It's funny because I prefer those stories. Some of my favorites are those style about characters who get to look from the outside in on the bigger characters.
That all just comes down to personal preference, I guess. I can tolerate books like that, but they have to have a story that I find compelling, and writing that I consider good. That's why I like
Thrawn, because it compensates for its bad choice of focus by being strong in other areas. For me,
Phasma doesn't do that.
I would recommend avoiding SW books from now on.
Uh...no? Whyt would I do that? Sure, I avoid some books that I definitely have no interest in, like the YA BS, that recent book about Padme, etc. But I'm going to at least glance at the general audience SW books that have subjects that I'm at least hypothetically interested in. Since they only produce about 1-2 actual books a year, its not like I use up too much time, especially compared to the old EU that was prolific and filled with books I wanted to read.
Funny enough, I feel that way now about Rogue One, which strikes me as even almost as unnecessary as The Phantom Menace. It was well done, creatively crafted and matter very little to me in the end. Solo at least let me care more about Han than I did before, which is saying something since I thought very little of him.
I like Han well enough, I've loved some of the EU books focused on him, but I just hate what they did in the film, from his stupid backstory to all the pointless "origins" and a plot filled with characters I couldn't stand (except Lando, I'd be up for a solo Lando movie).
Why not? Framing a character from an outside perspective is a very common literary technique. In any event, in the main story (Phasma and the others journey across her homeworld), Phasma is the central character. She's the one leading, making the decisions, pursuing an end goal. The point of the novel is explaining to us who Phasma is, where she came from, why she does what she does in the movies. That's what what defines a protagonist character. There are certainly side characters who get their own material (Cardinal and Siv), but that's business as usual in novels, movies, and the like.
For me, if we're not getting that story from Phasma's viewpoint, then we're not getting the story. Its more efficient to read that from the wiki, since while its still basically someone telling you the story its shorter, its better written and you can avoid all the BS with the pointless side characters.
As was clarified, I was talking about the trilogy of novels, not the YA series (good memory though, that Anderson wrote both). Not a huge fan of either (although I probably came to the YJK books too old to appreciate them).
Yeah, I definitely misunderstood what books you were talking about, but since I like both series and consider them pretty good my point still works of them being better then a lot of the new canon.
I have yet to hear a reason why the book wasn't about Phasma beyond "other characters had story arcs" and "she wasn't the POV character," neither of which are valid arguments (see above for reasons why it is about her, for example).
They are totally valid arguments. Again, the book isn't about her, its about two morons that will never be mentioned outside of the book (unless the author of
Phasma writes another book, which I hope doesn't happen but Disney has very low standards when it comes to employing authors for SW books so they probably will hire this author again). If the two morons had just been characters in Phasma's story, then it would have been fine (well, they still would have been crap, badly written characters, but from a story structure standpoint it would have been acceptable). As it is, its false advertising and just a terrible decision. I want to know why I should give a shit about less interesting boba Fett analogue, and I want to get inside her head and experience her story. I don't want to read about two idiots telling crappy stories in a book called
Phasma.
The point is, Phasma not being the POV character has zero bearing on whether the book is about her or not (and, for the last time, there is no reason to believe otherwise, unless you have something you haven't brought up yet.
It isn't about her, period. Unless it is told from her POV, including her thoughts and with her being the story, its not about her. It was deceptive, the book should have been called
Random Imperial and Random Resistance Cliches have a Chat about things that kind of (sometimes) relate to Captain Phasma. As it is, its just a worthless waste of paprer, money and everyone's time that can easily be skipped by reading the wiki and losing nothing by experiencing the information that way (Its actually even better, since you don't actually have to read a bad book to get the few relevant pieces of information from that book).
Also, none of this addresses that the book is just shit regardless. Like I said, I forgave
Thrawn for having most of the same problems as
Phasma because it was well written and had a compelling story.
Edit: Just noticed this response, it was originally misquoted as a quote from my post so I didn't notice it
Which article are we talking about? The one for the novel, character biographies, etc.? As far as you not reading the whole thing, it is pretty darn relevant. Summaries often skip little details and nuances that make the whole picture, meaning that you can miss stuff that adds up to a notable whole. Besides, your conclusions directly contradict stuff in the parts of the novel that you didn't read.
With how horrendous
Inferno Squad is, there is nothing to miss but bad writing. Also, none of my conclusions contradicted the novel. Idiot Cultish Pilot begins and ends the book as a brainwashed Imperial toady with no real motivation except "What does the Empire want me to do". Even characters like Darth Vader and Tarkin had motivations and thoughts outside of blindly serving Palpatine (in the tie in material at least), because most writers know you can't have a compelling main character that is just basically a tool for the Empire with no outside stuff. Hell, in the EU Mara Jade was literally called the Emperor's hand and in books taking place before Palpatine's death even she, at the time a literal tool of Palpatine, had her own thoughts and motivations.
Once again, its fine if you like
Inferno Squad and its characters. I just happen to find it an infuriating, badly written book that only isn't the worst book ever published under the SW brand because
Lost Stars exists. We all like different things, and I'm getting tired of arguing about a book that doesn't even deserve to exist, much less take up so much of my time. I'd prefer to go back to never thinking about it, outside of the times where I'm specifically thinking about the worst SW books.
. They're also almost certainly more complex and better written then Inferno Squad, and probably have much better characters.
