Lit Rogue Planet

I just finished reading the novel. Rate it on this scale and explain your opinion.

 

9/10 I really, really enjoyed it. Zonoma Sekot was a fun story and we got to see the development between Obi-Wan and Anakin.

 

2/10

It's been years since I read it though, so maybe I'd like it better now. I loved Raith Seinar's character. Aside from that the book was an absolute mess, most of the characters got on my nerves, Anakin and Obi-Wan seemed... off... somehow, and it was an absolute dullsfest. I think what disappointed me most of all was that it had a LOT of potential. It could have been a fantastic story that set up the later YV invasion. Instead it was just riding the coattails of TPM, and obviously so.

There are few novels I'd give this poor a rating. Some for being stupid, some for pissing me off, some for glaring plot holes/laziness on the part of the author. This might be the only one I'd rate so poorly for being disappointingly dull.

(I understand a *lot* of people like this book -- I just can't get into a book that has no substance. Sorry if I sound harsh. This is just one of those novels I reallllllly didn't like.)

 

Paging Rogue1-and-a-half, the beacons have been lit and Rogue Planet calls for aid!

 

Rogue Planet is a classic case of mismatch between author and material. Greg Bear is an extremely talented science fiction author, his mantle full of awards doesn't exist for no reason, but... he has absolutely no idea what to do with Star Wars.

Rogue Planet is about Zonama Sekot, it's pretty much the only thing Bear has any interest in within the novel, the characters are simply lenses used to unwrap this cool bio-planet. Unfortunately there's nothing there to make us care. The novel is an idea in search of a narrative.

You can get away with this in highly speculative science fiction, but not in epic space opera.

 

This was exactly my issue with it right here. Greg Bear was sort of stuck juggling one too many necessary plot he had to include in the story for it to fit the era, and none of them -- particular the Zonama Sekot one, which seemed most interesting at first -- reached its full potential.

 

Seeing as Rogue Planet was written before AoTC, Bear at least can be forgiven for not knowing about the Tusken killing and how it was "supposed to be his first dabble in the Dark Side".

 

Not the best SW book. In fact probably one of the worst.

It had good moments though. 5/10

 

I just re-read it a couple of months ago, and yeah, it has very good characterizations and Sienar/Tarkin sideplot is very interesting in theory, but somehow it just doesn't grab me. The plot doesn't move and Sekot's mysteries are being talked about but none of them is resolved.

I won't give it a grade, because I don't like grading things I can't measure. Who knows what I will think about this in a year? If I had suddenly liked it, no word in the novel would have changed.

 

Breathtakingly boring, as well as just plain disappointing, but having read some of his other work I have to agree that it was simply a mismatch between the author and the material being written, and I think this shows because the parts concerning Zonama Sekot were the ones that caught my interest. Everything/one else was filler. Not the worst SW novel of all time, but certainly one of the lower ones on the totem pole.

2/10

 

I hated it.

10/10

 

I didn't get that impression from Rogue Planet. Sure, Anakin came across as having "dark potential" in some scenes- but he still came across as a kind-hearted kid in the rest of the book.

 

It's been a while since I read this, got it as a gift in 2003 when I first jumped into the EU, I thought it was good for what it was, it actually made me read NJO Force Heretic series which got me into the EU fully so that could be why i gave it 8/10 because in a way it spawned my love of EU.

 

I don't remember much about it other than the opening on Coruscant being great, and the rest of the novel taking me ages to finish despite some of the chapters being a paragraph long. I'll give it a 6/10 for nostalgia's sake ("Wow, a follow-up to The Phantom Menace!!!")

 

I give it 10/10. It's one of the best things in the entire EU. It's probably still the EU book with the most literary merit.

Not a lot happens in the book, but the character development is fantastic. Raith Seinar is a wonderful, wonderful, fascinating character. He's compelling for a lot of reasons, most notably his ever increasing paranoia . . . Ke Daiv, the Blood Carver, is one of the best villains of the EU. He's fleshed out marvelously. We understand his personal issues, his shame, his self-loathing and the way he turns that into aggression.

And Obi-Wan and Anakin . . . Bear seems like about the only author in the EU who really nailed their relationship. And Obi-Wan's character here is finally given the development it really deserves. I recall, when we were all doing those "20 best scenes in the EU" or whatever a few years back that I picked the ending of this book, when Obi-Wan realizes what it is to have the "heart of a master" as one of my . . . top five, I think.

One last thing. A direct quote, in fact: “The Force disappointed you, did it not, Obi-Wan? It allowed your master to die. It could allow Anakin to die. And if it does, that will kill any chance of your remaining a Jedi. The future could not be read. The Force was silent and compressed around them all, as if holding in a giant breath.”


If you don't get a chill from that, even just in excerpt, I really don't know what to say to you. It's a perfect novel.

 

I'll second Rogue. Is it a pulse-pounding action thriller? No. But that doesn't make it a bad book. It's a fantastically written sci-fi character study, one that features tremendous characterization of Obi-Wan, a heartbreaking Anakin who's far more compelling than he ever was in AOTC or ROTS, and awesome Sienar and Tarkin. It explores a fascinating new world and unravels a mystery, brings our heroes into contact with something mystic and larger than themselves, it establishes tremendous backstory in the PT context . . . it's a great book, and a great Star Wars book. It does exactly what it should do, and kicks the ass of 90% of the PT-era novels.

 

1/10

Horribly boring and I found the descriptions indecipherable, half the time I couldn't figure out what the hell was supposed to be going on or what anything looked like. It's possibly the only Star Wars novel that I can't play out in my imagination.

 

It has potential and some of the dialog is pretty amazing, sadly it suffers somewhat from actually being utterly unnecessary. As the NJO books do a better job of explaining the lost Fosh Jedi und Sekot. Sienar is rather fun, though he seems a little too much like Bevel from Darksabre at times.

 

I love short chapters. The FH trilogy can go to hell.

 

My mother is a fish.

 

I thought RP was great at setting up peripheral stuff. Zonama Sekot, the Potentium, the Blood Carvers, Charza Kwinn as well as his species, Thracia Cho-Leem, and Raith Sienar were all great developments, and I wish more of them would appear more often in the EU.

I also thought it was interesting that Tarkin basically flat-out states that Palpatine's long-term plan is to destroy the Republic and the Jedi, and that Tarkin is a close partner in it. That's the PT-era Tarkin I want to see more of, not the TCW version.