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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