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jaredkwheeler's review
1.0
Star Wars Legends Project #158
Background: A New Threat was written by [a:Elizabeth Hand|40983|Elizabeth Hand|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1219875344p2/40983.jpg] and published in April of 2004. Hand wrote the 3rd through 6th books in this series (taking over for Terry Bisson). These are her only Star Wars books, though she has written a variety of non-Star Wars things.
A New Threat takes place 31 months after the Battle of Geonosis, 19 years before the Battle of Yavin. The young (though now 3 years older than when we last saw him) Boba Fett is the main character, with appearances by Jabba the Hutt, Wat Tambor, General Grievous, Anakin Skywalker, and a few recurring characters specific to this series. The book takes place on Tatooine and Xagobah.
Summary: Things are going pretty well for Boba Fett. He has established himself as the favorite bounty hunter of the powerful crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and he's almost a teenager. Of course, "favorite" is a designation contingent on success, and Jabba has just given Boba his most challenging assignment yet: Kill Wat Tambor, Foreman of the Techno Union. To do that, he'll have to fight his way through two armies and infiltrate an impenetrable fortress that has stymied even the Jedi. But that's all in a day's work for the up-and-coming Greatest Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy.
Review: Maybe it's just that I've lost patience for the particular brand of nonsense this series pulls, but this is a strong example of how not to do a Star Wars YA novel. I wanted it to succeed, but I always knew it was a mistake to build a series around the adventures of Boba Fett as a kid, and if you're not even going to try to do it right, then you particularly have no business doing it at all.
But let me pause for a second and detour through a pet peeve of mine. The book tells at one point that Boba "recalled how Jabba would sometimes have his prisoners brought to him frozen in carbonite."
No no no no NO. First we get a comic where Anakin builds a plan around freezing himself and a bunch of troops in carbonite, and now this. You could have literally anyone else in the galaxy reference the carbon freezing trick and it would be lame, but I'd accept it. But the only two people in the galaxy you cannot involve are Darth Vader and Boba Fett! Because in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader freezes Han Solo in carbonite as a test to make sure a human can survive the process, and Fett is worried that he won't . . . and none of that would make any sense if they were both well-aware that this is a common thing (which apparently it is not)! It's cheesy and it's sloppy and I hate it.
I think that's what grates overall. This is not a story that has ambitions to be anything more than a cheap cash-in on the Boba Fett brand. References to Star Wars lore are chosen at random and tossed haphazardly into the lackluster story to remind us that this is a Star Wars book. And you could almost forgive stuff like the author thinking a Clawdite shape-shifter can just morph into anything, like a bug or a bird, if the story were any good at all, and it just isn't. It's shallow pulp . . . and to add insult to injury, it's not even finished. The book ends on a cliffhanger with nothing resolved, making the whole exercise feel that much more pointless.
F
Background: A New Threat was written by [a:Elizabeth Hand|40983|Elizabeth Hand|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1219875344p2/40983.jpg] and published in April of 2004. Hand wrote the 3rd through 6th books in this series (taking over for Terry Bisson). These are her only Star Wars books, though she has written a variety of non-Star Wars things.
A New Threat takes place 31 months after the Battle of Geonosis, 19 years before the Battle of Yavin. The young (though now 3 years older than when we last saw him) Boba Fett is the main character, with appearances by Jabba the Hutt, Wat Tambor, General Grievous, Anakin Skywalker, and a few recurring characters specific to this series. The book takes place on Tatooine and Xagobah.
Summary: Things are going pretty well for Boba Fett. He has established himself as the favorite bounty hunter of the powerful crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and he's almost a teenager. Of course, "favorite" is a designation contingent on success, and Jabba has just given Boba his most challenging assignment yet: Kill Wat Tambor, Foreman of the Techno Union. To do that, he'll have to fight his way through two armies and infiltrate an impenetrable fortress that has stymied even the Jedi. But that's all in a day's work for the up-and-coming Greatest Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy.
Review: Maybe it's just that I've lost patience for the particular brand of nonsense this series pulls, but this is a strong example of how not to do a Star Wars YA novel. I wanted it to succeed, but I always knew it was a mistake to build a series around the adventures of Boba Fett as a kid, and if you're not even going to try to do it right, then you particularly have no business doing it at all.
But let me pause for a second and detour through a pet peeve of mine. The book tells at one point that Boba "recalled how Jabba would sometimes have his prisoners brought to him frozen in carbonite."
No no no no NO. First we get a comic where Anakin builds a plan around freezing himself and a bunch of troops in carbonite, and now this. You could have literally anyone else in the galaxy reference the carbon freezing trick and it would be lame, but I'd accept it. But the only two people in the galaxy you cannot involve are Darth Vader and Boba Fett! Because in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader freezes Han Solo in carbonite as a test to make sure a human can survive the process, and Fett is worried that he won't . . . and none of that would make any sense if they were both well-aware that this is a common thing (which apparently it is not)! It's cheesy and it's sloppy and I hate it.
I think that's what grates overall. This is not a story that has ambitions to be anything more than a cheap cash-in on the Boba Fett brand. References to Star Wars lore are chosen at random and tossed haphazardly into the lackluster story to remind us that this is a Star Wars book. And you could almost forgive stuff like the author thinking a Clawdite shape-shifter can just morph into anything, like a bug or a bird, if the story were any good at all, and it just isn't. It's shallow pulp . . . and to add insult to injury, it's not even finished. The book ends on a cliffhanger with nothing resolved, making the whole exercise feel that much more pointless.
F
hstapp's review
3.0
A fun and exciting adventure as Boba Fett leaves Tatooine for the first time since he began serving Jabba.
I really like the extra characters in this story, and it's always cool to see a certain someone from the original clone wars cartoons show up, however briefly. There are a few moments that seem a bit awkward, but overall I really enjoyed the book.
I really like the extra characters in this story, and it's always cool to see a certain someone from the original clone wars cartoons show up, however briefly. There are a few moments that seem a bit awkward, but overall I really enjoyed the book.
joshgauthier's review
4.0
Halfway between hero and villain, the challenge of a book like this is to balance the violence of its title character with a middle grade audience. As Boba Fett throws himself into service for Jabba and the conflicts of the Clone War, the universe gets bigger, the conflicts get heated, and Young Boba finds himself facing off against the toughest enemies he's ever met.
verkisto's review
2.0
Well. I suppose I've been spoiled by Jude Watson's take on the Expanded Universe, because the Boba Fett series has been pretty underwhelming. In A New Threat, she takes us to Xagobah (not her creation, but really?), where the native xamsters (again: Really?) are caught between a battle between the Republic and the Separatists. Boba is there to either capture or kill Angkor Wat Wat Tambor for Jabba, and Boba considers this his last apprenticeship assignment. Once this is complete, he'll be a professional, so the stakes are high (for Boba, at least).
Boba continues to make friends, this time finding one through Xaran, a xamster (seriously, was Hand cringing as she wrote this stuff?). Before he leaves, we see his friends in Jabba's palace, and the whole thing just seems sentimental and out of place, for Boba the Bounty Hunter. Even at his age (fourteen or so), he's pushing hard to be considered cold and calculating, and the idea that he's making friends all over the place seems at odds with that characterization.
Hand makes a big deal about how Boba knows that Darth Tyranus and Count Dooku are the same person, and he carries that knowledge around with him like it's his trust fund. We're reminded of this fact several times, but so far this is an unfired gun in the story, because as much as we see it, nothing is done with it. I get the feeling this is going to be relevant in the next book, but I'm not sure how much room there will be to cover it, since A New Threat is only half of the story of Xagobah and Wat Tambor. We finish this book with nothing resolved, with almost nothing having happened in the story anyway.
I may have been too excited about reading this series, but man, has it been disappointing. Luckily, there's only one book left in the series, because if there were any more, I'd be dreading having to keep reading it. I'm in this for the long haul (170 books to go!), for better or worse, but I'm sure hoping for better than this book.
Boba continues to make friends, this time finding one through Xaran, a xamster (seriously, was Hand cringing as she wrote this stuff?). Before he leaves, we see his friends in Jabba's palace, and the whole thing just seems sentimental and out of place, for Boba the Bounty Hunter. Even at his age (fourteen or so), he's pushing hard to be considered cold and calculating, and the idea that he's making friends all over the place seems at odds with that characterization.
Hand makes a big deal about how Boba knows that Darth Tyranus and Count Dooku are the same person, and he carries that knowledge around with him like it's his trust fund. We're reminded of this fact several times, but so far this is an unfired gun in the story, because as much as we see it, nothing is done with it. I get the feeling this is going to be relevant in the next book, but I'm not sure how much room there will be to cover it, since A New Threat is only half of the story of Xagobah and Wat Tambor. We finish this book with nothing resolved, with almost nothing having happened in the story anyway.
I may have been too excited about reading this series, but man, has it been disappointing. Luckily, there's only one book left in the series, because if there were any more, I'd be dreading having to keep reading it. I'm in this for the long haul (170 books to go!), for better or worse, but I'm sure hoping for better than this book.
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