Star Wars Books Thread
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That's Girls Gone Wild Space
That's where Thrawn went.
Thrawn was a party machine. Just look at his eyes, the dude was always stoned or hungover.
Zeltros?
I'm reading Shadows Of The Empire for the first time. I did have the game and played it a little, but I was more into Rogue Squadron than Shadows. I think the game/book came out when I was in high school and while I was still a film/game fan I wasn't reading any EU at that time. And as time went on I actually confused it with another book and thought I HAD read it until I was talking to somebody about it and realized one of us was talking about the wrong book. I think it's great so far, but I'm only about 1/3 through. There are a few strange things about it. For one Luke seems like ANH Luke instead of post-TESB Luke who was supposed to have been traumatized, darkened and matured by his run in with Vader and the bombshell he dropped. But here he's naive and cocky, and only when some Rogue Squadron member whose name I didn't recognize was killed did he suddenly realize that war was not a game and had consequences. The loss of Han and the death of Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, Biggs, Obi-Wan, Dak and Luke's hand apparently didn't drive that point home. But some guy named Dix buys the farm and suddenly everything just got real. Also the author, Steve Perry (who writes well for having spent most of his life fronting Journey), seems to be putting the idea out there that Vader only told Luke he was his father because he was afraid Luke was about to defeat him. That Luke, if he gave into his anger over Obi-Wan's death, would have been too strong. So out of fear Vader dropped the Father bombshell, replaced the anger with fear and confusion, and so avoided disaster. Which is kind of interesting but in the actual movie Vader delivers the good news to a disarmed/dismembered Luke. I don't know, maybe he wasn't mixed up, maybe he meant Luke still could have been dangerous just wielding the Force (a little lightning maybe) even though I'd guess he was probably already sufficiently confused/scared after having his hand chopped off.
Dash Rendar is turning into one of the biggest Gary Stu/Mary Sue types I've ever come across. I get it, he sure can fly/shoot/do whatever the plot calls for. But the author still makes it a point to tell us every other chapter or so just how good he is. I'm left suspecting that as the main character in the game they expected readers to feel like Dash was their stand-in and so they tried to blow a bunch of sunshine up our butts about how awesome We/He were.
Honestly, I never thought about it that way. I saw the character mostly as kind of bland Han Solo replacement I could take or leave...in the Shadows of the Empire stuff. In the Shadow Games novel, the character got the depth and development he needed to stand on his own two feet and be a better character.
Speaking of Star Wars books, the Rogue One junior novelization came out a few days ago. Just started reading my copy.
True, he did serve as that too. Whichever one or combination they were going for it turned into a lot of constant bragging about what a badass Dash was. He's always showing up to save the day and when he does somebody, usually Luke, just marvels about how awesome he is. I lost count of how many time the phrase "He sure can/could....", or some variation, followed by shoot/fly was used. Maybe they thought people wouldn't like him as a Han replacement and tried to over-qualify the guy It just felt like they were really trying to force this dude down my throat. And where Han's cockiness was kind of charming Dash was just downright obnoxious. Everybody in the book thought so too, but that usually just seemed like a ploy to sneak in some backdoor Dash-love by having him earn all of their awe-struck respect in spite of how they felt about him. Yeah, he's a crazy/obnoxious jerk... but her sure can fly!
I just finished it earlier by the way, and I found the ending pretty exciting. Overall it wasn't a bad read. It started out pretty strong, kind of went to hell when Leia went to Xizor's Castle but ended strong. I liked the ending tying in with RotJ the way it did but I thought it was trying way too hard to tie in a bunch of small things. Like Leia's thermal detonator, does there really need to be a wink-wink backstory moment to explain where she picked it up? A lot of the book did seem like it was very nostalgia oriented and trying to tie itself in with and mimic the movies whenever possible. In some ways it worked and sometimes not. I did like reading about Luke making his lightsaber. I had some other gripes with it but I griped them earlier, like about the portrayal of Luke. But I'm glad I read it, I wish I had read it when I was a lot younger and I might have loved it. It probably was meant for a younger reader being a video game tie-in at a time when that was a predominately young demographic. I doubt I'd love the Thrawn trilogy as much if I read them for the first time today. Even with my nostalgia goggles on I find his "genius" a little unbelievable at times. He's kind of like Sherlock Holmes of Star Wars, he's always right because the writer makes sure he is. Though it kind of seems like a leap/stretch to get there. Apparently the dude could bust into your apartment, take one look at the dogs playing poker painting on your wall and immediately know every single punch you will throw in order. Makes you wonder what would have happened to the galaxy if Palpatine had paid more attention in art class.
I thought the novel was fine. My biggest problem with it, in retrospect, was that important parts of the story were told in other media, and you really had to read the Dark Horse Comics series to get the full story. The novel focused on the Rebellion characters, Dash Rendar, and the Black Sun organization, while the comic book had the plot threads involving Darth Vader and Boba Fett.
Finished the Rogue One junior novelization a few days ago. Unlike the Force Awakens one, it's a pretty by-the-numbers tale with simple writing and no real expansion of the story in any meaningful way. Unless you're buying it for a kid or are a completist or something, I'd say it's an automatic skip (the opposite of its essential read adult novelization counterpart, ironically enough).
I did notice they seemed to be setting up scenes for other media, like when Dash is off investigating a lead on Boba Fett, but none of it really seemed all that important to the story. Though it's hard to tell without knowing exactly what all went down. Boba Fett doesn't seem all that important to the story though. The whole "we need to rescue Han" plotline didn't really have much to do with the overall arc of the story. Since it was impossible for them to rescue Han before RotJ I was glad it did drift away from it to get caught up in another plot only to come back to it at the end, because at first I thought I was going to be reading a book about a bunch of failed rescue attempts. And while there may have been more in the comic, there was already quite a lot of Vader in the book. Maybe not as much as Xizor but their rivalry and Vader's thoughts played a large role in the novel.
I've only read Ep. I (years ago and I don't remember much) and IV-VI, which I recently re-read and discussed at length earlier in the thread. Basically they're interesting time capsules of an era when the canon wasn't really ironed out and interesting to see how a writer performs when adapting a script into a novelization without seeing the movie. I haven't read the newer ones like Ep. VII and Rogue One. I was somewhat tempted to read Ep. VII and still might but reading Rogue One didn't seem like much fun. I didn't think the story was that great and mainly just enjoyed the visually impressive battles, which wouldn't have the same punch in a book.
It's actually well worth the read as it does a lot more with the characters and their motivations, internal monologues etc. There's also a bunch of neat little supplements between chapters, like in-universe ephemera. Easily one of the better novelisations by far.
I'll second that.
IMHO, Rogue One is easily the best, as @Reverend described above. TMP and ATOC do decent jobs of expanding on the films in interesting ways. The ROTS and TCW movie ones are well-written, but so different from the movies I find it distracting and annoying. TFA has a lot of additional material and scenes, but is really flat (read the jr. novelization for this one; it's a lot better in capturing the movie and adding depth to it), ROTJ has some really well-written moments but is a little thin, ANH as a really interesting writing style and is something of a fun look back in time (a really funny expanded version of Luke talking Han into rescuing Leia) but once again pretty thin overall, and ESB just is, flat and by the numbers, but not awful either.
Thirded.
Now I need to add that to my list.
I know it gets a lot of praise, but I'm sort of on the fence about the ROTS novel. On the one hand it does a great job of getting inside the various character's heads and portrays a seemingly more coherent narrative. It also very wisely avoids portraying the more elaborate or drawn out action scenes (it skips the crash landing in it's entirety!) A trap even the normal novels often fell into as their authors fail to realise that action scenes in prose form are almost universally boring, for much the same reason that exposition heavy cinema is typically dull; It plays directly against the strengths of the given medium.
On the other hand the repeated references to EU events that it portrays as integral to the plot, yet entirely absent from the movie is something I found more than a little jarring. Plus it's portrayal of General Grievous was nothing short of gratuitously violent. One can barely believe it's even the same character. In a weird way he's even more ridiculous than the more broadly villainous version from the movie & TV show. Even the (admittedly cool) version from the micro-series didn't make him out to be such a blood thirsty psycho.
I think the TPM book took the optimal approach by just adapted the movie as if nothing else even existed. As a result I feel it's aged much better than either AotC (which I found largely forgettable) or RotS.
On the other hand the repeated references to EU events that it portrays as integral to the plot, yet entirely absent from the movie is something I found more than a little jarring. Plus it's portrayal of General Grievous was nothing short of gratuitously violent. One can barely believe it's even the same character. In a weird way he's even more ridiculous than the more broadly villainous version from the movie & TV show. Even the (admittedly cool) version from the micro-series didn't make him out to be such a blood thirsty psycho.
I think the TPM book took the optimal approach by just adapted the movie as if nothing else even existed. As a result I feel it's aged much better than either AotC (which I found largely forgettable) or RotS.
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