Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
Really not as good as Tales of the Bounty Hunter. The author seems to write a lot but not really say very much. He also gets the characterisation wrong throughout, turning Dengar into this strange Han Solo wannabe. It is also clearly the first in a trilogy so expect an open ending. The Tales of the Bounty Hunter is the one to read if you want satisfying Bounty Hunter stories which are compact, interesting and entertaining. But I'm still going to read the second one, probably because I'm an idiot but you should still take my advice if you're interested in reading a Star Wars bounty hunter book.
adventurous
medium-paced
Se primarily after The Return of the Jedi, The Mandalorian Armour is the first book in The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy but K.W. Jeter. I listened to the audiobook of this, which means I listened to the abridged version, and cannot speak to the book as a whole. That said this is a very interesting book. We follow fan-favourite Boba Fett after being eaten by the Sarlacc, with some flashbacks to his adventures prior to this moment in his life. I don't think the book does a lot in terms of characterisation, but perhaps that will come further in the series (or perhaps it was in the unabridged version, I wouldn't know). Any characterisation that is achieved is mostly done through exploring Fett's relationship with other characters, especially Dengar. But what it's lacking in characterization it makes up for in political intrigue. This book is full of it. I enjoyed political intrigue, and it was handled pretty well, if, perhaps, a little heavy on exposition. The action sequences were very good, and this was enhanced by the use of sound effects in the audiobook. There is a big focus on the Bounty Hunter's Guild, which was very interesting, and exciting to see how this works, and how it does not. Overall this was a very fun, and if you're listening to the abridged audiobook also very short at only three hours, so well worth your time if you are considering this as a future read.
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
the hopping back and forth through time is clumsily handled and feels unnecessary. I guess if you have a strong attachment to all those weird lookin dudes in Empire then this book will do something for you. otherwise its kind of a boring action adventure tail that tries to be too smart
The story of how Boba Fett surviving the Sarlac pitt in ROTJ. Fun read.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
For 2020, I decided to reread (in publication order) all the Bantam-era Star Wars books that were released between 1991 and 1999; that shakes out to 38 adult novels and 5 anthologies of short stories & novellas.
This week’s focus: the first book in the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, The Mandalorian Armor by K.W. Jeter.
SOME HISTORY:
While K.W. Jeter is perhaps more known as a horror writer, he initially came to prominence as a writer of science fiction. His works were notable for a tendency towards hyperviolence as well as a florid writing style, and he was probably the first person to coin the term “steampunk.” By the 1990s, though, he was mostly writing tie-ins for existing franchises like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Blade Runner, and the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy marked his first and only foray into the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian Armor made it to number fourteen on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for the week of June 28, 1998.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
I never read any of the books in this trilogy. I probably picked it up at the library, read the back cover summary, saw “Boba Fett” and “Prince Xizor” and noped out of there. So I went into this read completely blind.
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
Cutting back and forth between two timelines, we see both Boba Fett’s early attempts to regain control after the debacle at Jabba’s Palace, as well as Prince Xizor’s plan (after the Battle of Yavin) to take down the Bounty Hunter’s Guild by using Fett as his unknowing weapon of destruction.
THE CHARACTERS:
First, a note about the cover: from the giant Darth Vader head, you would think that he plays a prominent role. Nope! He only appears in one chapter, ragging on Prince Xizor. Rather than being the Empire vs. the Bounty Hunters like the back cover claims, this is more of a personal feud on the side of Xizor.
I’m not super fond of Boba Fett, because I feel like he’s often hyped up to be this super-powered, best of the best bounty hunter. (And that was definitely the case here!) We’re given few opportunities to really get inside Fett’s head, and I would have appreciated more of an attempt to humanize or explain him.
Dengar, on the other hand, comes off as a more likeable character, perhaps because he feels more human. What I didn’t enjoy was how much of Dave Wolverton’s characterization for him was completely disregarded, because there’s no sense of his enhanced strength and abilities or his limited emotions. And poor Manaroo is shunted offpage “for her safety.”
Neelah is a former dancer from Jabba’s Palace who’s had her memory wiped. She doesn’t know her real name, or where she’s from, and she doesn’t uncover anything in book 1. You’ll need to read the next two to find out more.
We encounter some of the bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back, like Zuckuss and Bossk, but their characterization is completely different from their past appearances. Zuckuss is naive and remarkably stupid. Bossk talks a lot. It’s jarring.
And then we have our baddies. Palpatine and Vader make brief appearances in the past timeline, but Xizor is the main villain on that front. He wants to dismantle the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, and he certainly spends a lot of time explaining why. But I was left wondering...well, why? He’s the head of Black Sun, a huge organization, and from what we see of the Guild, they don’t seem like much of a threat to his power.
He uses an intermediary, a spider-like being with loads of little spiders to do its bidding. I also wasn’t sure why an intermediary was necessary, because surely he could have gone straight to Boba Fett and saved himself a lot of time and money.
And in the present timeline, our villain is Kuat of Kuat. (What a stupid name! And not, as I originally thought, pronounced like the country Kuwait). He wants to kill Boba Fett, he has a cat, and we don’t learn anything about his antipathy towards Fett. More fodder for the rest of the trilogy.
And then a body horror warning: if like me, you have an issue with body horror, maybe skip Chapters 14-16? In the past timeline, we meet a prior acquaintance of Fett’s named D’Harhan. First of all, how would you even do that?? Second, both D’harhan’s existence and his death were upsetting to me, and I couldn’t get the image of that poor man out of my head. I wish someone had warned me about him before I read this.
ISSUES:
The pace was far too sloooooooow, to the point that I worried I’d have another [b:Jedi Search|760110|Jedi Search (Star Wars The Jedi Academy Trilogy, #1)|Kevin J. Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327958212l/760110._SY75_.jpg|863900] situation where I put the book down for a month. It dragged, and I don’t think the dual timelines helped. It’d be one thing if the events in the past directly played into the present events, but that’s not easily or immediately clear to the reader.
Everyone talks far too much. Cradossk, Bossk, Xizor, Palpatine, Vader--they all sound like villains who over-explain their evil plans. The dialogue is either very slangy in a 1990s Earthisms-way (Dengar especially), or endlessly monologuing (everyone else). It’s a strange combination.
And despite all the original characters that Jeter introduces, they were surprisingly unmemorable. Neelah has amnesia, and doesn’t uncover anything about her past. Kuat of Kuat hates Boba Fett but we’re not told why. The giant spider alien is predictably scheming. They don’t add much to the story at this point.
Overall, the Bantam era played fast and loose with continuity, but this book really doesn’t take into account previous developments and events. We have Xizor reflecting on how the Emperor and Vader are unaware that he heads up Black Sun, which...what? Perhaps I’m misremembering [b:Shadows of the Empire|9549|Shadows of the Empire (Star Wars)|Steve Perry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361481442l/9549._SY75_.jpg|858558], but I thought that Xizor being a royal crime boss was the main reason he was in Palpatine’s inner circle. Xizor also brings up Palpatine’s Force abilities multiple times, which I thought was kept a lot more secret than Vader’s powers.
Boba Fett pulls out of his Sarlacc ordeal pretty quickly, when I thought from [b:Tales of the Bounty Hunters|131776|Tales of the Bounty Hunters (Star Wars)|Kevin J. Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1411172275l/131776._SY75_.jpg|2599174] that he had long-lasting health issues. Womp rats are described as the smallest carnivores in the galaxy (while Luke says in A New Hope that they’re “not much bigger than 2 meters”??). And the characterization of the other bounty hunters feels 180 degrees from what was established in previous stories. It’s almost as though Jeter took the characters he needed, but made no attempts to keep their portrayal in line with canon thus far.
And finally, why was this book even called “The Mandalorian Armor”? We don’t get any revelations about how or why Fett acquired his armor, or further insight into his backstory. I guess the title’s there so that the reader knows this is a Boba Fett story, nothing more.
IN CONCLUSION:
I had never read any of the Bounty Hunter Wars books, so I went into this one with no preconceptions. It's not good. Pace is slow, everyone talks way too much, and there is a complete disregard for previously established continuity.
Next up: the second of Aaron Allston’s X-Wing books, [b:Iron Fist|35449|Iron Fist (Star Wars X-Wing, #6)|Aaron Allston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327941995l/35449._SY75_.jpg|976853].
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/LRrbZI6T33A
This week’s focus: the first book in the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, The Mandalorian Armor by K.W. Jeter.
SOME HISTORY:
While K.W. Jeter is perhaps more known as a horror writer, he initially came to prominence as a writer of science fiction. His works were notable for a tendency towards hyperviolence as well as a florid writing style, and he was probably the first person to coin the term “steampunk.” By the 1990s, though, he was mostly writing tie-ins for existing franchises like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Blade Runner, and the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy marked his first and only foray into the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian Armor made it to number fourteen on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for the week of June 28, 1998.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
I never read any of the books in this trilogy. I probably picked it up at the library, read the back cover summary, saw “Boba Fett” and “Prince Xizor” and noped out of there. So I went into this read completely blind.
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
Cutting back and forth between two timelines, we see both Boba Fett’s early attempts to regain control after the debacle at Jabba’s Palace, as well as Prince Xizor’s plan (after the Battle of Yavin) to take down the Bounty Hunter’s Guild by using Fett as his unknowing weapon of destruction.
THE CHARACTERS:
First, a note about the cover: from the giant Darth Vader head, you would think that he plays a prominent role. Nope! He only appears in one chapter, ragging on Prince Xizor. Rather than being the Empire vs. the Bounty Hunters like the back cover claims, this is more of a personal feud on the side of Xizor.
I’m not super fond of Boba Fett, because I feel like he’s often hyped up to be this super-powered, best of the best bounty hunter. (And that was definitely the case here!) We’re given few opportunities to really get inside Fett’s head, and I would have appreciated more of an attempt to humanize or explain him.
Dengar, on the other hand, comes off as a more likeable character, perhaps because he feels more human. What I didn’t enjoy was how much of Dave Wolverton’s characterization for him was completely disregarded, because there’s no sense of his enhanced strength and abilities or his limited emotions. And poor Manaroo is shunted offpage “for her safety.”
Neelah is a former dancer from Jabba’s Palace who’s had her memory wiped. She doesn’t know her real name, or where she’s from, and she doesn’t uncover anything in book 1. You’ll need to read the next two to find out more.
We encounter some of the bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back, like Zuckuss and Bossk, but their characterization is completely different from their past appearances. Zuckuss is naive and remarkably stupid. Bossk talks a lot. It’s jarring.
And then we have our baddies. Palpatine and Vader make brief appearances in the past timeline, but Xizor is the main villain on that front. He wants to dismantle the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, and he certainly spends a lot of time explaining why. But I was left wondering...well, why? He’s the head of Black Sun, a huge organization, and from what we see of the Guild, they don’t seem like much of a threat to his power.
He uses an intermediary, a spider-like being with loads of little spiders to do its bidding. I also wasn’t sure why an intermediary was necessary, because surely he could have gone straight to Boba Fett and saved himself a lot of time and money.
And in the present timeline, our villain is Kuat of Kuat. (What a stupid name! And not, as I originally thought, pronounced like the country Kuwait). He wants to kill Boba Fett, he has a cat, and we don’t learn anything about his antipathy towards Fett. More fodder for the rest of the trilogy.
And then a body horror warning: if like me, you have an issue with body horror, maybe skip Chapters 14-16? In the past timeline, we meet a prior acquaintance of Fett’s named D’Harhan.
Spoiler
His head was removed so that a ship’s laser cannon could be fused into his spinal cord.ISSUES:
The pace was far too sloooooooow, to the point that I worried I’d have another [b:Jedi Search|760110|Jedi Search (Star Wars The Jedi Academy Trilogy, #1)|Kevin J. Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327958212l/760110._SY75_.jpg|863900] situation where I put the book down for a month. It dragged, and I don’t think the dual timelines helped. It’d be one thing if the events in the past directly played into the present events, but that’s not easily or immediately clear to the reader.
Everyone talks far too much. Cradossk, Bossk, Xizor, Palpatine, Vader--they all sound like villains who over-explain their evil plans. The dialogue is either very slangy in a 1990s Earthisms-way (Dengar especially), or endlessly monologuing (everyone else). It’s a strange combination.
And despite all the original characters that Jeter introduces, they were surprisingly unmemorable. Neelah has amnesia, and doesn’t uncover anything about her past. Kuat of Kuat hates Boba Fett but we’re not told why. The giant spider alien is predictably scheming. They don’t add much to the story at this point.
Overall, the Bantam era played fast and loose with continuity, but this book really doesn’t take into account previous developments and events. We have Xizor reflecting on how the Emperor and Vader are unaware that he heads up Black Sun, which...what? Perhaps I’m misremembering [b:Shadows of the Empire|9549|Shadows of the Empire (Star Wars)|Steve Perry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361481442l/9549._SY75_.jpg|858558], but I thought that Xizor being a royal crime boss was the main reason he was in Palpatine’s inner circle. Xizor also brings up Palpatine’s Force abilities multiple times, which I thought was kept a lot more secret than Vader’s powers.
Boba Fett pulls out of his Sarlacc ordeal pretty quickly, when I thought from [b:Tales of the Bounty Hunters|131776|Tales of the Bounty Hunters (Star Wars)|Kevin J. Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1411172275l/131776._SY75_.jpg|2599174] that he had long-lasting health issues. Womp rats are described as the smallest carnivores in the galaxy (while Luke says in A New Hope that they’re “not much bigger than 2 meters”??). And the characterization of the other bounty hunters feels 180 degrees from what was established in previous stories. It’s almost as though Jeter took the characters he needed, but made no attempts to keep their portrayal in line with canon thus far.
And finally, why was this book even called “The Mandalorian Armor”? We don’t get any revelations about how or why Fett acquired his armor, or further insight into his backstory. I guess the title’s there so that the reader knows this is a Boba Fett story, nothing more.
IN CONCLUSION:
I had never read any of the Bounty Hunter Wars books, so I went into this one with no preconceptions. It's not good. Pace is slow, everyone talks way too much, and there is a complete disregard for previously established continuity.
Next up: the second of Aaron Allston’s X-Wing books, [b:Iron Fist|35449|Iron Fist (Star Wars X-Wing, #6)|Aaron Allston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327941995l/35449._SY75_.jpg|976853].
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/LRrbZI6T33A
K.W. Jeter is supposed to be this wunderkind author, hailed by Philip K. Dick and other authors, so I had high expectations for this book. I mean, this was the guy who had been tagged to write the authorized sequels to Blade Runner! Of course this book had to be good, right?
Well, with that kind of set up, you probably know where this is going. I disliked this book. I didn't hate it, but neither did I care about anything that happened in the book. This is the first book in The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, so I expected Boba Fett to feature here, because what book about bounty hunters wouldn't feature Boba Fett? Instead, he's a secondary character at best, since Dengar feels like the main character.
Now, to be fair, this isn't the first book in the Boba Fett trilogy; this is about all the bounty hunters and the Bounty Hunters Guild. It's also the start of a trilogy, so there's a good chance Boba Fett is going to find his way back to being a main character. It's just odd how Jeter approaches the telling of the story, since the opening scene of the book appears to be after the titular war.
The book opens with Dengar finding Boba Fett, battered and weak, outside of his armor, next to the remains of the sarlacc. He rescues Fett, and we settle in for a story set after the events of Return of the Jedi, but then the book flashes back to events that take place between Empire and Jedi. Jeter flips back and forth between the two timelines, but the bulk of the story takes place earlier, which just didn't work for me. At the very least, it reduces the tension of the story, since we know some of the characters featured in the earlier timeline are going to make it to the later one.
Most of the book just felt so boring. It was hard to care about the characters, and the plot meandered enough that I had to force myself to come back to the book. At one point, Palpatine and Vader are having a conversation with Prince Xizor of Black Sun, and that conversation goes on for about forty pages. The conversation was important -- it layed out much of the plot and hinted at the machinations that would take place ahead -- but it went on way too long. The dialogue felt forced and insincere, in that it became more an infodump than a convincing conversation between a few characters. It was way too much speech and not enough action.
Speaking of action, what action there was always felt flat and unemotional. Maybe it was due to my lack of caring about the characters, but once things did get going, I always felt like a distant observer instead of being right there in the action with them.
This was a book with so much potential. I mean, I know someone who, after learning that Disney wasn't going to do a Boba Fett movie, turned to this trilogy to get his Boba Fett kick. I'm going to have to tell him to skip it. On the one hand, I hate to do it, because he really wants a good Boba Fett story; on the other hand, I have to do it, because I don't want him to subject himself to this book. Me? I at least have a reason to keep trudging on, but now my expectations won't be so high.
Well, with that kind of set up, you probably know where this is going. I disliked this book. I didn't hate it, but neither did I care about anything that happened in the book. This is the first book in The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, so I expected Boba Fett to feature here, because what book about bounty hunters wouldn't feature Boba Fett? Instead, he's a secondary character at best, since Dengar feels like the main character.
Now, to be fair, this isn't the first book in the Boba Fett trilogy; this is about all the bounty hunters and the Bounty Hunters Guild. It's also the start of a trilogy, so there's a good chance Boba Fett is going to find his way back to being a main character. It's just odd how Jeter approaches the telling of the story, since the opening scene of the book appears to be after the titular war.
The book opens with Dengar finding Boba Fett, battered and weak, outside of his armor, next to the remains of the sarlacc. He rescues Fett, and we settle in for a story set after the events of Return of the Jedi, but then the book flashes back to events that take place between Empire and Jedi. Jeter flips back and forth between the two timelines, but the bulk of the story takes place earlier, which just didn't work for me. At the very least, it reduces the tension of the story, since we know some of the characters featured in the earlier timeline are going to make it to the later one.
Most of the book just felt so boring. It was hard to care about the characters, and the plot meandered enough that I had to force myself to come back to the book. At one point, Palpatine and Vader are having a conversation with Prince Xizor of Black Sun, and that conversation goes on for about forty pages. The conversation was important -- it layed out much of the plot and hinted at the machinations that would take place ahead -- but it went on way too long. The dialogue felt forced and insincere, in that it became more an infodump than a convincing conversation between a few characters. It was way too much speech and not enough action.
Speaking of action, what action there was always felt flat and unemotional. Maybe it was due to my lack of caring about the characters, but once things did get going, I always felt like a distant observer instead of being right there in the action with them.
This was a book with so much potential. I mean, I know someone who, after learning that Disney wasn't going to do a Boba Fett movie, turned to this trilogy to get his Boba Fett kick. I'm going to have to tell him to skip it. On the one hand, I hate to do it, because he really wants a good Boba Fett story; on the other hand, I have to do it, because I don't want him to subject himself to this book. Me? I at least have a reason to keep trudging on, but now my expectations won't be so high.