Star Wars Books Thread

[Mr Light]

Which reminds me of another thing, did ANY characters Lost Stars appear in Bloodline? I expected one or both of the leads to at least cameo, unless they did and I just forgot their names...
I also read someone say the book is full of subtle Mad Max Fury Road references, but I didn't notice a single one.

 

[The Wormhole]

^^The leads from Lost Stars don't appear in Bloodline. Off the top of my head, Yendor, an X-Wing pilot from Lost Stars is in Bloodline. Not sure about anyone else.

 

[Mr Light]

Seems like a wasted opportunity to reuse those two characters.

 

[Reverend]

Remember that last we saw of them was several decades prior to Bloodline and IIRC Ciena was still a Republic POW. If they want to continue their story, having one or both of them pop-up in Leia's book would hinder that and limit their options.

 

[Mr Light]

Looked it up; Bloodline takes place 24 years after ROTJ, 6 years before TFA.

Maybe she's served her sentence after 24 years? And the guy would presumably be a high ranking officer in the New Republic.

 

[Set Harth]

I also read someone say the book is full of subtle Mad Max Fury Road references, but I didn't notice a single one.

I'm sure it was MEDIOCRE!!!

 

[Reverend]

Looked it up; Bloodline takes place 24 years after ROTJ, 6 years before TFA.

Maybe she's served her sentence after 24 years? And the guy would presumably be a high ranking officer in the New Republic.

Yes I know, my point was that if they intend to continue their stories they'd want to pick back up right after they left off. Having either of them show up first in another unrelated story set 20 odd years later would limit what they could do and all for the sake of a needless cameo.
Maybe they are still serving in the military. Maybe they retired to some quiet backwater, Maybe they both died heroically years ago. That story has yet to be told.

It's the same reason they won't have Ahsoka, Kanan Ezra or the Ghost crew cameo in anything set after their series, at least not until after their stories are told and their fates are known. See also why Luke and Ben are mentioned in this book, but did not appear. They'll get to their story later on down the line.

 

[Mr Light]

That's assuming Lucasfilm is interested in doing a proper Lost Stars sequel, though. They don't seem terribly interested in telling a continuing story with new characters at this point, just a long series of one-offs (with the exception of Sloane appearing in a couple places).

 

[Reverend]

I'm not saying they are and I'm not saying they aren't. I'm saying they currently have that option and putting in a cameo as you suggest would potentially hinder any such thing and to no great profit. Better on balance to keep their options open.

That said, Lost Stars is by far the most successful of the new canon books to date (critically at least, not sure on the sales front.) So the likelihood that they'd consider commissioning another in the series is decidedly higher than it is for anything else they've done to date.

 

[Set Harth]

If Bloodline is supposed to be 24 years after ROTJ, I wonder why they apparently used an OT-era image of Leia on the cover. Did they think the shadow effects would hide it?

 

[WebLurker]

An interesting "Star Wars" book
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24611638-luke-skywalker-can-t-read

This idea really interests me
http://www.tor.com/2012/10/03/most-citizens-of-the-star-wars-galaxy-are-probably-totally-illiterate/

I've had this idea that space travel and long-storage media have been around in the SW universe so long that things have gotten stagnant.

We do see a lot of printed signage in the canon, so it's fairly easy to assume that literacy is probably about as common as it is here in the real world, if not more so. For example, multilingual-ness is very common, even along slaves and the poor in the backwaters (Phantom Menace, The Force Awakens). Also, Rey's Survival Guide establishes that Rey (who's probably one of the lowest in social and economic standing that we've seen in the series) can read and write (the conceit of the book is that the reader found a handwritten journal that Rey kept during her time on Jakku).

 

[Reverend]

^I wouldn't credit a bit of tie-in merchandising fluff as demonstrating Rey's literacy.

A much better indicator is her technical knowledge. It's one thing to know from experience what shiny metal things are the most valuable and where in the wrecks to find them, it's quite another to actually know what they are, what they do and how to get them working again. The only way she could have learnt most of that given her situation would most likely have been via old Imperial and Alliance technical readouts and maintenance logs. Indeed, those old computer banks may well have been how she taught herself to read in the first place.

I suddenly have an image of a ten year old Rey, huddled in her walker at night with a half functioning old astromech's head, looking at it's holographic projections of X-wing schematics.

 

[WebLurker]

^I wouldn't credit a bit of tie-in merchandising fluff as demonstrating Rey's literacy.

A much better indicator is her technical knowledge. It's one thing to know from experience what shiny metal things are the most valuable and where in the wrecks to find them, it's quite another to actually know what they are, what they do and how to get them working again. The only way she could have learnt most of that given her situation would most likely have been via old Imperial and Alliance technical readouts and maintenance logs. Indeed, those old computer banks may well have been how she taught herself to read in the first place.

I wasn't citing "merchandising fluff," but a piece of canonical material (no different than citing a Star Trek in relation to a Star Trek movie). That book, incidentally, also notes that that she did collect old schematics from the wrecks to learn what had value and what was worthless.

[QUOTE="Reverend, post: 11609157]I suddenly have an image of a ten year old Rey, huddled in her walker at night with a half functioning old astromech's head, looking at it's holographic projections of X-wing schematics.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I'd like to see an official (or fan-made art) of that too. (The books state that she had a computer, not a droid head, but who cares for the sake of a picture?)

 

[The Wormhole]

I wasn't citing "merchandising fluff," but a piece of canonical material

Despite the party line from Disney and the Story Group, I'd be hesitant to treat a lot of the material released in the pre-TFA build-up as 100% hard canon, given how many errors and inconsistencies with TFA pop up, like the Finn centred YA novel getting his backstory completely wrong with what was established about him in TFA.

 

[WebLurker]

Despite the party line from Disney and the Story Group, I'd be hesitant to treat a lot of the material released in the pre-TFA build-up as 100% hard canon, given how many errors and inconsistencies with TFA pop up, like the Finn centred YA novel getting his backstory completely wrong with what was established about him in TFA.

If you're referring to Before the Awakening, I read it. I have a copy of it. It's in line with the movie. (In fact, it was used as backstory in the movie's junior novelization, which is also considered canon -- albeit a little more squishy in continuity due to the realities of novelizing movies before the final cut is finished).

In any franchise, errors will pop up, due to accidents, the realities of trying to create interlocking materials in a franchise were new stuff is being produced at the same time. It has happened before in the Star Wars franchise and it will happene again. But, we have plenty of examples in Star Trek of mistakes and errors in specific episodes and movies, and we're not debating if those installments are canon like the people who created them told us they are.

And in the case of the Star Wars Story Group material, we're getting unprecedented levels of corroboration across media (like Episode 8 director Rian Johnson contributing to the storyline of the Episode 7 prequel novel Bloodlines, Force Awakens backstory being seeded into the Dark Times-era young adult book series Servants of the Empire, which also overlapped with a TV crossover in Star Wars: Rebels). I've also listened to podcasts interviewing writers for the Story Group, who've gone one record that they're seeding stuff in media today for future projects and stories years down the road. So, until the time that Disney chooses to create another reboot, I think we can safely say that Star Wars is going canon across everything and it's here to stay, because so far, they've delivered.

 

[The Wormhole]

If you're referring to Before the Awakening, I read it. I have a copy of it. It's in line with the movie. (In fact, it was used as backstory in the movie's junior novelization, which is also considered canon -- albeit a little more squishy in continuity due to the realities of novelizing movies before the final cut is finished).

This is covered in page 13 of this very thread, basically the Before the Awakening novel has Phasma believing Finn has the makings to be a strong commander, until she has to reprimand him for his hesitancy to kill, while in the movie she describes as "unremarkable" and notes that prior to breaking Poe of his cell never had a blotch on his record.

 

[WebLurker]

This is covered in page 13 of this very thread, basically the Before the Awakening novel has Phasma believing Finn has the makings to be a strong commander, until she has to reprimand him for his hesitancy to kill, while in the movie she describes as "unremarkable" and notes that prior to breaking Poe of his cell never had a blotch on his record.

Phasma isn't worried about Finn's ability to kill in the book; she worried that his solidarity with his squadmates may override his unquestioning obedience to his superiors. She also deals with it and has reason to think that that problem has been solved (Finn complies and keeps his further feelings of not fitting in and disillusion with the First Order to himself). At the end of the story, when she sees him not shooting back in the training session, she merely concludes that Finn won't reach the potential she thought he would and is planning to evaluate his performance in the Jakku mission to decide what to do with him (what would've happened had he failed somehow and not defected is never completely addressed).

In the movie, after Finn's defection and his superiors are reviewing the case, this's what's said:

Phasma: "FN-2187 reported to my division, was evaluated and sent to reconditioning."
Hux: "No prior signs of non-conformity?"
Phasma: "This was his first offense."

That's got nothing to do with the book, since the point is that there was no evidence in Finn's background that he would turn traitor and try to defect. (The non-conformity line is a little tricky, but you need to take it in context, esp. since empathy wouldn't seen to fit a violent defection like they're experiencing.)

 

[Set Harth]

I've also listened to podcasts interviewing writers for the Story Group, who've gone one record that they're seeding stuff in media today for future projects and stories years down the road.

God help us.

 

[Mr Light]

But the entire Finn short story showed he was "non-conformist" to Phasma.

There's also the fact the the Poe short story established that his FIRST mission with the Resistance is to find Lor San Tekka, and that this happened short before the movie, yet now we're getting an *ongoing* comic book about him being a Resistance pilot prior to the movie.

 

[Ithekro]

Are you sure it is as a Resistance pilot or as a Republic pilot?