the end and there are almost no scene transitions; Luke will finish up doing an activity, then describe how he spent the next six hours in one sentence, and then do another activity while still in the same paragraph. It was really disjointed and jolting, and could've been solved by a simple break in the page.

Individual scenes also felt mis-ordered. When Nakari's father is introduced, Luke has one of his present-tense moments and says that he's not sure whether he made a good impression on Nakari's father, and then tells the reader that Nakari's father likes to yell at his employees and calls them minions, but always ends the request with a softer, kinder aside. And then we meet Nakari's father and he does just that. Why did we need Luke to explain to us a character trait that evidenced was right there, two paragraphs down? Why did we need him to talk about the impression he left BEFORE the scene where he meets the guy?

3) There was a lot of unnecessary explanation that didn't read well at all. I read a lot of sci-fi and I'm very familiar with the infodump and how clunky it can be - but most infodumps actually flesh out the world and make it interesting. Luke's occasional attempts to understand the Force were dull reiterations of knowledge the reader already knows (maybe an attempt to re-canonize certain aspects of the Force, I guess?), and there was a lot of time spent explaining why Luke knows things that are going on in other places that he shouldn't know (because this book doesn't understand how first person narration works, but it knows that it's not doing it right).

4) The other characters were either boring or paper-thin, with one characteristic that was hammered into you. Nakari was a pretty-female-sniper version of Luke, didn't have any flaws, and liked to state as obviously as possible that she likes how awkward Luke is (because at this point, the book is obviously directed at awkward teenage boys who just want pretty, not-awkward girls to tell them they're cute), and really made Luke unnecessary. The mission was originally a one-person mission, and she had a great ship, was a great pilot, and was a much better shot than Luke, and he asks her to come along to help, and then she basically stands there and lets Luke do almost everything. Dursil, the Givin woman they rescue, comes from a species that likes math a lot, so obviously, she doesn't understand subtleties of emotion and all of her dialogue and actions involve liking math. She reminded me a lot of Sheldon, from The Big Bang Theory, possibly one of the most tired and unfriendly portrayals of nerds in existence. Nakari's dad had his one thing, mentioned earlier. (They also forced in an anachronistic joke about "foiling" an equation that the characters found a lot funnier than the reader did.) And even Luke was just awkward, with little other characterization.

And last, but possibly the worst (major spoiler alert):

4) The main female character lasts long enough to encourage Luke to actually use the Force, and then dies, which finally allows Luke to grieve. FUCK THAT SHIT. Luke had ENOUGH love interests die in various (much more interesting) ways in the old EU. I am goddamn tired of introducing females as love interests only to kill them off when the main male character has gotten all the character development he can suck out of them. It's boring, it's misogynistic, and it's incredibly frustrating. She literally dies at the end of the mission, after she's done everything she can to help Luke finish the mission (which is really very little, since this book is just about how awesome Luke is), and her death only serves to help Luke process all of his repressed feelings of loss cf. Uncle Owen/Aunt Beru/Biggs Darklighter.

There were a few good things - once the action got rolling, I could get immersed for at least a few pages before some stilted dialogue or strange pacing or really unsubtle attempt at characterization distracted me. I really liked the idea of the Givin (though not the execution), and several alien species were interesting too. There were also a couple of funny moments.

To sum up: I think this book should not have been geared toward an adult audience. The bland characterization, the completely unsubtle nature of all the dialogue and plot, and the emphasis on Luke's awkwardness and his infatuation with Nakari make it a much better fit for younger readers. However, the lack of any voice or perspective in a first-person story, the uneven and sometimes confusing pacing, the lack of interesting/developed characters, and the existence/fridging of the main female character solely to serve the main male character's development really make it unsuitable for ANY audience.

Edit: I also feel incredibly ripped off, because one of the last (sort-of) trilogies published in the old EU started with Razor's Edge (featuring Leia) and Honor Among Thieves (ft. Han) and was presumably going to end with a Luke centric book (with a suspiciously similar plot), and the first two were definitely in my top 10 SW books. To have the old EU end when it was going in such a positive direction and to start the new one with this and Tarkin... such a bummer.

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