Surprisingly Wonderful!

Just finished reading this delightful book: Battelfront: Twilight Company, by Alexander Freed (2015). I must say I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked this one. Being a tie-in to a video game and being an obvious nod to the more violent Disney-ification of Star Wars as of late, I was prepared to dislike this novel.

It won me over in many ways. First, there were a few new words. I learned at least 3 new words while I read, which is a measure (to some degree) of the 'seriousness' of the writer in question. Sounds a bit funny, of course, but I like when I learn something while reading, even something as minor as some extra vocabulary.

Great use of tech and equipment and ships. Great additions of numerous worlds where the company saw action, most of the names new. Great use of existing Star Wars storylines, weaving the tale into the existing fabric of the Galactic Civil War. As you might guess, this book follows a group of Rebel Alliance infantry as they fight across the stars.

There were a bunch of ground combat scenes, of course, and many beings on both sides of the war perished. Not too much in the way of egregious violence or graphic battlefield imagery, thankfully. The book hovers around a semi-dark place, in terms of tone, but never falls fully into the abyss. Always buoyed by some hope and the inspiring spark of resistance so central to the Rebellion.

I have to say that I was reminded throughout of Dan Abnett's incredible Gaunt's Ghosts novels. Realistic peeks into the inner workings of more or less hard sci-fi ground combat units. Freed similarly pulls no punches when it comes to tense conflict where the outcome is balanced on a razor's edge. Hard battles where even main characters meet their ends. Freed fills the pages with a big and interesting cast of characters bound by their shared mission and determined to slog it through, sometimes fighting more for the sake of the friends beside them than for the over-arching 'cause'.

This was a tale from the lowly infantryman's point of view. Barely a mention of high ranking Alliance personnel. Nothing too planet shattering (see what I did there?) in terms of objectives completed or enemies defeated. A good, rugged tale about, as the back cover of the book says, "The bravest soldiers. The toughest warriors. The ultimate survivors." 

Right up there with "Lost Stars" and "Lords of the Sith" as the best of the Disney canon thus far. Followed in second place by "Tarkin". Third is "A New Dawn". Fourth is "Heir to the Jedi". Last place is "Aftermath". Unknown where to rank "Dark Disciple"...I am not that interested in finding out, either.

Luke Tells Us a Story

Just finished reading "Heir to the Jedi" by Kevin Hearne (2015). Set just a bit after the destruction of the first Death Star, this novel follows Luke on a series of side treks, biding his time until The Empire Strikes Back, I guess. Fan favorite R2 is there, so that's good. Although Luke can't innately understand his hoots and bleeps yet, so that's too bad.

The delivery of the story is a bit odd: first person, past tense. Luke is telling us what happened. I did not find this as distracting and jarring as Aftermath's present tense (and punctuation soup served with random word salad).

Heir was a  decent read. It seemed a collection of side trips, sometimes with different genres applied. One such trip is a sci-fi horror episode seemingly out of character with Star Wars in general. Others seem a bit pointless, like going to Rodia to look at a catalog of weapons the Alliance might purchase.

Luke comes across correctly, as I see it, even if we're oddly lodged in his head the whole time. A love interest is found, lightening the proceedings, and lost, providing some tragedy and depth as well as returning Luke to "single" from "it's complicated". A tricky story to write, as you know where the main character has to end up in less than 3 years time. He can't do anything here to outshine his performance in the movies, either.

As for the strange parts: many mentions were made of "noodles". Luke seemed to be eating noodles, moving them or his fork with the Force, and spilling noodle broth on himself on every other page. Also overdone was the word "nerf". We had nerf nuggets, nerf steaks, and nerf...noodles. This is a common problem with Star Wars writers, in my opinion. They overuse a few key words or aliens or whatever. Many excessive mentions of "rancor" were seen as well. I'd say a good goal to shoot for would be 50% old words and 50% new in this regard.

More blood! More gore! Again with the out-of-character Disney Star Wars fixation on graphic violence! Head shots are incorporated into every fight scene. Luke gets sprayed with brain matter at least twice. Slugs are shot into heads, through eyes, etc. Calm down, Disney. I don't get why new Star Wars needs to be so dirty, gritty, and realistic. Give it a break...this is fast and loose space opera, not Band of Brothers!

I am glad I read this one for the sake of completeness, but I'm still on the fence as to whether I'd add it to my "preferred canon". The love interest character may push it over the edge, as I am a hopeless romantic. To sum up: definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. High praise, indeed.

Build Up to A New Hope

The very satisfying Han Solo Trilogy is now complete, at least my reading of it. Rebel Dawn (1998) concludes the three book set with a bang featuring a nicely written ground combat war scene (to go with book 2's big space battle) and tie-ins galore with the Original Trilogy. In fact, the end of this book dumps you right into the lap of A New Hope, leading me to want to read the OT novelizations next (I have never done so).

The only gripe I might have with this one is understandable: A. C. Crispin includes a bunch of 'back story', re-hashing the events of the prior two novels quite a bit (in case book 3 is the only one you read). It wasn't too bad, though. There are some interesting "interludes", where Crispin works in a synopsis of the events from Brian Daley's Han Solo Adventures (in the Corporate Sector). An elegant way to have Rebel Dawn cover material before and after those side-trek books. I may go back and re-read those short works for the sake of completeness. I guess I will have to go get the Lando books, too, and see what Vuffi Raa et al is all about. Even the titles of those Lando stories make me want to cringe: Mindharp of Sharu, Flamewind of Oseon, and Star Cave of Thonboka? I guess they're nothing if not...original.

As far as Rebel Dawn goes, again I was very pleased to pal around with Han, Chewie, and Lando. More Hutts. More Imperials. More fledgling Rebels. All good stuff. This was a wonderful trilogy; I can't believe I took so long to read it. Better late than never, I suppose. Highly recommended!

Internal Hutt Politics

Just finished book 2 in The Han Solo Trilogy: The Hutt Gambit, by A. C. Crispin (1997). A fun read, a great follow up to book 1. I'm ready to start #3.

What's not to like? Han and Chewie, meeting Lando, Boba Fett, Jabba and the other hutts, Soontir Fel*, a rag tag space battle featuring an ad hoc smuggler and pirate fleet versus a second rate Outer Rim Imperial force. Even an "off-page" appearance by Darth Vader!

Nate thought I would like this series, and he was right. I am a big fan. The amount of great development and cross-pollination going on in these books is wonderful. A nice balance between making up tons of new stuff (Hutt clans, politics, biology) and working in known stuff (the types of equipment and spaceships used, some of the planets visited, etc). One of my new favorite SW phrases: "Minions of Xendor!"

It felt a bit strange to think of Han and Chewie sharing an apartment as a couple of young bachelor roommates, but what the heck. This book also subscribes to the "Long Hyperspace Travel Times" idea, like needing 5 days to travel from Corellia to Coruscant. Otherwise, the book is wonderful.


*As a side note, including Soontir Fel as a character in a book published in September of 1997 was pretty awesome, as he was 'invented', as far as I can tell, by Stackpole et al in a Dark Horse comics series first published in August of 1997. Now that's some great teamwork, SW!

Putting Episode VII on the Map

The following chart provides locations for planets from Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the map from pages 248-9 of the Age of Rebellion core rulebook. They were determined by comparing that map with the one from pages 8-9 of the Visual Dictionary.

Planet	Region	Coordinates
D'Qar	Outer Rim	0-18
Hosnian Prime	Core	M-12
Jakku	Inner Rim	J-14
Starkiller Base	Unknown Regions	H-6
Takodana	Expansion Region/Mid-Rim	J-16

The Force Awakens Novelization (no spoilers, yet)

Just finished the novelization of "The Force Awakens" by Alan Dean Foster, as read on my Kindle Fire. I really liked it! Not only was it a fast and easy read, packed with movement and action, it did what one hopes a novelization of a movie you've already seen will do: add to the enjoyment of the overall experience.

My least favorite portions of the movie definitely have to do with a certain secret base with special properties. The novelization helps in this respect, by adding a bunch of pseudoscience gobbledeegook* that serves to make the entire thing a bit more palatable. Hand waving at its best, perhaps, to shoehorn an outrageous concept into a semi-plausible sounding portion of the story. Hand-waving of this type is a necessary art for writing in a shared universe, where super nerds like us that want everything to hang together in some semblance of order and internal logic. Alan Dean Foster does an admirable job in this regard.

*In this case, I do not mean this as a disparaging term. Space opera like Star Wars need not (in fact should not) have too hard an edge to the science aspect of science fiction.

Other portions I quite enjoyed were some more details about Poe's escape from Jakku, a bit more on Lor San Tekka, as well as a couple of extended scenes here and there which give one the feeling of getting a peek at an earlier version of the screenplay, before changes brought about by filming and editing and whatnot.

I must say, this read has solidified my already certain love for these new characters. Particularly Rey, but also Finn, Poe, and BB-8. I will be very interested to see where the next movie takes these adventurers (and glad to have a certain secret base behind us, story-wise).

Visualizing the Movie (Spoilers)

Just finished reading this book. It is almost essential reading, in my view, if you want to understand the movie. I don't consider that a good thing.

A few notes I took as I read and looked at the pretty pictures. Warning: likely spoilers ahead!

A new (partial) map of the galaxy, featuring Starkiller Base (DS3?), Jakku (Rey's home), Hosnian Prime (current seat of Republic Senate), D'Qar (the main Resistance base), and Takodana (site of Maz Kanata's castle). Strangely enough, still no report on where the heck Lothal is located, I far as I can tell.

The Galactic Concordance is the official name of the peace treaty signed between the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant. This treaty ended the Galactic Civil War. Shortly thereafter the Republic Senate passed the Military Disarmament Act, wishing to dramatically reduce the size of the standing armed forces which had been in place since the beginning of the Clone Wars.

In an effort to woo worlds to their cause, the Republic Senate is no longer on Coruscant. The body is now hosted on a rotating basis, each host site elected by member worlds. As of the movie, the current Senate is meeting on Hosnian Prime, a Core World.

Lor San Tekka, an important figure in the movie now given a name (here and in a few other books), was a well traveled explorer who, among other things, helped Luke find lost or repressed Jedi artifacts and information after the GCW. Since the time of the Empire, San Tekka has been a member of the "Church of the Force", a religion based on revering the ideals espoused by the Jedi. The adherents to this faith are not, themselves, Force users but they respect the ideals nonetheless. I don't know that something called 'Church of the Force' sounds all that in line with Star Wars, personally.

Captain Phasma is not a captain in rank. Thank goodness, as that would be silly. A Stormtrooper Captain would be in command of something like 150 or so Stormtroopers, not the entire contingent within the First Order. No idea on what real rank she has, but it isn't Captain. As a side note, it is said that her armor was chromed using metal taken from one of Palpatine's personal star yachts.  Cool.

Germane to this blog, it turns out Rey's old broken salvaged Rebel starfighter helmet used to belong to one Captain Dosmit Reah of the Tierfon Yellow Aces. No idea on how a "Yellow Ace" made it to the Jakku battle at the end of the war (since they were disbanded years before that time).

The new movie and its attendant stuff (books, comics, novels, etc) is all very interesting, but I am growing to dislike the decisions made in a number of places. More on that later. Probably much more on that, in fact.