[NRG] Star by Star
John Donchig
out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
John
Policrat'
> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
DelRey have probably gone to the same big kiddie-print size as they had for
JediQuest...
And now we need to keep this thread going...
> John
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
*drive-by hi*
-- - Simon -
ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
Policrat'
You mind if I write you into an upcoming Sith War post?
(After all, you were last seen disappearing towards the RASS* Sector at the
start of VII)...
> -- - Simon -
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Simon H. Lee:
>
>> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
>> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>>> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
>>>
>>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
>>>> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
>>>> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
>>>
>>> DelRey have probably gone to the same big kiddie-print size as they had for
>>> JediQuest...
>>>
>>> And now we need to keep this thread going...
>>
>> *drive-by hi*
>
>You mind if I write you into an upcoming Sith War post?
Well, as I'm not doing anything with it at the moment...
>(After all, you were last seen disappearing towards the RASS* Sector at the
>start of VII)...
...who knows, maybe I'll actually write something.
Çheetah!
*breaking out one of the A-Team's chrome-plated AK-47's and firing on
full automatic*
"Hi" back at `ya!
> 8========##<^>##========8
>>>---> Çheetus Maximus!
> 8========##<^>##========8
"Anyone who consults a shrink, should have their head examined..."
-- Robert Anson Heinlein --
Policrat'
> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Simon H. Lee:
>>
>>> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
>>> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>>>> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
>>>>
>>>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
>>>>> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
>>>>> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
>>>>
>>>> DelRey have probably gone to the same big kiddie-print size as they had for
>>>> JediQuest...
>>>>
>>>> And now we need to keep this thread going...
>>>
>>> *drive-by hi*
>>
>> You mind if I write you into an upcoming Sith War post?
>
> Well, as I'm not doing anything with it at the moment...
From a certain point of view...
>> (After all, you were last seen disappearing towards the RASS* Sector at the
>> start of VII)...
>
> ...who knows, maybe I'll actually write something.
Yippee!-)
> -- - Simon -
> ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>"Simon H. Lee" wrote:
>>
>> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
>> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>> >Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
>> >
>> >> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
>> >> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
>> >> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
>> >
>> >DelRey have probably gone to the same big kiddie-print size as they had for
>> >JediQuest...
>> >
>> >And now we need to keep this thread going...
>>
>> *drive-by hi*
>
>*breaking out one of the A-Team's chrome-plated AK-47's and firing on
>full automatic*
>
>"Hi" back at `ya!
*spigot*
Çheetah!
*playing imaginary harmonica, in tune*
John Donchig
No no no...we can't start the nonsense already...if we do people won't
take the real thread seriously...
John
--
Laissez les bon temps roulez!
John Donchig
*celebrity spotting*
Oh my god! Was that THE Simon H. Lee? Waving hello to US? Oh wow!
Wait'll I tell my kids!
*celebrity spotting*
Policrat'
Am I supposed to take *that* seriously?
> John
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>"Simon H. Lee" wrote:
>>
>> rabid...@NOSPAMmailandnews.com choreographed a chorus line of
>> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>> >"Simon H. Lee" wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
>> >> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>> >> >Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
>> >> >
>> >> >> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
>> >> >> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
>> >> >> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
>> >> >
>> >> >DelRey have probably gone to the same big kiddie-print size as they had
> for
>> >> >JediQuest...
>> >> >
>> >> >And now we need to keep this thread going...
>> >>
>> >> *drive-by hi*
>> >
>> >*breaking out one of the A-Team's chrome-plated AK-47's and firing on
>> >full automatic*
>> >
>> >"Hi" back at `ya!
>>
>> *spigot*
>
>*playing imaginary harmonica, in tune*
*Wiley Miller*
...yes, it's random.
--
__ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
(__ * _ _ _ _ The problem with the rat race is that even
__)|| | |(_)| \ if you win the race, you're still a rat.
Çheetah!
>
> rabid...@NOSPAMmailandnews.com choreographed a chorus line of
> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
> >"Simon H. Lee" wrote:
> >>
> >> rabid...@NOSPAMmailandnews.com choreographed a chorus line of
> >> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
> >> >"Simon H. Lee" wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
> >> >> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
> >> >> >Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
> >> >> >
> >> >> >> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
> >> >> >> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
> >> >> >> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >DelRey have probably gone to the same big kiddie-print size as they had
> > for
> >> >> >JediQuest...
> >> >> >
> >> >> >And now we need to keep this thread going...
> >> >>
> >> >> *drive-by hi*
> >> >
> >> >*breaking out one of the A-Team's chrome-plated AK-47's and firing on
> >> >full automatic*
> >> >
> >> >"Hi" back at `ya!
> >>
> >> *spigot*
> >
> >*playing imaginary harmonica, in tune*
>
> *Wiley Miller*
*what if "what if" were "what for", and if not, why not?*
> ...yes, it's random.
It is?!?
Simon H. Lee
Throng?
>> ...yes, it's random.
>
>It is?!?
Shazbot!
--
| __
| (__ * _ _ _ _ Bringing you your recommended
| __)|| | |(_)| \ daily allowance of weirdness.
|_____________________________ A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E !
John Donchig
>
> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
>
> > Policrat' wrote:
> >>
> >> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
> >>
> >>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
> >>> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
> >>> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
> >>
> >> DelRey have probably gone to the same big kiddie-print size as they had for
> >> JediQuest...
> >>
> >> And now we need to keep this thread going...
> >
> > No no no...we can't start the nonsense already...if we do people won't
> > take the real thread seriously...
>
> Am I supposed to take *that* seriously?
<British>
I ain't quite figured that part out yet...
</British>
Policrat'
<french>
Mais oui?
</french>
> John
Pol'
Policrat'
> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
Yeah.
Non-spoiler bit... um...
Feh!
The only non-spoiler bit is that there is no non-spoiler bit... and that
sums up SbS rather well for those of you who'd rather not know...
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Anyone still paying attention?
OK...
SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
right...
So... Ganner Rhysode and the YJK go on a crazy mission to wipe them out...
all of them...
Meanwhile, Han and Leia do lots of running, jumping and standing still
together, really working as a *team* for the first time since, oh... RotJ -
this is almost certainly the work of a small but voiciferous group of
bigoted fangirlzzz at forums.theforce.net and the SW.com forums, but it
worked well...
Lando has built an army of Terminators which he's trying to flog to the
NR...
Meanwhile, Luke gets into the cockpit of his X-wing and shoots things.
Seriously.
Farmboy (that's his new callsign) has finally remembered something he forgot
when he pissed off to Dagobah 1/3 of the way through ESB... that what he
does best isn't float around Yavin 4 legs akimbo, humming... or do a fairly
dubious Yoda impression... or expound some hokey POV about the Force... or
stumble from one romanitic disaster to another... or even throw Dark Jedi
down the nearest available hole in the deck...
Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
Remember?
And it's *damn* good to see it again...
Luke's finally been hit with a clue-stick, organized the Jedi into a
starfighter force, and opened a can of whupass all over the Vong...
Yeah. Seriously.
Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
ram down the planetary shields.
The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
open fire regardless...
Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
Back with the YJK, we have Five Go Mad on Myrkrr... as Jaina, Jacen, Tenel
Ka, Zekk, and their dog Lowie are pinned down under various forms of heavy
fire by Nom Anor... somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
Anakin's corpse...
Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
who is clearly completely nuts...
Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
this...
Tsavong Lah, meanwhile, has realised that he's starting to rot, and, rather
than killing his svelte commscan officer, decides to get it on with her, and
begins preparations to make the voxyn with two backs instead...
Meanwhile Borsk Feyl'ya blows himself to tiny little pieces, and takes most
of the Imperial Palace and a shed-load of Vong with him, only to realise
that Tsavong Lah is a better dejarrik player than he is...
However, everyone else escapes...
Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
lightspeed...
But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
Yeah, I know some of this sounds like GhentZ's ramblings - but this is a
literal summary of SbS...
On reflection, SbS is pretty damn surreal... but hey, it's a blast...
I do have a few gripes, though...
Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
was all a bit incoherent, and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
In the end, I neither knew nor cared what actually happened to most of the
YJK...
And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
The major flaw, though, is characterization...
Nom Anor kills Anakin, and we get snatches of the cruel cunning with which
he drives the YJK through the worldship, but he's continually thwarted those
pesky kids...
And there was a *reason* why the YJK were ignored by any sane pro-fic
authors... there are too many utterly forgettable and disposable characters
in that plotline... and, added to that, there's the fact that Anakin's
self-assurance just comes across as dullness, and any sense of spark in his
relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
Also, since the entire cast of the YJK and JJK books (except the ones who
were killed earlier in SbS), plus Ganner and some superfluous additions, all
went to Myrkrr, there were *far* to many characters in that plotline... it
just got bogged down...
IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
addition of several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is
to Barabells what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry
and female), two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some
others I've forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
IMHO, they should have had them *really* captured rather than infiltrated -
after all, the Vong seemed to have captured everything from AT-ATs to live
Jedi to train the voxyn... and yould've thought the YJK would have spared a
*thought* to wonder which of their friends those unfortunates had been...
Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
- the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
blast... and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a
*shred* of credibility...
Also, Threepio's lines seem a bit stiff, at first - but Denning gets better
at writing him, and fast...
A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
All in all, yeah... it wasn't bad... the YJK plotline could have been
handled *far* better, but in the end, that turned out not to be the main
event after all, but a YJK novel which just happened to be told concurrently
with a proper Luke/Mara/Han/Leia/Lando/Garm/Wedge/Borsk Zahn-style EU
SW-fest...
Pol'
Sean Walsh
news:B80368C2.B815%policr...@hotmail.com...
Just an FYI, I dropped dead of a heart attack back around "Then the real
spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour"
Yowzers.
Sean
:)
--
"Don't fuck with the Jedi Master, son..." - Mark Hamill, 'J&SBSB'
New Gods Library: http://fastbak.tripod.com
Quantum Piett! http://www.geocities.com/quantumpiett/
My latest eBay auctions: http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/slwalsh/
Policrat'
Oh, and an Alderaanian pot-plant. I kid not...
Yeah...
> Sean :)
Pol'
DarthGumby
telepathically conveyed:
>Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Sean Walsh:
>
>> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:B80368C2.B815%policr...@hotmail.com... Do not underestimate the power
>> of the Dark John Donchig:
>>
>>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked out
>>>> the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624. Wow, that's
>>>> a lot of dead trees.
>>>>
>>> Yeah.
>>>
>>> Non-spoiler bit... um...
>>>
>>> Feh!
>>>
>>> The only non-spoiler bit is that there is no non-spoiler bit... and that sums
>>> up SbS rather well for those of you who'd rather not know...
>>>
>>> S P O I L E R
>>>
>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>
>>> S P O I L E R
>>>
>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>
>>> S P O I L E R
>>>
>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>
>>> S P O I L E R
>>>
>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>
>>> Anyone still paying attention?
*waves*
>>> OK...
>>>
>>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
<snip>
>>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
Cool!
>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
Crap! I mean, I know nothing about the kid except what
I've read in Crystal Star and JA3, but... damn. Here I
was expecting there to be a new Anakin/Ben showdown
someday. :)
Serves him right for leaving Chewie behind. Or was
that Jacen?
>>> Back with the YJK, we have Five Go Mad on Myrkrr... as Jaina, Jacen, Tenel
>>> Ka, Zekk, and their dog Lowie are pinned down under various forms of heavy
>>> fire by Nom Anor... somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>>> Anakin's corpse...
ROTFLMAO! Now I'll always see them on bicycles, doing
that salute... *snark*
>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>
>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
*enjoys this review more than the idea of reading the
book*
>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>>> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
>>> this...
Ya know... twice reading the JA3 (yes, that is what
I've spent my last waking moments reading the past few
nights, it's light, it's fun, God help me, I don't
think it's the worst I've read.) I've had to go,
"Whoa, that was creepy." First time was with the Sun
Crusher going through the Basilisk, second time when
Ackbar trashed the giant windchimes or whatever.
I could say something sarcastic about politics going
too far and investigating readers of the JA3, but it
seems too possible to be funny. :P
I think it's time for me to step back, read some stuff
where shit doesn't blow up. :)
>>> Meanwhile Borsk Feyl'ya blows himself to tiny little pieces
Ding dong the Bothan's dead?! :D
>>> However, everyone else escapes...
>>>
>>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>>> lightspeed...
>
>Oh, and an Alderaanian pot-plant. I kid not...
I knew Alderaan was a hippie commune.
>> Yowzers.
>
>Yeah...
Indeed. :)
>> Sean :)
>
>Pol'
Gumby
<.sig has wisely gone ahead to bed>
Rainbow Heron
>Anyone still paying attention?
Yep! While I"m still on novel-reading burn-out, I depend on spoilers
to tell me what's in the storylines. You can't tell me enough! So
thank you!
>OK...
>
>SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>
>This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
>not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
>with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
>of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
>which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
>a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
Cool! I love echoes when used correctly. They help to tie the whole
she-bang together.
>Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
>reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>right...
Didn't see Aliens, but I'll take your word for it...
>Meanwhile, Luke gets into the cockpit of his X-wing and shoots things.
>
>Seriously.
>
>Farmboy (that's his new callsign) has finally remembered something he forgot
>when he pissed off to Dagobah 1/3 of the way through ESB... that what he
>does best isn't float around Yavin 4 legs akimbo, humming... or do a fairly
>dubious Yoda impression... or expound some hokey POV about the Force... or
>stumble from one romanitic disaster to another... or even throw Dark Jedi
>down the nearest available hole in the deck...
>
>Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>
>Remember?
>
>And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>
>Luke's finally been hit with a clue-stick, organized the Jedi into a
>starfighter force, and opened a can of whupass all over the Vong...
>
>Yeah. Seriously.
ROTFL but cheering at the same time! Yay!!!!
:-)
>Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
Jedi fighting near ysalamari-world-Myrkrr, not good. Any way they
could have avoided that?
>Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
NOOOOOOOO! :.-(
>Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour.
Oh man...
>The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>open fire regardless...
Was this a good thing or a bad thing?
>Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
!!!
>somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>Anakin's corpse...
Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
I thought it would have been Jacen fromt he way folks have been
talking about him...
>Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it...
Let's hope the surviving Rebel Alliance members how they did it last
time...
>But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
Because the Vong have been taking over the galaxy star by star.
They've finally worked their way into the heart...one star at a time.
>Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
>over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
>impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
>was all a bit incoherent
Well if you're in a fight, things tend to get blurry.
>and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
Maybe that's why the author killed him off?
(Only *half* kidding, the other half is dead seriously asking...)
>and, added to that, there's the fact that Anakin's self-assurance just comes
>across as dullness
Maybe his self-assurance became dull and that was one of the reasons
he died?
>and any sense of spark in his relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
Well not every relationship has passionate sparks from the get-go.
Maybe it ties in with Anakin going dull...doing the same thing over
and over became dull to him and he stopped trusting. Thus the failure.
If the Jedi are (as well) doing the same things over and over, the
same things they've always done, then it wouldn't surprise me that
they are doing badly. When something good becomes rote and without
meaning or purpose, it becomes useless.
One thing I keep hearing is how the Jedi are failing all the time and
are always using old tricks. Maybe it's past time for some new tricks.
>IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
>and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
>addition of several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is
>to Barabells what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry
>and female), two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some
>others I've forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
Almost sounds like one of our Sith Wars with all of the character
juggling. :-)
>A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
Y**VH-1**!? LOL!
Did they have any BMTVs while they were at it? ;-)
>And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
Sounds great to me!
Thanks for the review Pol'!
But why oh why are they releasing the next one (like Shadowhunter) via
e-book exclusively? Not everyone has the money or inclinatin to do
that sort of thing, so millions miss out on the story by not having it
in HB or PB as well.
:-/
-Rainbow Heron
(sig thanks Pol too!)
I wish I didn't have novel burn-out anymore...
Policrat'
Heh!-)
>> OK...
>>
>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>>
>> This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
>> not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
>> with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
>> of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
>> which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
>> a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
>
> Cool! I love echoes when used correctly. They help to tie the whole
> she-bang together.
Aye...
[she-bang?-]
>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>> right...
>
> Didn't see Aliens, but I'll take your word for it...
You get the idea, though...?
>> Meanwhile, Luke gets into the cockpit of his X-wing and shoots things.
>>
>> Seriously.
>>
>> Farmboy (that's his new callsign) has finally remembered something he forgot
>> when he pissed off to Dagobah 1/3 of the way through ESB... that what he
>> does best isn't float around Yavin 4 legs akimbo, humming... or do a fairly
>> dubious Yoda impression... or expound some hokey POV about the Force... or
>> stumble from one romanitic disaster to another... or even throw Dark Jedi
>> down the nearest available hole in the deck...
>>
>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>>
>> Remember?
>>
>> And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>>
>> Luke's finally been hit with a clue-stick, organized the Jedi into a
>> starfighter force, and opened a can of whupass all over the Vong...
>>
>> Yeah. Seriously.
>
> ROTFL but cheering at the same time! Yay!!!!
>
> :-)
Heh!-)
>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>> relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>
> Jedi fighting near ysalamari-world-Myrkrr, not good. Any way they
> could have avoided that?
Yeah... by getting rid of the logical holes in the plot that you could drive
a Death Star through...
>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>
> NOOOOOOOO! :.-(
Hmm...
>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour.
>
> Oh man...
Aye...
>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>> open fire regardless...
>
> Was this a good thing or a bad thing?
It was jyst one of those things - some fairly sympathetic characters,
including Brand (remember Doornik-319) and Kre'frey agreed with Sovv, and
wouldn't fire...
But it was necessary, IMHO...
>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>
> !!!
Aye...
>> somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>> Anakin's corpse...
>
> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
dead...
>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>
> I thought it would have been Jacen fromt he way folks have been
> talking about him...
Nahh... Jacen's got his own 'issues', but he's there...
>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it...
>
> Let's hope the surviving Rebel Alliance members how they did it last
> time...
Yeah... Lando was summarily reappointed to the Military half-way through the
battle...
>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>
> Because the Vong have been taking over the galaxy star by star.
> They've finally worked their way into the heart...one star at a time.
Pfrrt!
>> Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
>> over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
>> impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
>> was all a bit incoherent
>
> Well if you're in a fight, things tend to get blurry.
Yeah... it was just on long blur, though - too much...
>> and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>
> Maybe that's why the author killed him off?
>
> (Only *half* kidding, the other half is dead seriously asking...)
Nahh... Greg Keyes wrote Anakin damn well in "Edge of Victory"...
>> and, added to that, there's the fact that Anakin's self-assurance just comes
>> across as dullness
>
> Maybe his self-assurance became dull and that was one of the reasons
> he died?
Nahh...
>> and any sense of spark in his relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>
> Well not every relationship has passionate sparks from the get-go.
> Maybe it ties in with Anakin going dull...doing the same thing over
> and over became dull to him and he stopped trusting. Thus the failure.
Nahh - at least, that wasn't the way it was supposed to be understood =)
> If the Jedi are (as well) doing the same things over and over, the
> same things they've always done, then it wouldn't surprise me that
> they are doing badly. When something good becomes rote and without
> meaning or purpose, it becomes useless.
>
> One thing I keep hearing is how the Jedi are failing all the time and
> are always using old tricks. Maybe it's past time for some new tricks.
Hmm... they're adapting, IMHO...
>> IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
>> and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
>> addition of several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is
>> to Barabells what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry
>> and female), two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some
>> others I've forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
>
> Almost sounds like one of our Sith Wars with all of the character
> juggling. :-)
Yeah...
>> A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>> erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
>
> Y**VH-1**!? LOL!
>
> Did they have any BMTVs while they were at it? ;-)
Probably... =)
>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
>
> Sounds great to me!
>
> Thanks for the review Pol'!
>
> But why oh why are they releasing the next one (like Shadowhunter) via
> e-book exclusively? Not everyone has the money or inclinatin to do
> that sort of thing, so millions miss out on the story by not having it
> in HB or PB as well.
I guess novellas ain't profitable =(
> :-/
>
> -Rainbow Heron
> (sig thanks Pol too!)
>
> I wish I didn't have novel burn-out anymore...
Heh!-)
Pol'
Policrat'
Yippee!
>>>> OK...
>>>>
>>>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>
> <snip>
>
>>>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>
> Cool!
Yeah!
>>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>
> Crap! I mean, I know nothing about the kid except what
> I've read in Crystal Star and JA3, but... damn. Here I
> was expecting there to be a new Anakin/Ben showdown
> someday. :)
Yeah, but there could still be a curve-ball on this...
> Serves him right for leaving Chewie behind. Or was
> that Jacen?
Anakin...
>>>> Back with the YJK, we have Five Go Mad on Myrkrr... as Jaina, Jacen, Tenel
>>>> Ka, Zekk, and their dog Lowie are pinned down under various forms of heavy
>>>> fire by Nom Anor... somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>>>> Anakin's corpse...
>
> ROTFLMAO! Now I'll always see them on bicycles, doing
> that salute... *snark*
=)
>>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>>
>>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>
> *enjoys this review more than the idea of reading the
> book*
Yippee!
>>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>>>> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
>>>> this...
>
> Ya know... twice reading the JA3 (yes, that is what
> I've spent my last waking moments reading the past few
> nights, it's light, it's fun, God help me, I don't
> think it's the worst I've read.) I've had to go,
> "Whoa, that was creepy." First time was with the Sun
> Crusher going through the Basilisk, second time when
> Ackbar trashed the giant windchimes or whatever.
Aye... KJA is a sick f*ck...
> I could say something sarcastic about politics going
> too far and investigating readers of the JA3, but it
> seems too possible to be funny. :P
>
> I think it's time for me to step back, read some stuff
> where shit doesn't blow up. :)
Perhaps...
>>>> Meanwhile Borsk Feyl'ya blows himself to tiny little pieces
>
> Ding dong the Bothan's dead?! :D
Nahh...
>>>> However, everyone else escapes...
>>>>
>>>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>>>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>>>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>>>> lightspeed...
>>
>> Oh, and an Alderaanian pot-plant. I kid not...
>
> I knew Alderaan was a hippie commune.
Not *that* sort of pot! Wash your brain out with soap!
>>> Yowzers.
>>
>> Yeah...
>
> Indeed. :)
BOOBIES!
>>> Sean :)
>>
>> Pol'
>
> Gumby
>
> <.sig has wisely gone ahead to bed>
.zzzzzzzzzzzig?
Pol'
Rainbow Heron
<policr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Cool! I love echoes when used correctly. They help to tie the whole
>> she-bang together.
>
>Aye...
>
>[she-bang?-]
"She-bang" is slang in my home for "thing/idea/concept/collective."
Tie the whole she-bang together = tie the whole idea together.
It's *not* "she-bang" as in Ricky Martin...we've used the w=phrase our
way for as long as I can remember.
>>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
>>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>>> right...
>>
>> Didn't see Aliens, but I'll take your word for it...
>
>You get the idea, though...?
Ugly little devils are are horrible to look at and damn hard to
kill...yep.
>>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>>> relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>>
>> Jedi fighting near ysalamari-world-Myrkrr, not good. Any way they
>> could have avoided that?
>
>Yeah... by getting rid of the logical holes in the plot that you could drive
>a Death Star through...
:-)
>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>
>> NOOOOOOOO! :.-(
>
>Hmm...
That was for Anakin- I liked him. The character that is.
>>> somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>>> Anakin's corpse...
>>
>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>
>Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>dead...
Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it...
>>
>> Let's hope the surviving Rebel Alliance members how they did it last
>> time...
>
>Yeah... Lando was summarily reappointed to the Military half-way through the
>battle...
Hmm. ...hope the Falcon's prepared to lose another satellite dish ;-)
>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>
>> Because the Vong have been taking over the galaxy star by star.
>> They've finally worked their way into the heart...one star at a time.
>
>Pfrrt!
"Pfrrt"???
>>> and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>>
>> Maybe that's why the author killed him off?
>>
>> (Only *half* kidding, the other half is dead seriously asking...)
>
>Nahh... Greg Keyes wrote Anakin damn well in "Edge of Victory"...
Guess we'll find out what happens later, well, later.
Wish I didn't have novel burn-out. I just bought the whole
Hitchhiker's Guide series Friday (compilation book on sale).
>>> and any sense of spark in his relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>>
>> Well not every relationship has passionate sparks from the get-go.
>> Maybe it ties in with Anakin going dull...doing the same thing over
>> and over became dull to him and he stopped trusting. Thus the failure.
>
>Nahh - at least, that wasn't the way it was supposed to be understood =)
And just how *is* it supposed to be understood? ;-)
<don't say read the book>
>> If the Jedi are (as well) doing the same things over and over, the
>> same things they've always done, then it wouldn't surprise me that
>> they are doing badly. When something good becomes rote and without
>> meaning or purpose, it becomes useless.
>>
>> One thing I keep hearing is how the Jedi are failing all the time and
>> are always using old tricks. Maybe it's past time for some new tricks.
>
>Hmm... they're adapting, IMHO...
Better adapt quick. Old tricks only get older and readers get tired of
reading it...not to mention the enemy gets to know your tricks and can
use 'em against you. The last thing you want is predictability in
these situations. Period.
>>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
>>
>> Sounds great to me!
>>
>> Thanks for the review Pol'!
>>
>> But why oh why are they releasing the next one (like Shadowhunter) via
>> e-book exclusively? Not everyone has the money or inclinatin to do
>> that sort of thing, so millions miss out on the story by not having it
>> in HB or PB as well.
>
>I guess novellas ain't profitable =(
Oh boo hiss... :-P novellas *are* profitable, just don't like being
*forced* to go futuristic, especially if I don't have the funds.
-Rainbow Heron
(sig is waiting for the burn-out to, well, burn out)
I think I'm beginning to remember the reasons why I thought this
series was a bad concept...and now it just keeps going and going...oh
well. If *you* like it you go on right ahead, I ain't stopping ya. And
thanks again for the summary/review Pol'!
Celaeno
Yep. I accidentally saw the rumor, so I have to check it out.
>OK...
>Meanwhile, Han and Leia do lots of running, jumping and standing still
>together, really working as a *team* for the first time since, oh... RotJ -
>this is almost certainly the work of a small but voiciferous group of
>bigoted fangirlzzz at forums.theforce.net and the SW.com forums, but it
>worked well...
Neat.
>Meanwhile, Luke gets into the cockpit of his X-wing and shoots things.
>
>Seriously.
>
>Farmboy (that's his new callsign) has finally remembered something he forgot
>when he pissed off to Dagobah 1/3 of the way through ESB... that what he
>does best isn't float around Yavin 4 legs akimbo, humming... or do a fairly
>dubious Yoda impression... or expound some hokey POV about the Force... or
>stumble from one romanitic disaster to another... or even throw Dark Jedi
>down the nearest available hole in the deck...
>
>Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>
>Remember?
>
>And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>
>Luke's finally been hit with a clue-stick, organized the Jedi into a
>starfighter force, and opened a can of whupass all over the Vong...
>
>Yeah. Seriously.
Hehe :)
>Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
Drat. I was just starting to warm to the fella. What if they'd killed
off Jacen instead?
>Back with the YJK, we have Five Go Mad on Myrkrr... as Jaina, Jacen, Tenel
>Ka, Zekk, and their dog Lowie are pinned down under various forms of heavy
>fire by Nom Anor... somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>Anakin's corpse...
>
>Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
So, the plot points on the cover, which can be translated as Anakin's
death sends Jaina to the Dark Side, are side notes and underwhelming?
Tsk.
Anakin isn't turning into an implanted blue spirit in Tahiri or
something, is he?
>Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
>this...
Almost beginning to wonder if the authors intend to EVER get the Vong
out of the galaxy.
Rakelle
--
There was an old man
From Peru, whose limericks
Were really haiku
Policrat'
Heh!-)
>> OK...
>
>> Meanwhile, Han and Leia do lots of running, jumping and standing still
>> together, really working as a *team* for the first time since, oh... RotJ -
>> this is almost certainly the work of a small but voiciferous group of
>> bigoted fangirlzzz at forums.theforce.net and the SW.com forums, but it
>> worked well...
>
> Neat.
Yeah...
>> Meanwhile, Luke gets into the cockpit of his X-wing and shoots things.
>>
>> Seriously.
>>
>> Farmboy (that's his new callsign) has finally remembered something he forgot
>> when he pissed off to Dagobah 1/3 of the way through ESB... that what he
>> does best isn't float around Yavin 4 legs akimbo, humming... or do a fairly
>> dubious Yoda impression... or expound some hokey POV about the Force... or
>> stumble from one romanitic disaster to another... or even throw Dark Jedi
>> down the nearest available hole in the deck...
>>
>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>>
>> Remember?
>>
>> And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>>
>> Luke's finally been hit with a clue-stick, organized the Jedi into a
>> starfighter force, and opened a can of whupass all over the Vong...
>>
>> Yeah. Seriously.
>
> Hehe :)
Yeah. I'm not the sort of person who says things like "It rocked!", but...
yeah... =)
>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>
> Drat. I was just starting to warm to the fella. What if they'd killed
> off Jacen instead?
Nahh...
>> Back with the YJK, we have Five Go Mad on Myrkrr... as Jaina, Jacen, Tenel
>> Ka, Zekk, and their dog Lowie are pinned down under various forms of heavy
>> fire by Nom Anor... somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>> Anakin's corpse...
>>
>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>
> So, the plot points on the cover, which can be translated as Anakin's
> death sends Jaina to the Dark Side, are side notes and underwhelming?
> Tsk.
Yep... it was clever, actually... they drip-fed the spoilers and edited the
audio version so everyone *thought* that SbS was going to be about Anakin
and Jaina and voxyn... then it turned out to be about Luke and Han and Leia
and the biggest space-battle in the SW Saga...
OTOH, they *do* seem to be setting Jacen and Jaina on a collision-course,
which may prove to be a Major Plot Point for the rest of the NJO...
> Anakin isn't turning into an implanted blue spirit in Tahiri or
> something, is he?
Hmm... IMHO, the way they've handled it leaves it open to any number of
'outs' - speculation so far has included a voice in Tahiri's head (though in
the state she's already in, that may not mean much) a 'Vong Vader' and
simply having Jaina do Dark Side things...
Basically, what they did in SbS is either intended to blind-side us after
the fairly blatant signposting of the eariler NJO stuff, or else the
signposting was all blind-siding in the first place...
>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
>> this...
>
> Almost beginning to wonder if the authors intend to EVER get the Vong
> out of the galaxy.
Nahh... I suspect they'll be whupped, but while genocide *is* a possibility,
IMHO, they're probably a permanent addition to the GFFA...
> Rakelle
Pol'
Policrat'
Yeah... I'd have said "shebang"... I was just twisting "she-bang" =)
>>>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged,
>>>> acid-spitting
>>>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>>>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>>>> right...
>>>
>>> Didn't see Aliens, but I'll take your word for it...
>>
>> You get the idea, though...?
>
> Ugly little devils are are horrible to look at and damn hard to
> kill...yep.
And spit corrosive mucus... and have acid for blood...
>>>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>>>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>>>> relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>>>
>>> Jedi fighting near ysalamari-world-Myrkrr, not good. Any way they
>>> could have avoided that?
>>
>> Yeah... by getting rid of the logical holes in the plot that you could drive
>> a Death Star through...
>
> :-)
Heh!-)
>>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>>
>>> NOOOOOOOO! :.-(
>>
>> Hmm...
>
> That was for Anakin- I liked him. The character that is.
I know...
>>>> somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>>>> Anakin's corpse...
>>>
>>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>>
>> Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>> dead...
>
> Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
Trouble is, at the end of SbS Anakin's corpse was still about as much in one
piece as it could've been after so many Vong had stuck amphistaffs in it...
>>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it...
>>>
>>> Let's hope the surviving Rebel Alliance members how they did it last
>>> time...
>>
>> Yeah... Lando was summarily reappointed to the Military half-way through the
>> battle...
>
> Hmm. ...hope the Falcon's prepared to lose another satellite dish ;-)
Oh, it did that in SbS already... Han, apparently, carries a spare now =)
>>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>>
>>> Because the Vong have been taking over the galaxy star by star.
>>> They've finally worked their way into the heart...one star at a time.
>>
>> Pfrrt!
>
> "Pfrrt"???
Except they didn't - their forces are *appallingly* over-stretched, their
lines of communication are far too concentrated on one route, and the NR
should have been doing a wholesale withdrawl-and-counterattack strategy from
half way through DT:R...
>>>> and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>>>
>>> Maybe that's why the author killed him off?
>>>
>>> (Only *half* kidding, the other half is dead seriously asking...)
>>
>> Nahh... Greg Keyes wrote Anakin damn well in "Edge of Victory"...
>
> Guess we'll find out what happens later, well, later.
>
> Wish I didn't have novel burn-out. I just bought the whole
> Hitchhiker's Guide series Friday (compilation book on sale).
Yippee!
>>>> and any sense of spark in his relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>>>
>>> Well not every relationship has passionate sparks from the get-go.
>>> Maybe it ties in with Anakin going dull...doing the same thing over
>>> and over became dull to him and he stopped trusting. Thus the failure.
>>
>> Nahh - at least, that wasn't the way it was supposed to be understood =)
>
> And just how *is* it supposed to be understood? ;-)
>
> <don't say read the book>
It was just less developed through most of the book than it should have been
after EoV... and when the Anakin/Tahiri mush kicked in, there wasn't enough
context...
>>> If the Jedi are (as well) doing the same things over and over, the
>>> same things they've always done, then it wouldn't surprise me that
>>> they are doing badly. When something good becomes rote and without
>>> meaning or purpose, it becomes useless.
>>>
>>> One thing I keep hearing is how the Jedi are failing all the time and
>>> are always using old tricks. Maybe it's past time for some new tricks.
>>
>> Hmm... they're adapting, IMHO...
>
> Better adapt quick. Old tricks only get older and readers get tired of
> reading it...not to mention the enemy gets to know your tricks and can
> use 'em against you. The last thing you want is predictability in
> these situations. Period.
Oh, they're adapting frantically... the problem is, they've just not worked
out that they need to start Vong-thumping on their own terms...
>>>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>>>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>>>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of
>>>> SBS...
>>>
>>> Sounds great to me!
>>>
>>> Thanks for the review Pol'!
>>>
>>> But why oh why are they releasing the next one (like Shadowhunter) via
>>> e-book exclusively? Not everyone has the money or inclinatin to do
>>> that sort of thing, so millions miss out on the story by not having it
>>> in HB or PB as well.
>>
>> I guess novellas ain't profitable =(
>
> Oh boo hiss... :-P novellas *are* profitable, just don't like being
> *forced* to go futuristic, especially if I don't have the funds.
Heh!-)
C'mon, it's only about $3...
> -Rainbow Heron
> (sig is waiting for the burn-out to, well, burn out)
>
> I think I'm beginning to remember the reasons why I thought this
> series was a bad concept...and now it just keeps going and going...oh
> well. If *you* like it you go on right ahead, I ain't stopping ya. And
> thanks again for the summary/review Pol'!
Yeah... I dunno, the Vong *still* don't seem 'Star Wars' to me...
Pol'
Rainbow Heron
You twisted it so well that I didn't notice you twisted it. %-/
>>>>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged,
>>>>> acid-spitting
>>>>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>>>>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>>>>> right...
>>>>
>>>> Didn't see Aliens, but I'll take your word for it...
>>>
>>> You get the idea, though...?
>>
>> Ugly little devils are are horrible to look at and damn hard to
>> kill...yep.
>
>And spit corrosive mucus... and have acid for blood...
eeeeck...my acid reflux is beginning to stir...
>>>>> somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>>>>> Anakin's corpse...
>>>>
>>>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>>>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>>>
>>> Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>>> dead...
>>
>> Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
>
>Trouble is, at the end of SbS Anakin's corpse was still about as much in one
>piece as it could've been after so many Vong had stuck amphistaffs in it...
Pretty violent death! Poor guy, I hope he went fast.
>>>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it...
>>>>
>>>> Let's hope the surviving Rebel Alliance members how they did it last
>>>> time...
>>>
>>> Yeah... Lando was summarily reappointed to the Military half-way through the
>>> battle...
>>
>> Hmm. ...hope the Falcon's prepared to lose another satellite dish ;-)
>
>Oh, it did that in SbS already... Han, apparently, carries a spare now =)
:-D I would!
>>>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>>>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>>>
>>>> Because the Vong have been taking over the galaxy star by star.
>>>> They've finally worked their way into the heart...one star at a time.
>>>
>>> Pfrrt!
>>
>> "Pfrrt"???
>
>Except they didn't - their forces are *appallingly* over-stretched, their
>lines of communication are far too concentrated on one route, and the NR
>should have been doing a wholesale withdrawl-and-counterattack strategy from
>half way through DT:R...
Well then, maybe it's their killing off major characters (aka Stars)
one by one... ;-)
>>>>> and any sense of spark in his relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>>>>
>>>> Well not every relationship has passionate sparks from the get-go.
>>>> Maybe it ties in with Anakin going dull...doing the same thing over
>>>> and over became dull to him and he stopped trusting. Thus the failure.
>>>
>>> Nahh - at least, that wasn't the way it was supposed to be understood =)
>>
>> And just how *is* it supposed to be understood? ;-)
>>
>> <don't say read the book>
>
>It was just less developed through most of the book than it should have been
>after EoV... and when the Anakin/Tahiri mush kicked in, there wasn't enough
>context...
Ah. Maybe they were taking it slow?
>>>> If the Jedi are (as well) doing the same things over and over, the
>>>> same things they've always done, then it wouldn't surprise me that
>>>> they are doing badly. When something good becomes rote and without
>>>> meaning or purpose, it becomes useless.
>>>>
>>>> One thing I keep hearing is how the Jedi are failing all the time and
>>>> are always using old tricks. Maybe it's past time for some new tricks.
>>>
>>> Hmm... they're adapting, IMHO...
>>
>> Better adapt quick. Old tricks only get older and readers get tired of
>> reading it...not to mention the enemy gets to know your tricks and can
>> use 'em against you. The last thing you want is predictability in
>> these situations. Period.
>
>Oh, they're adapting frantically... the problem is, they've just not worked
>out that they need to start Vong-thumping on their own terms...
Somebody go slap 'em upside the head and tell them to start
Vong-thumping.
(how about tub-thumping? ;-) )
>>>>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>>>>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>>>>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of
>>>>> SBS...
>>>>
>>>> Sounds great to me!
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the review Pol'!
>>>>
>>>> But why oh why are they releasing the next one (like Shadowhunter) via
>>>> e-book exclusively? Not everyone has the money or inclinatin to do
>>>> that sort of thing, so millions miss out on the story by not having it
>>>> in HB or PB as well.
>>>
>>> I guess novellas ain't profitable =(
>>
>> Oh boo hiss... :-P novellas *are* profitable, just don't like being
>> *forced* to go futuristic, especially if I don't have the funds.
>
>Heh!-)
>
>C'mon, it's only about $3...
The electronic device that stores them isn't.
Besides, I prefer books anyway.
>> -Rainbow Heron
>> (sig is waiting for the burn-out to, well, burn out)
>>
>> I think I'm beginning to remember the reasons why I thought this
>> series was a bad concept...and now it just keeps going and going...oh
>> well. If *you* like it you go on right ahead, I ain't stopping ya. And
>> thanks again for the summary/review Pol'!
>
>Yeah... I dunno, the Vong *still* don't seem 'Star Wars' to me...
Me neither.
-Rainbow Heron
(sig would like to see Vong gone)
Ugly little bastards...is it just me or do they seem similar in some
aspects to the Mars Attacks! aliens. Y'know with the 'visible skull'
thing...<automated sig follows>
==========================================
http://web.infoave.net/~rkanderson/rassm/swc.htm
DarthGumby
telepathically conveyed:
>>IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
>>and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
>>addition of several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is
>>to Barabells what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry
>>and female), two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some
>>others I've forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
>
>Almost sounds like one of our Sith Wars with all of the character
>juggling. :-)
So I'm reading the Jedi Academy trilogy, and last night
I get to where Luke asks the holocron if there's
anything they should know, and the dude says he wants
to tell them about a sith war.
I had this momentary weirdness, I was like "Sith War,
here?"
I read too late at night, methinks...
<.sigs agree and offer DG a straitjacket>
Gumby
DarthGumby
telepathically conveyed:
>Do not underestimate the power of the Dark DarthGumby:
>
>> On Tue, 30 Oct 2001 01:57:22 +0000, Policrat'
>> telepathically conveyed:
>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>
>>>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>
>> Crap! I mean, I know nothing about the kid except what
>> I've read in Crystal Star and JA3, but... damn. Here I
>> was expecting there to be a new Anakin/Ben showdown
>> someday. :)
>
>Yeah, but there could still be a curve-ball on this...
Neat, so maybe by the time I'm up to these books,
everyone will be undead.
Wait, undead's not good, is it?
>> Serves him right for leaving Chewie behind. Or was
>> that Jacen?
>
>Anakin...
Pppt. Serves him right. :)
>>>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>>>>> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
>>>>> this...
>>
>> Ya know... twice reading the JA3 (yes, that is what
>> I've spent my last waking moments reading the past few
>> nights, it's light, it's fun, God help me, I don't
>> think it's the worst I've read.) I've had to go,
>> "Whoa, that was creepy." First time was with the Sun
>> Crusher going through the Basilisk, second time when
>> Ackbar trashed the giant windchimes or whatever.
>
>Aye... KJA is a sick f*ck...
I was also kept awake by the fact that I typed Basilisk
when it was the Hydra. My subconscious is a nitpicking
little bugger.
>>>>> Meanwhile Borsk Feyl'ya blows himself to tiny little pieces
>>
>> Ding dong the Bothan's dead?! :D
>
>Nahh...
*snap* Oh well. He was too good of an annoying guy to
waste, I guess.
>>>>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>>>>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>>>>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>>>>> lightspeed...
>>>
>>> Oh, and an Alderaanian pot-plant. I kid not...
>>
>> I knew Alderaan was a hippie commune.
>
>Not *that* sort of pot! Wash your brain out with soap!
*brain sparkles and makes squeaky sound*
*Gumby opens mouth to speak and soap bubbles come out*
>> <.sig has wisely gone ahead to bed>
>
>.zzzzzzzzzzzig?
'zup?
>Pol'
Gumby
remove MyHelmet to e-mail me.
I want to look upon your e-mail... with my own eyes...
*wheeze*
--Anywhere my computer hangs is home
Rainbow Heron
:-) You could almost rename the Sith War Archives and call it the Sith
Wars Holocron.
Almost.
>I read too late at night, methinks...
I post too late at night methinks...
...or too early in the morning depending on your point of view.
><.sigs agree and offer DG a straitjacket>
<RH's straitjacket is actually crooked>
Guess I could always iron it out...
-Rainbow Heron
(sig reminds RH that she can't iron)
That's why I take supplements sig. <automated sig follows>
==========================================
http://web.infoave.net/~rkanderson/rassm/swc.htm
Policrat'
> On Thu, 01 Nov 2001 03:24:43 +0000, Policrat'
Hard to see, the dark twist is, heh!?-)
>>>>>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged,
>>>>>> acid-spitting
>>>>>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>>>>>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>>>>>> right...
>>>>>
>>>>> Didn't see Aliens, but I'll take your word for it...
>>>>
>>>> You get the idea, though...?
>>>
>>> Ugly little devils are are horrible to look at and damn hard to
>>> kill...yep.
>>
>> And spit corrosive mucus... and have acid for blood...
>
> eeeeck...my acid reflux is beginning to stir...
Yup...
>>>>>> somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>>>>>> Anakin's corpse...
>>>>>
>>>>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>>>>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>>>>
>>>> Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>>>> dead...
>>>
>>> Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
>>
>> Trouble is, at the end of SbS Anakin's corpse was still about as much in one
>> piece as it could've been after so many Vong had stuck amphistaffs in it...
>
> Pretty violent death! Poor guy, I hope he went fast.
Yeah... kinda keeled over, not knowing whether he'd got the big barrel of
voxyn DNA he was trying to blow up...
>>>>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it...
>>>>>
>>>>> Let's hope the surviving Rebel Alliance members how they did it last
>>>>> time...
>>>>
>>>> Yeah... Lando was summarily reappointed to the Military half-way through
>>>> the
>>>> battle...
>>>
>>> Hmm. ...hope the Falcon's prepared to lose another satellite dish ;-)
>>
>> Oh, it did that in SbS already... Han, apparently, carries a spare now =)
>
> :-D I would!
Aye...
>>>>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>>>>
>>>>> Because the Vong have been taking over the galaxy star by star.
>>>>> They've finally worked their way into the heart...one star at a time.
>>>>
>>>> Pfrrt!
>>>
>>> "Pfrrt"???
>>
>> Except they didn't - their forces are *appallingly* over-stretched, their
>> lines of communication are far too concentrated on one route, and the NR
>> should have been doing a wholesale withdrawl-and-counterattack strategy from
>> half way through DT:R...
>
> Well then, maybe it's their killing off major characters (aka Stars)
> one by one... ;-)
Pfrt!
Yeah, that makes sense...
I had an idea it might be something to do with Vergere's tears, actually...
>>>>>> and any sense of spark in his relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>>>>>
>>>>> Well not every relationship has passionate sparks from the get-go.
>>>>> Maybe it ties in with Anakin going dull...doing the same thing over
>>>>> and over became dull to him and he stopped trusting. Thus the failure.
>>>>
>>>> Nahh - at least, that wasn't the way it was supposed to be understood =)
>>>
>>> And just how *is* it supposed to be understood? ;-)
>>>
>>> <don't say read the book>
>>
>> It was just less developed through most of the book than it should have been
>> after EoV... and when the Anakin/Tahiri mush kicked in, there wasn't enough
>> context...
>
> Ah. Maybe they were taking it slow?
Nope - I assume Denning just wrote a lot of it before EoV...
>>>>> If the Jedi are (as well) doing the same things over and over, the
>>>>> same things they've always done, then it wouldn't surprise me that
>>>>> they are doing badly. When something good becomes rote and without
>>>>> meaning or purpose, it becomes useless.
>>>>>
>>>>> One thing I keep hearing is how the Jedi are failing all the time and
>>>>> are always using old tricks. Maybe it's past time for some new tricks.
>>>>
>>>> Hmm... they're adapting, IMHO...
>>>
>>> Better adapt quick. Old tricks only get older and readers get tired of
>>> reading it...not to mention the enemy gets to know your tricks and can
>>> use 'em against you. The last thing you want is predictability in
>>> these situations. Period.
>>
>> Oh, they're adapting frantically... the problem is, they've just not worked
>> out that they need to start Vong-thumping on their own terms...
>
> Somebody go slap 'em upside the head and tell them to start
> Vong-thumping.
>
> (how about tub-thumping? ;-) )
Not really your kind of music, that...
Classic New Cheese, though...
<tubthumping>
Pissing the night away...
Pissing the night away...
He drinks a whisky drink...
He drinks a vodka drink...
He drinks a lager drink...
He drinks a cider drink...
He sings the songs that remind him of the good times...
He sings the songs that remind him of the better times...
Oh, Danny Boy... Danny Boy...
I get knocked down but I get up again!
You're never going to keep me down!
I get knocked down but I get up again!
You're never going to keep me down!
I get knocked down but I get up again!
You're never going to keep me down!
I get knocked down but I get up again!
You're never going to keep me down!
</tubthumping>
Sorry... =)
>>>>>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>>>>>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>>>>>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of
>>>>>> SBS...
>>>>>
>>>>> Sounds great to me!
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the review Pol'!
>>>>>
>>>>> But why oh why are they releasing the next one (like Shadowhunter) via
>>>>> e-book exclusively? Not everyone has the money or inclinatin to do
>>>>> that sort of thing, so millions miss out on the story by not having it
>>>>> in HB or PB as well.
>>>>
>>>> I guess novellas ain't profitable =(
>>>
>>> Oh boo hiss... :-P novellas *are* profitable, just don't like being
>>> *forced* to go futuristic, especially if I don't have the funds.
>>
>> Heh!-)
>>
>> C'mon, it's only about $3...
>
> The electronic device that stores them isn't.
Any PC with Adobe Acrobat?
> Besides, I prefer books anyway.
Yeah...
>>> -Rainbow Heron
>>> (sig is waiting for the burn-out to, well, burn out)
>>>
>>> I think I'm beginning to remember the reasons why I thought this
>>> series was a bad concept...and now it just keeps going and going...oh
>>> well. If *you* like it you go on right ahead, I ain't stopping ya. And
>>> thanks again for the summary/review Pol'!
>>
>> Yeah... I dunno, the Vong *still* don't seem 'Star Wars' to me...
>
> Me neither.
>
> -Rainbow Heron
> (sig would like to see Vong gone)
Aye...
> Ugly little bastards...is it just me or do they seem similar in some
> aspects to the Mars Attacks! aliens. Y'know with the 'visible skull'
> thing...
Yep...
><automated sig follows>
> ==========================================
> http://web.infoave.net/~rkanderson/rassm/swc.htm
You some kinda relation to Bill?
Pol'
Policrat'
Erm... nope...
>>> Serves him right for leaving Chewie behind. Or was
>>> that Jacen?
>>
>> Anakin...
>
> Pppt. Serves him right. :)
Heh!-)
>>>>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>>>>>> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in
>>>>>> doing
>>>>>> this...
>>>
>>> Ya know... twice reading the JA3 (yes, that is what
>>> I've spent my last waking moments reading the past few
>>> nights, it's light, it's fun, God help me, I don't
>>> think it's the worst I've read.) I've had to go,
>>> "Whoa, that was creepy." First time was with the Sun
>>> Crusher going through the Basilisk, second time when
>>> Ackbar trashed the giant windchimes or whatever.
>>
>> Aye... KJA is a sick f*ck...
>
> I was also kept awake by the fact that I typed Basilisk
> when it was the Hydra. My subconscious is a nitpicking
> little bugger.
=)
>>>>>> Meanwhile Borsk Feyl'ya blows himself to tiny little pieces
>>>
>>> Ding dong the Bothan's dead?! :D
>>
>> Nahh...
>
> *snap* Oh well. He was too good of an annoying guy to
> waste, I guess.
Oh yeah, they wasted him all right... just after it finally became clear to
all the fanboys how damn *cool* he was...
>>>>>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>>>>>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>>>>>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>>>>>> lightspeed...
>>>>
>>>> Oh, and an Alderaanian pot-plant. I kid not...
>>>
>>> I knew Alderaan was a hippie commune.
>>
>> Not *that* sort of pot! Wash your brain out with soap!
>
> *brain sparkles and makes squeaky sound*
>
> *Gumby opens mouth to speak and soap bubbles come out*
Heh!-)
>>> <.sig has wisely gone ahead to bed>
>>
>> .zzzzzzzzzzzig?
>
> 'zup?
'sleep?
>> Pol'
>
> Gumby
>
> remove MyHelmet to e-mail me.
> I want to look upon your e-mail... with my own eyes...
> *wheeze*
And no damn politics either!
Pol'
jill marie
Very big parts that didn't click.
> This read like it was written by someone who was really
familiar with SW -
> not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but
really familiar
> with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there
seemed to be a *lot*
> of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were
even more *echos*,
> which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl'
stuff made sense in
> a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well,
kinda, at least...
>
> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into
eight-legged, acid-spitting
> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are
bloody hard to
> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like
Aliens, you'd be
> right...
>
> So... Ganner Rhysode and the YJK go on a crazy mission to
wipe them out...
> all of them...
Why? Why did they *have* to do this? Ok, so the Voxyn (why
the Jedi didn't get the Vornskr connection just from the
name, I'll never know...;-) are bad, Jedi killing monsters.
They're short lived and are cloned from one 'mother'. So,
they risk 17 YJK to kill this mother. But, the YV are
masters at bio tech. They can just make another one. So,
why bother? This makes no sense to me at all.
Which feeds into another complaint, Anakin Solo dies.
> Meanwhile, Han and Leia do lots of running, jumping and
standing still
> together, really working as a *team* for the first time
since, oh... RotJ -
> this is almost certainly the work of a small but
voiciferous group of
> bigoted fangirlzzz at forums.theforce.net and the SW.com
forums, but it
> worked well...
My complaint here is that we saw a lot more of Luke and Mara
being 'intimate' than Han and Leia.
But, why the sudden change of heart? Because he has a son
now? It needed more explination.
> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather,
on a dying
> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom
Anor, a
> relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some
voxyn...
>
> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin
Solo dies.
>
> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and
developed of the Solo kids. So they have him die over some
lame mission? I could see him dying to directly protect his
family, which would have been a lot better IMO, but to kill
some mother clone? Please.
> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong
attack Cour. This is
> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies
pull an old
> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships
ahead of them to
> ram down the planetary shields.
>
> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge
just mutiny, and
> open fire regardless...
>
> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors
in this book with no really good explination given. The
same with Leia. I found this irritating.
> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead
already!"
>
> Back with the YJK, we have Five Go Mad on Myrkrr... as
Jaina, Jacen, Tenel
> Ka, Zekk, and their dog Lowie are pinned down under
various forms of heavy
> fire by Nom Anor... somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a
conversation with
> Anakin's corpse...
>
> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to
get her brother's body back, but didn't use it to try and
save him in the first place?
> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets
captured by the
> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome
sufferer, Vergere -
> who is clearly completely nuts...
I expected a bit more of an explination of Vergere's
actions. Again, extremely unclear.
> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with
it... the Vong
> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of
their fleet in doing
> this...
<smirk>
I concur. I really couldn't make out what was going on half
the time. Did we *really* need blow by blow action, but
absolutely no insight into the characters?
> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical
POV, if not a
> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one
template, and it's
> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui
Sheesh gave them...
> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out
loud!
Exactly. Hello!! Major Plot Hole!
> The major flaw, though, is characterization...
Which was non-existant.
> Nom Anor kills Anakin, and we get snatches of the cruel
cunning with which
> he drives the YJK through the worldship, but he's
continually thwarted those
> pesky kids...
>
> And there was a *reason* why the YJK were ignored by any
sane pro-fic
> authors... there are too many utterly forgettable and
disposable characters
> in that plotline... and, added to that, there's the fact
that Anakin's
> self-assurance just comes across as dullness, and any
sense of spark in his
> relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>
> Also, since the entire cast of the YJK and JJK books
(except the ones who
> were killed earlier in SbS), plus Ganner and some
superfluous additions, all
> went to Myrkrr, there were *far* to many characters in
that plotline... it
> just got bogged down...
Again, exactly. Way too many people to not care about. I
can't even remember what happened to Ganner.
And again, Anakin died, in part, trying to kill Nom Anor.
Why not let Anakin kill him? After all, it is SW. Let the
good guys win once in a while.
> Also, Threepio's lines seem a bit stiff, at first - but
Denning gets better
> at writing him, and fast...
>
> A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by
the Terminators...
> erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
They were a nice addition.
> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the
the
> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy
mind-linking with Mara and
> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the
best parts of SBS...
But, didn't you get a bit exhausted with all of the non-stop
battles? Luke and Mara were fine, but Leia freaking out and
not letting Ben go and then losing him for god's sake?
Please. I just didn't like the bit of Leia's character that
we got.
> All in all, yeah... it wasn't bad... the YJK plotline
could have been
> handled *far* better, but in the end, that turned out not
to be the main
> event after all, but a YJK novel which just happened to be
told concurrently
> with a proper Luke/Mara/Han/Leia/Lando/Garm/Wedge/Borsk
Zahn-style EU
> SW-fest...
>
> Pol'
I was just frustrated with the book. With the plot holes,
with the non-characterization, everything. Heck, I didn't
even like Anakin that much, but his death seemed a waste.
Maybe that was the point...a waste. But, geez, this is SW
and I'm getting a bit frustrated by the good guys losing all
the time.
~~jill marie
Daniel Olin Miller
> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Rainbow Heron:
> > (sig would like to see Vong gone)
>
> Aye...
>
> > Ugly little bastards...is it just me or do they seem similar in some
> > aspects to the Mars Attacks! aliens. Y'know with the 'visible skull'
> > thing...
>
> Yep...
They seem to me to be a direct ripoff of the Affronters. Nasty BEMs with
passion for pain and genetic engineering...
Daniel O. Miller
Simon H. Lee
the thread. It doesn't help that I've not seen it yet.
-- - Simon -
ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
jill marie
Heck, that didn't stop everyone else. ;-) I think Pol' and
I are the only ones to have read it right now. It was at
Wal-Mart in SLC last weekend.
~~jill marie
jump in, the water's warm
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>
I've been trying valiantly not to be spoiled...
Policrat'
F*ck, yeah... except the Affront were... well, cool...
They had a sense of humour, which is something the Vong conspicuously
*lack*...
> Daniel O. Miller
Pol'
Policrat'
>
> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> wrote: Do not underestimate the power of
> the Dark John Donchig:
>
>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked out
>>> the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624. Wow, that's
>>> a lot of dead trees.
>>>
>> Yeah.
>>
>> Non-spoiler bit... um...
>>
>> Feh!
>>
>> The only non-spoiler bit is that there is no non-spoiler bit... and that sums
>> up SbS rather well for those of you who'd rather not know...
>>
>> S P O I L E R
>>
>> S P A C E . . .
>>
>> S P O I L E R
>>
>> S P A C E . . .
>>
>> S P O I L E R
>>
>> S P A C E . . .
>>
>> S P O I L E R
>>
>> S P A C E . . .
>>
>> Anyone still paying attention?
>>
>> OK...
>>
>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>>
> Very big parts that didn't click.
Yeah...
>> This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
>> not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
>> with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
>> of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
>> which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
>> a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
>>
>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>> right...
>>
>> So... Ganner Rhysode and the YJK go on a crazy mission to wipe them out...
>> all of them...
>>
> Why? Why did they *have* to do this? Ok, so the Voxyn (why the Jedi didn't
> get the Vornskr connection just from the name, I'll never know...;-) are bad,
> Jedi killing monsters. They're short lived and are cloned from one 'mother'.
> So, they risk 17 YJK to kill this mother. But, the YV are masters at bio
> tech. They can just make another one. So, why bother? This makes no sense
> to me at all.
Nor me... the idea that the hyperlanes are dovin-basal-mind is a dumb plot
device too... there's nothing to stop anyone just going *over* them...
"His strategy indicates two-dimentional thinking..."
And no, I don't know why quotes from "The Wrath of Khan" always seem so
aposite in the NRG either...
> Which feeds into another complaint, Anakin Solo dies.
Yeah...
>> Meanwhile, Han and Leia do lots of running, jumping and standing still
>> together, really working as a *team* for the first time since, oh... RotJ -
>> this is almost certainly the work of a small but voiciferous group of bigoted
>> fangirlzzz at forums.theforce.net and the SW.com forums, but it worked
>> well...
>>
> My complaint here is that we saw a lot more of Luke and Mara being 'intimate'
> than Han and Leia.
Yeah... the characterization of Han and Leia seemed sketchy in parts, as if
LFL had decided to change the whole direction of it after Denning had begun
(hence 'Recovery', as well)...
>> Lando has built an army of Terminators which he's trying to flog to the NR...
>>
>> Meanwhile, Luke gets into the cockpit of his X-wing and shoots things.
>>
>> Seriously.
>>
>> Farmboy (that's his new callsign) has finally remembered something he forgot
>> when he pissed off to Dagobah 1/3 of the way through ESB... that what he does
>> best isn't float around Yavin 4 legs akimbo, humming... or do a fairly
>> dubious Yoda impression... or expound some hokey POV about the Force... or
>> stumble from one romanitic disaster to another... or even throw Dark Jedi
>> down the nearest available hole in the deck...
>>
>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>>
>> Remember?
>>
>> And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>>
>> Luke's finally been hit with a clue-stick, organized the Jedi into a
>> starfighter force, and opened a can of whupass all over the Vong...
>>
>> Yeah. Seriously.
>>
> But, why the sudden change of heart? Because he has a son now? It needed
> more explination.
I thought it made sense... IMHO, it was worth handling the psychology
'off-camera' just for the 'wow' factor when it became clear what Farmboy was
doing...
Ahh, *finally*! This is your father's Star Wars after all!
>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a relatively
>> small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>>
>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>
>> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
>>
> An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and developed of the Solo
> kids. So they have him die over some lame mission? I could see him dying to
> directly protect his family, which would have been a lot better IMO, but to
> kill some mother clone? Please.
Yeah... I think that was kinda the point, though... it was supposed to be a
left-field curve-ball...
>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old Yevethan
>> trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to ram down the
>> planetary shields.
>>
>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>> open fire regardless...
>>
>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>
> What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors in this book with
> no really good explination given. The same with Leia. I found this
> irritating.
Nahh, Borsk was Borsk... I thought the 'dejarik player' idea tied the whole
thing together rather neatly...
[the Bothan was doublethinking, IMHO... sneaky bastard out-thought himself]
And Leia... hey, it was signposted in BP... kinda...
I'm going to give Denning a 'let' on this, since it should have all happened
a *lot* earlier...
>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>
>> Back with the YJK, we have Five Go Mad on Myrkrr... as Jaina, Jacen, Tenel
>> Ka, Zekk, and their dog Lowie are pinned down under various forms of heavy
>> fire by Nom Anor... somewhere nearby, Tahiri is holding a conversation with
>> Anakin's corpse...
>>
>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>
> A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to get her brother's
> body back, but didn't use it to try and save him in the first place?
Yeah...
>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>
> I expected a bit more of an explination of Vergere's actions. Again,
> extremely unclear.
At first, I thought Vergere was just genuinely insane... re-reading, I
realised the funky chicken-analog's got a plan... unfortunately, she's not
going to let the Solos get in the way...
And maybe she doesn't trust them... she heard that 'Skywalker' was in
charge, and thought that it was Anakin, who Thracia had been worried about
way back... then she saw Jaina use Force-lightning...
But has no-one noticed that the Fosh come from the Unknown Regions!?
Whatever Vergere's plan is, I keep seeing blue fingerprints all over it...
>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet
>> in doing this...
>>
> <smirk>
Heh!-)
There was insight... it was just, well... clumsy...
>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>
> Exactly. Hello!! Major Plot Hole!
Maybe they can throw a Dark Jedi into it... =)
>> The major flaw, though, is characterization...
>>
> Which was non-existant.
Nahh... it was just, well... unexciting... given how many YJK Denning was
using, I felt he covered the bases in a workmanlike manner, at least...
>> Nom Anor kills Anakin, and we get snatches of the cruel cunning with which he
>> drives the YJK through the worldship, but he's continually thwarted those
>> pesky kids...
>>
>> And there was a *reason* why the YJK were ignored by any sane pro-fic
>> authors... there are too many utterly forgettable and disposable characters
>> in that plotline... and, added to that, there's the fact that Anakin's
>> self-assurance just comes across as dullness, and any sense of spark in his
>> relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>>
>> Also, since the entire cast of the YJK and JJK books (except the ones who
>> were killed earlier in SbS), plus Ganner and some superfluous additions, all
>> went to Myrkrr, there were *far* to many characters in that plotline... it
>> just got bogged down...
>>
> Again, exactly. Way too many people to not care about. I can't even remember
> what happened to Ganner.
Yep...
(Ganner, FYI, got out with Jaina - though he was utterly uncharacterized...
and I still have no idea how Lowie got back to the shuttle, or what happened
to the Dark Jedi)
>> IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
>> and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
>> several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is to Barabells
>> what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry and female),
>> two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some others I've
>> forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
>>
>> IMHO, they should have had them *really* captured rather than infiltrated -
>> after all, the Vong seemed to have captured everything from AT-ATs to live
>> Jedi to train the voxyn... and yould've thought the YJK would have spared a
>> *thought* to wonder which of their friends those unfortunates had been...
>>
>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
>> - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
>> the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
>> and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
>> scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a blast...
>> and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a *shred* of
>> credibility...
>>
> And again, Anakin died, in part, trying to kill Nom Anor. Why not let Anakin
> kill him? After all, it is SW. Let the good guys win once in a while.
The bad news is, it gets darker... Stover and Williams/Dix are kinda Iain M.
Banks rip-offs...
>> Also, Threepio's lines seem a bit stiff, at first - but Denning gets better
>> at writing him, and fast...
>>
>> A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>> erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
>>
> They were a nice addition.
Heh!-)
>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
>>
> But, didn't you get a bit exhausted with all of the non-stop battles? Luke
> and Mara were fine, but Leia freaking out and not letting Ben go and then
> losing him for god's sake? Please. I just didn't like the bit of Leia's
> character that we got.
Hey, she actually used her lightsaber...
>> All in all, yeah... it wasn't bad... the YJK plotline could have been handled
>> *far* better, but in the end, that turned out not to be the main event after
>> all, but a YJK novel which just happened to be told concurrently with a
>> proper Luke/Mara/Han/Leia/Lando/Garm/Wedge/Borsk Zahn-style EU SW-fest...
>>
>> Pol'
>>
> I was just frustrated with the book. With the plot holes, with the
> non-characterization, everything. Heck, I didn't even like Anakin that much,
> but his death seemed a waste. Maybe that was the point...a waste. But, geez,
> this is SW and I'm getting a bit frustrated by the good guys losing all the
> time.
Yeah... I just, well... *went* with it, and I found that the decent stuff
was enough to outweight the cr*p...
> ~~jill marie
Pol'
Policrat'
> Y'know, I really need to read this thing so that I can get in on
> the thread. It doesn't help that I've not seen it yet.
Don't let that stop you!
> -- - Simon -
Pol'
Daniel Olin Miller
I particularly like the way they repair their ships to within a
monomolecular layer beneath the battle damage to leave a scar.
But I also liked the whole playing tennis with a bird instead of a ball.
> > Daniel O. Miller
>
> Pol'
>
>
Daniel O. Miller
Policrat'
They really could teach the Vong a few things about mindless cruelty...
*and* drink them under the table at the same time...
>>> Daniel O. Miller
>>
>> Pol'
>>
>>
>
> Daniel O. Miller
Pol'
Celaeno
>Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Rainbow Heron:
>>>> Didn't see Aliens, but I'll take your word for it...
>>>
>>> You get the idea, though...?
>>
>> Ugly little devils are are horrible to look at and damn hard to
>> kill...yep.
>
>And spit corrosive mucus... and have acid for blood...
*resists urge to embark upon diatribe about exactly how stupid the
notion of acid blood - acid as in eats you and the floor below you
away - really is*
>>>> Jedi fighting near ysalamari-world-Myrkrr, not good. Any way they
>>>> could have avoided that?
>>>
>>> Yeah... by getting rid of the logical holes in the plot that you could drive
>>> a Death Star through...
>>
>> :-)
>
>Heh!-)
I thought the books were *supposed* to have those.
>>>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>>>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>>>
>>> Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>>> dead...
>>
>> Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
>
>Trouble is, at the end of SbS Anakin's corpse was still about as much in one
>piece as it could've been after so many Vong had stuck amphistaffs in it...
Maybe it'll desintegrate while we're not looking.
>>> Yeah... Lando was summarily reappointed to the Military half-way through the
>>> battle...
>>
>> Hmm. ...hope the Falcon's prepared to lose another satellite dish ;-)
>
>Oh, it did that in SbS already... Han, apparently, carries a spare now =)
LOL!!!
>> I think I'm beginning to remember the reasons why I thought this
>> series was a bad concept...and now it just keeps going and going...oh
>> well. If *you* like it you go on right ahead, I ain't stopping ya. And
>> thanks again for the summary/review Pol'!
>
>Yeah... I dunno, the Vong *still* don't seem 'Star Wars' to me...
That's why I'm just waiting for them to go away... they don't belong
in the galaxy in more senses than one.
Celaeno
Ok, we'll let you know when it's degenerated far enough to have
nothing to do with the book anymore...
Policrat'
Feel free...
>>>>> Jedi fighting near ysalamari-world-Myrkrr, not good. Any way they
>>>>> could have avoided that?
>>>>
>>>> Yeah... by getting rid of the logical holes in the plot that you could
>>>> drive a Death Star through...
>>>
>>> :-)
>>
>> Heh!-)
>
> I thought the books were *supposed* to have those.
Yeah, but not *that* bad...
>>>>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>>>>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>>>>
>>>> Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>>>> dead...
>>>
>>> Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
>>
>> Trouble is, at the end of SbS Anakin's corpse was still about as much in one
>> piece as it could've been after so many Vong had stuck amphistaffs in it...
>
> Maybe it'll desintegrate while we're not looking.
Nahh... it's all been handled *too* low-key, IMHO...
>>>> Yeah... Lando was summarily reappointed to the Military half-way through
>>>> the
>>>> battle...
>>>
>>> Hmm. ...hope the Falcon's prepared to lose another satellite dish ;-)
>>
>> Oh, it did that in SbS already... Han, apparently, carries a spare now =)
>
> LOL!!!
Quite...
>>> I think I'm beginning to remember the reasons why I thought this
>>> series was a bad concept...and now it just keeps going and going...oh
>>> well. If *you* like it you go on right ahead, I ain't stopping ya. And
>>> thanks again for the summary/review Pol'!
>>
>> Yeah... I dunno, the Vong *still* don't seem 'Star Wars' to me...
>
> That's why I'm just waiting for them to go away... they don't belong
> in the galaxy in more senses than one.
Aye...
> Rakelle
Pol'
DarthGumby
telepathically conveyed:
>On Thu, 01 Nov 2001 04:32:59 -0500, DarthGumby
><DarthMyHe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>So I'm reading the Jedi Academy trilogy, and last night
>>I get to where Luke asks the holocron if there's
>>anything they should know, and the dude says he wants
>>to tell them about a sith war.
>>
>>I had this momentary weirdness, I was like "Sith War,
>>here?"
>
>:-) You could almost rename the Sith War Archives and call it the Sith
>Wars Holocron.
>
>Almost.
Who'd get to be the bug-dude that tells these stories?
<.sigs offer DG mirror>
>><.sigs agree and offer DG a straitjacket>
>
><RH's straitjacket is actually crooked>
>
>Guess I could always iron it out...
It might work itself out.
>-Rainbow Heron
>(sig reminds RH that she can't iron)
<.sigs turn on all the hot water in the bathroom and
proceed to melt>
>That's why I take supplements sig. <automated sig follows>
>==========================================
>http://web.infoave.net/~rkanderson/rassm/swc.htm
Gumby
Rainbow Heron
<DarthMyHe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>So I'm reading the Jedi Academy trilogy, and last night
>>>I get to where Luke asks the holocron if there's
>>>anything they should know, and the dude says he wants
>>>to tell them about a sith war.
>>>
>>>I had this momentary weirdness, I was like "Sith War,
>>>here?"
>>
>>:-) You could almost rename the Sith War Archives and call it the Sith
>>Wars Holocron.
>>
>>Almost.
>
>Who'd get to be the bug-dude that tells these stories?
I thought some holocrons had more than one narrator/keeper, so I gues
many people could or we could invent some new character or something.
>>-Rainbow Heron
>>(sig reminds RH that she can't iron)
>
><.sigs turn on all the hot water in the bathroom and
>proceed to melt>
<ng sig rescues DG's .sigs before they completely melt and sticks them
into the freezer to they can recooperate>
-Rainbow Heron
(sig is cool...it's cold in here)
And have some lemonade .sigs... :-)
==========================================
http://web.infoave.net/~rkanderson/rassm/swc.htm
Rainbow Heron's Sith War Characters Page
Celaeno
Trust me. You do NOT want me to start going chemical here...
>>> Heh!-)
>>
>> I thought the books were *supposed* to have those.
>
>Yeah, but not *that* bad...
>
>>>>>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>>>>>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>>>>>
>>>>> Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>>>>> dead...
>>>>
>>>> Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
>>>
>>> Trouble is, at the end of SbS Anakin's corpse was still about as much in one
>>> piece as it could've been after so many Vong had stuck amphistaffs in it...
>>
>> Maybe it'll desintegrate while we're not looking.
>
>Nahh... it's all been handled *too* low-key, IMHO...
Plotholes galore and low-key 'important' deaths.
So, how bad *is* the book?
DarthGumby
telepathically conveyed:
>On Fri, 02 Nov 2001 22:26:09 -0500, DarthGumby
><DarthMyHe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>>So I'm reading the Jedi Academy trilogy, and last night
>>>>I get to where Luke asks the holocron if there's
>>>>anything they should know, and the dude says he wants
>>>>to tell them about a sith war.
>>>>
>>>>I had this momentary weirdness, I was like "Sith War,
>>>>here?"
>>>
>>>:-) You could almost rename the Sith War Archives and call it the Sith
>>>Wars Holocron.
>>>
>>>Almost.
>>
>>Who'd get to be the bug-dude that tells these stories?
>
>I thought some holocrons had more than one narrator/keeper, so I gues
>many people could or we could invent some new character or something.
*wheels turn* Cool...
><ng sig rescues DG's .sigs before they completely melt and sticks them
>into the freezer to they can recooperate>
<.sigs make snow angels on the waffle boxes>
>-Rainbow Heron
>(sig is cool...it's cold in here)
<DG's .sig warns RH's sig to look out for Wampii>
>And have some lemonade .sigs... :-)
<.sigs say thanks and begin to drink the lemonade, but
it freezes so now they're eating the lemonade>
Gumby
Policrat'
Yeah, probably...
>>>> Heh!-)
>>>
>>> I thought the books were *supposed* to have those.
>>
>> Yeah, but not *that* bad...
>>
>>>>>>> Is Anakin really dead or is it just a rouse? Do they talk about/handle
>>>>>>> it in a way that there's no mistake about it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Aye... that's not to say he won't be back some way or other, but he's
>>>>>> dead...
>>>>>
>>>>> Another little glowing blue Anakin perhaps?
>>>>
>>>> Trouble is, at the end of SbS Anakin's corpse was still about as much in
>>>> one
>>>> piece as it could've been after so many Vong had stuck amphistaffs in it...
>>>
>>> Maybe it'll desintegrate while we're not looking.
>>
>> Nahh... it's all been handled *too* low-key, IMHO...
>
> Plotholes galore and low-key 'important' deaths.
Yeah... as someone pointed out at the TF.N forums, it's never actually said
*explicitly*, except in dialogue, that Anakin actually 'died'...
> So, how bad *is* the book?
It rocks, kinda... if you can ignore the irritating bits...
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that "Troy Denning" is
actually Tim Zahn, either along with KJA, or producing a sophisticated
parody of KJA to counterpoint his own work... the back-flap photo *really*
looks like Zahn in a toupée, too...
Basically, that describes SbS quite well... Tim Zahn in a toupée, with a KJA
novel thrown in...
> Rakelle
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
Ye gods, I've gone back to the beginning of the damn thread to post
my comments. And *then* I'll read the other 36 posts' worth of misc
commentary, including my own ;)
Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
>
>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
>> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
>> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
Six hundred and six in my copy, though the end is so abrupt that
maybe I'm missing something... anyway, the paragraph spacing is b r o a d.
>Yeah.
>
>Non-spoiler bit... um...
>
>Feh!
>
>The only non-spoiler bit is that there is no non-spoiler bit... and that
>sums up SbS rather well for those of you who'd rather not know...
>
>S
>P
>O
>I
>L
>E
>R
>
>S
>P
>A
>C
>E
>..
>..
>..
>
>S
>P
>O
>I
>L
>E
>R
>
>S
>P
>A
>C
>E
>..
>..
>..
>
>S
>P
>O
>I
>L
>E
>R
>
>S
>P
>A
>C
>E
>..
>..
>..
>
>S
>P
>O
>I
>L
>E
>R
>
>S
>P
>A
>C
>E
>..
>..
>..
>
>Anyone still paying attention?
>
>OK...
>
>SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>
>This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
>not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
>with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
>of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
>which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
>a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
[1]
>Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
>reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>right...
Very much so.
>Lando has built an army of Terminators which he's trying to flog to the
>NR...
The first weapons demo was more Robocop, but yes, that would be
another good comparison.
>Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>
>Remember?
>
>And it's *damn* good to see it again...
Yes.
>Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>ram down the planetary shields.
>
>The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>open fire regardless...
>
>Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>
>I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
after all.
>Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
"It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
*nicer* to do that in this one.
>Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>who is clearly completely nuts...
I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>Tsavong Lah, meanwhile, has realised that he's starting to rot,
"Kids... don't try this at home. Or at least sterilize the saw
first."
>Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>lightspeed...
That rushed ending...
>But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
But I can't push others down my path..."
And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
>Yeah, I know some of this sounds like GhentZ's ramblings - but this is a
>literal summary of SbS...
>
>On reflection, SbS is pretty damn surreal... but hey, it's a blast...
>
>I do have a few gripes, though...
>
>Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
>over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
>impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
>was all a bit incoherent, and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>In the end, I neither knew nor cared what actually happened to most of the
>YJK...
[1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
but shallow.
>And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
>implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>The major flaw, though, is characterization...
>
>Nom Anor kills Anakin, and we get snatches of the cruel cunning with which
>he drives the YJK through the worldship, but he's continually thwarted those
>pesky kids...
>
>And there was a *reason* why the YJK were ignored by any sane pro-fic
>authors... there are too many utterly forgettable and disposable characters
>in that plotline... and, added to that, there's the fact that Anakin's
>self-assurance just comes across as dullness, and any sense of spark in his
>relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>
>Also, since the entire cast of the YJK and JJK books (except the ones who
>were killed earlier in SbS), plus Ganner and some superfluous additions, all
>went to Myrkrr, there were *far* to many characters in that plotline... it
>just got bogged down...
>
>IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
>and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
>addition of several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is
>to Barabells what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry
>and female), two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some
>others I've forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
Having never read the *JK books, I've never gotten much more than
superficial impressions of those characters before they get shot, stabbed,
exploded, cleaved, masticated, etc... The problem here, I think, is that
the team had to be scaled to the threat, and if it was just a tiny
infiltration team succeeding for a long time vs. a large Vong operation,
the Vong would appear unusually weak... plus, the Jedi had time to plan the
operation out, so it makes sense for *them* to add lots of extra
cannonfod^H^H^H manpower.
>IMHO, they should have had them *really* captured rather than infiltrated -
>after all, the Vong seemed to have captured everything from AT-ATs to live
>Jedi to train the voxyn... and yould've thought the YJK would have spared a
>*thought* to wonder which of their friends those unfortunates had been...
>
>Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
>- the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
>the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
>and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
>scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
>blast... and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a
>*shred* of credibility...
>
>Also, Threepio's lines seem a bit stiff, at first - but Denning gets better
>at writing him, and fast...
I was surprised by his glibness when Viqi Shesh comes to visit... I
guess I could chalk this up to Threepio being cast as a neurotic wimp for
most of the books, but Denning does remember that he's supposed to have
*some* wiliness in him somewhere.
Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
Though luck's in there too.
>A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
>
>And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
>
>All in all, yeah... it wasn't bad... the YJK plotline could have been
>handled *far* better, but in the end, that turned out not to be the main
>event after all, but a YJK novel which just happened to be told concurrently
>with a proper Luke/Mara/Han/Leia/Lando/Garm/Wedge/Borsk Zahn-style EU
>SW-fest...
--
__ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
(__ * _ _ _ _ The problem with the rat race is that even
__)|| | |(_)| \ if you win the race, you're still a rat.
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>>
>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
>>> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
>>> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
>>
>>.
>>.
>>
>>Anyone still paying attention?
>
>
>>OK...
>Anakin isn't turning into an implanted blue spirit in Tahiri or
>something, is he?
If she keeps talking to the body...
>>Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>>don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
>>this...
>
>Almost beginning to wonder if the authors intend to EVER get the Vong
>out of the galaxy.
My take on that at this point is that they logically *can't*... it
wouldn't be the largest Reset Button ever if the Vong suddenly turned
around and left and the stories still had to deal with the devastation left
behind (which would be the only sensible thing to do if the Vong were
stopped) but if that's the case, why toss out the Vong as a presence?
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>Pretty violent death! Poor guy, I hope he went fast.
He was *glowing* at the time... hard to say if being repeatedly
perforated killed him any more than channelling a quadrant's worth of the
Force through himself.
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
"C'mon! Do it! Kill me! I'm here!"
Let's see... if the voxyn has acidic blood, wouldn't the rest of
its biochemistry be different enough as a consequence that it would have
trouble functioning in a "normal" atmosphere? Of course, the blood could
be simply dangerous for some other reasons, but that's not nearly as fun as
acid... which is probably the point in the end of course, the fun of it all
;)
--
______(-o-)___A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E !____<*>__________
| __ "The Internet is where lunatics are
| (__ * _ _ _ _ internetworked worldwide at the speed of light.
| __)|| | |(_)| \ *This* is progress?" --J. Shinal
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
Well... given what we know of the SW universe, while you can go
anywhere in hyperspace, everyone sticks to the established routes because
of the random chance of hitting uncharted crap out in the middle of
nowhere... so they'd have to remap routes around the mining, which would
take a while.
On the other hand, "Space is big. Really big."
I've got to stop bringing RL physics into this. =>
>"His strategy indicates two-dimentional thinking..."
>
>And no, I don't know why quotes from "The Wrath of Khan" always seem so
>aposite in the NRG either...
Funny, I quoted "The good of the many outweighs the good of the
one" *before* reading this post.
>> Which feeds into another complaint, Anakin Solo dies.
>
>Yeah...
"Everybody dies, but not everyone truly lives."
>>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
> relatively
>>> small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>>>
>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>>
>>> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
>>>
>> An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and developed of the
> Solo
>> kids. So they have him die over some lame mission? I could see him dying to
>> directly protect his family, which would have been a lot better IMO, but to
>> kill some mother clone? Please.
>
>Yeah... I think that was kinda the point, though... it was supposed to be a
>left-field curve-ball...
Except... well, I accidentally spoiled myself a month back or so on
RASSM when someone leaked that part of SbS, so maybe I wasn't *that*
surprised... but even so, parts of the book telegraph that Anakin's going
to die, and somewhat obviously.
>>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
> Yevethan
>>> trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to ram down
> the
>>> planetary shields.
>>>
>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>>> open fire regardless...
>>>
>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>
>> What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors in this book
> with
>> no really good explination given. The same with Leia. I found this
>> irritating.
>
>Nahh, Borsk was Borsk... I thought the 'dejarik player' idea tied the whole
>thing together rather neatly...
Agree. He *always* changes sides. I think the main thing is that
this time he's a lot more desperate as he knows that his time is running
out, so he makes deals without the usual "I'll stab you in the back later"
undercurrent we're used to.
>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>
>> A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to get her brother's
>> body back, but didn't use it to try and save him in the first place?
>
>Yeah...
That would have been much more effective.
>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>>
>> I expected a bit more of an explination of Vergere's actions. Again,
>> extremely unclear.
>
>At first, I thought Vergere was just genuinely insane... re-reading, I
>realised the funky chicken-analog's got a plan... unfortunately, she's not
>going to let the Solos get in the way...
>
>And maybe she doesn't trust them... she heard that 'Skywalker' was in
>charge, and thought that it was Anakin, who Thracia had been worried about
>way back... then she saw Jaina use Force-lightning...
>
>But has no-one noticed that the Fosh come from the Unknown Regions!?
>
>Whatever Vergere's plan is, I keep seeing blue fingerprints all over it...
That would be one truly impressive and improbable (from a plot POV)
bit of preplanning from the Chiss...
>>> I do have a few gripes, though...
>(Ganner, FYI, got out with Jaina - though he was utterly uncharacterized...
>and I still have no idea how Lowie got back to the shuttle, or what happened
>to the Dark Jedi)
>
>>> IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
>>> and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
>>> several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is to
> Barabells
>>> what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry and female),
>>> two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some others I've
>>> forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
>>>
>>> IMHO, they should have had them *really* captured rather than infiltrated -
>>> after all, the Vong seemed to have captured everything from AT-ATs to live
>>> Jedi to train the voxyn... and yould've thought the YJK would have spared a
>>> *thought* to wonder which of their friends those unfortunates had been...
>>>
>>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
>>> - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
>>> the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
>>> and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
>>> scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
> blast...
>>> and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a *shred*
> of
>>> credibility...
Heck, the Dark Jedi were superfluous. By the time they surprised
Lowie to steal the escape ship, I'd been presented with so many sneaky
pull-the-rug-out-from-the-characters that I was bored by it. Not to
mention that what happens to Anakin and Jaina could have happened without
the DJs there.
>> And again, Anakin died, in part, trying to kill Nom Anor. Why not let Anakin
>> kill him? After all, it is SW. Let the good guys win once in a while.
>
>The bad news is, it gets darker... Stover and Williams/Dix are kinda Iain M.
>Banks rip-offs...
The usual problem with killing the prominent villains, of course,
is that it would reduce some of the tension before the climax. I really
thought that Shesh should have died, though--after the repeated kidnapping
attempts ad absurdum (see my last paragraph of comments) and with her cover
blown, she really doesn't serve much of a purpose except as another villain
for the readers and characters to hate and pursue... (or Tsavong Lah to
doublecross) but there's no real plot reason to have her around now that
her cover is blown.
"At my signal, unleash Griping."
John Donchig
Were there? I didn't really notice.
> but there were even more *echos*,
> >which I *really* liked,
These I liked as well.
> and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
> >a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
>
> [1]
>
> >Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
> >reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
> >kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
> >right...
>
> Very much so.
>
> >Lando has built an army of Terminators which he's trying to flog to the
> >NR...
This bugs you?
> The first weapons demo was more Robocop, but yes, that would be
> another good comparison.
>
> >Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
> >
> >Remember?
> >
> >And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>
> Yes.
Yeah, maybe it is. But there's also a huge part of my brain that rebels
every time I see him get into a cockpit, saying in essence "he's the
Master of the Jedi, the most powerful Force user the galaxy has ever
seen, a former NR general, and he's in a fighter cockpit? Shouldn't he
be doing something a damn sight more grand than that?" You know, like
leading a Jedi infiltration team....
> >Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
> >easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
> >Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
> >ram down the planetary shields.
> >
> >The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
> >open fire regardless...
What surprised me was that Admiral Kre'fey made something of an about
face. Maybe the Bothan in him came out, but still. And where the hell
is Ackbar? You'd think he'd have come out of retirement already. After
all, Bel Iblis and Rieekan both have to be 200 years old by now, and
they're out there.
> >Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
> >
> >I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>
> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
> after all.
So better for the Jedi to mop up their own fallen after the Vong have
been beaten back than the alternative?
> >Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>
> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
I hope so.
And did anyone else get really disturbed by that whole thing? Tahiri
talking to Anakin's dead body? It got to me, badly.
> >Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>
> "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
> have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
> *nicer* to do that in this one.
I think that was part of the point. Making us wait to get in her head.
> >Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
> >GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
> >who is clearly completely nuts...
Nah, she's playing both sides for some reason. Whether or not that
reason ends up being underwhelming is another question all together....
> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
What kills me about this whole thing is that no one--not even master
empath Jacen--has figured out that she's connected to the Force. Not
even necessarily that she's Jedi, just that the Force runs through her.
> >Tsavong Lah, meanwhile, has realised that he's starting to rot,
>
> "Kids... don't try this at home. Or at least sterilize the saw
> first."
>
> >Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
> >Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
> >Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
> >lightspeed...
>
> That rushed ending...
Like I said, they're just making us wait.
> >But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
> >phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>
> Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
> This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
> Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
> after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
> But I can't push others down my path..."
>
> And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
> if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
> reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
It hasn't to do with remaining defensive, it has to do with remaining in
the light. Luke has; Corran has; Mara has. Anakin did. None of them
are sitting on their hands. It's been shown that Jedi can be active and
not cross that Dark Line.
The trouble with this situation, however, is that the Jedi are not being
seduced to the Dark Side, they aren't slipping slowly over, they are
making conscious decisions to do so. It's not Palpatine getting to Luke
on the DS2, it's "well, I'm mad and I'm going to go to the Dark Side now
because I don't have enough patience to do it the right way."
> >Yeah, I know some of this sounds like GhentZ's ramblings - but this is a
> >literal summary of SbS...
> >
> >On reflection, SbS is pretty damn surreal... but hey, it's a blast...
> >
> >I do have a few gripes, though...
> >
> >Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
> >over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
> >impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
> >was all a bit incoherent, and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
> >In the end, I neither knew nor cared what actually happened to most of the
> >YJK...
>
> [1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
> but shallow.
Maybe that's bound to happen when you have to write 15 characters. It's
not the Fab Five anymore; it's the Fab Five, Mara, Lando, Jacen, Anakin,
Jaina, the Vong, and whatever Jedi/other the author needs to further his
plot.
Sure we can bitch, but I know that I, for one, was kind of heated when
Luke wasn't getting much "screen time." I was thinking "that's great
and all, but where the hell is Luke?" Either the author is going to
piss people off by not covering everyone but getting a few people in
depth, or he's going to piss people off by covering everyone but not in
the depth they would like.
> >And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
> >plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
> >implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
> >but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>
> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
My memory may not be totally reliable, but I seem to remember that the
reason the Jedi went after the clone queen in the first place is that
Cilghal determined that the reason all of the voxyn were clones of one
queen is because the Vong couldn't replicate the process, that there was
evidence they just couldn't possibly do it again. Maybe it wasn't
underscored enough, but that's what I remember.
> >The major flaw, though, is characterization...
> >
> >Nom Anor kills Anakin, and we get snatches of the cruel cunning with which
> >he drives the YJK through the worldship, but he's continually thwarted those
> >pesky kids...
> >
> >And there was a *reason* why the YJK were ignored by any sane pro-fic
> >authors... there are too many utterly forgettable and disposable characters
> >in that plotline... and, added to that, there's the fact that Anakin's
> >self-assurance just comes across as dullness, and any sense of spark in his
> >relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
Why do you see his self-assurance as dullness?
> >Also, since the entire cast of the YJK and JJK books (except the ones who
> >were killed earlier in SbS), plus Ganner and some superfluous additions, all
> >went to Myrkrr, there were *far* to many characters in that plotline... it
> >just got bogged down...
> >
> >IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
> >and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
> >addition of several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is
> >to Barabells what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry
> >and female), two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some
> >others I've forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
>
> Having never read the *JK books, I've never gotten much more than
> superficial impressions of those characters before they get shot, stabbed,
> exploded, cleaved, masticated, etc... The problem here, I think, is that
> the team had to be scaled to the threat, and if it was just a tiny
> infiltration team succeeding for a long time vs. a large Vong operation,
> the Vong would appear unusually weak...
Exactly. If just three-five had gone in the author would have had one
of two problems--one, he scales the Vong down as well, which would beg
the question "why is this thing so poorly guarded?" or the Jedi cut
through them at such a rate that the reader just finds it unbelieveable.
> plus, the Jedi had time to plan the
> operation out, so it makes sense for *them* to add lots of extra
> cannonfod^H^H^H manpower.
One thing about the whole operation bothers the hell out of me. WHY WAS
ANAKIN IN CHARGE? Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se;
he's earned all of the respect he's gotten. But for such an operation
wouldn't it have made a LOT more sense to send someone with tactical and
command experience? Someone who could ride herd on the kids? Someone
like oh, say, LUKE SKYWALKER? The weak reasoning given for why Luke
himself didn't go just rang hollow in my ears. Part of me really
expects to see Luke second guessing that decision in the next few books.
> >IMHO, they should have had them *really* captured rather than infiltrated -
> >after all, the Vong seemed to have captured everything from AT-ATs to live
> >Jedi to train the voxyn... and yould've thought the YJK would have spared a
> >*thought* to wonder which of their friends those unfortunates had been...
> >
> >Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
> >- the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
> >the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
> >and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
> >scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
> >blast... and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a
> >*shred* of credibility...
> >
> >Also, Threepio's lines seem a bit stiff, at first - but Denning gets better
> >at writing him, and fast...
>
> I was surprised by his glibness when Viqi Shesh comes to visit... I
> guess I could chalk this up to Threepio being cast as a neurotic wimp for
> most of the books, but Denning does remember that he's supposed to have
> *some* wiliness in him somewhere.
Exactly, cf. the "used car salesman" attitude he shows with Owen Lars.
> Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
> more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
> Though luck's in there too.
Look who she's going up against most of the time--other politicians.
When she's taken on any of the heroes directly, like with Luke in the
Senate Chamber, she's lost.
> >A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
> >erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
> >
> >And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
> >battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
> >making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
Speaking of Luke, when was the last time the grandaddy of all Jedi
badasses actually used his lightsaber? Was it way back in MAS's last
book? What was that, 1 1/2 years of internal time ago?
And one more thought before I go....
Is it just me, or does the whole "Leia isn't a Jedi" thing annoy the
piss out of you all? I know it does me. I mean Jeezus. Look how it
flip-flops according to the "needs" of the situation: HttE3--Jedi,
JA3--Not Jedi, Corellian 3--Jedi, HoT--Jedi, NJO--Not Jedi.
Come on folks--LFL and Del Rey, I'm looking in your direction--Tim Zahn
underlined and put three exclamation points on it in HoT--Leia Organo
Solo is a Jedi Knight. She could have been doing everything she's done
during the NJO with the title "Jedi Knight" over her head as easily as
not. Let's see what she's been doing....hmmm....being a diplomat,
protecting refugees, fighting the Vong. Nope, of course not, those
aren't things a Jedi Knight would do at all....
Note exasperated sarcasm.
John
--
Laissez les bon temps roulez!
John Donchig
>
> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
> >Do not underestimate the power of the Dark jill marie:
> >
> >>
> >> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> wrote: Do not underestimate the power of
> >> the Dark John Donchig:
> >>
> >>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked out
> >>>> the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624. Wow,
> > that's
> >>>> a lot of dead trees.
> >>>>
> >>> Yeah.
> >>>
> >>> Non-spoiler bit... um...
> >>>
> >>> Feh!
> >>>
> >>> The only non-spoiler bit is that there is no non-spoiler bit... and that
> > sums
> >>> up SbS rather well for those of you who'd rather not know...
> >>>
> >>> S P O I L E R
> >>>
> >>> S P A C E . . .
> >>>
> >>> S P O I L E R
> >>>
> >>> S P A C E . . .
> >>>
> >>> S P O I L E R
> >>>
> >>> S P A C E . . .
> >>>
> >>> S P O I L E R
> >>>
> >>> S P A C E . . .
> >"His strategy indicates two-dimentional thinking..."
> >
> >And no, I don't know why quotes from "The Wrath of Khan" always seem so
> >aposite in the NRG either...
>
> Funny, I quoted "The good of the many outweighs the good of the
> one" *before* reading this post.
>
> >> Which feeds into another complaint, Anakin Solo dies.
> >
> >Yeah...
>
> "Everybody dies, but not everyone truly lives."
Uhhh.....no no, don't help me.....Braveheart?
> >>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
> >>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
> > relatively
> >>> small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
> >>>
> >>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
> >>>
> >>> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
> >>>
> >> An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and developed of the
> > Solo
> >> kids. So they have him die over some lame mission? I could see him dying to
> >> directly protect his family, which would have been a lot better IMO, but to
> >> kill some mother clone? Please.
> >
> >Yeah... I think that was kinda the point, though... it was supposed to be a
> >left-field curve-ball...
>
> Except... well, I accidentally spoiled myself a month back or so on
> RASSM when someone leaked that part of SbS, so maybe I wasn't *that*
> surprised... but even so, parts of the book telegraph that Anakin's going
> to die, and somewhat obviously.
Could it be that the accidental spoiling (which I myself suffered)
colored what you were reading so that you saw telegraphing where there
wasn't any?
> >>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
> >>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
> > Yevethan
> >>> trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to ram down
> > the
> >>> planetary shields.
> >>>
> >>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
> >>> open fire regardless...
> >>>
> >>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
> >>>
> >> What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors in this book
> > with
> >> no really good explination given. The same with Leia. I found this
> >> irritating.
> >
> >Nahh, Borsk was Borsk... I thought the 'dejarik player' idea tied the whole
> >thing together rather neatly...
>
> Agree. He *always* changes sides. I think the main thing is that
> this time he's a lot more desperate as he knows that his time is running
> out, so he makes deals without the usual "I'll stab you in the back later"
> undercurrent we're used to.
I was actually rather impressed with the holograph gambit....
> >>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
> >>>
> >> A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to get her brother's
> >> body back, but didn't use it to try and save him in the first place?
> >
> >Yeah...
>
> That would have been much more effective.
I disagree. This way--after his death--can exploit the finality of the
situation.
> >>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
> >>> - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
> >>> the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
> >>> and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
> >>> scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
> > blast...
> >>> and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a *shred*
> > of
> >>> credibility...
>
> Heck, the Dark Jedi were superfluous. By the time they surprised
> Lowie to steal the escape ship, I'd been presented with so many sneaky
> pull-the-rug-out-from-the-characters that I was bored by it. Not to
> mention that what happens to Anakin and Jaina could have happened without
> the DJs there.
Yes, but it was a nice way to contrast Zekk (who I really did like and I
suspect he will be back for more helpings) with the rest of the Jedi.
It was also a symbolic way of showing what can and will happen to lots
of Skywalker's Jedi.
> >> And again, Anakin died, in part, trying to kill Nom Anor. Why not let Anakin
> >> kill him? After all, it is SW. Let the good guys win once in a while.
> >
> >The bad news is, it gets darker... Stover and Williams/Dix are kinda Iain M.
> >Banks rip-offs...
>
> The usual problem with killing the prominent villains, of course,
> is that it would reduce some of the tension before the climax. I really
> thought that Shesh should have died, though--after the repeated kidnapping
> attempts ad absurdum (see my last paragraph of comments) and with her cover
> blown, she really doesn't serve much of a purpose except as another villain
> for the readers and characters to hate and pursue... (or Tsavong Lah to
> doublecross) but there's no real plot reason to have her around now that
> her cover is blown.
Aye. What other good can she possibly serve the Vong now that she's
been exposed? And if she can't serve the Vong, what point is there of
having her alive at the end of SbS?
Of course, the next books could simply explain that her
lightsaber-cleaved body was found rotting somewhere, thus solving the
problem of her still living at the end of SbS and opening a new can over
who the Jedi-murderer is....
John Donchig
True, but I think the point was that he wouldn't have wanted or been
able to pull off that little trick if not for the fact that he already
knew he was a dead man walking.
Simon H. Lee
Simon H. Lee
Yeah, too easy. :)
>> >>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>> >>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>> > relatively
>> >>> small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>> >>>
>> >>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>> >>>
>> >>> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
>> >>>
>> >> An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and developed of the
>> > Solo
>> >> kids. So they have him die over some lame mission? I could see him dying
> to
>> >> directly protect his family, which would have been a lot better IMO, but
> to
>> >> kill some mother clone? Please.
>> >
>> >Yeah... I think that was kinda the point, though... it was supposed to be a
>> >left-field curve-ball...
>>
>> Except... well, I accidentally spoiled myself a month back or so on
>> RASSM when someone leaked that part of SbS, so maybe I wasn't *that*
>> surprised... but even so, parts of the book telegraph that Anakin's going
>> to die, and somewhat obviously.
>
>Could it be that the accidental spoiling (which I myself suffered)
>colored what you were reading so that you saw telegraphing where there
>wasn't any?
Maybe, but I believe in my strength of will :)
>> >>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This
> is
>> >>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>> > Yevethan
>> >>> trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to ram down
>> > the
>> >>> planetary shields.
>> >>>
>> >>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny,
> and
>> >>> open fire regardless...
>> >>>
>> >>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>> >>>
>> >> What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors in this book
>> > with
>> >> no really good explination given. The same with Leia. I found this
>> >> irritating.
>> >
>> >Nahh, Borsk was Borsk... I thought the 'dejarik player' idea tied the whole
>> >thing together rather neatly...
>>
>> Agree. He *always* changes sides. I think the main thing is that
>> this time he's a lot more desperate as he knows that his time is running
>> out, so he makes deals without the usual "I'll stab you in the back later"
>> undercurrent we're used to.
>
>I was actually rather impressed with the holograph gambit....
Me too. Tying this into another comment I've seen in this thread,
it demonstrates that both sides are continuing to adapt to one another.
>> >>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>> >>>
>> >> A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to get her
> brother's
>> >> body back, but didn't use it to try and save him in the first place?
>> >
>> >Yeah...
>>
>> That would have been much more effective.
>
>I disagree. This way--after his death--can exploit the finality of the
>situation.
What of the dramatic value, though? Jaina just gets really mad
(granted, it had been building up for a while even before Anakin died) and
starts spitting out lightning and being in a bad mood. Compare that to her
trying to fight her way to Anakin to save him and either realizing that
he's going to die and giving in or going over just after he dies?
>> >>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two
> Terminators
>> >>> - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to
> keep
>> >>> the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd
> escaped
>> >>> and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
>> >>> scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
>> > blast...
>> >>> and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a
> *shred*
>> > of
>> >>> credibility...
>>
>> Heck, the Dark Jedi were superfluous. By the time they surprised
>> Lowie to steal the escape ship, I'd been presented with so many sneaky
>> pull-the-rug-out-from-the-characters that I was bored by it. Not to
>> mention that what happens to Anakin and Jaina could have happened without
>> the DJs there.
>
>Yes, but it was a nice way to contrast Zekk (who I really did like and I
>suspect he will be back for more helpings) with the rest of the Jedi.
>It was also a symbolic way of showing what can and will happen to lots
>of Skywalker's Jedi.
Good point, but... I think I'd have preferred such tension to
develop more from the inherent weaknesses of the Jedi in the team rather
than from an out-of-the-blue source.
Policrat'
>
> Ye gods, I've gone back to the beginning of the damn thread to post
> my comments. And *then* I'll read the other 36 posts' worth of misc
> commentary, including my own ;)
Yippee...
<grinning like an idiot at the amount of NRG-generated spam on RASSM>
> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark John Donchig:
>>
>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
>>> out the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624.
>>> Wow, that's a lot of dead trees.
>
> Six hundred and six in my copy, though the end is so abrupt that
> maybe I'm missing something... anyway, the paragraph spacing is b r o a d.
Yeah...
>> Yeah.
>>
>> Non-spoiler bit... um...
>>
>> Feh!
>>
>> The only non-spoiler bit is that there is no non-spoiler bit... and that
>> sums up SbS rather well for those of you who'd rather not know...
>>
>> S
>> P
>> O
>> I
>> L
>> E
>> R
>>
>> S
>> P
>> A
>> C
>> E
>> ..
>> ..
>> ..
Those didn't used to be there, did they?
|-0-|
|-0-|
|-0-|
>> S
>> P
>> O
>> I
>> L
>> E
>> R
>>
>> S
>> P
>> A
>> C
>> E
>> ...
>> ....
>> .....
.........
..........
>> Anyone still paying attention?
>>
>> OK...
>>
>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>>
>> This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
>> not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
>> with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
>> of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
>> which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
>> a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
>
> [1]
Should we start posting in html to make all this easier?
>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>> right...
>
> Very much so.
Yeah...
>> Lando has built an army of Terminators which he's trying to flog to the
>> NR...
>
> The first weapons demo was more Robocop, but yes, that would be
> another good comparison.
Aye... I *knew* there was another blatant rip-off in there...
>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>>
>> Remember?
>>
>> And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>
> Yes.
Aye... any thoughts *why*? Is this some decision by LFL, or just that
no-one's thought of it?
>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>
>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>> open fire regardless...
>>
>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>
>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>
> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
> after all.
Yeah... Han, for instance - was it KJA who had Han reflecting on it?
That always bothered me, frankly... why the f*ck is there one rule for
Force-adepts, and another for the rest of the GFFA?! Yeah, I can see the
*sense* in inculcating a dualistic dogma to prevent Jedi fttDS, but it just
makes them dull and mentally disturbed at the same time...
>> Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>
> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
I just hope they weren't signalling that we'll get Anakin/Tahiri smut before
the NJO is out...
>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>
> "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
> have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
> *nicer* to do that in this one.
Yeah...
It's another "Star Wars Pants" moment, that is...
>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>
> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
Yeah... though I noticed that what she said to Jacen didn't *actually* imply
*at all* that she was on the Vong side...
>> Tsavong Lah, meanwhile, has realised that he's starting to rot,
>
> "Kids... don't try this at home. Or at least sterilize the saw
> first."
Klingons, anyone?
>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>> lightspeed...
>
> That rushed ending...
Aye...
>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>
> Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
> This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
> Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
> after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
> But I can't push others down my path..."
Thankee!
> And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
> if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
> reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
Clawcraft. And funky Star Destroyers...
Thought - the Dark Side in itself isn't *evil*, it's just, well, kinda
dark... a Dark Jedi need be no less a sympathetic or heroic character than
Cheradenine Zakalwe or Hamlet...
>> Yeah, I know some of this sounds like GhentZ's ramblings - but this is a
>> literal summary of SbS...
>>
>> On reflection, SbS is pretty damn surreal... but hey, it's a blast...
>>
>> I do have a few gripes, though...
>>
>> Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
>> over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
>> impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
>> was all a bit incoherent, and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>> In the end, I neither knew nor cared what actually happened to most of the
>> YJK...
>
> [1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
> but shallow.
"All sound and fury, signifying nothing"?
Was it just me, or was there a big contrast between the YJK plot and the
"STAR WARS" plot...
>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>
> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
How many were there? I thought the Vong had kinda shot their bolt...
But it didn't work *dramatically*... that was my issue... and we saw in
EoV:C that Anakin could run rings round a lot of Vong...
IMHO, what I said still makes sense...
>> IMHO, they should have had them *really* captured rather than infiltrated -
>> after all, the Vong seemed to have captured everything from AT-ATs to live
>> Jedi to train the voxyn... and yould've thought the YJK would have spared a
>> *thought* to wonder which of their friends those unfortunates had been...
>>
>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
>> - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
>> the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
>> and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
>> scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
>> blast... and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a
>> *shred* of credibility...
>>
>> Also, Threepio's lines seem a bit stiff, at first - but Denning gets better
>> at writing him, and fast...
>
> I was surprised by his glibness when Viqi Shesh comes to visit... I
> guess I could chalk this up to Threepio being cast as a neurotic wimp for
> most of the books, but Denning does remember that he's supposed to have
> *some* wiliness in him somewhere.
Yeah... I got the impression that Denning had watched the movies while
writing SbS...
> Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
> more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
> Though luck's in there too.
I think she just knows the way Cour. works...
>> A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>> erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
>>
>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
>>
>> All in all, yeah... it wasn't bad... the YJK plotline could have been
>> handled *far* better, but in the end, that turned out not to be the main
>> event after all, but a YJK novel which just happened to be told concurrently
>> with a proper Luke/Mara/Han/Leia/Lando/Garm/Wedge/Borsk Zahn-style EU
>> SW-fest...
And?
> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
> (__ * _ _ _ _ The problem with the rat race is that even
> __)|| | |(_)| \ if you win the race, you're still a rat.
Pol'
Policrat'
I can see them running a "voices in her head" plot...
>>> Meanwhile, Cour. falls, and the NR - frankly - falls with it... the Vong
>>> don't seem to mind that they've lost the best part of their fleet in doing
>>> this...
>>
>> Almost beginning to wonder if the authors intend to EVER get the Vong
>> out of the galaxy.
>
> My take on that at this point is that they logically *can't*... it
> wouldn't be the largest Reset Button ever if the Vong suddenly turned
> around and left and the stories still had to deal with the devastation left
> behind (which would be the only sensible thing to do if the Vong were
> stopped) but if that's the case, why toss out the Vong as a presence?
Because they're irritating... If the NR got some sort of bio-weapon which
did *nasty* things to Vong...
> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
> (__ * _ _ _ _ The problem with the rat race is that even
> __)|| | |(_)| \ if you win the race, you're still a rat.
Pol'
Policrat'
> rainbo...@ftc-i.net choreographed a chorus line of
Glowing?!
What bothers me, though... was that, or was it not, the Dark Side?!
Because if it was the Light Side, shouldn't it have *healed* him...?
> -- - Simon -
> ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
Pol'
Policrat'
Heh!-)
> Let's see... if the voxyn has acidic blood, wouldn't the rest of
> its biochemistry be different enough as a consequence that it would have
> trouble functioning in a "normal" atmosphere? Of course, the blood could
> be simply dangerous for some other reasons, but that's not nearly as fun as
> acid... which is probably the point in the end of course, the fun of it all
> ;)
Which brings me on to something else... the Vong have *no* sense of fun...
compared to the Affront - or even the Klingons - they're just bloody
*dull*...
Yeah, actually... that's what bothers me about the Vong... they're supposed
to *enjoy* pain... they should *laugh* at pain, pick themselves off the deck
and *smile* at the Jedi who've just cut their legs off... and use Vergere as
a football or a toasting-rack, rather than a bloody *pet*...
> ______(-o-)___A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E !____<*>__________
> | __ "The Internet is where lunatics are
> | (__ * _ _ _ _ internetworked worldwide at the speed of light.
> | __)|| | |(_)| \ *This* is progress?" --J. Shinal
Yeah... progress...
Pol'
Rainbow Heron
<DarthMyHe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>><ng sig rescues DG's .sigs before they completely melt and sticks them
>>into the freezer to they can recooperate>
>
><.sigs make snow angels on the waffle boxes>
<Jedichu empties ice trays onto the floor and starts kicking the ice
cubes around the kitchen>
>>-Rainbow Heron
>>(sig is cool...it's cold in here)
>
><DG's .sig warns RH's sig to look out for Wampii>
<Wampa comes up to ng sig>"De ya wunna Wampii?"
<ng sig:>whack!
>>And have some lemonade .sigs... :-)
>
><.sigs say thanks and begin to drink the lemonade, but
>it freezes so now they're eating the lemonade>
Lemonade slush? :-)
-Rainbow Heron
(sig gets some cherry juice and makes a Slurpee)
Brain freeze!
Policrat'
It's one bad mother... dammit, it's Mace Windu...
(played, for the duration of the joke, by Sacha Baron-Cohen...)
>>> But, the YV are masters at bio tech. They can just make another one. So,
>>> why bother? This makes no sense to me at all.
>>
>> Nor me... the idea that the hyperlanes are dovin-basal-mind is a dumb plot
>> device too... there's nothing to stop anyone just going *over* them...
>
> Well... given what we know of the SW universe, while you can go
> anywhere in hyperspace, everyone sticks to the established routes because
> of the random chance of hitting uncharted crap out in the middle of
> nowhere... so they'd have to remap routes around the mining, which would
> take a while. On the other hand, "Space is big. Really big."
> I've got to stop bringing RL physics into this. =>
Why?
Fig. 1138: There is a Hole in your Plot
___________
/ \
Manifest Lack of Uncharted Crap Here
/ \<-------(suggested route for sending
/ \ YJK to their deaths)
------------------------:---------------
G A L A C T I C : P L A N E
------------------------:---------------
\
(Dovin Basals)
Manifest Lack of Uncharted Crap Here Too
>> "His strategy indicates two-dimentional thinking..."
>>
>> And no, I don't know why quotes from "The Wrath of Khan" always seem so
>> aposite in the NRG either...
>
> Funny, I quoted "The good of the many outweighs the good of the
> one" *before* reading this post.
"Buried alive... buried alive..."
>>> Which feeds into another complaint, Anakin Solo dies.
>>
>> Yeah...
>
> "Everybody dies, but not everyone truly lives."
"The word is given: warp speed."
>>>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>>>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>>>> relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>>>>
>>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>>>
>>>> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
>>>>
>>> An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and developed of the
>>> Solo kids. So they have him die over some lame mission? I could see him
>>> dying to directly protect his family, which would have been a lot better
>>> IMO, but to kill some mother clone? Please.
>>
>> Yeah... I think that was kinda the point, though... it was supposed to be a
>> left-field curve-ball...
>
> Except... well, I accidentally spoiled myself a month back or so on
> RASSM when someone leaked that part of SbS, so maybe I wasn't *that*
> surprised... but even so, parts of the book telegraph that Anakin's going
> to die, and somewhat obviously.
Yeah... not to mention Jain's fttDS... and the destruction of the Imperial
Palace...
>>>> Then the real spit hits the fan when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>>>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>>>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>>>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>>>
>>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>>>> open fire regardless...
>>>>
>>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>>
>>> What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors in this book
>>> with no really good explination given. The same with Leia. I found this
>>> irritating.
>>
>> Nahh, Borsk was Borsk... I thought the 'dejarik player' idea tied the whole
>> thing together rather neatly...
>
> Agree. He *always* changes sides. I think the main thing is that
> this time he's a lot more desperate as he knows that his time is running
> out, so he makes deals without the usual "I'll stab you in the back later"
> undercurrent we're used to.
Yeah...
>>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>>
>>> A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to get her brother's
>>> body back, but didn't use it to try and save him in the first place?
>>
>> Yeah...
>
> That would have been much more effective.
Aye... but Anakin would have been so *understanding*... =)
>>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>>>
>>> I expected a bit more of an explination of Vergere's actions. Again,
>>> extremely unclear.
>>
>> At first, I thought Vergere was just genuinely insane... re-reading, I
>> realised the funky chicken-analog's got a plan... unfortunately, she's not
>> going to let the Solos get in the way...
>>
>> And maybe she doesn't trust them... she heard that 'Skywalker' was in
>> charge, and thought that it was Anakin, who Thracia had been worried about
>> way back... then she saw Jaina use Force-lightning...
>>
>> But has no-one noticed that the Fosh come from the Unknown Regions!?
>>
>> Whatever Vergere's plan is, I keep seeing blue fingerprints all over it...
>
> That would be one truly impressive and improbable (from a plot POV)
> bit of preplanning from the Chiss...
Not really... apparently the SW Gamer and the EGtAS have said that the Chiss
have fought the Vong before... but anyway, take a real close look at the
plant-life and big black fortresses on Nirauan and Hjarna...
The thing is, the Chiss don't believe in pre-emptive strikes, do they?-)
And seriously, where d'you think Vergere went after AoC? Looking for the
Fosh and Thracia Cho Leem, perhaps?
Yeah... they were more interesting than most of the YJK...
>>> And again, Anakin died, in part, trying to kill Nom Anor. Why not let Anakin
>>> kill him? After all, it is SW. Let the good guys win once in a while.
>>
>> The bad news is, it gets darker... Stover and Williams/Dix are kinda Iain M.
>> Banks rip-offs...
>
> The usual problem with killing the prominent villains, of course,
> is that it would reduce some of the tension before the climax. I really
> thought that Shesh should have died, though--after the repeated kidnapping
> attempts ad absurdum (see my last paragraph of comments) and with her cover
> blown, she really doesn't serve much of a purpose except as another villain
> for the readers and characters to hate and pursue... (or Tsavong Lah to
> doublecross) but there's no real plot reason to have her around now that
> her cover is blown.
I assume there's going to be a Sheesh/Tsavong Lah/Yeoman Rand thing
happening =)
I'd be interested to see what the Senator from Kuat's Leda-impersonation is
like...
Trouble is, Anor is just starting to look *too* implausible...
"There was something about it that I didn't like..."
"That's to be expected."
"No, something else."
"Well, then let it be a lesson."
"No... something else."
"What then?"
"I enjoyed it."
> -- - Simon -
> ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
Pol'
Policrat'
Couldn't resist, could you...?-p
Yeah...
>>> but there were even more *echos*,
>>> which I *really* liked,
>
> These I liked as well.
Aye... oh, aye... DelRey, please take note...
>> and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
>>> a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
>>
>> [1]
>>
>>> Basically, the Yuzzies have shaped vornskrs into eight-legged, acid-spitting
>>> reptilian things called voxyn to hunt the Jeedai and are bloody hard to
>>> kill... if you'd think they sound just a *little* like Aliens, you'd be
>>> right...
>>
>> Very much so.
>>
>>> Lando has built an army of Terminators which he's trying to flog to the
>>> NR...
>
> This bugs you?
Nahh... I thought other people would have issues with it...
>> The first weapons demo was more Robocop, but yes, that would be
>> another good comparison.
>>
>>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>>>
>>> Remember?
>>>
>>> And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>>
>> Yes.
>
> Yeah, maybe it is. But there's also a huge part of my brain that rebels
> every time I see him get into a cockpit, saying in essence "he's the
> Master of the Jedi, the most powerful Force user the galaxy has ever
> seen, a former NR general, and he's in a fighter cockpit? Shouldn't he
> be doing something a damn sight more grand than that?" You know, like
> leading a Jedi infiltration team....
<Pfrt!>
Look at it this way... Luke was *shit* as a Jedi... *and* he hated it... and
I don't just think that was KJA being KJA... the character just *wouldn't
write* in that context... what he's *really* good at is being a
tactical-level starfighter officer...
Like Wedge, Luke is basically a cavalryman, a cavalier... a knight...
>>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>>
>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>>> open fire regardless...
>
> What surprised me was that Admiral Kre'fey made something of an about
> face. Maybe the Bothan in him came out, but still.
Made sense, IMHO
> And where the hell is Ackbar? You'd think he'd have come out of retirement
> already.
As of VP, Ackbar was on Mon Cal in an amphibious bath-chair... since the
Yuuzhan Vong have cut Mon Cal off from the NR, it's a fair bet he's doing
interesting things in their rear...
> After all, Bel Iblis and Rieekan both have to be 200 years old by now, and
> they're out there.
Aye...
>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>
>>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>
>> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
>> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
>> after all.
>
> So better for the Jedi to mop up their own fallen after the Vong have
> been beaten back than the alternative?
What *is* the alternative, though? The loss of a spurious, and maybe
hypocritical, moral purity?
>>> Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>>
>> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>
> I hope so.
>
> And did anyone else get really disturbed by that whole thing? Tahiri
> talking to Anakin's dead body? It got to me, badly.
Really... I just kinda found it appropriately wrong...
>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>
>> "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
>> have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
>> *nicer* to do that in this one.
>
> I think that was part of the point. Making us wait to get in her head.
Aye... I thought Jaina was covered quite well... though the way her
emotional cauterization was handled *could* have been better...
>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>
> Nah, she's playing both sides for some reason. Whether or not that
> reason ends up being underwhelming is another question all together....
*spork!*
Yeah...
>> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
>> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
>> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>
> What kills me about this whole thing is that no one--not even master
> empath Jacen--has figured out that she's connected to the Force. Not
> even necessarily that she's Jedi, just that the Force runs through her.
Aye... maybe the little plot-hole thereby produced is doing duty like a
ysalamiri's Force-nul field...?
>>> Tsavong Lah, meanwhile, has realised that he's starting to rot,
>>
>> "Kids... don't try this at home. Or at least sterilize the saw
>> first."
>>
>>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>>> lightspeed...
>>
>> That rushed ending...
>
> Like I said, they're just making us wait.
Aye...
>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>
>> Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
>> This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
>> Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
>> after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
>> But I can't push others down my path..."
>>
>> And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
>> if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
>> reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
>
> It hasn't to do with remaining defensive, it has to do with remaining in
> the light. Luke has; Corran has; Mara has. Anakin did. None of them
> are sitting on their hands. It's been shown that Jedi can be active and
> not cross that Dark Line.
>
> The trouble with this situation, however, is that the Jedi are not being
> seduced to the Dark Side, they aren't slipping slowly over, they are
> making conscious decisions to do so. It's not Palpatine getting to Luke
> on the DS2, it's "well, I'm mad and I'm going to go to the Dark Side now
> because I don't have enough patience to do it the right way."
Yeah... the problem is that the 'Dark Line' is an artificial dogma... it's
even thinking in those terms that causes the problem... IMHO, Corran is the
only Jedi who *really* believes in the dualism and at the same time,
actually has the strength to keep on the 'Light Side'...
Mara's kinda practical... she knows she wasn't Dark, so she shrugs, and just
carries on as before... Luke, down to DE, was the same... and Mara brought
him back in VotF... Anakin had the same Skywalker attitude, maybe, though in
strict dogmatic terms, opening himself to the Force in the way he did, he
was channeling the Dark Side... I just don't see how you could *do* that
with the Light Side...
>>> Yeah, I know some of this sounds like GhentZ's ramblings - but this is a
>>> literal summary of SbS...
>>>
>>> On reflection, SbS is pretty damn surreal... but hey, it's a blast...
>>>
>>> I do have a few gripes, though...
>>>
>>> Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
>>> over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
>>> impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
>>> was all a bit incoherent, and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>>> In the end, I neither knew nor cared what actually happened to most of the
>>> YJK...
>>
>> [1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
>> but shallow.
>
> Maybe that's bound to happen when you have to write 15 characters. It's
> not the Fab Five anymore; it's the Fab Five, Mara, Lando, Jacen, Anakin,
> Jaina, the Vong, and whatever Jedi/other the author needs to further his
> plot.
>
> Sure we can bitch, but I know that I, for one, was kind of heated when
> Luke wasn't getting much "screen time." I was thinking "that's great
> and all, but where the hell is Luke?" Either the author is going to
> piss people off by not covering everyone but getting a few people in
> depth, or he's going to piss people off by covering everyone but not in
> the depth they would like.
Yeah... but were all the YJK *really* necessary...?
>>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
>>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>
>> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
>> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>
> My memory may not be totally reliable, but I seem to remember that the
> reason the Jedi went after the clone queen in the first place is that
> Cilghal determined that the reason all of the voxyn were clones of one
> queen is because the Vong couldn't replicate the process, that there was
> evidence they just couldn't possibly do it again. Maybe it wasn't
> underscored enough, but that's what I remember.
So it was a *fluke*... that's just *weak*...
But, at the *very* least, they could *still* just set packs of angry
Vornskrs on them...
I mean, two *clubbed* vornskrs took down *Joruus C'baoth* with only 50%
casualties...
>>> The major flaw, though, is characterization...
>>>
>>> Nom Anor kills Anakin, and we get snatches of the cruel cunning with which
>>> he drives the YJK through the worldship, but he's continually thwarted those
>>> pesky kids...
>>>
>>> And there was a *reason* why the YJK were ignored by any sane pro-fic
>>> authors... there are too many utterly forgettable and disposable characters
>>> in that plotline... and, added to that, there's the fact that Anakin's
>>> self-assurance just comes across as dullness, and any sense of spark in his
>>> relationship with Tahiri is patchy...
>
> Why do you see his self-assurance as dullness?
The way it was handled in most of SbS, rather than the self-assurance in
itself... I thought Keyes did a damn good job...
>>> Also, since the entire cast of the YJK and JJK books (except the ones who
>>> were killed earlier in SbS), plus Ganner and some superfluous additions, all
>>> went to Myrkrr, there were *far* to many characters in that plotline... it
>>> just got bogged down...
>>>
>>> IMHO, they should have cut down the team to just Jacen, Jaina and Anakin,
>>> and *maybe* a few others... Ganner, Zekk, Tenel Ka, perhaps - but the
>>> addition of several YJK characters, a Bith, three Barabells (Troy Denning is
>>> to Barabells what Dave Wolverton is to Whipids and MAS is to anything furry
>>> and female), two Dark Jedi, a Chadra-Fan, a Twi'lek, and probably some
>>> others I've forgotten already just made for a muddled and unengaging mess...
>>
>> Having never read the *JK books, I've never gotten much more than
>> superficial impressions of those characters before they get shot, stabbed,
>> exploded, cleaved, masticated, etc... The problem here, I think, is that
>> the team had to be scaled to the threat, and if it was just a tiny
>> infiltration team succeeding for a long time vs. a large Vong operation,
>> the Vong would appear unusually weak...
>
> Exactly. If just three-five had gone in the author would have had one
> of two problems--one, he scales the Vong down as well, which would beg
> the question "why is this thing so poorly guarded?" or the Jedi cut
> through them at such a rate that the reader just finds it unbelieveable.
Shamed Ones?
Or, failing that, something like the whole ANH Death Star running, jumping,
standing still, and being a little short for a stormtrooper stuff...
>> plus, the Jedi had time to plan the
>> operation out, so it makes sense for *them* to add lots of extra
>> cannonfod^H^H^H manpower.
>
> One thing about the whole operation bothers the hell out of me. WHY WAS
> ANAKIN IN CHARGE? Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se;
> he's earned all of the respect he's gotten. But for such an operation
> wouldn't it have made a LOT more sense to send someone with tactical and
> command experience? Someone who could ride herd on the kids? Someone
> like oh, say, LUKE SKYWALKER? The weak reasoning given for why Luke
> himself didn't go just rang hollow in my ears. Part of me really
> expects to see Luke second guessing that decision in the next few books.
I got the impression that the Jedi just 'knew' it was right... my issues are
more with the more general idea of the plot, and its handling...
>>> IMHO, they should have had them *really* captured rather than infiltrated -
>>> after all, the Vong seemed to have captured everything from AT-ATs to live
>>> Jedi to train the voxyn... and yould've thought the YJK would have spared a
>>> *thought* to wonder which of their friends those unfortunates had been...
>>>
>>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two Terminators
>>> - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was needed to keep
>>> the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well if they'd escaped
>>> and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
>>> scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
>>> blast... and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him a
>>> *shred* of credibility...
>>>
>>> Also, Threepio's lines seem a bit stiff, at first - but Denning gets better
>>> at writing him, and fast...
>>
>> I was surprised by his glibness when Viqi Shesh comes to visit... I
>> guess I could chalk this up to Threepio being cast as a neurotic wimp for
>> most of the books, but Denning does remember that he's supposed to have
>> *some* wiliness in him somewhere.
>
> Exactly, cf. the "used car salesman" attitude he shows with Owen Lars.
Yeah...
>> Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
>> more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
>> Though luck's in there too.
>
> Look who she's going up against most of the time--other politicians.
> When she's taken on any of the heroes directly, like with Luke in the
> Senate Chamber, she's lost.
Aye...
>>> A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>>> erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
>>>
>>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
>
> Speaking of Luke, when was the last time the grandaddy of all Jedi
> badasses actually used his lightsaber? Was it way back in MAS's last
> book? What was that, 1 1/2 years of internal time ago?
Yeah, probably...
> And one more thought before I go....
>
> Is it just me, or does the whole "Leia isn't a Jedi" thing annoy the
> piss out of you all? I know it does me. I mean Jeezus. Look how it
> flip-flops according to the "needs" of the situation: HttE3--Jedi,
> JA3--Not Jedi, Corellian 3--Jedi, HoT--Jedi, NJO--Not Jedi.
>
> Come on folks--LFL and Del Rey, I'm looking in your direction--Tim Zahn
> underlined and put three exclamation points on it in HoT--Leia Organo
> Solo is a Jedi Knight. She could have been doing everything she's done
> during the NJO with the title "Jedi Knight" over her head as easily as
> not. Let's see what she's been doing....hmmm....being a diplomat,
> protecting refugees, fighting the Vong. Nope, of course not, those
> aren't things a Jedi Knight would do at all....
>
> Note exasperated sarcasm.
Yeah... but to be fair, take a look at the NJO... they're *all*
paramilitaries, with the odd field-medic thrown in... there *are* no New
Jedi diplomats, nothing *at all* like Leia...
Partly, it's more of Farmboy being a cr*p Jedi, partly it's because
Farmboy'll always be *the* Jedi to the NJO, whereas Leia's still the
Princess of Alderaan, the Rebel politico...
The thing is, Luke is still probably *Leia*'s image of a Jedi...
> John
Pol'
Policrat'
Aye...
Will Jacen earn that?
>>>>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>>>>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>>>>> relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>>>>>
>>>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>>>>
>>>>> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
>>>>>
>>>> An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and developed of the
>>>> Solo kids. So they have him die over some lame mission? I could see him
>>>> dying to directly protect his family, which would have been a lot better
>>>> IMO, but to kill some mother clone? Please.
>>>
>>> Yeah... I think that was kinda the point, though... it was supposed to be a
>>> left-field curve-ball...
>>
>> Except... well, I accidentally spoiled myself a month back or so on
>> RASSM when someone leaked that part of SbS, so maybe I wasn't *that*
>> surprised... but even so, parts of the book telegraph that Anakin's going
>> to die, and somewhat obviously.
>
> Could it be that the accidental spoiling (which I myself suffered)
> colored what you were reading so that you saw telegraphing where there
> wasn't any?
Nahh... it was there...
>>>>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This
>>>>> is easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>>>>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>>>>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>>>>
>>>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny,
>>>>> and open fire regardless...
>>>>>
>>>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>>>
>>>> What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors in this book
>>>> with no really good explination given. The same with Leia. I found this
>>>> irritating.
>>>
>>> Nahh, Borsk was Borsk... I thought the 'dejarik player' idea tied the whole
>>> thing together rather neatly...
>>
>> Agree. He *always* changes sides. I think the main thing is that
>> this time he's a lot more desperate as he knows that his time is running
>> out, so he makes deals without the usual "I'll stab you in the back later"
>> undercurrent we're used to.
>
> I was actually rather impressed with the holograph gambit....
Ehh? Which?
>>>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>>>
>>>> A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to get her
>>>> brother's body back, but didn't use it to try and save him in the first
>>>> place?
>>>
>>> Yeah...
>>
>> That would have been much more effective.
>
> I disagree. This way--after his death--can exploit the finality of the
> situation.
Yeah... I guess... she has none of the remorse she'd've had if she'd fttDS
to save him, and *then* he'd copped an amphistaff in the guts...
>>>>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two
>>>>> Terminators - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was
>>>>> needed to keep the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well
>>>>> if they'd escaped and made like ET with a villip - for some reason,
>>>>> Denning seems to write scenes involving villips really well, and that one
>>>>> would have been a blast... and it should have been Nom Anor who captured
>>>>> Jacen, to give him a *shred* of credibility...
>>
>> Heck, the Dark Jedi were superfluous. By the time they surprised
>> Lowie to steal the escape ship, I'd been presented with so many sneaky
>> pull-the-rug-out-from-the-characters that I was bored by it. Not to
>> mention that what happens to Anakin and Jaina could have happened without
>> the DJs there.
>
> Yes, but it was a nice way to contrast Zekk (who I really did like and I
> suspect he will be back for more helpings) with the rest of the Jedi.
> It was also a symbolic way of showing what can and will happen to lots
> of Skywalker's Jedi.
Aye...
>>>> And again, Anakin died, in part, trying to kill Nom Anor. Why not let
>>>> Anakin
>>>> kill him? After all, it is SW. Let the good guys win once in a while.
>>>
>>> The bad news is, it gets darker... Stover and Williams/Dix are kinda Iain M.
>>> Banks rip-offs...
>>
>> The usual problem with killing the prominent villains, of course,
>> is that it would reduce some of the tension before the climax. I really
>> thought that Shesh should have died, though--after the repeated kidnapping
>> attempts ad absurdum (see my last paragraph of comments) and with her cover
>> blown, she really doesn't serve much of a purpose except as another villain
>> for the readers and characters to hate and pursue... (or Tsavong Lah to
>> doublecross) but there's no real plot reason to have her around now that
>> her cover is blown.
>
> Aye. What other good can she possibly serve the Vong now that she's
> been exposed? And if she can't serve the Vong, what point is there of
> having her alive at the end of SbS?
Quisling? Sex-slave?
> Of course, the next books could simply explain that her
> lightsaber-cleaved body was found rotting somewhere, thus solving the
> problem of her still living at the end of SbS and opening a new can over
> who the Jedi-murderer is....
Heh!-)
> John
Pol'
Policrat'
> "Simon H. Lee" wrote:
"Ach, he's dead already..."
I still have issues about whether he was *really* channeling the Light
Side...
> John
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
>> >Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>> >
>> >Remember?
>> >
>> >And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>>
>> Yes.
>
>Yeah, maybe it is. But there's also a huge part of my brain that rebels
>every time I see him get into a cockpit, saying in essence "he's the
>Master of the Jedi, the most powerful Force user the galaxy has ever
>seen, a former NR general, and he's in a fighter cockpit? Shouldn't he
>be doing something a damn sight more grand than that?" You know, like
>leading a Jedi infiltration team....
I do agree that it's a little odd. (What I'd originally written
after "Yes." up there was "But isn't he getting a little old for this sort
of thing?" though that would apply to Wedge too then...) It's also a much
more random way of dying than being in close personal combat.
>> >Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>> >easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>> >Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>> >ram down the planetary shields.
>> >
>> >The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>> >open fire regardless...
>
>What surprised me was that Admiral Kre'fey made something of an about
>face. Maybe the Bothan in him came out, but still. And where the hell
>is Ackbar? You'd think he'd have come out of retirement already. After
>all, Bel Iblis and Rieekan both have to be 200 years old by now, and
>they're out there.
IIRC there was a very brief mention of Ackbar coming in, but that
did disappear amidst all the other stuff...
>> >Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>> >
>> >I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>
>> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
>> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
>> after all.
>
>So better for the Jedi to mop up their own fallen after the Vong have
>been beaten back than the alternative?
[1]
>> >Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>>
>> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>
>I hope so.
>
>And did anyone else get really disturbed by that whole thing? Tahiri
>talking to Anakin's dead body? It got to me, badly.
It passed by rather quickly, but as you mention, it'll most likely
be picked up on later... ticking time bomb and all.
>> >Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>
>> "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
>> have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
>> *nicer* to do that in this one.
>
>I think that was part of the point. Making us wait to get in her head.
The ending got me thinking of how the other hardcovers wrapped up,
and your point is supported by how things have gone before--Balance Point
also ends very quickly and lets some things wrap up in the following PBs.
As I started SbS, I kept trying to envision reading it right after BP
without EoV in between... and I guess it works.
I guess these deaths just aren't that earthshaking.
>> >Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>> >GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>> >who is clearly completely nuts...
>
>Nah, she's playing both sides for some reason. Whether or not that
>reason ends up being underwhelming is another question all together....
>
>> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
>> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
>> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>
>What kills me about this whole thing is that no one--not even master
>empath Jacen--has figured out that she's connected to the Force. Not
>even necessarily that she's Jedi, just that the Force runs through her.
Glimmerings, but no light bulb...
>> >But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>> >phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>
>> Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
>> This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
>> Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
>> after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
>> But I can't push others down my path..."
>>
>> And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
>> if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
>> reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
>
>It hasn't to do with remaining defensive, it has to do with remaining in
>the light. Luke has; Corran has; Mara has. Anakin did. None of them
>are sitting on their hands. It's been shown that Jedi can be active and
>not cross that Dark Line.
>
>The trouble with this situation, however, is that the Jedi are not being
>seduced to the Dark Side, they aren't slipping slowly over, they are
>making conscious decisions to do so. It's not Palpatine getting to Luke
>on the DS2, it's "well, I'm mad and I'm going to go to the Dark Side now
>because I don't have enough patience to do it the right way."
Is there a point to all of Jacen's worrying, then, or is it just
something thrown in for a little extra tension? Because if it's just
sloppy/misdirected writing that's undermining that crisis...
>> >Yeah, I know some of this sounds like GhentZ's ramblings - but this is a
>> >literal summary of SbS...
>> >
>> >On reflection, SbS is pretty damn surreal... but hey, it's a blast...
>> >
>> >I do have a few gripes, though...
>> >
>> >Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
>> >over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
>> >impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
>> >was all a bit incoherent, and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>> >In the end, I neither knew nor cared what actually happened to most of the
>> >YJK...
>>
>> [1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
>> but shallow.
>
>Maybe that's bound to happen when you have to write 15 characters. It's
>not the Fab Five anymore; it's the Fab Five, Mara, Lando, Jacen, Anakin,
>Jaina, the Vong, and whatever Jedi/other the author needs to further his
>plot.
>
>Sure we can bitch, but I know that I, for one, was kind of heated when
>Luke wasn't getting much "screen time." I was thinking "that's great
>and all, but where the hell is Luke?" Either the author is going to
>piss people off by not covering everyone but getting a few people in
>depth, or he's going to piss people off by covering everyone but not in
>the depth they would like.
Ah, what'cha gonna do?
>> >And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>> >plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
>> >implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>> >but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>
>> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
>> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>
>My memory may not be totally reliable, but I seem to remember that the
>reason the Jedi went after the clone queen in the first place is that
>Cilghal determined that the reason all of the voxyn were clones of one
>queen is because the Vong couldn't replicate the process, that there was
>evidence they just couldn't possibly do it again. Maybe it wasn't
>underscored enough, but that's what I remember.
*pages riffling* You might be right, but I don't remember or see
any mentions of that during the chapter where Cilghal tells everyone the
base has to be on Myrkyr, where I figure that would have been important...
>One thing about the whole operation bothers the hell out of me. WHY WAS
>ANAKIN IN CHARGE? Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se;
>he's earned all of the respect he's gotten. But for such an operation
>wouldn't it have made a LOT more sense to send someone with tactical and
>command experience? Someone who could ride herd on the kids? Someone
>like oh, say, LUKE SKYWALKER? The weak reasoning given for why Luke
>himself didn't go just rang hollow in my ears. Part of me really
>expects to see Luke second guessing that decision in the next few books.
"Point." Letting Anakin lead primarily serves to get him killed;
Luke *could* still lead the team and have all of the other outcomes (Jacen
& Jaina) occur as they do. Though Luke fits in a lot better with Han &
Leia than with the kids... it would be possible for the twins to be
trapped, but much of the intermediate stuff would be different with *The*
Jedi Master along, if just for plausibility alone.
>> Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
>> more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
>> Though luck's in there too.
>
>Look who she's going up against most of the time--other politicians.
>When she's taken on any of the heroes directly, like with Luke in the
>Senate Chamber, she's lost.
True. But that makes her apparent (near) success at kidnapping Ben
during the chaos at the end seem a tiny bit contrived, even with a decoy
Anakin.
>> >A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>> >erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
>> >
>> >And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>> >battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>> >making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of SBS...
>
>Speaking of Luke, when was the last time the grandaddy of all Jedi
>badasses actually used his lightsaber? Was it way back in MAS's last
>book? What was that, 1 1/2 years of internal time ago?
>
>And one more thought before I go....
>
>Is it just me, or does the whole "Leia isn't a Jedi" thing annoy the
>piss out of you all? I know it does me. I mean Jeezus. Look how it
>flip-flops according to the "needs" of the situation: HttE3--Jedi,
>JA3--Not Jedi, Corellian 3--Jedi, HoT--Jedi, NJO--Not Jedi.
Yes.
>Come on folks--LFL and Del Rey, I'm looking in your direction--Tim Zahn
>underlined and put three exclamation points on it in HoT--Leia Organo
>Solo is a Jedi Knight. She could have been doing everything she's done
>during the NJO with the title "Jedi Knight" over her head as easily as
>not. Let's see what she's been doing....hmmm....being a diplomat,
>protecting refugees, fighting the Vong. Nope, of course not, those
>aren't things a Jedi Knight would do at all....
Simon H. Lee
That wouldn't be a very noble end, would it?
>Because if it was the Light Side, shouldn't it have *healed* him...?
Too much of anything is a bad thing... or so it appears now.
Wasn't Dorsk 82 also fried by channelling too much Force?
--
__ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
(__ * _ _ _ _ "Sometimes the need to mess with their heads
__)|| | |(_)| \ outweighs the millstone of humiliation."
Simon H. Lee
That was on TV today... I do *not* believe that the edited-for-TV
guys cut out "If it bleeds, we can kill it."
>> Let's see... if the voxyn has acidic blood, wouldn't the rest of
>> its biochemistry be different enough as a consequence that it would have
>> trouble functioning in a "normal" atmosphere? Of course, the blood could
>> be simply dangerous for some other reasons, but that's not nearly as fun as
>> acid... which is probably the point in the end of course, the fun of it all
>> ;)
>
>Which brings me on to something else... the Vong have *no* sense of fun...
>compared to the Affront - or even the Klingons - they're just bloody
>*dull*...
>
>Yeah, actually... that's what bothers me about the Vong... they're supposed
>to *enjoy* pain... they should *laugh* at pain, pick themselves off the deck
>and *smile* at the Jedi who've just cut their legs off... and use Vergere as
>a football or a toasting-rack, rather than a bloody *pet*...
"Your arm's off!"
"I've had worse."
True. We still don't really have much of an idea of how a typical
Vong lives, just lots of guys who like pointy sticks.
--
| __
| (__ * _ _ _ _ Bringing you your recommended
| __)|| | |(_)| \ daily allowance of weirdness.
|_____________________________ A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E !
Policrat'
[reverses frigate-analog, jumps out, puts Anakin's husk in the back]
"Just in case. It's a long ride to the next hardcover."
>>>>>> Meanwhile, the YJK find themselves at Myrkrr - or rather, on a dying
>>>>>> worldship orbitinG Myrkrr, where they face off against Nom Anor, a
>>>>>> relatively small Yuuzhan Vong detachment, and some voxyn...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Most of the Yuzzies die. Most of the voxyn die. Anakin Solo dies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And that isn't even the climax... it's just an incident.
>>>>>>
>>>>> An incident....exactly. Anakin was the most likable and developed of the
>>>>> Solo kids. So they have him die over some lame mission? I could see him
>>>>> dying to directly protect his family, which would have been a lot better
>>>>> IMO, but to kill some mother clone? Please.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah... I think that was kinda the point, though... it was supposed to be a
>>>> left-field curve-ball...
>>>
>>> Except... well, I accidentally spoiled myself a month back or so on
>>> RASSM when someone leaked that part of SbS, so maybe I wasn't *that*
>>> surprised... but even so, parts of the book telegraph that Anakin's going
>>> to die, and somewhat obviously.
>>
>> Could it be that the accidental spoiling (which I myself suffered)
>> colored what you were reading so that you saw telegraphing where there
>> wasn't any?
>
> Maybe, but I believe in my strength of will :)
You do?
>>>>>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This
>>>>>> is easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>>>>>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>>>>>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny,
>>>>>> and open fire regardless...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>>>>
>>>>> What's with that?? Borsk, like Luke, totally changes colors in this book
>>>>> with no really good explination given. The same with Leia. I found this
>>>>> irritating.
>>>>
>>>> Nahh, Borsk was Borsk... I thought the 'dejarik player' idea tied the whole
>>>> thing together rather neatly...
>>>
>>> Agree. He *always* changes sides. I think the main thing is that
>>> this time he's a lot more desperate as he knows that his time is running
>>> out, so he makes deals without the usual "I'll stab you in the back later"
>>> undercurrent we're used to.
>>
>> I was actually rather impressed with the holograph gambit....
>
> Me too. Tying this into another comment I've seen in this thread,
> it demonstrates that both sides are continuing to adapt to one another.
Y'quhat?!
>>>>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>>>>
>>>>> A bit anti-climatic, wasn't it? She uses the Dark Side to get her
>>>>> brother's body back, but didn't use it to try and save him in the first
>>>>> place?
>>>>
>>>> Yeah...
>>>
>>> That would have been much more effective.
>>
>> I disagree. This way--after his death--can exploit the finality of the
>> situation.
>
> What of the dramatic value, though? Jaina just gets really mad
> (granted, it had been building up for a while even before Anakin died) and
> starts spitting out lightning and being in a bad mood. Compare that to her
> trying to fight her way to Anakin to save him and either realizing that
> he's going to die and giving in or going over just after he dies?
Aye...
>>>>>> Anyhow, the YJK could have escaped without the assistance of two
>>>>>> Terminators - the idea that they were just doing what Jedi do, which was
>>>>>> needed to keep the main plot moving, could have been handled just as well
>>>>>> if they'd escaped
>>>>>> and made like ET with a villip - for some reason, Denning seems to write
>>>>>> scenes involving villips really well, and that one would have been a
>>>>>> blast... and it should have been Nom Anor who captured Jacen, to give him
>>>>>> a *shred* of credibility...
>>>
>>> Heck, the Dark Jedi were superfluous. By the time they surprised
>>> Lowie to steal the escape ship, I'd been presented with so many sneaky
>>> pull-the-rug-out-from-the-characters that I was bored by it. Not to
>>> mention that what happens to Anakin and Jaina could have happened without
>>> the DJs there.
>>
>> Yes, but it was a nice way to contrast Zekk (who I really did like and I
>> suspect he will be back for more helpings) with the rest of the Jedi.
>> It was also a symbolic way of showing what can and will happen to lots
>> of Skywalker's Jedi.
>
> Good point, but... I think I'd have preferred such tension to
> develop more from the inherent weaknesses of the Jedi in the team rather
> than from an out-of-the-blue source.
Yeah... Jaina fttDS because of Anakin and Jacen arguing all the time...
> -- - Simon -
> ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
That's what they want us to think, eh?
--
John Donchig
Explain. What leads you to think differently?
Policrat'
"The Force is with him..."
Actually, given what happened to Ben, maybe not...
But seriously, a random shot in a melée or a coralskipper managing to outfly
an X-wing...
>>>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>>>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>>>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>>>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>>>
>>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>>>> open fire regardless...
>>
>> What surprised me was that Admiral Kre'fey made something of an about
>> face. Maybe the Bothan in him came out, but still. And where the hell
>> is Ackbar? You'd think he'd have come out of retirement already. After
>> all, Bel Iblis and Rieekan both have to be 200 years old by now, and
>> they're out there.
>
> IIRC there was a very brief mention of Ackbar coming in, but that
> did disappear amidst all the other stuff...
IIRC, it was a rumour...
>>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>>
>>>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>>
>>> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
>>> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
>>> after all.
>>
>> So better for the Jedi to mop up their own fallen after the Vong have
>> been beaten back than the alternative?
>
> [1]
Eh?
>>>> Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>>>
>>> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>>
>> I hope so.
>>
>> And did anyone else get really disturbed by that whole thing? Tahiri
>> talking to Anakin's dead body? It got to me, badly.
>
> It passed by rather quickly, but as you mention, it'll most likely
> be picked up on later... ticking time bomb and all.
Hmm... messy... someone pointed out that there was a bit of Romeo and Juliet
in there...
"Star by Star", anybody...?
>>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>
>>> "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
>>> have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
>>> *nicer* to do that in this one.
>>
>> I think that was part of the point. Making us wait to get in her head.
>
> The ending got me thinking of how the other hardcovers wrapped up,
> and your point is supported by how things have gone before--Balance Point
> also ends very quickly and lets some things wrap up in the following PBs.
> As I started SbS, I kept trying to envision reading it right after BP
> without EoV in between... and I guess it works.
> I guess these deaths just aren't that earthshaking.
Yeah...
>>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>
>> Nah, she's playing both sides for some reason. Whether or not that
>> reason ends up being underwhelming is another question all together....
>>
>>> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
>>> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
>>> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>>
>> What kills me about this whole thing is that no one--not even master
>> empath Jacen--has figured out that she's connected to the Force. Not
>> even necessarily that she's Jedi, just that the Force runs through her.
>
> Glimmerings, but no light bulb...
Which is just *wrong*, aye?
>>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>>
>>> Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
>>> This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
>>> Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
>>> after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
>>> But I can't push others down my path..."
>>>
>>> And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
>>> if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
>>> reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
>>
>> It hasn't to do with remaining defensive, it has to do with remaining in
>> the light. Luke has; Corran has; Mara has. Anakin did. None of them
>> are sitting on their hands. It's been shown that Jedi can be active and
>> not cross that Dark Line.
>>
>> The trouble with this situation, however, is that the Jedi are not being
>> seduced to the Dark Side, they aren't slipping slowly over, they are
>> making conscious decisions to do so. It's not Palpatine getting to Luke
>> on the DS2, it's "well, I'm mad and I'm going to go to the Dark Side now
>> because I don't have enough patience to do it the right way."
>
> Is there a point to all of Jacen's worrying, then, or is it just
> something thrown in for a little extra tension? Because if it's just
> sloppy/misdirected writing that's undermining that crisis...
Yeah...
But seriously, here are some thoughts on "Star by Star"...
Anakin and Tahiri...
Jacen and Jaina...
Vergere's two tears for Jacen...
The Vong attack...
The collapse of the NR's integrity...
The Jedi getting Dark...
A sad lack of Ewoks and Metal Bikinis in the rest of the NJO...
And maybe, just maybe, it echoes the last line of an old Arthur C. Clarke
short story...
"And overhead, one by one, the stars were going out."
>>>> Yeah, I know some of this sounds like GhentZ's ramblings - but this is a
>>>> literal summary of SbS...
>>>>
>>>> On reflection, SbS is pretty damn surreal... but hey, it's a blast...
>>>>
>>>> I do have a few gripes, though...
>>>>
>>>> Firstly, the scenes on the worldship orbiting Myrkrr were confused,
>>>> over-long, and perhaps unneccessary. Sure, we got a lot of subjective
>>>> impressions of things blowing up and Jedi getting stabbed and burnt, but it
>>>> was all a bit incoherent, and Anakin seemed massively undercharacterized...
>>>> In the end, I neither knew nor cared what actually happened to most of the
>>>> YJK...
>>>
>>> [1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
>>> but shallow.
>>
>> Maybe that's bound to happen when you have to write 15 characters. It's
>> not the Fab Five anymore; it's the Fab Five, Mara, Lando, Jacen, Anakin,
>> Jaina, the Vong, and whatever Jedi/other the author needs to further his
>> plot.
>>
>> Sure we can bitch, but I know that I, for one, was kind of heated when
>> Luke wasn't getting much "screen time." I was thinking "that's great
>> and all, but where the hell is Luke?" Either the author is going to
>> piss people off by not covering everyone but getting a few people in
>> depth, or he's going to piss people off by covering everyone but not in
>> the depth they would like.
>
> Ah, what'cha gonna do?
I dunno, but I'm sure we can string it out for a few posts...
>>>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>>>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and
>>>> it's
>>>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>>>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>>
>>> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
>>> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>>
>> My memory may not be totally reliable, but I seem to remember that the
>> reason the Jedi went after the clone queen in the first place is that
>> Cilghal determined that the reason all of the voxyn were clones of one
>> queen is because the Vong couldn't replicate the process, that there was
>> evidence they just couldn't possibly do it again. Maybe it wasn't
>> underscored enough, but that's what I remember.
>
> *pages riffling* You might be right, but I don't remember or see
> any mentions of that during the chapter where Cilghal tells everyone the
> base has to be on Myrkyr, where I figure that would have been important...
Yeah... except, of course, the base *isn't* on Myrkr
>> One thing about the whole operation bothers the hell out of me. WHY WAS
>> ANAKIN IN CHARGE? Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se;
>> he's earned all of the respect he's gotten. But for such an operation
>> wouldn't it have made a LOT more sense to send someone with tactical and
>> command experience? Someone who could ride herd on the kids? Someone
>> like oh, say, LUKE SKYWALKER? The weak reasoning given for why Luke
>> himself didn't go just rang hollow in my ears. Part of me really
>> expects to see Luke second guessing that decision in the next few books.
>
> "Point."
Surely, "'Fact.'"?
;-p
> Letting Anakin lead primarily serves to get him killed;
> Luke *could* still lead the team and have all of the other outcomes (Jacen
> & Jaina) occur as they do. Though Luke fits in a lot better with Han &
> Leia than with the kids... it would be possible for the twins to be
> trapped, but much of the intermediate stuff would be different with *The*
> Jedi Master along, if just for plausibility alone.
Yeah... what bothered me was the complete lack of ability by the YJK to
*really* take the fight back to the Vong... Nom Anor *herded* them like
meat-animals...
>>> Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
>>> more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
>>> Though luck's in there too.
>>
>> Look who she's going up against most of the time--other politicians.
>> When she's taken on any of the heroes directly, like with Luke in the
>> Senate Chamber, she's lost.
>
> True. But that makes her apparent (near) success at kidnapping Ben
> during the chaos at the end seem a tiny bit contrived, even with a decoy
> Anakin.
That was the chaos, surely...
>>>> A *lot* of people will probably get really p*ssed off by the Terminators...
>>>> erm, YVH-1s... but IMHO, they were crazy enough to work...
>>>>
>>>> And Luke and Mara, Han and Leia, are really spot-on... the the
>>>> battle-sequences from Luke's POV, with Farmboy mind-linking with Mara and
>>>> making comebacks to Artoo's one-liners, was perhaps the best parts of
>>>> SBS...
>>
>> Speaking of Luke, when was the last time the grandaddy of all Jedi
>> badasses actually used his lightsaber? Was it way back in MAS's last
>> book? What was that, 1 1/2 years of internal time ago?
>>
>> And one more thought before I go....
>>
>> Is it just me, or does the whole "Leia isn't a Jedi" thing annoy the
>> piss out of you all? I know it does me. I mean Jeezus. Look how it
>> flip-flops according to the "needs" of the situation: HttE3--Jedi,
>> JA3--Not Jedi, Corellian 3--Jedi, HoT--Jedi, NJO--Not Jedi.
>
> Yes.
Aye...
Add in DE and PoT, though...
>> Come on folks--LFL and Del Rey, I'm looking in your direction--Tim Zahn
>> underlined and put three exclamation points on it in HoT--Leia Organo
>> Solo is a Jedi Knight. She could have been doing everything she's done
>> during the NJO with the title "Jedi Knight" over her head as easily as
>> not. Let's see what she's been doing....hmmm....being a diplomat,
>> protecting refugees, fighting the Vong. Nope, of course not, those
>> aren't things a Jedi Knight would do at all....
>
>
> -- - Simon -
> ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
Pol'
Policrat'
Y'quhat!?
*splutter!*
>>> Let's see... if the voxyn has acidic blood, wouldn't the rest of
>>> its biochemistry be different enough as a consequence that it would have
>>> trouble functioning in a "normal" atmosphere? Of course, the blood could
>>> be simply dangerous for some other reasons, but that's not nearly as fun as
>>> acid... which is probably the point in the end of course, the fun of it all
>>> ;)
>>
>> Which brings me on to something else... the Vong have *no* sense of fun...
>> compared to the Affront - or even the Klingons - they're just bloody
>> *dull*...
>>
>> Yeah, actually... that's what bothers me about the Vong... they're supposed
>> to *enjoy* pain... they should *laugh* at pain, pick themselves off the deck
>> and *smile* at the Jedi who've just cut their legs off... and use Vergere as
>> a football or a toasting-rack, rather than a bloody *pet*...
>
> "Your arm's off!"
> "I've had worse."
Basically, yeah...
> True. We still don't really have much of an idea of how a typical
> Vong lives, just lots of guys who like pointy sticks.
And have no damn sense of humour...
"What is the air-speed of an unladen Fosh?"
> | __
> | (__ * _ _ _ _ Bringing you your recommended
> | __)|| | |(_)| \ daily allowance of weirdness.
> |_____________________________ A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E !
Pol'
DarthGumby
telepathically conveyed:
>On Sat, 03 Nov 2001 20:23:19 -0500, DarthGumby
><DarthMyHe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>><ng sig rescues DG's .sigs before they completely melt and sticks them
>>>into the freezer to they can recooperate>
>>
>><.sigs make snow angels on the waffle boxes>
>
><Jedichu empties ice trays onto the floor and starts kicking the ice
>cubes around the kitchen>
<alt. .sig puts on frilly outfit and tries to skate on
an ice cube>
<.sig cheers when Jedichu kicks the ice cube alt. .sig
is on past the doorway>
>>>-Rainbow Heron
>>>(sig is cool...it's cold in here)
>>
>><DG's .sig warns RH's sig to look out for Wampii>
>
><Wampa comes up to ng sig>"De ya wunna Wampii?"
>
><ng sig:>whack!
<DG squeaks and curls up in ball, .sigs shout "WAMPA!
WAMPA!!">
>>>And have some lemonade .sigs... :-)
>>
>><.sigs say thanks and begin to drink the lemonade, but
>>it freezes so now they're eating the lemonade>
>
>Lemonade slush? :-)
<.sigs dance in the yellow snow, then realize what it
must look like and try to explain and offer a taste to
everyone looking on in horror>
>-Rainbow Heron
>(sig gets some cherry juice and makes a Slurpee)
>
>Brain freeze!
<DG bellows "My freeze hurts!" and then realizes it
messed up its line. .sigs reel DG offstage with a
fishing pole.>
Gumby
Policrat'
Just the fact that he *could* channel it, that it *damaged* him
(apparently)... I wouldn't expect the Light Side to *allow* that sort of
use...
Anakin was *willing* the Force, *using* it so he could stay alive and
fighting until he'd done what he believed was *right*... any of that sound
familiar, at all?
I need to eat and sleep some time, y'know... =)
> John
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>>>>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked out
>>>>>> the entry for Star by Star at amazon.com and it's listed at 624. Wow,
>>>>>> that's a lot of dead trees.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Yeah.
>>>>>
>>>>> Non-spoiler bit... um...
>>>>>
>>>>> Feh!
>>>>>
>>>>> The only non-spoiler bit is that there is no non-spoiler bit... and that
>>>>> sums up SbS rather well for those of you who'd rather not know...
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> S P O I L E R
>>>>>
>>>>> S P A C E . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyone still paying attention?
>>>>>
>>>>> OK...
>>>>>
>>>>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>>>>>
>>>> Very big parts that didn't click.
>>>
>>> Yeah...
>>>> Why? Why did they *have* to do this? Ok, so the Voxyn (why the Jedi
> didn't
>>>> get the Vornskr connection just from the name, I'll never know...;-) are
>>>> bad, Jedi killing monsters. They're short lived and are cloned from one
>>>> 'mother'. So, they risk 17 YJK to kill this mother.
>
>It's one bad mother... dammit, it's Mace Windu...
>
>(played, for the duration of the joke, by Sacha Baron-Cohen...)
:)
>>>> But, the YV are masters at bio tech. They can just make another one. So,
>>>> why bother? This makes no sense to me at all.
>>>
>>> Nor me... the idea that the hyperlanes are dovin-basal-mind is a dumb plot
>>> device too... there's nothing to stop anyone just going *over* them...
>>
>> Well... given what we know of the SW universe, while you can go
>> anywhere in hyperspace, everyone sticks to the established routes because
>> of the random chance of hitting uncharted crap out in the middle of
>> nowhere... so they'd have to remap routes around the mining, which would
>> take a while. On the other hand, "Space is big. Really big."
>> I've got to stop bringing RL physics into this. =>
>
>Why?
>
>Fig. 1138: There is a Hole in your Plot
>
> ___________
> / \
> Manifest Lack of Uncharted Crap Here
> / \<-------(suggested route for sending
> / \ YJK to their deaths)
> ------------------------:---------------
> G A L A C T I C : P L A N E
> ------------------------:---------------
> \
> (Dovin Basals)
>
> Manifest Lack of Uncharted Crap Here Too
There goes one of the conventions of space SF ;)
>>> "His strategy indicates two-dimentional thinking..."
>>>
>>> And no, I don't know why quotes from "The Wrath of Khan" always seem so
>>> aposite in the NRG either...
>>
>> Funny, I quoted "The good of the many outweighs the good of the
>> one" *before* reading this post.
>
>"Buried alive... buried alive..."
"You've managed to kill almost everyone else. But unlike a good
assassin, you *keep* on *missing* the *target.*"
>>>> Which feeds into another complaint, Anakin Solo dies.
>>>
>>> Yeah...
>>
>> "Everybody dies, but not everyone truly lives."
>
>"The word is given: warp speed."
"I'm not a drama critic."
>>>> I expected a bit more of an explination of Vergere's actions. Again,
>>>> extremely unclear.
>>>
>>> At first, I thought Vergere was just genuinely insane... re-reading, I
>>> realised the funky chicken-analog's got a plan... unfortunately, she's not
>>> going to let the Solos get in the way...
>>>
>>> And maybe she doesn't trust them... she heard that 'Skywalker' was in
>>> charge, and thought that it was Anakin, who Thracia had been worried about
>>> way back... then she saw Jaina use Force-lightning...
>>>
>>> But has no-one noticed that the Fosh come from the Unknown Regions!?
>>>
>>> Whatever Vergere's plan is, I keep seeing blue fingerprints all over it...
>>
>> That would be one truly impressive and improbable (from a plot POV)
>> bit of preplanning from the Chiss...
>
>Not really... apparently the SW Gamer and the EGtAS have said that the Chiss
>have fought the Vong before... but anyway, take a real close look at the
>plant-life and big black fortresses on Nirauan and Hjarna...
Nobody tells me nuthin'... but how would the Chiss have set Vergere
up for this 60 years earlier? Rogue Planet suggests that the Vong attack
on Zonoma Sekot was a surprise. Of course, the Chiss might have been
attacked first and Vergere could have been planted amidst the Jedi by them,
but... are you Fox Mulder in disguise?
>The thing is, the Chiss don't believe in pre-emptive strikes, do they?-)
>
>And seriously, where d'you think Vergere went after AoC? Looking for the
>Fosh and Thracia Cho Leem, perhaps?
Probably had to set some things right in her head, yeah.
>> The usual problem with killing the prominent villains, of course,
>> is that it would reduce some of the tension before the climax. I really
>> thought that Shesh should have died, though--after the repeated kidnapping
>> attempts ad absurdum (see my last paragraph of comments) and with her cover
>> blown, she really doesn't serve much of a purpose except as another villain
>> for the readers and characters to hate and pursue... (or Tsavong Lah to
>> doublecross) but there's no real plot reason to have her around now that
>> her cover is blown.
>
>I assume there's going to be a Sheesh/Tsavong Lah/Yeoman Rand thing
>happening =)
My, you've turned into Çheetah!.
>I'd be interested to see what the Senator from Kuat's Leda-impersonation is
>like...
Bjork?
>>>> I was just frustrated with the book. With the plot holes, with the
>>>> non-characterization, everything. Heck, I didn't even like Anakin that
>>>> much, but his death seemed a waste. Maybe that was the point...a waste.
>>>> But, geez, this is SW and I'm getting a bit frustrated by the good guys
>>>> losing all the time.
>>>
>>> Yeah... I just, well... *went* with it, and I found that the decent stuff
>>> was enough to outweight the cr*p...
>>
>> "At my signal, unleash Griping."
>
>"There was something about it that I didn't like..."
>
>"That's to be expected."
>
>"No, something else."
>
>"Well, then let it be a lesson."
>
>"No... something else."
>
>"What then?"
>
>"I enjoyed it."
*snark*
--
______(-o-)___A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E !____<*>__________
| __ "How many people do you know who can get out of
| (__ * _ _ _ _ a straitjacket in under three minutes?"
| __)|| | |(_)| \ "Fortunately, none."
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>
>> John Donchig <jdon...@earthlink.net> choreographed a chorus line of
>> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>>>>>>>> Nothing really imporant to say other than 624 PAGES??? I just checked
"I'm getting better!"
>> Maybe, but I believe in my strength of will :)
>
>You do?
Yes. ;)
>>> I was actually rather impressed with the holograph gambit....
>>
>> Me too. Tying this into another comment I've seen in this thread,
>> it demonstrates that both sides are continuing to adapt to one another.
>
>Y'quhat?!
Tsavong Lah wouldn't have his job if he wasn't somewhat
intelligent? And the subplot about the yammosks made sense strategically.
>Yeah... Jaina fttDS because of Anakin and Jacen arguing all the time...
*zap* "I win!"
--
(-o-) A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E ! <*>
| __ "Senso, anything on your radar?" |
| (__ * _ _ _ _ "Nothing but my forehead, sir." |
| __)|| | |(_)| \ --Courtesy of G. Permann |
|___________________________________________________________________|
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Simon H. Lee:
>
>>
>> Ye gods, I've gone back to the beginning of the damn thread to post
>> my comments. And *then* I'll read the other 36 posts' worth of misc
>> commentary, including my own ;)
>
>Yippee...
>
><grinning like an idiot at the amount of NRG-generated spam on RASSM>
"The game's afoot, eh?"
12345678900987654321
>>> S
>>> P
>>> O
>>> I
>>> L
>>> E
>>> R
>>>
>>> S
>>> P
>>> A
>>> C
>>> E
>>> ...
>>> ....
>>> .....
>..........
>...........
>>> Anyone still paying attention?
>>>
>>> OK...
>>>
>>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>>>
>>> This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
>>> not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
>>> with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
>>> of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
>>> which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense in
>>> a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
>>
>> [1]
>
>Should we start posting in html to make all this easier?
<html>
<bold><blink>
NO
</bold></blink>
</html>
>>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>>>
>>> Remember?
>>>
>>> And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>>
>> Yes.
>
>Aye... any thoughts *why*? Is this some decision by LFL, or just that
>no-one's thought of it?
He needs to get out more? There really wouldn't have been much for
him to do on the ground in this book, unless he did lead the infiltration
team, which would have opened up its own can of worms...
>>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>>
>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>>> open fire regardless...
>>>
>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>
>>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>
>> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
>> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
>> after all.
>
>Yeah... Han, for instance - was it KJA who had Han reflecting on it?
It was one of the NJO authors, and fairly recently, too... Keyes
or Tyers?
>That always bothered me, frankly... why the f*ck is there one rule for
>Force-adepts, and another for the rest of the GFFA?! Yeah, I can see the
>*sense* in inculcating a dualistic dogma to prevent Jedi fttDS, but it just
>makes them dull and mentally disturbed at the same time...
We've had this discussion for another NJO book...
>>> Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>>
>> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>
>I just hope they weren't signalling that we'll get Anakin/Tahiri smut before
>the NJO is out...
Yeah, necrophilia really livens up the place. ;)
>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>
>> "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
>> have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
>> *nicer* to do that in this one.
>
>Yeah...
>
>It's another "Star Wars Pants" moment, that is...
*duck*
>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>
>> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
>> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
>> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>
>Yeah... though I noticed that what she said to Jacen didn't *actually* imply
>*at all* that she was on the Vong side...
Though the Vong (and everyone else) certainly think so.
>>> Tsavong Lah, meanwhile, has realised that he's starting to rot,
>>
>> "Kids... don't try this at home. Or at least sterilize the saw
>> first."
>
>Klingons, anyone?
No singing yet.
>>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>>> lightspeed...
>>
>> That rushed ending...
>
>Aye...
>
>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>
>> Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
>> This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
>> Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
>> after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
>> But I can't push others down my path..."
>
>Thankee!
I remember reading that and saying "So that's where the title's
from... one teeny quote."
>> And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
>> if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
>> reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
>
>Clawcraft. And funky Star Destroyers...
>
>Thought - the Dark Side in itself isn't *evil*, it's just, well, kinda
>dark... a Dark Jedi need be no less a sympathetic or heroic character than
>Cheradenine Zakalwe or Hamlet...
Evil Kirk, perhaps? Back in the Ruin thread, didn't we speculate
that the the use/balance of both sides might be needed for a Jedi to fight?
>> [1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
>> but shallow.
>
>"All sound and fury, signifying nothing"?
>
>Was it just me, or was there a big contrast between the YJK plot and the
>"STAR WARS" plot...
Comment made in another reply: The YJK characters spend most of
their time rooting around in a hole, the others try to save the galaxy.
Too bad the holey bit wasn't exploited better.
>>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and it's
>>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>
>> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
>> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>
>How many were there? I thought the Vong had kinda shot their bolt...
They got a lot, but still, why can't the Vong just trap one of the
free-range ones? It is *cloning* after all...
That's saved for Dramatic MomentsŽ? Also, if a few YJKs could form
a battle meld and carve their way through a huge mass of Vong, what would
keep the other Jedi from doing the same, other than the plot?
>
>And?
...
Simon H. Lee
>But, at the *very* least, they could *still* just set packs of angry
>Vornskrs on them...
>
>I mean, two *clubbed* vornskrs took down *Joruus C'baoth* with only 50%
>casualties...
The Vong just *have* to improve on things, I suppose. Though
you're right, they've already got a whole species of terrific
Force-trackers that they can use, and a planet full of them.
>>> Having never read the *JK books, I've never gotten much more than
>>> superficial impressions of those characters before they get shot, stabbed,
>>> exploded, cleaved, masticated, etc... The problem here, I think, is that
>>> the team had to be scaled to the threat, and if it was just a tiny
>>> infiltration team succeeding for a long time vs. a large Vong operation,
>>> the Vong would appear unusually weak...
>>
>> Exactly. If just three-five had gone in the author would have had one
>> of two problems--one, he scales the Vong down as well, which would beg
>> the question "why is this thing so poorly guarded?" or the Jedi cut
>> through them at such a rate that the reader just finds it unbelieveable.
>
>Shamed Ones?
There's an idea...
Simon H. Lee
"Oops! Leia, I'm not going to let you babysit ever again."
>But seriously, a random shot in a melée or a coralskipper managing to outfly
>an X-wing...
He can breathe on the ground, though, and without being strapped to
a giant explosive fuel tank.
>>>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>>>
>>>>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>>>
>>>> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
>>>> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
>>>> after all.
>>>
>>> So better for the Jedi to mop up their own fallen after the Vong have
>>> been beaten back than the alternative?
>>
>> [1]
>
>Eh?
I meant to footnote that later on. I forgot.
>>>>> Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>>>>
>>>> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>>>
>>> I hope so.
>>>
>>> And did anyone else get really disturbed by that whole thing? Tahiri
>>> talking to Anakin's dead body? It got to me, badly.
>>
>> It passed by rather quickly, but as you mention, it'll most likely
>> be picked up on later... ticking time bomb and all.
>
>Hmm... messy... someone pointed out that there was a bit of Romeo and Juliet
>in there...
>
>"Star by Star", anybody...?
"Cut me up into little stars?"
The Vong didn't quite get that far, but they tried...
>>>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>>
>>> Nah, she's playing both sides for some reason. Whether or not that
>>> reason ends up being underwhelming is another question all together....
>>>
>>>> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
>>>> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
>>>> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>>>
>>> What kills me about this whole thing is that no one--not even master
>>> empath Jacen--has figured out that she's connected to the Force. Not
>>> even necessarily that she's Jedi, just that the Force runs through her.
>>
>> Glimmerings, but no light bulb...
>
>Which is just *wrong*, aye?
Considering how much contact they've had with her now, it's
annoying.
"Would the last person off of Coruscant please turn off the
lights?"
...and now we get to wallow in EVEN MORE darkness for a few books
=}
>> Ah, what'cha gonna do?
>
>I dunno, but I'm sure we can string it out for a few posts...
----------
>>>>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>>>>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and
>>>>> it's
>>>>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave
> them...
>>>>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>>>
>>>> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
>>>> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>>>
>>> My memory may not be totally reliable, but I seem to remember that the
>>> reason the Jedi went after the clone queen in the first place is that
>>> Cilghal determined that the reason all of the voxyn were clones of one
>>> queen is because the Vong couldn't replicate the process, that there was
>>> evidence they just couldn't possibly do it again. Maybe it wasn't
>>> underscored enough, but that's what I remember.
>>
>> *pages riffling* You might be right, but I don't remember or see
>> any mentions of that during the chapter where Cilghal tells everyone the
>> base has to be on Myrkyr, where I figure that would have been important...
>
>Yeah... except, of course, the base *isn't* on Myrkr
"Oops!"
>>> One thing about the whole operation bothers the hell out of me. WHY WAS
>>> ANAKIN IN CHARGE? Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se;
>>> he's earned all of the respect he's gotten. But for such an operation
>>> wouldn't it have made a LOT more sense to send someone with tactical and
>>> command experience? Someone who could ride herd on the kids? Someone
>>> like oh, say, LUKE SKYWALKER? The weak reasoning given for why Luke
>>> himself didn't go just rang hollow in my ears. Part of me really
>>> expects to see Luke second guessing that decision in the next few books.
>>
>> "Point."
>
>Surely, "'Fact.'"?
>
>;-p
I'm glad I never read the *JK novels. That "fact" bit would have
annoyed me to no end.
>> Letting Anakin lead primarily serves to get him killed;
>> Luke *could* still lead the team and have all of the other outcomes (Jacen
>> & Jaina) occur as they do. Though Luke fits in a lot better with Han &
>> Leia than with the kids... it would be possible for the twins to be
>> trapped, but much of the intermediate stuff would be different with *The*
>> Jedi Master along, if just for plausibility alone.
>
>Yeah... what bothered me was the complete lack of ability by the YJK to
>*really* take the fight back to the Vong... Nom Anor *herded* them like
>meat-animals...
And the Jedi were even aware of the situation enough to comment on
it, even funnier.
Of course, in the end... didn't one of us point out that Nom Anor
should *really* be close to sucking vacuum for all of his slip-ups?
>>>> Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
>>>> more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
>>>> Though luck's in there too.
>>>
>>> Look who she's going up against most of the time--other politicians.
>>> When she's taken on any of the heroes directly, like with Luke in the
>>> Senate Chamber, she's lost.
>>
>> True. But that makes her apparent (near) success at kidnapping Ben
>> during the chaos at the end seem a tiny bit contrived, even with a decoy
>> Anakin.
>
>That was the chaos, surely...
And disguised Vong here and there...
Simon H. Lee
"Let's find out!" *toss*
Policrat'
Nope...
>> Because if it was the Light Side, shouldn't it have *healed* him...?
>
> Too much of anything is a bad thing... or so it appears now.
> Wasn't Dorsk 82 also fried by channelling too much Force?
Yeah... and you know our views on that...
> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
> (__ * _ _ _ _ "Sometimes the need to mess with their heads
> __)|| | |(_)| \ outweighs the millstone of humiliation."
Is Palpatine Amidala's father?
Pol'
Rainbow Heron
<policr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Is Palpatine Amidala's father?
Heck no! Don't we meet him (and the rest of the family) in Ep2?
Sheesh everyone's just *dying* for Palpatine to be *somebody*'s
father! This is actually kinda funny... <snicker>
-Rainbow Heron
(sig has a feeling that, all of our opinions aside, he's childless)
My own therory? He's Mara's father.
Simon H. Lee
But what do the authors intend? :?
>> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
>> (__ * _ _ _ _ "Sometimes the need to mess with their heads
>> __)|| | |(_)| \ outweighs the millstone of humiliation."
>
>Is Palpatine Amidala's father?
"Who's yo' daddy?"
--
__ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
(__ * _ _ _ _ "Your superior intellect is no
__)|| | |(_)| \ match for our puny weapons!"
Policrat'
Actually, it would, y'know... as I said, Zakalwe, Hamlet, Adalric Brandl...
dammit, Anakin Skywalker... what exactly does fttDS *mean*?
>>>> Because if it was the Light Side, shouldn't it have *healed* him...?
>>>
>>> Too much of anything is a bad thing... or so it appears now.
>>> Wasn't Dorsk 82 also fried by channelling too much Force?
>>
>> Yeah... and you know our views on that...
>
> But what do the authors intend? :?
Erm... I dunno... I get the impression they know what they're doing,
though... even if it may well turn out to be decidedly underwhelming...
>>> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
>>> (__ * _ _ _ _ "Sometimes the need to mess with their heads
>>> __)|| | |(_)| \ outweighs the millstone of humiliation."
>>
>> Is Palpatine Amidala's father?
>
> "Who's yo' daddy?"
Mace Windu... it *has* to be... explains Vader's voice and all =)
> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
> (__ * _ _ _ _ "Your superior intellect is no
> __)|| | |(_)| \ match for our puny weapons!"
Pol'
Policrat'
Heh! I can imagine Mara 'accidentally' dropping that pot-plant
>> But seriously, a random shot in a melée or a coralskipper managing to outfly
>> an X-wing...
>
> He can breathe on the ground, though, and without being strapped to
> a giant explosive fuel tank.
Ach... Luke was never a ground soldier... yeah, he can duel with
lightsabers... 'ish... Vader whupped him in ESB, and it took a fttDS to even
chop Pappa Darth's hand off in RotJ... but he's not actually that good when
it comes to old-fashioned infantry fighting... which was, IIRC, why he
resigned from the NR Military...
>>>>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>>>>
>>>>> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
>>>>> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
>>>>> after all.
>>>>
>>>> So better for the Jedi to mop up their own fallen after the Vong have
>>>> been beaten back than the alternative?
>>>
>>> [1]
>>
>> Eh?
>
> I meant to footnote that later on. I forgot.
And what did you mean to say...
>>>>>> Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>>>>>
>>>>> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>>>>
>>>> I hope so.
>>>>
>>>> And did anyone else get really disturbed by that whole thing? Tahiri
>>>> talking to Anakin's dead body? It got to me, badly.
>>>
>>> It passed by rather quickly, but as you mention, it'll most likely
>>> be picked up on later... ticking time bomb and all.
>>
>> Hmm... messy... someone pointed out that there was a bit of Romeo and Juliet
>> in there...
>>
>> "Star by Star", anybody...?
>
> "Cut me up into little stars?"
> The Vong didn't quite get that far, but they tried...
Aye... nah, I meant, "star-crossed"...
>>>>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>>>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere
>>>>>> -
>>>>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>>>
>>>> Nah, she's playing both sides for some reason. Whether or not that
>>>> reason ends up being underwhelming is another question all together....
>>>>
>>>>> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
>>>>> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
>>>>> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>>>>
>>>> What kills me about this whole thing is that no one--not even master
>>>> empath Jacen--has figured out that she's connected to the Force. Not
>>>> even necessarily that she's Jedi, just that the Force runs through her.
>>>
>>> Glimmerings, but no light bulb...
>>
>> Which is just *wrong*, aye?
>
> Considering how much contact they've had with her now, it's
> annoying.
Yep... I mean, Vergere *shouldn't* be that good with the Force... though I'd
suspect that she's behind the Jedi Heresy among the Shamed Ones...
Heh!-)
> ...and now we get to wallow in EVEN MORE darkness for a few books
> =}
Yeah...
>>> Ah, what'cha gonna do?
>>
>> I dunno, but I'm sure we can string it out for a few posts...
>
> ----------
INDEEEED?!
>>>>>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>>>>>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and
>>>>>> it's
>>>>>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave
>> them...
>>>>>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>>>>
>>>>> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
>>>>> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>>>>
>>>> My memory may not be totally reliable, but I seem to remember that the
>>>> reason the Jedi went after the clone queen in the first place is that
>>>> Cilghal determined that the reason all of the voxyn were clones of one
>>>> queen is because the Vong couldn't replicate the process, that there was
>>>> evidence they just couldn't possibly do it again. Maybe it wasn't
>>>> underscored enough, but that's what I remember.
>>>
>>> *pages riffling* You might be right, but I don't remember or see
>>> any mentions of that during the chapter where Cilghal tells everyone the
>>> base has to be on Myrkyr, where I figure that would have been important...
>>
>> Yeah... except, of course, the base *isn't* on Myrkr
>
> "Oops!"
"Fact."
Why the *kriff* didn't they move the bloody thing?!
>>>> One thing about the whole operation bothers the hell out of me. WHY WAS
>>>> ANAKIN IN CHARGE? Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se;
>>>> he's earned all of the respect he's gotten. But for such an operation
>>>> wouldn't it have made a LOT more sense to send someone with tactical and
>>>> command experience? Someone who could ride herd on the kids? Someone
>>>> like oh, say, LUKE SKYWALKER? The weak reasoning given for why Luke
>>>> himself didn't go just rang hollow in my ears. Part of me really
>>>> expects to see Luke second guessing that decision in the next few books.
>>>
>>> "Point."
>>
>> Surely, "'Fact.'"?
>>
>> ;-p
>
> I'm glad I never read the *JK novels. That "fact" bit would have
> annoyed me to no end.
Aye...
>>> Letting Anakin lead primarily serves to get him killed;
>>> Luke *could* still lead the team and have all of the other outcomes (Jacen
>>> & Jaina) occur as they do. Though Luke fits in a lot better with Han &
>>> Leia than with the kids... it would be possible for the twins to be
>>> trapped, but much of the intermediate stuff would be different with *The*
>>> Jedi Master along, if just for plausibility alone.
>>
>> Yeah... what bothered me was the complete lack of ability by the YJK to
>> *really* take the fight back to the Vong... Nom Anor *herded* them like
>> meat-animals...
>
> And the Jedi were even aware of the situation enough to comment on
> it, even funnier.
And they did *nothing* much beyond run... sure, they fought, but it was
really half-hearted, as if getting to the climax of the plotline was all
that mattered...
Ewoks would have done a better job...
> Of course, in the end... didn't one of us point out that Nom Anor
> should *really* be close to sucking vacuum for all of his slip-ups?
Yeah... which is why I felt that more dead/captured Jedi would have made
more sense...
>>>>> Speaking of Viqi Shesh, her various stunts make her seem either far
>>>>> more clever than she should be, or the good guys as remarkably inept.
>>>>> Though luck's in there too.
>>>>
>>>> Look who she's going up against most of the time--other politicians.
>>>> When she's taken on any of the heroes directly, like with Luke in the
>>>> Senate Chamber, she's lost.
>>>
>>> True. But that makes her apparent (near) success at kidnapping Ben
>>> during the chaos at the end seem a tiny bit contrived, even with a decoy
>>> Anakin.
>>
>> That was the chaos, surely...
>
> And disguised Vong here and there...
Aye... you'd think it might have made more sense for NRI to try and work out
how the *Vong* were getting over the frontier...
> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
> (__ * _ _ _ _ The problem with the rat race is that even
> __)|| | |(_)| \ if you win the race, you're still a rat.
Pol'
Policrat'
Yeah... Vong tech seems *too* much, y'know... I guess, yeah... it doesn't
seem *plausible*... there's plenty of stuff on using Belkadan to grow skips,
and on worldships dying... but no mention of lines-of-supply,
infrastructure, resources... it's as if they just have a bottomless pit when
it comes to shaping living-weapons and growing medium-sized warships...
>>>> Having never read the *JK books I've never gotten much more than
>>>> superficial impressions of those characters before they get shot, stabbed,
>>>> exploded, cleaved, masticated, etc... The problem here, I think, is that
>>>> the team had to be scaled to the threat, and if it was just a tiny
>>>> infiltration team succeeding for a long time vs. a large Vong operation,
>>>> the Vong would appear unusually weak...
>>>
>>> Exactly. If just three-five had gone in the author would have had one
>>> of two problems--one, he scales the Vong down as well, which would beg
>>> the question "why is this thing so poorly guarded?" or the Jedi cut
>>> through them at such a rate that the reader just finds it unbelieveable.
>>
>> Shamed Ones?
>
> There's an idea...
Yeah... that was what I thought...
And Anakin didn't have to be the leader... he could have just taken
control...
> -- - Simon -
> ALL DONE! BYE BYE!
Pol'
Policrat'
> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
> high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>> Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Simon H. Lee:
>>
>>>
>>> Ye gods, I've gone back to the beginning of the damn thread to post
>>> my comments. And *then* I'll read the other 36 posts' worth of misc
>>> commentary, including my own ;)
>>
>> Yippee...
>>
>> <grinning like an idiot at the amount of NRG-generated spam on RASSM>
>
> "The game's afoot, eh?"
Yeah...
Oh aye, that's another thing... voxyn = "The vornskrr of the
Baskervilles"...
Thought not...
1138
>>>> S
>>>> P
>>>> O
>>>> I
>>>> L
>>>> E
>>>> R
>>>>
>>>> S
>>>> P
>>>> A
>>>> C
>>>> E
>>>> ...
>>>> ....
>>>> .....
>> ..........
>> ...........
...............
...............
>>>> Anyone still paying attention?
>>>>
>>>> OK...
>>>>
>>>> SbS has its moments - but there are big parts which didn't quite click...
>>>>
>>>> This read like it was written by someone who was really familiar with SW -
>>>> not Luceno-like familiar with the obscure nooks of SW, but really familiar
>>>> with the films and the Bantam franchise... sure, there seemed to be a *lot*
>>>> of direct dialogue-quotes from the films, but there were even more *echos*,
>>>> which I *really* liked, and most of the 'cute' or 'kewl' stuff made sense
>>>> in
>>>> a way that, say, Bollux' cameo in AoC didn't... well, kinda, at least...
>>>
>>> [1]
>>
>> Should we start posting in html to make all this easier?
>
> <html>
> <bold><blink>
> NO
> </bold></blink>
> </html>
<html>
<font size='7'><bold></blink>
INDEED?
</blink></bold></font>
<img src='boobies.gif'>
</html>
>>>> Luke Skywalker flies X-wings...
>>>>
>>>> Remember?
>>>>
>>>> And it's *damn* good to see it again...
>>>
>>> Yes.
>>
>> Aye... any thoughts *why*? Is this some decision by LFL, or just that
>> no-one's thought of it?
>
> He needs to get out more? There really wouldn't have been much for
> him to do on the ground in this book, unless he did lead the infiltration
> team, which would have opened up its own can of worms...
Yeah... except Luke should have been doing this far more... yeah, he fought
in a couple of desultory actions in VP and DT:O, but this is the *first*
time he's done the squadron-level combat thing since... well, since Hoth,
actually...
>>>> Then the real spit hits the fan, when the Yuuzhan Vong attack Cour. This is
>>>> easily the biggest, bloodiest scrap in SW... the Yuzzies pull an old
>>>> Yevethan trick, sending a massive fleet of refugee-ships ahead of them to
>>>> ram down the planetary shields.
>>>>
>>>> The NR, predictably, balks massively... and Garm and Wedge just mutiny, and
>>>> open fire regardless...
>>>>
>>>> Then Borsk Feyl'ya starts agreeing with them.
>>>>
>>>> I keep hearing Scotty in TWoK, saying "Och, he's dead already!"
>>>
>>> There's just a lot less ambivalence when falling to the Dark Side
>>> isn't that much of an issue. "Good of the many?"--the galaxy is at stake
>>> after all.
>>
>> Yeah... Han, for instance - was it KJA who had Han reflecting on it?
>
> It was one of the NJO authors, and fairly recently, too... Keyes
> or Tyers?
I thought it was earlier... MAS had Wedge and Corran reflect on it, IIRC...
>> That always bothered me, frankly... why the f*ck is there one rule for
>> Force-adepts, and another for the rest of the GFFA?! Yeah, I can see the
>> *sense* in inculcating a dualistic dogma to prevent Jedi fttDS, but it just
>> makes them dull and mentally disturbed at the same time...
>
> We've had this discussion for another NJO book...
Yeah... but seriously... what does fttDS actually *mean*?!
>>>> Tahiri is holding a conversation with Anakin's corpse...
>>>
>>> Ah, there's a loose end. I wonder if Jacen will kiss her for him.
>>
>> I just hope they weren't signalling that we'll get Anakin/Tahiri smut before
>> the NJO is out...
>
> Yeah, necrophilia really livens up the place. ;)
Oops... Freudian slip... Anakin/Jacen... nah, that's not right either...
"Tahiri/Jacen smut..."
Yeah...
Or NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!, as the case may be...
>>>> Jaina falls, rather underwhelmingly, to the Dark Side.
>>>
>>> "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time." Fortunately we'll
>>> have the next few books to get into her head. Though it would have been
>>> *nicer* to do that in this one.
>>
>> Yeah...
>>
>> It's another "Star Wars Pants" moment, that is...
>
> *duck*
Chop down this forest... with a duck!
>>>> Jacen manages to kill the last remaining voxyn, then gets captured by the
>>>> GFFA's favourite chicken analog and Stockholm-syndrome sufferer, Vergere -
>>>> who is clearly completely nuts...
>>>
>>> I'm sure when her ultimate motives are revealed we're supposed to
>>> all go "Ah, *that's* what she was doing *all along*!" Which is why I've
>>> largely stopped trying to figure it out.
>>
>> Yeah... though I noticed that what she said to Jacen didn't *actually* imply
>> *at all* that she was on the Vong side...
>
> Though the Vong (and everyone else) certainly think so.
Yeah... but where did she *go*...?
>>>> Tsavong Lah, meanwhile, has realised that he's starting to rot,
>>>
>>> "Kids... don't try this at home. Or at least sterilize the saw
>>> first."
>>
>> Klingons, anyone?
>
> No singing yet.
Yeah, the Vong don't do *that*, either...
>>>> Well... I'm not sure what happened to Rieekan or Garm or Admiral Sovv or
>>>> Brand or Kre'frey or even the NR fleet... but Han, Leia, Luke, Mara, Ben,
>>>> Artoo, Threepio, and even Kyp bloody Durron all make the jump to
>>>> lightspeed...
>>>
>>> That rushed ending...
>>
>> Aye...
>>
>>>> But the most important question remains unanswered - exactly what does the
>>>> phrase 'Star by Star' have to do with it?
>>>
>>> Page 399, Jacen: "Am I worried about what's happening to us? Sure.
>>> This war is bringing out all that's selfish and wicked in the New
>>> Republic, corrupting the galaxy star by star. I see it pulling one Jedi
>>> after another to the dark side, making us fight to win instead of protect.
>>> But I can't push others down my path..."
>>
>> Thankee!
>
> I remember reading that and saying "So that's where the title's
> from... one teeny quote."
Aye...
>>> And that is happening... with of course the continuing problem that
>>> if the Jedi remain defensive, they'll all die anyway, the Vong will
>>> reshape the galaxy, and what'll they protect then?
>>
>> Clawcraft. And funky Star Destroyers...
>>
>> Thought - the Dark Side in itself isn't *evil*, it's just, well, kinda
>> dark... a Dark Jedi need be no less a sympathetic or heroic character than
>> Cheradenine Zakalwe or Hamlet...
>
> Evil Kirk, perhaps?
Evil Kirk was just a raging nutter, though...
> Back in the Ruin thread, didn't we speculate that the the use/balance of both
> sides might be needed for a Jedi to fight?
Yeah, except, I don't think that's what GL's 'balance' is about... reading
his comments, I think what he's saying is that Dark and Light have to be
*distinct*, and when that gets blurred (expediency, relativism, etc.) then
that's where the *real* problems start...
But I ask again - what exactly does fttDS entail - is it an *internal*
thing, or something with wider repercussions?
>>> [1] I felt pretty muddled in a few spots. Lots going on at once,
>>> but shallow.
>>
>> "All sound and fury, signifying nothing"?
>>
>> Was it just me, or was there a big contrast between the YJK plot and the
>> "STAR WARS" plot...
>
> Comment made in another reply: The YJK characters spend most of
> their time rooting around in a hole, the others try to save the galaxy.
> Too bad the holey bit wasn't exploited better.
Yeah...
>>>> And it was all utterly pointless (at least, from a logical POV, if not a
>>>> plot-wise one) - sure, all the voxyn were cloned from one template, and
>>>> it's
>>>> implied this was one of a small consignment which Viqui Sheesh gave them...
>>>> but they did it while *orbiting Myrkrr*, for cryin' out loud!
>>>
>>> For that matter, what's to stop the Vong from cloning more voxyn
>>> from some of the ones that are still alive out there?
>>
>> How many were there? I thought the Vong had kinda shot their bolt...
>
> They got a lot, but still, why can't the Vong just trap one of the
> free-range ones? It is *cloning* after all...
Yeah... I assume they're supposed to be unable to make second-generation
clones, in this instance at least - some sort of scientific impossibility
disguised as a plot-point...
> That's saved for Dramatic Moments®? Also, if a few YJKs could form
> a battle meld and carve their way through a huge mass of Vong, what would
> keep the other Jedi from doing the same, other than the plot?
Yeah... I think it's something that was based off the fact that Jacen and
Jaina are twins... IMHO, it's similar to what Luke and Leia did in DE...
Or rather, Luke, Leia, and Anakin...
Hmm... interesting...
Deliberate?
>> And?
>
> ...
Yeah...
> (-o-) A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E ! <*>
> | __ "Senso, anything on your radar?" |
> | (__ * _ _ _ _ "Nothing but my forehead, sir." |
> | __)|| | |(_)| \ --Courtesy of G. Permann |
> |___________________________________________________________________|
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
There *was* a brief mention of the impossibly long supply lines
that were developing, but that was all.
And I suppose religion comes into play, but why *don't* they just
start dropping all of their colonists on the worlds they've captured? If
contamination by tech is a problem, there are probably plenty of planets
with big open fields on them... of course, the Vong could be *so* dependent
on specially-grown biotech for their basic needs that they can't just do
that.
>>>>> Having never read the *JK books I've never gotten much more than
>>>>> superficial impressions of those characters before they get shot, stabbed,
>>>>> exploded, cleaved, masticated, etc... The problem here, I think, is that
>>>>> the team had to be scaled to the threat, and if it was just a tiny
>>>>> infiltration team succeeding for a long time vs. a large Vong operation,
>>>>> the Vong would appear unusually weak...
>>>>
>>>> Exactly. If just three-five had gone in the author would have had one
>>>> of two problems--one, he scales the Vong down as well, which would beg
>>>> the question "why is this thing so poorly guarded?" or the Jedi cut
>>>> through them at such a rate that the reader just finds it unbelieveable.
>>>
>>> Shamed Ones?
>>
>> There's an idea...
>
>Yeah... that was what I thought...
>
>And Anakin didn't have to be the leader... he could have just taken
>control...
...and now that you raised that point, the worldship they were on
was one of the old, screwed-up ones which presumably would have a good
portion of annoyed low-rank Vong on it. Which, unless space was a premium,
would be a dubious place to stick a fairly important facility, unless the
Vong were having trouble with Myrkyr itself. Eh.
--
Policrat'
<*pfrrrt!*>
"Tell your sister... you were right... you were *riiight*..."
>>> Maybe, but I believe in my strength of will :)
>>
>> You do?
>
> Yes. ;)
Really?-)
>>>> I was actually rather impressed with the holograph gambit....
>>>
>>> Me too. Tying this into another comment I've seen in this thread,
>>> it demonstrates that both sides are continuing to adapt to one another.
>>
>> Y'quhat?!
>
> Tsavong Lah wouldn't have his job if he wasn't somewhat
> intelligent? And the subplot about the yammosks made sense strategically.
Aye... what was the 'holograph gambit', though?
>> Yeah... Jaina fttDS because of Anakin and Jacen arguing all the time...
>
> *zap* "I win!"
Something like that, yeah... =)
> (-o-) A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E ! <*>
> | __ "Senso, anything on your radar?" |
> | (__ * _ _ _ _ "Nothing but my forehead, sir." |
> | __)|| | |(_)| \ --Courtesy of G. Permann |
> |___________________________________________________________________|
Pol'
Simon H. Lee
high-kicking electrons to spell out:
>Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Simon H. Lee:
chomp
chomp
>>>>>>>>>>>> Anyone still paying attention?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Pretty violent death! Poor guy, I hope he went fast.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> He was *glowing* at the time... hard to say if being repeatedly
>>>>>> perforated killed him any more than channelling a quadrant's worth of the
>>>>>> Force through himself.
>>>>>
>>>>> Glowing?!
>>>>>
>>>>> What bothers me, though... was that, or was it not, the Dark Side?!
>>>>
>>>> That wouldn't be a very noble end, would it?
>>>
>>> Nope...
>
>Actually, it would, y'know... as I said, Zakalwe, Hamlet, Adalric Brandl...
>dammit, Anakin Skywalker... what exactly does fttDS *mean*?
The cynical side of me says that the books aren't really meant for
the tragic end audience in *that* sense, at least not for a character of
Anakin's stature (the Solo one, not the Skywalker one).
>>>>> Because if it was the Light Side, shouldn't it have *healed* him...?
>>>>
>>>> Too much of anything is a bad thing... or so it appears now.
>>>> Wasn't Dorsk 82 also fried by channelling too much Force?
>>>
>>> Yeah... and you know our views on that...
>>
>> But what do the authors intend? :?
>
>Erm... I dunno... I get the impression they know what they're doing,
>though... even if it may well turn out to be decidedly underwhelming...
That's what we've been told. But I don't get the impression from
Anakin's death (or Dorsk's) that what they were trying was a Dark Side
thing, necessarily. Having thrown the issue of intent back in, rather than
just how they used the Force.
>>> Is Palpatine Amidala's father?
>>
>> "Who's yo' daddy?"
>
>Mace Windu... it *has* to be... explains Vader's voice and all =)
Policrat'
> Policrat' <policr...@hotmail.com> choreographed a chorus line of
Did that second line actually make much sense to you?
>>>>> But, the YV are masters at bio tech. They can just make another one. So,
>>>>> why bother? This makes no sense to me at all.
>>>>
>>>> Nor me... the idea that the hyperlanes are dovin-basal-mind is a dumb plot
>>>> device too... there's nothing to stop anyone just going *over* them...
>>>
>>> Well... given what we know of the SW universe, while you can go
>>> anywhere in hyperspace, everyone sticks to the established routes because
>>> of the random chance of hitting uncharted crap out in the middle of
>>> nowhere... so they'd have to remap routes around the mining, which would
>>> take a while. On the other hand, "Space is big. Really big."
>>> I've got to stop bringing RL physics into this. =>
>>
>> Why?
>>
>> Fig. 1138: There is a Hole in your Plot
>>
>> ___________
>> / \
>> Manifest Lack of Uncharted Crap Here
>> / \<-------(suggested route for sending
>> / \ YJK to their deaths)
>> ------------------------:---------------
>> G A L A C T I C : P L A N E
>> ------------------------:---------------
>> \
>> (Dovin Basals)
>>
>> Manifest Lack of Uncharted Crap Here Too
>
> There goes one of the conventions of space SF ;)
Yeah... but when's it ever been a problem in, say, Trek...?
Or indeed, in SW before this...?
>>>> "His strategy indicates two-dimentional thinking..."
>>>>
>>>> And no, I don't know why quotes from "The Wrath of Khan" always seem so
>>>> aposite in the NRG either...
>>>
>>> Funny, I quoted "The good of the many outweighs the good of the
>>> one" *before* reading this post.
>>
>> "Buried alive... buried alive..."
>
> "You've managed to kill almost everyone else. But unlike a good
> assassin, you *keep* on *missing* the *target.*"
"He's so... *human*..."
>>>>> Which feeds into another complaint, Anakin Solo dies.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah...
>>>
>>> "Everybody dies, but not everyone truly lives."
>>
>> "The word is given: warp speed."
>
> "I'm not a drama critic."
"There are always... possibilities..."
>>>>> I expected a bit more of an explination of Vergere's actions. Again,
>>>>> extremely unclear.
>>>>
>>>> At first, I thought Vergere was just genuinely insane... re-reading, I
>>>> realised the funky chicken-analog's got a plan... unfortunately, she's not
>>>> going to let the Solos get in the way...
>>>>
>>>> And maybe she doesn't trust them... she heard that 'Skywalker' was in
>>>> charge, and thought that it was Anakin, who Thracia had been worried about
>>>> way back... then she saw Jaina use Force-lightning...
>>>>
>>>> But has no-one noticed that the Fosh come from the Unknown Regions!?
>>>>
>>>> Whatever Vergere's plan is, I keep seeing blue fingerprints all over it...
>>>
>>> That would be one truly impressive and improbable (from a plot POV)
>>> bit of preplanning from the Chiss...
>>
>> Not really... apparently the SW Gamer and the EGtAS have said that the Chiss
>> have fought the Vong before... but anyway, take a real close look at the
>> plant-life and big black fortresses on Nirauan and Hjarna...
>
> Nobody tells me nuthin'... but how would the Chiss have set Vergere
> up for this 60 years earlier? Rogue Planet suggests that the Vong attack
> on Zonoma Sekot was a surprise. Of course, the Chiss might have been
> attacked first and Vergere could have been planted amidst the Jedi by them,
> but... are you Fox Mulder in disguise?
The Vong have been through the GFFA before... *way* before, like
pre-Old-Republic 'before'...
It's fairly clear that the Chiss (and perhaps other UR races like the Fosh)
knew they were coming back... sure, the Zonama Sekot attack was a surprise
to Zonama Sekot, but that doesn't mean it was a surprise to the Chiss, or to
Vergere...
Do I think that, just maybe, they go round in circles? Yeah...
>> The thing is, the Chiss don't believe in pre-emptive strikes, do they?-)
>>
>> And seriously, where d'you think Vergere went after AoC? Looking for the
>> Fosh and Thracia Cho Leem, perhaps?
>
> Probably had to set some things right in her head, yeah.
Yeah... but even if she didn't know before, it's fairly clear that she was
*somewhere* in the GFFA, with 'her people'... and then chose - or was
persuaded - to go back to the Vong...
>>> The usual problem with killing the prominent villains, of course,
>>> is that it would reduce some of the tension before the climax. I really
>>> thought that Shesh should have died, though--after the repeated kidnapping
>>> attempts ad absurdum (see my last paragraph of comments) and with her cover
>>> blown, she really doesn't serve much of a purpose except as another villain
>>> for the readers and characters to hate and pursue... (or Tsavong Lah to
>>> doublecross) but there's no real plot reason to have her around now that
>>> her cover is blown.
>>
>> I assume there's going to be a Sheesh/Tsavong Lah/Yeoman Rand thing
>> happening =)
>
> My, you've turned into Çheetah!.
Heck, I was being serious... Tsavongh Lah is evidently going to be shaping
the living weapon with two backs... and Senator Sheesh is probably going to
be a wee bit jealous...
>> I'd be interested to see what the Senator from Kuat's Leda-impersonation is
>> like...
>
> Bjork?
*snarf!*
>>>>> I was just frustrated with the book. With the plot holes, with the
>>>>> non-characterization, everything. Heck, I didn't even like Anakin that
>>>>> much, but his death seemed a waste. Maybe that was the point...a waste.
>>>>> But, geez, this is SW and I'm getting a bit frustrated by the good guys
>>>>> losing all the time.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah... I just, well... *went* with it, and I found that the decent stuff
>>>> was enough to outweight the cr*p...
>>>
>>> "At my signal, unleash Griping."
>>
>> "There was something about it that I didn't like..."
>>
>> "That's to be expected."
>>
>> "No, something else."
>>
>> "Well, then let it be a lesson."
>>
>> "No... something else."
>>
>> "What then?"
>>
>> "I enjoyed it."
>
> *snark*
Any idea of the source...?
> ______(-o-)___A L L D O N E ! B Y E B Y E !____<*>__________
> | __ "How many people do you know who can get out of
> | (__ * _ _ _ _ a straitjacket in under three minutes?"
> | __)|| | |(_)| \ "Fortunately, none."
Pol'
Policrat'
Yeah... so?
> Sheesh everyone's just *dying* for Palpatine to be *somebody*'s
> father! This is actually kinda funny... <snicker>
Aye... I was kinda taking the p*ss...
> -Rainbow Heron
> (sig has a feeling that, all of our opinions aside, he's childless)
>
> My own therory? He's Mara's father.
=)
Mara is, after all (John Donchig, you paying attention?) the Green Knight's
Daughter...
Pol'
Policrat'
Clearly... I guess... but then again, the Collective Unconscious has done
odd things with the Matter of SW before...
> __ (-o-) <*> A L L D O N E! B Y E B Y E!
> (__ * _ _ _ _ The problem with the rat race is that even
> __)|| | |(_)| \ if you win the race, you're still a rat.
Pol'