Star Wars

I wouldn't really call Into the Darkness horror, but the Fallen Star? Yeah.

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

Just finished up Path of Vengeance.

It's tragically ironic that the Ro family's philosophy of "Don't let others tell you what to do" came as result of one of them being taken advantage of by a cult leader since she was a child, and finding her own path in life after being free of that manipulation. Then her descendants decided to mix that philosophy with classic Evereni paranoia and twist it to mean "I am superior to everyone else, and those who tell me what to do need to be crushed". And that's how we got a sociopath like Marchion.

Totally missed it when they announced the next Essential Legends wave, out August 15. But then, they really do seem to have given up on doing unabridged audiobooks for the ones that don’t have them, which has killed my enthusiasm for the whole venture.

• Star Wars: Fatal Alliance
• Outbound Flight and Survivor’s Quest (I am glad Zahn is getting more love)
• Republic Commando: Triple Zero

So, I've spent approximately four non-consecutive days in the family car driving up and down a decent chunk of the country. On the one hand my knee hurts like a motherfucker from all that sitting still. On the other hand, I got a lot of reading done. Relevantly to this thread, I was able to plow through X-Wing: Rogue Squadron at a pretty decent clip.

It was reasonably entertaining. A lot of it was story and character setup, which for the first book in a decently long series makes sense enough. Wedge and Horn were interesting enough, and did a suitable job carrying the main narrative. I liked the depiction of the tensions and dynamics in the newly formed squadron, and the politicking in Alliance command was believable enough. Most characters seemed decently rounded, I liked that Salm wasn't relegated to a shallow paranoid roadblock but was portrayed as having reasonable causes to act in the ways he did.

(I am noticing, however, between this and the Thrawn trilogy, that Bothan characters seem to be getting cast into the role of smug asshole politicians too busy jostling for influence to catch on to reality.)

The villains were also interesting, I liked the look at the Empire in a transitional state from its unified form in the movies to the mess of warlord states it degenerates into by the time of the later novels. Still powerful, still large, but the cracks are showing and the outer parts are already starting to slough away. Isard's... interesting, I don't think I've seen enough to get a strong bead on her yet but so far she seems like a promising coldly calculating chessmaster.

I'd say so far I'm reasonably interested, which isn't a bad spot to be on the first book in a series. Not a whole lot of specific thoughts, but we'll see how things develop as I go along.

Zahn and Stackpole had a great working relationship in the '90s. They follow each other's characterization beats pretty closely, and as their books develop their original characters guest-star in each other's work. You'll meet Winter in the next book, for example, and Talon Karrde in book 4. You'll also meet a Bothan who doesn't follow that mold, though she does make unwarranted assumptions that almost lead to bad consequences until she gets some sense knocked into her.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on May 24th 2023 at 6:10:35 AM

I'm mildly surprised there's been zero direct Bothans info whatsoever in canon yet. There's no information about them, what they're like, what they even are, just a long list of vague mentions and references.

Depends on how you define horror, tbh. Most of the threats in the High Republic are horrific and scary on the surface, with multiple eldritch abominations, masters of unknown dark magic, and raider death cults.

But the High Republic is also staunchly a high fantasy heroic epic series, so the stories themselves are rarely horror. There's a lot of Defanged Horrors as a result, similar to stuff like how Doctor Strange handles horror.

But I'd dig a Star Wars horror game. Imo, a Resident Evil style game where you play an FPS or 3PS protagonist with limited resources facing off against a terrifying threat or horrific conspiracy would actually work really well in the Star Wars universe.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 26th 2023 at 2:20:08 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I do remember that the X-Wing series also started to rag on the Bothans a lot for exhibiting Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and being very smug about the Second Death Star, even though (as Wedge says) it's become common knowledge in the military that they were meant to get the plans and led the Alliance into a trap, yet they still try and use it for political clout.

So, a High Republic game where you're playing as a Jedi and have to worry about Nameless? If we're using those guys, the game would basically turn into something like Eternal Darkness or Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Just ask poor Azlin Rell. The manga, The Edge of Balance: Precedent, showed that he never truly recovered from the Nameless's hallucinations, and there are some horrific implications he may have eventually committed suicide.

Edited by GahmahRaan on Sep 6th 2023 at 8:08:22 AM

Moved from the film thread.

I feel like I've been more invested in the Star Wars Legends (as it is known now) in my life than the movies, so finally decided to bite the bullet and give one of the books a try, in audiobook form, and bought Death Troopers.

Edited by Mullon on Jun 22nd 2023 at 10:32:19 AM

Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.

I hope you enjoy(ed) it. It’s the one Star Wars book I couldn’t get into, in text or audio form. Not my cup of tea.

I'm enjoying it, but it's very clear the Star Wars galaxy has nothing in the way of horror fiction, because this cast is really stupid.

Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.

Star Wars could really use more horror stuff, yeah. It's one of the few pulp genres that the series only rarely gets into. Death Troopers is the most straightforward horror story I can think of in either canon.

Most of the horror stuff is more "our awesome heroes come across a horror situation and outwit it in an awesome way, because they're our awesome heroes" territory, which is fine (I mean, that mindset gave us The Screaming Citadel in canon and that one mission in the old Republic Commando game from Legends, both of which were amazing), but a straight up spooky narrative could be an interesting thing to see more of.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

There's also the pseudo prequel to Desth Troopers set during the Old Republic where the original version of it is recreated and used by a Sith Lord at a Sith Academy in an effort to become immortal.

It goes as well as you'd expect for the Sith in training.

I meant in universe there's no horror fiction in the Star Wars galaxy because the Genre Blindness is incredible. I would think a galaxy where every third planet has a horrible monster on it would make spacefarers more cautious.

Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.

It's the whole swashbuckling adventure thing.

There's definitely, like, horror characters in Star Wars. Legends had Abeloth, an Eldritch Abomination. Canon has the Drengir, also Eldritch Abominations, and the Queen of Ktath'atn, who is basically Dracula mixed with a Resident Evil villain.

But the problem is they're horror characters trapped in swashbuckling adventure stories, so they're going to be dealt with like swashbuckling adventure villains. Heroes land on their planets, discover horrifying situation, have crazy awesome plan to get out, foil villain and ride into the sunset. And once you start establishing these guys as villains made to be rallied against and foiled and so on, it can be very hard to go back and go full horror with them later.

It's also why I never thought the whole "make a horror story about a bunch of doomed Jedi trying to survive Vader" would work as well as people think. Vader's basically a supervillain: he's a guy you fight, a personality to trade barbs with, even if you can't win - and while he can be horrifying in short bursts, that fact in itself would make it hard for him to carry an entirely horror genre story.

We need stories with characters that are... removed from the general set up of the franchise. It's something I'd be interested to see in Outlaws, since as an open world game it could totally have completely unrelated horror side-missions and anecdotes removed from anything around it.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 27th 2023 at 11:53:22 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Vader also loses a lot of menace the longer he's on-screen, since Anakin is the most extra sad boi who ever lived, so he'll inevitably start making lame puns or throwing tantrums.

When (and why) did bad puns become Vader's thing? He had some in the EIII novisation and then again Rogue One but I don't remember any in the OT or anything.

The Mind Drinkers from Fate of the Jedi got close to horror, but I see what you mean on the whole.

Edited by MisterTambourineMan on Jun 27th 2023 at 7:36:15 AM

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

There were those "Galaxy of Terror" books. One of which even included Boba Fett fighting zombies.

" And once you start establishing these guys as villains made to be rallied against and foiled and so on, it can be very hard to go back and go full horror with them later."

Grevious is probably the biggest example of this, introduce in the shorts, he feel and act more like a predator moving slowly until it leap and bounce, killing jedi in a frenetic movement one by one, it is very brutal and make grevious feel like a beast....cut to clone army series were he become a regular villian who run like a coward.

If anything his decay is less about his hability and more about not being a horro chararter anymore

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Hmm, I, Jedi has new Essential Legends Collection art in my library app, but I haven’t seen any announcement where I usually do, the Del Ray Facebook page. And Twitter requires a login now.

Still no official announcement, but it looks like the next Essential Legends books are indeed I, Jedi, The Courtship of Princess Leia, and the next Old Republic and Republic Commando books, Annihilation and True Colors.

---

Speaking of the ELC, I'm about a third of the way through the Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter audiobook, and they let Sam Witwer go to town. If you get Maul's voice actor to read a book, you want him to do his Maul voice, but pre-TPM Legends Maul doesn't have much in the way of dialogue to use for Chewing the Scenery. So Witwer does the voice for the narration. And then he narrates every other viewpoint character in their vocal style, too. (To an extent. Thankfully none of the Neimoidians' scenes are done in their accent.) And if a character with a notable voice is even mentioned, he drops into that voice. When Maul thinks about his master, Sidious's slimy tone starts dripping out. He does as much as he can with the material.

>Republic Commando

UGH.

Having finished Shadow Hunter, in which Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon show up in more minor roles, I can report that Witwer does a pretty good Ewan McGregor and an excellent Liam Neeson. Lucasfilm has a good track record of getting Neeson to return for cameos, but if he’s not available they can tap Witwer for Qui-Gon any day.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Aug 9th 2023 at 1:50:05 PM

Ah, there it is. Next wave of Essential Legends Collection drops October 24, though as I said, the various places to find ebooks have had the new cover art for a while already.

• Star Wars: Annihilation
• The Courtship of Princess Leia
• Republic Commando: True Colors
• I, Jedi

I like I, Jedi’s art! I like the inclusion of Exar Kun’s temple, which is described in the book, but I think comes from the comics? Courtship looks like they tried really hard to make a portrait that looks like Leia but not like Carrie Fisher.