Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Review: Dark Disciple

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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