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horizon_brave 's review for:
Aftermath
by Chuck Wendig
First let me say..that Marc Thompson, the narrator, could do a mean Fry from Futurama…
So I went into this book already hearing a lot of negativity towards it. (Since when is there not negativity in the Star Wars community towards their own product…?) But there seemed to be a lot of pushback towards the writing style in that it was too loose, and not focused on a central story. To me though, this "roving story" theme fits the idea of the book. The Galactic Empire suffered a mammoth loss and was reeling. It was a fist blow to the structure and would echo and resonant throughout the core worlds. So I think focusing on just one or two threads in story would be very narrow minded and miss out on the opportunity to show readers the full scope of what this means on the galactic scale.
This is great, in A New Dawn, we were introduced to Captain Sloane. Now here, we see her at her later career as recently promoted Admiral. She's onboard the Vigilence. And is en route to meet up with many other captains of other Star Destroyers. They all have made secret plans to redevous together to discuss an emergency "next actions" meeting. Wedge Antilles has been "hunting" the Imperial trail and stumbles upon the Vigilence near Akiva. His ship is captured though and is tractored beamed on board. He escapes his ship and hides within the Vigilence. Admiral Sloane is angered by this..an then even more so when a ship blasts passed the Destroyer and lands on Akiva. This ship is carrying a smuggler and his "cargo" Nora Wexely. She's come to Akiva to return home, get her son Temmin, who we're introduced to later, and get out. Nora Wexely, actually fought at the battle of Endor. She was a Y-wing Pilot who accompanied Lando and Nein Nubb in the Falcon, through the Death Star's tunnels and drew some of the TIE fighters away. Pretty cool "cameo". This is handled better than it was in Lost Stars which made way way too much use of that tactic…
What's awesome is we have an 'Interlude' chapter and Han and Chewie just sort of hanging out and it feels very good to see the two buds sort of just traveling. Of course story meets them squarely as they eventually come to see that Chewie's home of Kashshyykk has been occupied by Imperials. Seems an odd time for this since the Empire is sort of reeling. Chewie is outraged and angry and Han calms him down. The problem is that he and Chewie were on route apparently to carry out another "mission" for the New Republic, and they are already obligated to that. Under Chewie's protesting, Han caves and asks to bring as many favors and his friends and allies as possible.
Sinjir, and Temen team up to capture an imperial communications rely station. They manage to take it, and through some trickery, oust the garrison there. Meanwhile they also shoot a "video" of a staged murder of "Temen". They act out a scene of violence and murder from an Imperial shooting Temen. They use the hi jacked comms rely, they (somehow…I love how realistic hacking is in S.W…) broadcast the message to all of Akiva.
We're given a sort of neat view and confirmation of TIE fighter handling compared to the Xwing.
Sort of an awkward way of writing though..that Nora, who's piloting the TIE is shot down, and in the emminent crash she goes on about how there is no eject button due to the lack of Imperial caring for pilots lives. That's fine and jives exactly with what he know and are supposed to be taught about the Empire…but then later we see Nora is fine, and her line is "There really are ejection seats!" And that's it, It just feels like a moment that should have had some better "deeper" explanation. Maybe a sort of predestined reason? Or clever tie in… But not it's just like "oh yea whoops I was wrong there's actually an ejection seat! I missed it sorry! The Empire does care, so ignore all of that, they're not that bad!"
It sort of takes away from the deeper implication of the no ejection philosophy.
Now…my problem up to this point is our 'group' that was brought together…doesn't really seem to have much serious reason to stay together. It seems a bit forced. I know for story telling it must be to a certain point. I mean we have a mother in the character of Nora Wexley, who abandoned her son to go fight the Empire. That's cool, great idea, but she comes back here to make amends, and thing literally thrusts her son into an assassination/bounty hunt to round up the Empire's top thugs? I mean it's not like she's just going off by herself to do this, but she's actively engaging him as well. And her desire to reconnect with her son clearly is still a back seat to her need to fight the Empire. This leads me to another complaint about the book. I call this the stark black/white problem. Aside from Rae Sloane there is just too much black and white differences between the Empire and New Republic (rebellion) here. I like my stories and warring factions with more grey thrown in. I mean this isn't the silly notion that Star Trek uses with the "perfect" humanity that StarFleet is. Starfleet is apparently a 100% good moral compass (not true in fact) but that just comes off as very silly, very immature and makes for some awfully boring stories. Rae Sloane who I really like as a character, is the only Imperial that we're shown that's not a complete oaf, a bully, completely insane, or vengeful to the point of having a destructive mindset. The Rebellion on the other hand, especially in one of the "interlude" chapters, we're shown this almost propaganda-esque view of people who had their homeworld liberated by the Rebellion and the occupying Rebellion troops are all smiles and friendly, meanwhile every Imperial we encounter has a stick up his ass. I far more enjoy a book when I can see the real downside, and realistic grittiness when it comes to something like a very long protracted war. The Empire has been and unfortunately continues in this book, to be either bufoons, lead by haughty, bumbling idiot officers, or just pure malice and hate.
Rae's assistant Adea runs into Wedge and decides to see if she can take him in combat. We're given a new sort of cool idea of Imperial training called ICE, which is Imperial Combat Exercises. Apparently all troopers and officers go through a standard minimum of hand to hand combat. Wedge gets the drop on her, and gets her blaster. I was worried they 'punk' Wedge yet again and completely make this secretary be able to beat him… Wedge is tired, and frustrated, and doesn't take shit this time! She tries to outplay him, but he's stronger and faster. Good for you Wedge! When then are followed up with the narration of someone coming from behind and shooting him in the back… Hoo kay. Fine.
Wedge obviously isn't dead, but it's an odd moment when Sloane see's he's alive… she shot him, expecting him to die, then she orders him locked up…Well if you were wanting to kill him, just do it now! Ugh..
We get a moment from the zabrack bounty hunter Jas, and she's lamenting that she'll probably loose someone on this mission. And she pretends to ignore it and push the feeling aside so that she doesn't grow attach or get hurt when one of them is killed. Strikes me as a bit much considering she's a profession head hunter and literally just met these people at most a day or two ago. Again this
Okay so maybe I'm very dense and didn't pick up on this earlier, but it just now hit me and I realize that Sinjir is actually homosexual. It's only during his backstory / self reflection to Nora that I finally realized… I'm curious to know if it was suggested earlier…I'm sure it was but I probably just missed it. Glad to see this though…but it sort of flies in the face with his sort of fascination with the Zabrak bounty hunter Jas.
While I do have my complaints, I enjoy the very loose and almost anthology like quality to a lot of the story here. We're given the random peeks into how the fall of the Empire is affecting the galaxy on planetary scales.
Let me just say that as expected the production quality is top here, Mr. Bones is really brought to life
So we have the few admirals and Imperial brass all trapped in the palace, pretty much under seige by the mass rioting. This seems a *tad* forced, to give them that "300" type feel, but it's interesting to put the "bad guys" in that position when usually it's the reverse.
Temmin, Nora, Jas, and Sanjir sneak underground into an abandoned droid factory that can lead up into the Palace, but apparently to Temmen it's "haunted". Rae is trapped with the bad-mirals, as they still bicker amongst themselves. They have to wait for Crassius' shuttle, which had to fuel up. Rae has had enough, and demands the star destroyers return, caving into Pandion's original suggest. At the end of the chapter, Rae is contacted by the Sullustan gangster of Akiva… Surat. I like how Rae, despite her protests before, finally gives in and wants the safty of the Destroyers. They found out that Wedge's beacon went through and are expecting an attack.
There's a running gag/theme in the book, that I'm just picking up on. Instead of the classic "I've got a bad feeling about this", The chapters are all beginning with, or contain the lines "You have a problem/We have a problem/ You got a problem?" type lines. I love small running gags like this…
One of the Interlude chapters, we're starting to see a clear bias here in story telling.. Bus full of kids stops at once was the Imperial Academy. It's been taken over by the Rebelling/New Republic. A boy, Pade, is treated well and kind and the rebel solider who he speaks to is this bastian of humanity, giving the kid money and an offer to join the new academy, since his parents left him…. If this were an imperial run place, the officer would have been written to be a douche bag…
Further leading to the sort of annoying writing style where all Imperials are assholes…
So we're first lead to believe that Sinjir would sell them out to the Empire, but it's actually that dumb punk Temmin. He literally rats out the entire group, and only wants to save he and his mother and were willing to turn everyone else into the empire. He made a deal apparently on the sly contacting Surat.
Lol the story line with Jam is…a bit odd. He attempts to take over the ground to air turbo laser turrent, and shoot down Crassius's yacht, that's coming down to pick up the Imperials and their now prisoners of Nora, Jas, Sanjir etc. Jam takes it, but the guns don't work. He tries to perform some hotwiring on it. Now this guy we're introduced to as a pretty tough badass marine. But a big problem is Star Wars is that everything is hackable, and everyone know how to do it perfectly. So I was happy to see that this didn't actually work for him. I really expected him to just spend two paragraphs working on it, and fixing it with ease. Now the way he really fixes it, by hitting it really hard with his fists, is actually more satisfying than if he actually put his mind to it… I think we've all had those moments of "bang with stick". That being said, his story line sort of went no where. He gets some resolution and recognition in the end, but ultimately he not being present wouldn't have had much of an impact. I don't mind character plots like this, it adds a bit of realism to the story, that not everyone is mission critical to the plot, but it is a bit jarring, since it's not used very often.
Wrapping the book up, Nora pretty much takes out all of the Imperial big wigs, save Rae Sloane. To me this is such a gross waste of characters. I think it would have been far more fun, enjoyable and realistic if maybe only 1 or 2 were killed, and it was setup that the hero's would have to go on sort of assassination missions to take them out one by one, after they scatter. But…no. All Dead. Plus on top of this we now have this random group of characters that honestly came together out of greed really, now just wanting to continue together? I just don't see the connection or bond.
I'm glad Rae Sloane survives, but I just hope they don't turn her into a General Hux type character that just a whipping post and gets beaten and out played by everyone. I was really hoping that the kid Temmin (who by the way betrayed all of them) get killed or captured or something. No…we have Wedge, the coolest guy in the galaxy, get captured and beaten up by everyone he encounters..Sigh, I enjoyed the book, I like the idea of us seeing different places around the galaxy during this downfall of the Empire, but I just couldn't really get a feel or good connection with the main protagonists, besides Sinjir and perhaps Nora…sometimes. Speaking of which…I find it interesting that Nora didn't really change or evolve. She began the story as someone who chose the empire over her family…and she spent the book beating herself up over it…but by the end, still preferred fighting and flying around over sticking with and protecting her son. Hell! She even put her son in life threatening positions, multiple times!
I don't mind, but damn…just saying…bitch is ruthless!
I enjoyed the book I think it was heavily flawed in that it rushed certain stories, and had a lot of missed opportunities though..
So I went into this book already hearing a lot of negativity towards it. (Since when is there not negativity in the Star Wars community towards their own product…?) But there seemed to be a lot of pushback towards the writing style in that it was too loose, and not focused on a central story. To me though, this "roving story" theme fits the idea of the book. The Galactic Empire suffered a mammoth loss and was reeling. It was a fist blow to the structure and would echo and resonant throughout the core worlds. So I think focusing on just one or two threads in story would be very narrow minded and miss out on the opportunity to show readers the full scope of what this means on the galactic scale.
This is great, in A New Dawn, we were introduced to Captain Sloane. Now here, we see her at her later career as recently promoted Admiral. She's onboard the Vigilence. And is en route to meet up with many other captains of other Star Destroyers. They all have made secret plans to redevous together to discuss an emergency "next actions" meeting. Wedge Antilles has been "hunting" the Imperial trail and stumbles upon the Vigilence near Akiva. His ship is captured though and is tractored beamed on board. He escapes his ship and hides within the Vigilence. Admiral Sloane is angered by this..an then even more so when a ship blasts passed the Destroyer and lands on Akiva. This ship is carrying a smuggler and his "cargo" Nora Wexely. She's come to Akiva to return home, get her son Temmin, who we're introduced to later, and get out. Nora Wexely, actually fought at the battle of Endor. She was a Y-wing Pilot who accompanied Lando and Nein Nubb in the Falcon, through the Death Star's tunnels and drew some of the TIE fighters away. Pretty cool "cameo". This is handled better than it was in Lost Stars which made way way too much use of that tactic…
What's awesome is we have an 'Interlude' chapter and Han and Chewie just sort of hanging out and it feels very good to see the two buds sort of just traveling. Of course story meets them squarely as they eventually come to see that Chewie's home of Kashshyykk has been occupied by Imperials. Seems an odd time for this since the Empire is sort of reeling. Chewie is outraged and angry and Han calms him down. The problem is that he and Chewie were on route apparently to carry out another "mission" for the New Republic, and they are already obligated to that. Under Chewie's protesting, Han caves and asks to bring as many favors and his friends and allies as possible.
Sinjir, and Temen team up to capture an imperial communications rely station. They manage to take it, and through some trickery, oust the garrison there. Meanwhile they also shoot a "video" of a staged murder of "Temen". They act out a scene of violence and murder from an Imperial shooting Temen. They use the hi jacked comms rely, they (somehow…I love how realistic hacking is in S.W…) broadcast the message to all of Akiva.
We're given a sort of neat view and confirmation of TIE fighter handling compared to the Xwing.
Sort of an awkward way of writing though..that Nora, who's piloting the TIE is shot down, and in the emminent crash she goes on about how there is no eject button due to the lack of Imperial caring for pilots lives. That's fine and jives exactly with what he know and are supposed to be taught about the Empire…but then later we see Nora is fine, and her line is "There really are ejection seats!" And that's it, It just feels like a moment that should have had some better "deeper" explanation. Maybe a sort of predestined reason? Or clever tie in… But not it's just like "oh yea whoops I was wrong there's actually an ejection seat! I missed it sorry! The Empire does care, so ignore all of that, they're not that bad!"
It sort of takes away from the deeper implication of the no ejection philosophy.
Now…my problem up to this point is our 'group' that was brought together…doesn't really seem to have much serious reason to stay together. It seems a bit forced. I know for story telling it must be to a certain point. I mean we have a mother in the character of Nora Wexley, who abandoned her son to go fight the Empire. That's cool, great idea, but she comes back here to make amends, and thing literally thrusts her son into an assassination/bounty hunt to round up the Empire's top thugs? I mean it's not like she's just going off by herself to do this, but she's actively engaging him as well. And her desire to reconnect with her son clearly is still a back seat to her need to fight the Empire. This leads me to another complaint about the book. I call this the stark black/white problem. Aside from Rae Sloane there is just too much black and white differences between the Empire and New Republic (rebellion) here. I like my stories and warring factions with more grey thrown in. I mean this isn't the silly notion that Star Trek uses with the "perfect" humanity that StarFleet is. Starfleet is apparently a 100% good moral compass (not true in fact) but that just comes off as very silly, very immature and makes for some awfully boring stories. Rae Sloane who I really like as a character, is the only Imperial that we're shown that's not a complete oaf, a bully, completely insane, or vengeful to the point of having a destructive mindset. The Rebellion on the other hand, especially in one of the "interlude" chapters, we're shown this almost propaganda-esque view of people who had their homeworld liberated by the Rebellion and the occupying Rebellion troops are all smiles and friendly, meanwhile every Imperial we encounter has a stick up his ass. I far more enjoy a book when I can see the real downside, and realistic grittiness when it comes to something like a very long protracted war. The Empire has been and unfortunately continues in this book, to be either bufoons, lead by haughty, bumbling idiot officers, or just pure malice and hate.
Rae's assistant Adea runs into Wedge and decides to see if she can take him in combat. We're given a new sort of cool idea of Imperial training called ICE, which is Imperial Combat Exercises. Apparently all troopers and officers go through a standard minimum of hand to hand combat. Wedge gets the drop on her, and gets her blaster. I was worried they 'punk' Wedge yet again and completely make this secretary be able to beat him… Wedge is tired, and frustrated, and doesn't take shit this time! She tries to outplay him, but he's stronger and faster. Good for you Wedge! When then are followed up with the narration of someone coming from behind and shooting him in the back… Hoo kay. Fine.
Wedge obviously isn't dead, but it's an odd moment when Sloane see's he's alive… she shot him, expecting him to die, then she orders him locked up…Well if you were wanting to kill him, just do it now! Ugh..
We get a moment from the zabrack bounty hunter Jas, and she's lamenting that she'll probably loose someone on this mission. And she pretends to ignore it and push the feeling aside so that she doesn't grow attach or get hurt when one of them is killed. Strikes me as a bit much considering she's a profession head hunter and literally just met these people at most a day or two ago. Again this
Okay so maybe I'm very dense and didn't pick up on this earlier, but it just now hit me and I realize that Sinjir is actually homosexual. It's only during his backstory / self reflection to Nora that I finally realized… I'm curious to know if it was suggested earlier…I'm sure it was but I probably just missed it. Glad to see this though…but it sort of flies in the face with his sort of fascination with the Zabrak bounty hunter Jas.
While I do have my complaints, I enjoy the very loose and almost anthology like quality to a lot of the story here. We're given the random peeks into how the fall of the Empire is affecting the galaxy on planetary scales.
Let me just say that as expected the production quality is top here, Mr. Bones is really brought to life
So we have the few admirals and Imperial brass all trapped in the palace, pretty much under seige by the mass rioting. This seems a *tad* forced, to give them that "300" type feel, but it's interesting to put the "bad guys" in that position when usually it's the reverse.
Temmin, Nora, Jas, and Sanjir sneak underground into an abandoned droid factory that can lead up into the Palace, but apparently to Temmen it's "haunted". Rae is trapped with the bad-mirals, as they still bicker amongst themselves. They have to wait for Crassius' shuttle, which had to fuel up. Rae has had enough, and demands the star destroyers return, caving into Pandion's original suggest. At the end of the chapter, Rae is contacted by the Sullustan gangster of Akiva… Surat. I like how Rae, despite her protests before, finally gives in and wants the safty of the Destroyers. They found out that Wedge's beacon went through and are expecting an attack.
There's a running gag/theme in the book, that I'm just picking up on. Instead of the classic "I've got a bad feeling about this", The chapters are all beginning with, or contain the lines "You have a problem/We have a problem/ You got a problem?" type lines. I love small running gags like this…
One of the Interlude chapters, we're starting to see a clear bias here in story telling.. Bus full of kids stops at once was the Imperial Academy. It's been taken over by the Rebelling/New Republic. A boy, Pade, is treated well and kind and the rebel solider who he speaks to is this bastian of humanity, giving the kid money and an offer to join the new academy, since his parents left him…. If this were an imperial run place, the officer would have been written to be a douche bag…
Further leading to the sort of annoying writing style where all Imperials are assholes…
So we're first lead to believe that Sinjir would sell them out to the Empire, but it's actually that dumb punk Temmin. He literally rats out the entire group, and only wants to save he and his mother and were willing to turn everyone else into the empire. He made a deal apparently on the sly contacting Surat.
Lol the story line with Jam is…a bit odd. He attempts to take over the ground to air turbo laser turrent, and shoot down Crassius's yacht, that's coming down to pick up the Imperials and their now prisoners of Nora, Jas, Sanjir etc. Jam takes it, but the guns don't work. He tries to perform some hotwiring on it. Now this guy we're introduced to as a pretty tough badass marine. But a big problem is Star Wars is that everything is hackable, and everyone know how to do it perfectly. So I was happy to see that this didn't actually work for him. I really expected him to just spend two paragraphs working on it, and fixing it with ease. Now the way he really fixes it, by hitting it really hard with his fists, is actually more satisfying than if he actually put his mind to it… I think we've all had those moments of "bang with stick". That being said, his story line sort of went no where. He gets some resolution and recognition in the end, but ultimately he not being present wouldn't have had much of an impact. I don't mind character plots like this, it adds a bit of realism to the story, that not everyone is mission critical to the plot, but it is a bit jarring, since it's not used very often.
Wrapping the book up, Nora pretty much takes out all of the Imperial big wigs, save Rae Sloane. To me this is such a gross waste of characters. I think it would have been far more fun, enjoyable and realistic if maybe only 1 or 2 were killed, and it was setup that the hero's would have to go on sort of assassination missions to take them out one by one, after they scatter. But…no. All Dead. Plus on top of this we now have this random group of characters that honestly came together out of greed really, now just wanting to continue together? I just don't see the connection or bond.
I'm glad Rae Sloane survives, but I just hope they don't turn her into a General Hux type character that just a whipping post and gets beaten and out played by everyone. I was really hoping that the kid Temmin (who by the way betrayed all of them) get killed or captured or something. No…we have Wedge, the coolest guy in the galaxy, get captured and beaten up by everyone he encounters..Sigh, I enjoyed the book, I like the idea of us seeing different places around the galaxy during this downfall of the Empire, but I just couldn't really get a feel or good connection with the main protagonists, besides Sinjir and perhaps Nora…sometimes. Speaking of which…I find it interesting that Nora didn't really change or evolve. She began the story as someone who chose the empire over her family…and she spent the book beating herself up over it…but by the end, still preferred fighting and flying around over sticking with and protecting her son. Hell! She even put her son in life threatening positions, multiple times!
I don't mind, but damn…just saying…bitch is ruthless!
I enjoyed the book I think it was heavily flawed in that it rushed certain stories, and had a lot of missed opportunities though..