Fatal Faves: Shadows of the Empire

Posted on May 18, 2016by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

shit-eating-grin

A long time ago, in another millennium entirely, I had only just discovered Star Wars via the Special Editions and I was hungry for more. The Paradise Snare, book one of A.C. Crispin’s Han Solo Trilogy, was my first SW book, but I didn’t actually choose for it to be—it was the summer of 1997, my fifteenth birthday was coming up, and I asked my mother to get me what seemed like the most exciting, natural entry point into the world of the Expanded Universe. No, not Heir to the Empire—Shadows of the Empire. I don’t even know how I actually managed to hear about it, since I didn’t own a single piece of merchandise at this point, but somehow there were enough remainders of its huge multimedia bonanza the previous year that it got through to my young, ignorant brain that this was an Important Story.

Exactly how hard my mother looked for it—it would’ve been out in paperback by this point—will forever remain a mystery, but one way or another she eventually settled on Paradise Snare instead. I can only imagine what was going through her head as she browsed through things like The Crystal Star and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye before deciding for some unknowable reason that that was the right call, but in retrospect, it actually was a pretty good call. Not only was the HST a great story, but Paradise Snare being set as early in the timeline as it was led to me reading the entire Bantam era pretty much in chronological order, which had a huge impact on how I ultimately became familiar with stories like Dark Empire, the Corellian Trilogy, and yes, Shadows of the Empire. Read More

Star Wars: Bloodline – NOT a “Fix” Book!

Posted on May 16, 2016by Obiwomble's Outlook

cloakofdeceptionA “fix” book? What on earth is a fix book? Much as we may love it, over the years, Star Wars has acquired a deserved reputation for some quite off the wall plot concepts. Ideas like casually dropping the bomb that Vader is Luke’s father to the far more infamous taxation plot of The Phantom Menace. In some cases, a book comes out and addresses such plots head on. It considers how to either make a broken plot work or enhance an existing one that works adequately but could be improved. With the advent of the prequels, this became more noticeable but was not restricted to them. Is Bloodline one of these books? No, it isn’t. Why? Read on…

It was Cloak of Deception in 2001 that first showed what could be done to support the films. This took the much loathed foundation for the Republic Senate falling apart and sought to provide a logic that explained why the taxation of trade routes was so problematic. James Luceno also wove in pieces on the Jedi, on Darth Sidious and almost every other plot strand that the film had slung around with abandon. In the process, this prequel-to-a-prequel improved nearly everything.

Jump forward a year, to 2002 and the New Jedi Order volume of Destiny’s Way came out. It remains hard to know exactly how much of that series really was planned out and how much was winging it, the finale The Unifying Force suggests rather more improvisation than might want to be admitted. Now, I doubt that would make any difference but back then, you had to have a plan! Or claim to have one. Everyone seemed to get far more cynical about this stuff after Lost. Read More

Bloodline: Just the Story I Needed

Posted on May 13, 2016by

star-wars-bloodline-posters_crkkBloodline was just the Star Wars tale I’d been waiting for. I love politics, and I have been wanting a good Leia-centric book in which she’s really in her element as a politician. In that, Bloodline was outstanding- and it did indeed answer a good deal of my questions about The Force Awakens‘ political situation and just what had happened to the galaxy. I’m glad that not all of the questions were answered, and that there is still so much room to tell stories in the galaxy, but this was just what I needed to read.

Confession: I actually enjoyed The New Rebellion. A sudden crisis, bringing out internal conflict within the New Republic. Leia having her political competence questioned. Endless intrigue. This felt like a new reimagining of some of those themes, though with substantially better storytelling. Today on Twitter (yes, I write a lot of my articles the night before), there were many lists of favorite Star Wars books, mixing both new and Legends. Consistently, I saw Bloodline and Heir to the Empire, two books from dramatically different eras. Books that honestly don’t feel that different; twenty-five years and two GFFA’s apart, they feel so complementary. This is something that I, and many other old Legends fans, often need to keep us happy in Star Wars. I miss the feel of the Star Wars I grew up on, and reading a re-imagining of it brings me right back to this fandom.

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Gray Matters II: BLOODLINE – A New Republic Costs More Than A Used One

Posted on May 11, 2016by Imperial Court Circular

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There’s been a sense from some fans that The Force Awakens and its background material indicates that the New Republic has been a failure, that all the heroes fought for has been for naught. Not everyone thinks that – Nick previously wrote to take stock of the New Republic as seen in the context of TFA and the Journey to TFA books and his verdict was a positive one. But since then, Bloodline has been released and given us a great deal of context about the dysfunction that paralyzed the New Republic in the years leading up to the film. Sarah discussed the role extremism and partisanship played in impeding the New Republic’s governance, and Sarah, Rocky, and yours truly discussed how these irreconcilable differences stemmed from fear and mistrust. After all that, one might be forgiven for assuming that the rosy view of the New Republic was definitely wrong and that TFA showed the demise of a government that was at best a failure and at worst, doomed. But is that the right lesson to take from Bloodline? We don’t think it is – Bloodline simply showed democracy as it is, warts and all.

As promised with our first “Gray Matters” piece on Lost Stars and its realistic and human portrayal of those who serve the Galactic Empire, here’s our follow-up on how to realistically portray the good guys. And just like the first piece, the article didn’t really come together until Claudia Gray wrote a novel perfectly demonstrating what we wanted to talk about: how democracy is portrayed in Star Wars and why it’s important that it be treated with nuance. As with the first Gray Matters piece, the goal is to make it clear that there isn’t and shouldn’t be a black-and-white sense of the New Republic – complexity and nuance is more interesting than unmitigated success and failure. Read More

A civil chat about the uncivil politics of Bloodline

Posted on May 9, 2016by , and Not A Committee

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Here at ETE, we’ve been waiting for Bloodline with scarcely contained anticipation. Politics is a favorite subject matter of ours, and you can bet that a pre-The Force Awakens politics book with Leia as its main character basically checks off all of our boxes. So as the second of what’s looking to be five pieces on Claudia Gray’s latest contribution to the Star Wars universe, we have a little chat about different aspects and observations we’ve made about the book.

Sarah, Rocky, and I each couldn’t wait to start talking about the book. We’ve already heard some of Sarah’s thoughts on disparate points of view and how that affects the political dialogue in the New Republic. We’ll definitely have to chat some more about that. But first let’s start with some general observations on Bloodline.

Jay: It’s a book we’ve waited so long for (excitement built for it even before TFA, before any of us had any idea what the book would be about, simply because of the “New Republic” tag it originally had). Being on the other side of that is still odd to me, but it’s a good feeling because we got the novel we wanted. We got the Leia political novel that not only teased the developing politics of TFA, that not only featured an excellent portrayal of Leia, but surprised a lot of us with the nuanced characterization of Ransolm Casterfo. We expected the intrigue and the politics, but I don’t know that we expected so many feelings from this book. I’m glad to get to know what Hosnian was like before it got blown up, glad to meet my apparent doppelgänger Casterfo, and will be on the #VoteLeia train for all eternity.

Rocky, what are your opening thoughts about the book?

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