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livtheninth 's review for:
Tarkin
by James Luceno
This is the first and only time I have given a Star Wars book only one star. It actually hurts me to do it, but the fact is, I struggled to get through this and really wanted to DNF it. Only my stubbornness saw me through, after which I desperately threw myself into another, much better Star Wars book to get the bad reading experience out of my system.
I don't exactly know what went wrong here. I like Luceno as an author - Catalyst, for example, is one of the best Star Wars books I have read. I love the character of Tarkin in ANH and the Clone Wars tv show. I crave more stories about unapologetic bad guys, the Empire that considers itself the only path to stability in the galaxy, stories in which the rebels are viewed through a different lens - because from a certain point of view, they may as well be misguided terrorists. This should have been right on the money for me.
But this book. This book. I wanted to scream. I was so incredibly bored. I'm unsure if it is a pacing issue, a fundamentally uninteresting plot that fails to enthrall or even just interest me, a lack of character distinction and broad themes... all of the above? However, the fact is that I usually get invested in every godsdamned Star Wars story purely because it's Star Wars, and yet this one left me cold and grievously disappointed.
I felt like every Empire character spoke in the exact same way, using the same vocabulary - and let's be real, Vader doesn't talk like that. He just doesn't. Leave Vader alone. This overall sameness made it very hard for me to distinguish between characters, and I lost focus time and time again.
The more interesting bits in there, for me, concerned how Tarkin grew up, his family history, the descriptions of his home planet. I wish there would have been more of that. More of actually getting to know more about his character. I already know he is calculating and shrewd - I don't need to read an entire book where he doesn't grow or evolve, and his growth here I felt was nominal at best.
I recently read Claudia Gray's Master and Apprentice as well as E K Johnston's Queen's Shadow - both good examples of character insight and growth being handled well without obscuring the narrative - and Tarkin sure suffered from following their acts. However, I don't think I would have liked this any better regardless of what other reading experience I was coming off when picking this book up.
Like I stated at the beginning, it really hurts me to give Tarkin one star, but I can't in good conscience give it a passing grade (which I consider two stars to represent). I won't recommend this to anyone. Not when there are so many better alternatives out there for someone who wants to get into the Star Wars expanded universe.
I don't exactly know what went wrong here. I like Luceno as an author - Catalyst, for example, is one of the best Star Wars books I have read. I love the character of Tarkin in ANH and the Clone Wars tv show. I crave more stories about unapologetic bad guys, the Empire that considers itself the only path to stability in the galaxy, stories in which the rebels are viewed through a different lens - because from a certain point of view, they may as well be misguided terrorists. This should have been right on the money for me.
But this book. This book. I wanted to scream. I was so incredibly bored. I'm unsure if it is a pacing issue, a fundamentally uninteresting plot that fails to enthrall or even just interest me, a lack of character distinction and broad themes... all of the above? However, the fact is that I usually get invested in every godsdamned Star Wars story purely because it's Star Wars, and yet this one left me cold and grievously disappointed.
I felt like every Empire character spoke in the exact same way, using the same vocabulary - and let's be real, Vader doesn't talk like that. He just doesn't. Leave Vader alone. This overall sameness made it very hard for me to distinguish between characters, and I lost focus time and time again.
The more interesting bits in there, for me, concerned how Tarkin grew up, his family history, the descriptions of his home planet. I wish there would have been more of that. More of actually getting to know more about his character. I already know he is calculating and shrewd - I don't need to read an entire book where he doesn't grow or evolve, and his growth here I felt was nominal at best.
I recently read Claudia Gray's Master and Apprentice as well as E K Johnston's Queen's Shadow - both good examples of character insight and growth being handled well without obscuring the narrative - and Tarkin sure suffered from following their acts. However, I don't think I would have liked this any better regardless of what other reading experience I was coming off when picking this book up.
Like I stated at the beginning, it really hurts me to give Tarkin one star, but I can't in good conscience give it a passing grade (which I consider two stars to represent). I won't recommend this to anyone. Not when there are so many better alternatives out there for someone who wants to get into the Star Wars expanded universe.