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xonrad 's review for:
Lost Stars
by Claudia Gray
I am a firm believer that the start of a book needs to grab you, otherwise it is a waste of your personal time. If it can't grab you entirely, it at least has to offer a hint of grand promise to slog through the painful exposition imposed by an author during the first act.
I simply could not find either with this book. It is a coming of age romance that has been done before.
If you are satisfied with seeing that played out in your beloved Star Wars universe, this is probably going to go down well with you, but if you want to experience something new and different... this really feels from the beginning like it depends too much on "Star Wars" appeal to sell the story.
On top of that, there are too many shallow tropes on Imperial characters, their motivations, their behaviour, and so on... right from the first few pages.
Ignore any type of appreciation for Star Wars, past or present, and consider a greater understanding of history and literature... if you have not been properly exposed to explorations of fascism, totalitarianism, etc... this may seem interesting, but again, if you are well informed it is likely to come across as annoyingly simplified and categorically stereotyped.
When you do consider the mistakes made in the old expanded universe, and the potential for depth within the Star Wars universe... personal brutal opinion: this has been baby'fied to an almost Prequels level of "good vs evil" tropes, and has the same unappealing teen pulp qualities as those expanded universe novels of yore that I could not stomach to follow through on.
I simply could not find either with this book. It is a coming of age romance that has been done before.
If you are satisfied with seeing that played out in your beloved Star Wars universe, this is probably going to go down well with you, but if you want to experience something new and different... this really feels from the beginning like it depends too much on "Star Wars" appeal to sell the story.
On top of that, there are too many shallow tropes on Imperial characters, their motivations, their behaviour, and so on... right from the first few pages.
Ignore any type of appreciation for Star Wars, past or present, and consider a greater understanding of history and literature... if you have not been properly exposed to explorations of fascism, totalitarianism, etc... this may seem interesting, but again, if you are well informed it is likely to come across as annoyingly simplified and categorically stereotyped.
When you do consider the mistakes made in the old expanded universe, and the potential for depth within the Star Wars universe... personal brutal opinion: this has been baby'fied to an almost Prequels level of "good vs evil" tropes, and has the same unappealing teen pulp qualities as those expanded universe novels of yore that I could not stomach to follow through on.