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A review by neilrcoulter
Poe Dameron: Free Fall by Alex Segura
2.0
Poe Dameron: A Han Solo Story
A short story in Greg Rucka’s book Before the Awakening gives some of Poe Dameron’s backstory. Then in The Rise of Skywalker, part of the heroes’ ultimately pointless and unnecessary mission requires that they get assistance from a band of spice runners on Kijimi. Poe drew the short straw as the only character who could possibly have had some past connection to smugglers, so this detail got added to his history with little explanation. I can imagine Disney then scrambling to find some way to explain how Poe could have spent time on the wrong side of the law, so Alex Segura drew the short straw and had to (quickly, I assume) figure out some way to make it work. I feel a little bad for Segura, because it was a poisoned chalice.
The story he wrote, Free Fall, is like so much of Disney-era Star Wars: every character, location, and event feels almost exactly like something else that’s already happened in another SW story. There’s a cantina just like the Mos Eisley cantina; a teenage kid who dreams of getting off his dead-end planet and having adventures in the galaxy; a crash landing on a planet and then a fight for survival; predictable double-crosses; vague hints at galactic politics, but nothing specific; crime syndicates that have no clear motive or plan and that shouldn’t be hard for law officers to track down (I mean, they’re called “The Spice Runners of Kijimi”—what planet do you think you’d find them on?); a girl, a boy, and a slightly humorous, clueless droid on adventures that include some petty bickering and possible romance; a hotshot pilot who can fly anything; dead parents whose memories haunt or motivate the protagonist; and on and on.
But the biggest error in this story is that all of it, 100%, feels like an alternate version of Solo. And it’s odd because in the movies, there’s nothing particularly Solo-like about Poe, nor does he have a lot of interaction with Han. So why make him another Solo character? The other misstep is that this story directly contradicts the version of Poe’s past in Before the Awakening (which was actually a pretty good book). Five years in, and Disney’s “everything is canon” is already having to retcon itself, contradicting itself in the process.
Along with the typos that make SW books feel deliberately disposable, Free Fall also has some dialogue that sounds really fake. This line early on, for example, which one of The Spice Runners of Kijimi says to Poe:
Another oddity is that in the movie, I’d thought the heroes were going to see some spice runners, who, you know, happened to be on the planet Kijimi. But in this novel, it’s like the name of a band: “‘Ever heard of the Spice Runners of Kijimi?’ Trune asked” (53). I don’t know why, but it always made me chuckle when the full name of the band was written out or spoken (which is really often).
I’m mostly done with keeping up with the SW books set in the sequel trilogy era (this is what I tell myself...), but I picked this one up because I liked Zorii Bliss in the movie and wanted to know her story. However, it’s just Qi’ra’s story from Solo, with a few small details rearranged to fool the plagiarism detector.
Why is current SW so incredibly uncreative? I don’t understand why people can’t imagine bigger and bolder.
A short story in Greg Rucka’s book Before the Awakening gives some of Poe Dameron’s backstory. Then in The Rise of Skywalker, part of the heroes’ ultimately pointless and unnecessary mission requires that they get assistance from a band of spice runners on Kijimi. Poe drew the short straw as the only character who could possibly have had some past connection to smugglers, so this detail got added to his history with little explanation. I can imagine Disney then scrambling to find some way to explain how Poe could have spent time on the wrong side of the law, so Alex Segura drew the short straw and had to (quickly, I assume) figure out some way to make it work. I feel a little bad for Segura, because it was a poisoned chalice.
The story he wrote, Free Fall, is like so much of Disney-era Star Wars: every character, location, and event feels almost exactly like something else that’s already happened in another SW story. There’s a cantina just like the Mos Eisley cantina; a teenage kid who dreams of getting off his dead-end planet and having adventures in the galaxy; a crash landing on a planet and then a fight for survival; predictable double-crosses; vague hints at galactic politics, but nothing specific; crime syndicates that have no clear motive or plan and that shouldn’t be hard for law officers to track down (I mean, they’re called “The Spice Runners of Kijimi”—what planet do you think you’d find them on?); a girl, a boy, and a slightly humorous, clueless droid on adventures that include some petty bickering and possible romance; a hotshot pilot who can fly anything; dead parents whose memories haunt or motivate the protagonist; and on and on.
But the biggest error in this story is that all of it, 100%, feels like an alternate version of Solo. And it’s odd because in the movies, there’s nothing particularly Solo-like about Poe, nor does he have a lot of interaction with Han. So why make him another Solo character? The other misstep is that this story directly contradicts the version of Poe’s past in Before the Awakening (which was actually a pretty good book). Five years in, and Disney’s “everything is canon” is already having to retcon itself, contradicting itself in the process.
Along with the typos that make SW books feel deliberately disposable, Free Fall also has some dialogue that sounds really fake. This line early on, for example, which one of The Spice Runners of Kijimi says to Poe:
“We’re smugglers,” she said flatly. “And our pilot is dead. If you can get us off this moon, you will begin a life of adventure and uncertainty unlike anything you’ve imagined. This place will be a blurry memory before too long.” (48)Come on, SW—be better.
Another oddity is that in the movie, I’d thought the heroes were going to see some spice runners, who, you know, happened to be on the planet Kijimi. But in this novel, it’s like the name of a band: “‘Ever heard of the Spice Runners of Kijimi?’ Trune asked” (53). I don’t know why, but it always made me chuckle when the full name of the band was written out or spoken (which is really often).
I’m mostly done with keeping up with the SW books set in the sequel trilogy era (this is what I tell myself...), but I picked this one up because I liked Zorii Bliss in the movie and wanted to know her story. However, it’s just Qi’ra’s story from Solo, with a few small details rearranged to fool the plagiarism detector.
Why is current SW so incredibly uncreative? I don’t understand why people can’t imagine bigger and bolder.