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neilrcoulter 's review for:
Star Wars: Canto Bight
by Mira Grant, Rae Carson, John Jackson Miller, Saladin Ahmed
This is a strange book to give a rating to. After seeing The Last Jedi and being disappointed especially with the pointless Canto Bight interlude, I had low expectations of this book of four short stories set in that new location. In the film, Canto Bight seems out of place in the Star Wars universe--perhaps too similar to something from real-life Earth? Or maybe the whole location was colored negatively because of how much I didn't like Rose and Finn. Whatever the case, I assumed the book would at least explain some backstory for the Master Codebreaker (codename: Red Herring), perhaps DJ, certainly some of the creatures seen in the casino.
But no.
None of that happens in this book. The four stories here are loosely connected to one another, but they do not take place on the night that Rose and Finn pay their visit; I assume this takes place sometime before that event, since there seems to be no residue from that activity.
So the reader opens this book and finds four stories about a location that feels, from the movie, like one of the least interesting and least developed in all the Star Wars films. That's not helpful.
It's also unhelpful that the first two stories are by far the worst half of the book. Saladin Ahmed's opening story is about a vaporator salesman who seems to be perhaps some kind of large, walking earthworm? (Another difficulty of the book is that I don't yet know what these new alien species look like, so it's hard to picture what's going on.) He gets himself into a "wrong man" caper, and . . . I don't know, some stuff happens, most of which is me flipping ahead in the book to see how much longer this story goes on.
The second story, Mira Grant's "The Wine in Dreams," is without a doubt one of the worst Star Wars stories of the new canon. It involves two women trying to buy a bottle of exotic wine. Apparently, Star Wars now has all the same kinds of alcohol, with all the same related words, as our own Earth does, and that feels wrong to me. I spent even more time flipping ahead to see how much longer the story goes on.
But then something happened in the third story--"Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing," by Rae Carson. It starts as badly as the first two stories do. In this case, the protagonist is the favorite masseur at Canto Bight's exclusive spa. But Carson steadily builds a story that makes sense, creates relationships that feel real, and expands the understanding of what Canto Bight is, what it means to Star Wars. I'm still not sure if I like Canto Bight, but Carson's story, and the story that follows it, begin to open up better possibilities. Canto Bight is an artificial construct--a luxurious city built on a desolate planet, complete with its own artificially created ocean. The city represents paradise to many downtrodden people in the galaxy. It's the place they dream of getting to one day. But within the Canto Bight, there are layers of people who want to escape, who want to stay and make something of themselves, and who have all kinds of hopes and fears. And beneath all of that is a slave class that has little hope of achieving anything more in their lives. It's kind of interesting to have this one location that serves as a complex microcosm of so much of the galaxy in Star Wars. Carson's story is the first glimpse of that world that intrigued me. Carson previously wrote a good short story about R5-D4 in the collection From a Certain Point of View, and now this story; she clearly gets Star Wars in a way that most authors don't. I hope she continues to get commissions for new stories and books.
The closer of this volume is John Jackson Miller's "The Ride," about a down-on-his-luck professional gambler who has to learn big lessons in one night. I liked this story, too. It's quirky, compact, clever in just the right ways, and knows its boundaries. It builds on what I liked about Carson's story: further opening up the little details of life in a new Star Wars location.
What I've always wanted from Star Wars books is stories that don't require space battles and lightsabers. Canto Bight is it, and though this introductory collection is half-disappointing, I do like the general motivation behind the creation of this planet. I'd like to see it continue, maintaining that separation between itself and the "big stories" of the trilogies. Whether the good parts of this book make me like the Canto Bight segment of The Last Jedi any better . . . well, we'll just have to see.
But no.
None of that happens in this book. The four stories here are loosely connected to one another, but they do not take place on the night that Rose and Finn pay their visit; I assume this takes place sometime before that event, since there seems to be no residue from that activity.
So the reader opens this book and finds four stories about a location that feels, from the movie, like one of the least interesting and least developed in all the Star Wars films. That's not helpful.
It's also unhelpful that the first two stories are by far the worst half of the book. Saladin Ahmed's opening story is about a vaporator salesman who seems to be perhaps some kind of large, walking earthworm? (Another difficulty of the book is that I don't yet know what these new alien species look like, so it's hard to picture what's going on.) He gets himself into a "wrong man" caper, and . . . I don't know, some stuff happens, most of which is me flipping ahead in the book to see how much longer this story goes on.
The second story, Mira Grant's "The Wine in Dreams," is without a doubt one of the worst Star Wars stories of the new canon. It involves two women trying to buy a bottle of exotic wine. Apparently, Star Wars now has all the same kinds of alcohol, with all the same related words, as our own Earth does, and that feels wrong to me. I spent even more time flipping ahead to see how much longer the story goes on.
But then something happened in the third story--"Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing," by Rae Carson. It starts as badly as the first two stories do. In this case, the protagonist is the favorite masseur at Canto Bight's exclusive spa. But Carson steadily builds a story that makes sense, creates relationships that feel real, and expands the understanding of what Canto Bight is, what it means to Star Wars. I'm still not sure if I like Canto Bight, but Carson's story, and the story that follows it, begin to open up better possibilities. Canto Bight is an artificial construct--a luxurious city built on a desolate planet, complete with its own artificially created ocean. The city represents paradise to many downtrodden people in the galaxy. It's the place they dream of getting to one day. But within the Canto Bight, there are layers of people who want to escape, who want to stay and make something of themselves, and who have all kinds of hopes and fears. And beneath all of that is a slave class that has little hope of achieving anything more in their lives. It's kind of interesting to have this one location that serves as a complex microcosm of so much of the galaxy in Star Wars. Carson's story is the first glimpse of that world that intrigued me. Carson previously wrote a good short story about R5-D4 in the collection From a Certain Point of View, and now this story; she clearly gets Star Wars in a way that most authors don't. I hope she continues to get commissions for new stories and books.
The closer of this volume is John Jackson Miller's "The Ride," about a down-on-his-luck professional gambler who has to learn big lessons in one night. I liked this story, too. It's quirky, compact, clever in just the right ways, and knows its boundaries. It builds on what I liked about Carson's story: further opening up the little details of life in a new Star Wars location.
What I've always wanted from Star Wars books is stories that don't require space battles and lightsabers. Canto Bight is it, and though this introductory collection is half-disappointing, I do like the general motivation behind the creation of this planet. I'd like to see it continue, maintaining that separation between itself and the "big stories" of the trilogies. Whether the good parts of this book make me like the Canto Bight segment of The Last Jedi any better . . . well, we'll just have to see.