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Jan. 8th, 2016 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretStar Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig
It's the controversial direct canonical replacement to Kathy Tyers's unsatisfying "Legends" novel The Truce at Bakura, taking place roughly after the Battle of Endor. Controversial because it initiated the process of overwriting decades of beloved, or at least popular, Star Wars EU fiction with new work and controversial because Wendig is a controversial writer with a very distinctive style which he moderates but does not abandon for Aftermath, a style that is clearly not to everyone's taste. Also, less importantly, controversial because it adds explicitly queer characters to the Star Wars universe. I'm not really sure why that's a thing people are upset about, but apparently it is a thing.
For what it's worth, I generally like Wendig's writing. I enjoyed Blackbirds quite a bit, and I've liked several of his short stories. Wendig's writing is the kind of writing with stylistic tics you'd think you'd tire of- the present tense, the choppy sentences, the choppy plotting- but so far I have not tired of it. Wendig has a gift for using the immediacy of present tense as a shortcut to meaningful suspense, so the present tense does not feel gimmicky because it is purposeful, and he has a yet more important gift for drawing fascinating characters with really, really engaging conflicts. They are rarely sympathetic characters- the bounty hunters, failed Imperials, and deadbeat parents who populate Aftermath are no more likeable than the criminals and drifters who populate Blackbirds- but their struggles are struggles we nonetheless comprehend and empathize with.
For those concerned about the overwriting process I mentioned, I feel it is worth pointing out that nothing in Aftermath repudiates the Thrawn Trilogy explicitly, and the ending possibly hints at the possibility of some sort of remixed Thrawn Trilogy to come. Nobody really laments the loss of The Truce of Bakura very much, as it's not a very momentous story and the Ssi-Ruuk do not feel like Star Wars aliens. I invested enough of my childhood in the Bantam EU that I do feel a sense of loss, but it's not really a major one.
And just taking Aftermath as a piece of fiction, I think it's rather good. If the Sad Puppies uphold their 'promise' to push for more awards recognition to tie-in fiction, I think Aftermath would not be a bad place to start. The mother-son relationship at the heart of the book, with its complex abandonment and trust issues woven together as core elements of plot... Aftermath tells a really compelling story really well and does it within the constraints of tie-in fiction and genre. And it does action well, and it does humor, particularly in Bones the retrofitted Episode 1 style Battle Droid. A lot of things going for this book.
It's the controversial direct canonical replacement to Kathy Tyers's unsatisfying "Legends" novel The Truce at Bakura, taking place roughly after the Battle of Endor. Controversial because it initiated the process of overwriting decades of beloved, or at least popular, Star Wars EU fiction with new work and controversial because Wendig is a controversial writer with a very distinctive style which he moderates but does not abandon for Aftermath, a style that is clearly not to everyone's taste. Also, less importantly, controversial because it adds explicitly queer characters to the Star Wars universe. I'm not really sure why that's a thing people are upset about, but apparently it is a thing.
For what it's worth, I generally like Wendig's writing. I enjoyed Blackbirds quite a bit, and I've liked several of his short stories. Wendig's writing is the kind of writing with stylistic tics you'd think you'd tire of- the present tense, the choppy sentences, the choppy plotting- but so far I have not tired of it. Wendig has a gift for using the immediacy of present tense as a shortcut to meaningful suspense, so the present tense does not feel gimmicky because it is purposeful, and he has a yet more important gift for drawing fascinating characters with really, really engaging conflicts. They are rarely sympathetic characters- the bounty hunters, failed Imperials, and deadbeat parents who populate Aftermath are no more likeable than the criminals and drifters who populate Blackbirds- but their struggles are struggles we nonetheless comprehend and empathize with.
For those concerned about the overwriting process I mentioned, I feel it is worth pointing out that nothing in Aftermath repudiates the Thrawn Trilogy explicitly, and the ending possibly hints at the possibility of some sort of remixed Thrawn Trilogy to come. Nobody really laments the loss of The Truce of Bakura very much, as it's not a very momentous story and the Ssi-Ruuk do not feel like Star Wars aliens. I invested enough of my childhood in the Bantam EU that I do feel a sense of loss, but it's not really a major one.
And just taking Aftermath as a piece of fiction, I think it's rather good. If the Sad Puppies uphold their 'promise' to push for more awards recognition to tie-in fiction, I think Aftermath would not be a bad place to start. The mother-son relationship at the heart of the book, with its complex abandonment and trust issues woven together as core elements of plot... Aftermath tells a really compelling story really well and does it within the constraints of tie-in fiction and genre. And it does action well, and it does humor, particularly in Bones the retrofitted Episode 1 style Battle Droid. A lot of things going for this book.