seekingferret (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seekingferret) wrote2013-02-14 10:55 am
seekingferret) wrote2013-02-14 10:55 am
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Back on a short, unexpected bout of Star Wars EU feelings brought about by Aaron Allston's new Wraith Squadron novel!
That novel itself was not brilliant, even though its main flaws were things Allston was aware of and was winkingly lampshading. The reconstituted Wraith Squadron consists of the children of Wraith Squadron members, a couple of wholly new characters, and Face and Voort. It is a weird and frustrating strategem, trying to bank on our feelings about the original characters to buy a cheap and unearned reader empathy for the new characters. Allston lampshades it with a cameo by Lara Notsil in which she informs the readers that she has married Myn and begs Voort not to recruit her children to the new Wraith Squadron. But... I don't know, do creators think that lampshading fixes problems? It doesn't. It just asserts that the problems are outside the creator's ability to fix.
What was most interesting about it was that it was in a structural sense exactly what I'd hoped for from a Wraith Squadron sequel- a story where the X-wing orientation was jettisoned and the Wraiths got to be unconstrained agents of infiltration. Mercy Kill reads much more like spy novel than war novel, which pleased me. It is simply not a brilliant spy novel. It was good to see all the Wraiths again, though.
But this also motivated me to read another of Allston's SW novels, sitting next to it on the library shelf. Fate of the Jedi: Outcast is the first of the novels in the series immediately succeeding the Darth Caedus saga. I have never read any of the Darth Caedus saga and have very little interest in reading it, though I have a rough idea of its shape from various spoilers I have read. It actually sounds kind of disastrous. But I enjoyed Outcast quite a bit, with its triple focus on Luke and his son Ben as Master and student, Han and Leia as aging adventurers trying to figure out how to be grandparents, and Jaina figuring out her relationship with Jag and her sources of professional satisfaction. The one thing the Prequel Trilogy accomplishes beautifully is expanding the Star Wars Saga as a generational epic, and Outcast is a fine contribution to this genre of Star Wars tale. If the Star Wars films are about lonely Skywalker men trying to rediscover and redeem family, the EU has been about Skywalkers of all genders and ages and alignments actually living with having families that love them openly and honestly. I suppose this is why the Darth Caedus saga had to happen, I suppose when you have a family of Jedi and you want to tell stories of estrangement and disillusionment the Sith is the primary avenue to do so, but... No, I'm still not convinced the Darth Caedus story was anything but a screwup. You can't take characters that you invested children in with the YJK/JJK books and turn them into monsters, unless it's like the Prequel Trilogy and people went in knowing that Anakin was going to become a monster.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that it's been most of a decade since I could say I was really in Star Wars fandom, but apparently I still have feelings.
That novel itself was not brilliant, even though its main flaws were things Allston was aware of and was winkingly lampshading. The reconstituted Wraith Squadron consists of the children of Wraith Squadron members, a couple of wholly new characters, and Face and Voort. It is a weird and frustrating strategem, trying to bank on our feelings about the original characters to buy a cheap and unearned reader empathy for the new characters. Allston lampshades it with a cameo by Lara Notsil in which she informs the readers that she has married Myn and begs Voort not to recruit her children to the new Wraith Squadron. But... I don't know, do creators think that lampshading fixes problems? It doesn't. It just asserts that the problems are outside the creator's ability to fix.
What was most interesting about it was that it was in a structural sense exactly what I'd hoped for from a Wraith Squadron sequel- a story where the X-wing orientation was jettisoned and the Wraiths got to be unconstrained agents of infiltration. Mercy Kill reads much more like spy novel than war novel, which pleased me. It is simply not a brilliant spy novel. It was good to see all the Wraiths again, though.
But this also motivated me to read another of Allston's SW novels, sitting next to it on the library shelf. Fate of the Jedi: Outcast is the first of the novels in the series immediately succeeding the Darth Caedus saga. I have never read any of the Darth Caedus saga and have very little interest in reading it, though I have a rough idea of its shape from various spoilers I have read. It actually sounds kind of disastrous. But I enjoyed Outcast quite a bit, with its triple focus on Luke and his son Ben as Master and student, Han and Leia as aging adventurers trying to figure out how to be grandparents, and Jaina figuring out her relationship with Jag and her sources of professional satisfaction. The one thing the Prequel Trilogy accomplishes beautifully is expanding the Star Wars Saga as a generational epic, and Outcast is a fine contribution to this genre of Star Wars tale. If the Star Wars films are about lonely Skywalker men trying to rediscover and redeem family, the EU has been about Skywalkers of all genders and ages and alignments actually living with having families that love them openly and honestly. I suppose this is why the Darth Caedus saga had to happen, I suppose when you have a family of Jedi and you want to tell stories of estrangement and disillusionment the Sith is the primary avenue to do so, but... No, I'm still not convinced the Darth Caedus story was anything but a screwup. You can't take characters that you invested children in with the YJK/JJK books and turn them into monsters, unless it's like the Prequel Trilogy and people went in knowing that Anakin was going to become a monster.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that it's been most of a decade since I could say I was really in Star Wars fandom, but apparently I still have feelings.