Star Wars Books Thread

[Mr Light]

I just finished re-reading Aftermath in anticipation of Life Debt. I still don't LIKE the book, but it's much better the second time around. I can keep track of the characters this time, and accept the shape of it since I'm not going in with expectations that aren't going to be met.

 

[The Wormhole]

I've finished Life Debt. Mostly forgettable. I do like the character of Admiral Sloane, but otherwise there's not much to recommend from this one.

 

[Mr Light]

I'm waiting on the library to get it. I really don't want to drop $15 on it.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, it's OK. Some of the characters are interesting to a point, though the plot is fairly dull.
There are some interesting details and hints buried in there, the biggest of which is the epilogue.

Spoiler: Life Debt epilogue

Gallius Rax, the Imperial Remnant's cultured fleet Admiral puppet master is a native of Jakku and the "secret weapons lab" mentioned in other sources has something to do with an object or structure that Palpatine started excavating a little after TPM.

Whatever it is it's been there a thousand years, with means it's almost certainly related to the Sith or the Jedi. All of a sudden the co-incidences surrounding Jakku in TFA seem less and less co-incidental.
That it served as the rally point for the fleet before disappearing into uncharted space, Lor San Tekka's presence there later on, maybe even Rey's origins. The Falcon being there still seems like a massive coincidence, though one might argue that it's a "will of the force" type of situation.

As for what that thing is, buried under the sand: Palpatine said it was significant a thousand years ago and will be again. So it could be anything from a force imbued artefact, a temple (Sith or Jedi) an ancient battlefield. Whatever it is it's a fair bet it has something to do with the fall of the old Sith Empire and the founding of Darth Bane's new secret Sith Order.

Other than that there's some incidental continuity stuff that I liked. The biggest one is that instead of the drawn-out silliness of the EU, they had Han and Leia marry on Endor. Like probably 10 mins after the credits rolled on RotJ and that Ben was conceived on the honeymoon.

 

[Mr Light]

spoilers

 

[Tuskin38]

Yeah, it's OK. Some of the characters are interesting to a point, though the plot is fairly dull.
There are some interesting details and hints buried in there, the biggest of which is the epilogue.

Spoiler: Life Debt epilogue

Gallius Rax, the Imperial Remnant's cultured fleet Admiral puppet master is a native of Jakku and the "secret weapons lab" mentioned in other sources has something to do with an object or structure that Palpatine started excavating a little after TPM.

Whatever it is it's been there a thousand years, with means it's almost certainly related to the Sith or the Jedi. All of a sudden the co-incidences surrounding Jakku in TFA seem less and less co-incidental.
That it served as the rally point for the fleet before disappearing into uncharted space, Lor San Tekka's presence there later on, maybe even Rey's origins. The Falcon being there still seems like a massive coincidence, though one might argue that it's a "will of the force" type of situation.

As for what that thing is, buried under the sand: Palpatine said it was significant a thousand years ago and will be again. So it could be anything from a force imbued artefact, a temple (Sith or Jedi) an ancient battlefield. Whatever it is it's a fair bet it has something to do with the fall of the old Sith Empire and the founding of Darth Bane's new secret Sith Order.

Other than that there's some incidental continuity stuff that I liked. The biggest one is that instead of the drawn-out silliness of the EU, they had Han and Leia marry on Endor. Like probably 10 mins after the credits rolled on RotJ and that Ben was conceived on the honeymoon.

Spoiler

Maybe Jakku will inherit Tatooine's backstory from the EU, it used to be lush but some cataclysm caused it to 'die'.

Oh also, Zahn confirmed that Thrawn novel ends before Rebels Season 3. He didn't give a year of when it starts, but it will be the first meeting between Thrawn and the Empire.

 

[Reverend]

^Maybe, but it's not like they're mutually exclusive and one would imagine a lot of inhabited desert planets would have a similar backstory. I mean it's pretty much Mars's backstory, no?

That said, if I had to name a planet who's EU background may be partially borrowed for Jakku it's...

Spoiler

Ruusan.

Yeah, I know that planet is still in canon, but only the name. The story associated with it in the EU is still 'Legends' material so far as I know.

ETA I forgot to mention that there's also fairly major thing that's hinted at in 'Life Debt' and that's that...

Spoiler: Life Debt

Boba Fett got out of the Sarlacc.
I say hinted because it's not said outright, but there is a scene where the Rancor keeper goes out to the Pit of Carkoon where scavengers are still picking over the wreckage of the sail barge and is confronted by someone (not Boba) wearing obviously scavenged, acid pitted armour and carrying a blaster carbine
If this is hinting at what I think it does, it means Boba hacked/blasted his way out of the Sarlacc and stripped off his ruined armour before making it back to civilisation...or he tasted so bad that it spat him out and scavengers stripped his corpse. Either way.

 

[Set Harth]

it will be the first meeting between Thrawn and the Empire.

Didn't Zahn already write a short story covering that?

 

[Reverend]

^He wrote a whole novel around it. Presumably they plan to have a different take on it this time, which is good because I always thought that was easily one of his weaker books.

 

[JD]

He has to completely redo the whole thing since the first version was very much based around the history of the EU, and set up things we already know won't happen in the new canon.

 

[Reverend]

spoilers

I promise, it's totally incidental, only mentioned in passing and not really part of the plot at all. Plus I think the thing about Ben's conception was actually from 'Bloodline' and again, is only mentioned in passing.

It actually feels like these news books are each assigned a small portion of "filler" plot details that fill in some of the blanks between RotJ & TFA at the rate they're popping up.

 

[Set Harth]

^He wrote a whole novel around it.

What was it called?

 

[Reverend]

What was it called?

'Outbound Flight'. It took place just before the Clone Wars and actually featured Anakin & Obi Wan getting into the mix. There was also a direct followup with Luke & Mara called 'Survivor's Quest'.

 

[Mr Light]

Outbound Flight is a great book. Survivor's Quest is a very standalone adventure and my least favorite Zahn book (but still enjoyable).

 

[WebLurker]

Outbound Flight is a great book. Survivor's Quest is a very standalone adventure and my least favorite Zahn book (but still enjoyable).

Actually, Outbound Flight was my least favorite. I've found that Survivor's Quest is one of Zhan's more re-readable Star Wars books personally.

 

[Reverend]

I had trouble really getting into 'Outbound Flight'. The plot was forgettable (seriously, I've forgotten most of it) the tie-in to the NJO stuff left a bad taste and also tying it into the prequel characters felt a little too cute. The characterisation of Jorus C'baoth seemed very un-Jedi like. It made sense for him to act like that when it was his half crazed clone, but with the man himself it didn't feel right.
Mind you, in hindsight I could see Dooku (maybe pre-Tyranus) filling a similar role.

For me the fundamental flaw of Thrawn's backstory was the whole thing with the Chiss being this super advanced little isolationist Empire at the fringes of known space. It follows a pattern that seemed to start with the old RPG source books where certain things were made out to be newer developments than they really need to be. Another example is the idea that the Mon Calamari (the only ones with ships big and powerful enough to go up against the Star Destroyers) were a new race with which that the Empire had just made first contact. I felt it didn't fit in very well with the idea that this is a very old and very lived in galaxy. It has it's mysterious little corners, but like Tolkien Middle Earth most of it is very old remnants of what came before and there's very little in the way of "new" things. That more of a traditional sci-fi universe where it really should be more like high fantasy in that regard.

I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but it also bothered me how they also had a nasty habit of defining races by the role in which one of their members first appeared in the movies.

Like for instance how they made Rodian's big on bounty hunting because Greedo was a bounty hunter, how the Corellians were all brash rogues because that's Han's people, Twi'leks were mostly an enslaved race because of Oola, or that Nikto, Weequay and Gamorrean were subject races of the Hutts because a bunch of them served as Jabba's guards (ignoring that Jabba had just as many human guards.) That kind of thing. It seemed very unimaginative.

The most bothersome to me was the whole thing about the Empire being "humans only" racists and the Emperor himself being sexist because we never saw any non-human male Imperials. It felt like an almost cartoonishly petty level of villainy.

That the Republic wasn't a single culture but a collection of thousands of cultures, each with their own history and identities while the far from being a dominant culture, the Empire was a souless *lack* of culture that was consuming the galaxy.

I like how the prequels and the TV shows have made the galaxy seem much older and cosmopolitan and that of the EU concepts they did adopt, they almost always made them much more interesting by giving them a grander context. As I've previously discussed at length elsewhere; the most notable one being how they translated the Mandaloran culture for TCW. So much more interesting than the race of space Viking/Spartan/Crusader Knights the EU made them out to be.

 

[Mr Light]

The Empire "discovered" Mon Cal?! I didn't remember that. That is silly.

The Chiss being unknown I can buy because they're from that far flung dangerous region of the galaxy the Old Republic always avoided.

I thought O.G. C'Boath was a fascinating character. I love asshole Jedi.

The problem with Survivor's Quest is that's this tiny little stuck on one planet adventure that doesn't really "matter" in any larger sense. It's just setting up a mystery of what happened in the other book. The only nice thing about it is that it's the only book where Zahn wrote Luke and Mara as a married couple.

 

[Tuskin38]

Didn't Zahn already write a short story covering that?

Yes but that isn't canon anymore.

The Empire "discovered" Mon Cal?! I didn't remember that. That is silly.

It was like that until the prequel trilogy came along IIRC.

Pablo talked about it on twitter a few months ago.

 

[Set Harth]

'Outbound Flight'. It took place just before the Clone Wars

So, before the Empire.

So not about Thrawn's first meeting with the Empire, because the Empire didn't exist yet.

 

[Reverend]

The Empire "discovered" Mon Cal?! I didn't remember that. That is silly.

Yup. Also Admiral Ackbar designed the B-Wing himself because apparently Admirals have nothing better to do. This was of course after he served as Tarkin's personal slave, because if you're already doubled down on the silly, why not go for broke?

The Chiss being unknown I can buy because they're from that far flung dangerous region of the galaxy the Old Republic always avoided.

I've no problem with the Chiss being from an isolated planet or system but they way they were shown to be a small Empire in their own right just never sat right with me. I had a similar issue with the Hapes and the dinosaur people from the Bakura book (can't be bothered to look up how to spell their name.)

Again though, it was more that it was a part of a larger pattern that the EU repeated again and again.

I thought O.G. C'Boath was a fascinating character. I love asshole Jedi.

The problem with Survivor's Quest is that's this tiny little stuck on one planet adventure that doesn't really "matter" in any larger sense. It's just setting up a mystery of what happened in the other book. The only nice thing about it is that it's the only book where Zahn wrote Luke and Mara as a married couple.

I thought it hard to credit that the council would tolerate the presence of a master who was so overtly *angry* all the time. I mean I know they were ineffectual but that seemed a little too overt.

So, before the Empire.

So not about Thrawn's first meeting with the Empire, because the Empire didn't exist yet.

Yeah, pretty much.

Though if you're desperate to split hairs, at this point Palpatine was very much approaching his endgame, so the nascent Empire was already taking form.