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Star Wars Novels/Graphic Novels


Magnar of Skagos

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/25/2017 at 2:40 PM, Joe Pesci said:

Anyone start on Empire's End yet?

Read and finished.  It was the best of the three Wendigs, but still gets sloggy at times.  Sets up the First Order, at last, explains the significance of Jakku, explains the origins of the Knights of Ren, heavily hints at the origin of Snoke.  I don't envy Wendig's job of basically having 1000+ pages of info dump, but some of the stuff that he personally brought to the table kinda stinks. 

The overall canon story is still miles better than the old EU though. 

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5 hours ago, Spaßvogel said:

Read and finished.  It was the best of the three Wendigs, but still gets sloggy at times.  Sets up the First Order, at last, explains the significance of Jakku, explains the origins of the Knights of Ren, heavily hints at the origin of Snoke. 

That sounds fairly interesting at least.

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1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Anyone want to spoil the Jakku thing for me since I'm lazy and also I don't plan on reading these til I've read the other 300 or so books on my pile.

Go on YouTube and watch "what really happened at the battle of Jakku" by Star Wars Explained.  He also has a video with 51 Easter Eggs/ties to other Star Wars media.

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15 hours ago, Spaßvogel said:

Read and finished.  It was the best of the three Wendigs, but still gets sloggy at times.  Sets up the First Order, at last, explains the significance of Jakku, explains the origins of the Knights of Ren, heavily hints at the origin of Snoke.  I don't envy Wendig's job of basically having 1000+ pages of info dump, but some of the stuff that he personally brought to the table kinda stinks. 

The overall canon story is still miles better than the old EU though. 

Gonna give this a start tomorrow, appreciate you giving your take on it. Not sure if they'll keep Wendig around on future novels, but at least it seems that he improved with each book. Really looking forward to Thrawn next month, there's a sample chapter available and it was pretty interesting.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Empire's End was a satisfactory ending to this trilogy. It had it's good and bad moments, but nothing really stuck out for me outside of the battle of Jakku, which I thought Wendig did really well. If you weren't really that interested in reading this book, the link and videos mentioned a few posts up will be more than sufficient to get the key points from.

At least Thrawn is up next...

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I've never been a huge Star Wars fan. I enjoy the movies, but not in a huge, cultish way. That being said, I thought perhaps if I read some of the novels I would appreciate that universe better by digging into the side stories and whatnot. So, I was at the airport and looking for something to read on the plane when I came across Tarkin, which tells the story of Grand Moff Tarkin in his early years and then after he has risen to a position of power in the Empire. Aaaand it was pretty much garbage. Some of that I chalk up to jumping straight in without really knowing the ins and outs of Star Wars as a whole, but mostly it was because the writing was atrocious. Maybe if I had read it when I was like 9 or 10 years old it would have been decent.

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Tarkin isn't exactly the best STAR WARS book ever written. The novels tend to fluctuate between awesome and garbage depending on author and need.

Here's my review of STAR WARS: AFTERMATH: EMPIRE'S END

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2017/03/star-wars-aftermath-empires-end-by.html

    Chuck Wendig had a pretty hard road ahead of him when he took upon the Aftermath trilogy as he, essentially, had to replace the entire Star Wars Legends Expanded Universe by creating a history that replaced the 100+ books which chronicled the period from the Battle of Endor to when the Empire finally surrendered in Timothy Zahn's Visions of the Future.

    Wendig's task was somewhat mitigated by the fact that instead of a twenty-year guerilla war by the Empire's remnants, it's a much more sedate six months between the death of the Emperor to the Battle of Jaaku where the Imperials are defeated. Still, his three books received a good deal of criticism for their focus on new characters rather than Han, Luke, and Leia as well as minor interludes. Still, I was looking forward to how the book wrapped up the plots and what hints they'd give toward the rise of the First Order.

    The premise of the book is Gallius Rax, agent of the deceased Emperor, has successfully scuttled attempts by the New Republic and Empire to make a peace treaty. He has also withdrawn all of the Imperial fleet to the planet Jakku in hopes of setting up a massive conflict between the two sides. Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, stripped of her position, now hunts him with ex-Rebel Brentin Wexley. Huntin them both is Norra Wexley and her crew who believe Sloane masterminded Rax's terrorist attack on the New Republic Senate. Meanwhile, Mon Mothma fights an attempt by a rival Senator to seize her position after the attack makes her look weak. Eventually, they will all meet up at Jakku to decide the final fate of the galaxy.

    Ultimately, I think the book did a decent enough job of fulfilling its primary purpose in explaining how the Empire was brought to its knees. Gallius Rax has been suspected of running a con against his own troops for some time and the realization he's been working for Emperor Palpatine the entire time in order to initiate a "scorched Earth" policy similar to Hitler's is a neat bit of storytelling. It also fits that Palpatine would set things up that no one could inherit his throne save, perhaps, a Sith Lord like Darth Vader who would suspect such a thing. This truth is revealed early in the story and a pleasant surprise as I was of the mind Rax would turn out to be an agent of the still-mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke.

    I also like the examination of the trouble the New Republic is having in defining itself beyond being against the Galactic Empire. Mon Mothma is determined to make the Empire's existence almost incidental to them while her opponents believe destroying it is their primary concern. Honestly, I think Wendig is a bit harsh on the side which believes you can't build a new government until the old one is completely dismantled. Indeed, the ending to that plotline with Mothma's rival leaves a lot to be desired. I think the heroes' position also changes several times in order to accommodate whatever is convenient for the story and keep our sympathy. Ditto, the "villains" operating on Chandrilla.

    Of all the story arcs in the book, I have to say I liked Rae Sloane's the best. Mostly because it doesn't go in directions I expected. Continually, she's confronted with the Dark Side (*rimshot*) of the Empire only to try to make excuses like it was Gallius Rax's doing or that Palpatine was the real problem. It's interesting, also, to see how Imperial ideology has twisted her even when she's one of the more "sane" Imperials. Indeed, that sanity blinds her to the faults of other members of the organization. How it ultimately resolves leaves me thinking about her character in ways I don't normally with Imperials.

     I have to say I actually liked the character of Norra Wexley as a protagonist far more than I expected to since I considered her story somewhat boring in previous books. As the unwilling single mother with a teenage son turned guerilla fighter, she's a character who has had her own emotional journey throughout the story. Norra isn't a Jedi, determined to do the right thing, nor is she a bad person. It makes her story all the more personable. I even started liking her romance with Wedge Antilles, even noting that she's probably about fifteen years older than him. Which, hey, isn't a big deal. Love where you will.

     There's a couple of areas I didn't much care for: the aforementioned handling of Mon Mothma's rival (you, sir, are no Borsk Fey'lya) as well as the fact Wedge Antilles seems to be written as a midle-aged man versus a man barely older than Luke Skywalker. I also think Sinjir, a former Imperial interrogator, getting a position as high as he does at one point is straining credulity. Still, I overall liked everything in the book and enjoyed quite a few moments I wouldn't have expected to. For example, Jar-Jar Binks makes his first cameo in years and it actually fits as a final fate to the character. That, alone, was worth the price of purchase.

    In conclusion, I have to say this was a very entertaining book. It's not really a great substitute for the Legends Expanded Universe but it fulfills its purpose in saying, "So, what happened to the Empire after Endor." Gallius Rax was an excellent villain, Grand Admiral Sloane was well-written, and we got to see all of the arcs of the series' characters wrapped up. Could it have been better? Maybe. Maybe a series centered around Han, Luke, and Leia would have been better but I enjoyed this for what it was.

8.5/10

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  • 3 weeks later...
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So I bought the new Thrawn book because I loved the old Thrawn trilogy and the folkowup ones were decent. Are any of those of Thrawn book she still canon or do I have to go into this new book sort of mind erasing what I know about Thrawn. I'm super confused: never read much EU outside of Thrawn and some KJA books that made me want to gouge out my eyes, and I didn't follow the uproar over what is still canon vs not. 

Thanks!

 

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2 hours ago, unJon said:

So I bought the new Thrawn book because I loved the old Thrawn trilogy and the folkowup ones were decent. Are any of those of Thrawn book she still canon or do I have to go into this new book sort of mind erasing what I know about Thrawn. I'm super confused: never read much EU outside of Thrawn and some KJA books that made me want to gouge out my eyes, and I didn't follow the uproar over what is still canon vs not. 

Thanks!

 

I'm into the new book a ways and I wouldn't say you need to mind erase what you know about Thrawn at all. If you aren't concerned with the new canon vs old, it's really just a story about how Thrawn works his way up the ladder in the Empire in his early days. It's a pretty good read too.

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Thrawn actually keeps most of the old Expanded Universe backstory intact, but apparently recaps it for new readers (the first chapter is apparently an old Zahn Thrawn short story from 1997 that he's rejigged a bit), so you don't need to know anything about him previously but it doesn't clash too badly.

I believe there is one change to his backstory:

Originally he was exiled from the Chiss because he violated their ban on using pre-emptive strikes and he joins the Empire because he is impressed by its capacity for order and discipline. In the new book apparently he is again exiled from the Chiss, but this is just a cover story so he can infiltrate the Empire and protect Chiss interests whilst also helping build up the Empire with an eye on a mysterious threat in the Unknown Regions.

That's paraphrasing from a couple of articles I've read.

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On 15/04/2017 at 3:59 AM, C.T. Phipps said:

Zahn really needs to stop dialing up Thrawn.

I love the character but, honestly, that's a bit silly.

I think it's more Lucasfilm dialling up Thrawn and asking Zahn to help out, perhaps with the implied threat that they'll give the character to Chuck Wendig instead (shudder).

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14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think it's more Lucasfilm dialling up Thrawn and asking Zahn to help out, perhaps with the implied threat that they'll give the character to Chuck Wendig instead (shudder).

I'm not sure that Thrawn was dialed up in the way mentioned in your spoiler text up thread. Agree that a Thrawn claimed that, but it contradicts the opening italics section of the book, no? And Thrawn could have been lying to the character he told it too. He was talking his way out of being shot or 86ed. 

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