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neilrcoulter 's review for:
Life Debt
by Chuck Wendig
To say that Life Debt is better than its predecessor, Aftermath, is not to say that it is a good book. It's just that it would be hard for another book to be as bad as Aftermath. I'm less inclined to believe that Chuck Wendig has become a better author in the intervening months, instead assuming that Disney/Lucasfilm went into crisis mode last year when Aftermath received such a scathing reception from eager Star Wars fans. The first line of the new canon of Star Wars books was extremely disappointing, and Wendig's novel was the most disappointing of the lot. I believe that Disney/Lucasfilm frantically started putting more effort into their publications, and the results are slowly starting to show--though the Star Wars canon is still far from high art.
Life Debt was obviously handled by better editors than Aftermath. The present-tense writing style is still bad, but it's not as distracting as in the previous volume. Gone are absolutely ridiculous moments, such as Admiral Ackbar rubbing moisturizer into his skin. The result is a little more engaging, with a little more forward momentum.
What's left, however, is the nagging sense that this is a novel-length movie trailer, and that Wendig is not allowed to do anything more than tease little pieces of information that may or may not ever be relevant. It's hard to imagine, for example, how the Rancor keeper from Tatooine is going to be important later on, but there he is in his own little vignette that has nothing to do with anything in the book. (And I really didn't need the Rancor that Luke kills in Return of the Jedi to have a name: Pateesa.)
Wendig is able to shift nicely between a couple of different time periods, however, and one of the best parts of the book is the brief glimpse into something Emperor Palpatine (or "Sheev," as his young friends call him) was up to 30 years before the main events of this novel. Almost against my will I am interested to know what Palpatine was doing on Jakku. I'm prepared for disappointment, but I'm mildly curious.
As for the other characters in the story, things are not good. When I began the book, I found that I had no memory whatsoever of the new team that Wendig created in the first volume: Norra Wexley and her son, Temmin; Jas Emari; Sinjir Rath Velus; Jom Barell; Mister Bones the Battle Droid (man, it hurts to have to type that name). If you're also struggling to recall anything about these characters when you begin Life Debt, I'll let you in on a secret: it doesn't matter. Wendig repeats any information about those characters that's important, and it just barely matters what they did in the first book. Each of the characters has two or three defining traits and motivations, and they're repeated often enough that you'll get it fairly quickly. Please don't re-read Aftermath in preparation for Life Debt.
The movie characters Wendig is allowed to use in this book are really disappointing. It's one thing if Mon Mothma is dull and lifeless, or if Wendig can't ever capture quite the right tone for Han Solo, but it's entirely wrong to make Leia into a complete idiot. And Leia is a complete idiot in this book. She is wrong, unwise, thoughtless, and stupid. If I thought it wasn't possible to have a worse Leia than Claudia Gray's version of her in Bloodline, I have been proven wrong. This was embarrassing.
The narrative is odd and disjointed, and the big set-piece of the final third of the book--the liberation of the Wookiee home planet--feels like it comes out of nowhere. I really didn't care about it at all, and it didn't help that this was the focus of most of Leia's brainless decisions.
One of the most laughably bad parts of Aftermath was the dialogue and word choices. It's not quite as bad in Life Debt, but it's occasionally terrible. A couple examples:
The inclusion of a grungy, pessimistic kind of sexuality throughout the story didn't help to endear me to the book. There's a drunken one-night-stand (I guess more than that, but it doesn't feel that way at the time) between a couple of men, and an ongoing and kind of disgusting sexual relationship between a couple of the main characters, in addition to another main character who, it's strongly implied, is cheating on her husband. It doesn't feel Star Wars-y, and I'm sad that authors like Wendig and Gray are charting the course of the mythology. That galaxy deserves better.
Anyway, I won't be sad if the third volume of this trilogy is canceled. If it is published, I will be very happy that it's only a trilogy and not anything longer. As for the Star Wars canon, I hold out hope for James Luceno's Rogue One novel; he's one of the only Star Wars authors I trust, and I'm more interested in the Rogue One film than I am in Episode 8.
As a postscript: in my review of another recent Star Wars novel, I praised Pablo Hidalgo for no longer requiring that every single book include the phrase "I have a bad feeling about this." I spoke too soon. Page 236.
Life Debt was obviously handled by better editors than Aftermath. The present-tense writing style is still bad, but it's not as distracting as in the previous volume. Gone are absolutely ridiculous moments, such as Admiral Ackbar rubbing moisturizer into his skin. The result is a little more engaging, with a little more forward momentum.
What's left, however, is the nagging sense that this is a novel-length movie trailer, and that Wendig is not allowed to do anything more than tease little pieces of information that may or may not ever be relevant. It's hard to imagine, for example, how the Rancor keeper from Tatooine is going to be important later on, but there he is in his own little vignette that has nothing to do with anything in the book. (And I really didn't need the Rancor that Luke kills in Return of the Jedi to have a name: Pateesa.)
Wendig is able to shift nicely between a couple of different time periods, however, and one of the best parts of the book is the brief glimpse into something Emperor Palpatine (or "Sheev," as his young friends call him) was up to 30 years before the main events of this novel. Almost against my will I am interested to know what Palpatine was doing on Jakku. I'm prepared for disappointment, but I'm mildly curious.
As for the other characters in the story, things are not good. When I began the book, I found that I had no memory whatsoever of the new team that Wendig created in the first volume: Norra Wexley and her son, Temmin; Jas Emari; Sinjir Rath Velus; Jom Barell; Mister Bones the Battle Droid (man, it hurts to have to type that name). If you're also struggling to recall anything about these characters when you begin Life Debt, I'll let you in on a secret: it doesn't matter. Wendig repeats any information about those characters that's important, and it just barely matters what they did in the first book. Each of the characters has two or three defining traits and motivations, and they're repeated often enough that you'll get it fairly quickly. Please don't re-read Aftermath in preparation for Life Debt.
The movie characters Wendig is allowed to use in this book are really disappointing. It's one thing if Mon Mothma is dull and lifeless, or if Wendig can't ever capture quite the right tone for Han Solo, but it's entirely wrong to make Leia into a complete idiot. And Leia is a complete idiot in this book. She is wrong, unwise, thoughtless, and stupid. If I thought it wasn't possible to have a worse Leia than Claudia Gray's version of her in Bloodline, I have been proven wrong. This was embarrassing.
The narrative is odd and disjointed, and the big set-piece of the final third of the book--the liberation of the Wookiee home planet--feels like it comes out of nowhere. I really didn't care about it at all, and it didn't help that this was the focus of most of Leia's brainless decisions.
One of the most laughably bad parts of Aftermath was the dialogue and word choices. It's not quite as bad in Life Debt, but it's occasionally terrible. A couple examples:
Solo leans in. "Spiders don't frighten you because most spiders are no bigger than your hand. These spiders, webweavers? Big as you and me. . . . The Wookiees eat 'em. Chewie says they're, well, chewy." (315)
They rage. Fur and fangs and swiping limbs. Men screaming. In the distance, something explodes. (321)Along with that, we get the adjective "swimmy" (twice!), and the fiercest, most terrifying character in the galaxy saying to a subordinate, "When I give the say-so . . . " "Say-so"?? Also, Wendig finds corny ways to actually write the movie titles "the empire strikes back" and "revenge of the sith" into the novel. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, did you get it? Ugh.
The inclusion of a grungy, pessimistic kind of sexuality throughout the story didn't help to endear me to the book. There's a drunken one-night-stand (I guess more than that, but it doesn't feel that way at the time) between a couple of men, and an ongoing and kind of disgusting sexual relationship between a couple of the main characters, in addition to another main character who, it's strongly implied, is cheating on her husband. It doesn't feel Star Wars-y, and I'm sad that authors like Wendig and Gray are charting the course of the mythology. That galaxy deserves better.
Anyway, I won't be sad if the third volume of this trilogy is canceled. If it is published, I will be very happy that it's only a trilogy and not anything longer. As for the Star Wars canon, I hold out hope for James Luceno's Rogue One novel; he's one of the only Star Wars authors I trust, and I'm more interested in the Rogue One film than I am in Episode 8.
As a postscript: in my review of another recent Star Wars novel, I praised Pablo Hidalgo for no longer requiring that every single book include the phrase "I have a bad feeling about this." I spoke too soon. Page 236.