Books Star Wars: Last Shot by Daniel Jose Older (Out on Apr 17, 2018)

Do we really have to use spoiler tags in a thread specifically for discussing a book?

 

Spoiler

I wouldn't be surprised (after all, Qi'ra isn't in any of the other movies, so they don't seem to be in contact. However, hasn't it yet to be explained what role Qi'ra plays and if she and Han were involved?.

Spoiler

Rebel Dawn is Legends, not canon, so different continuities and different versions of the same idea.

 

Everyone’s using a uff from the books to discuss one thing really. Might as well just start a spoilers allowed thread for the conversation.


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Spoiler: One Canon Question

For @Sinrebirth One Canon project who is trying to make it all fit.

 

Oh, didn't realize that.

Spoiler

IMHO, at this point, canon and Legends have diverged so much that a syncretistic approach to it has become impossible. Mileage may vary, of course.

 

You don't know the power of the Sinny side of the Continuity.

 

What? What kinda internet poster are you?

 

Reasonable, eh?

<Looks it up>

Ah, here we are - you're on the Internet endangered species list.

 

Finished the book. It was okay? I think I’d rank it towards the bottom of the new canon novels just above Ahsoka.

There were parts I liked not overall it felt like a bit of a chore to get through. Highlights were definitely Peekpa and Taka.

I wasn’t entirely sold on Han or Lando’s characterisation.

Glad others loved it though!

 

I agree entirely. The jumping back and forth, sometimes even every other (short) chapter, was really jarring and pulled me out of the story every time. For the longest time, none of the flashbacks particularly felt import or meaningful to the main plot in the "present" time. Even once it became apparent what the exact connections were, they largely fell flat and felt superfluous. The actual connection could have simply been explained in a couple of lines of dialogue. Or, even better, I think they probably could have just ditched the past connection entirely and drew Han and Lando into this thing in a more effective way. The flashbacks honestly just felt to me like a shoe-horned attempt to tie this in to the characters in roughly the same era as the Solo movie.

 

The Lando/L3 section reeks the most of “mandated media tie-in” and the ending of the book would have probably played out exactly the same if the Lando/L3 chapters were exorcised from the book completely.

I enjoyed the Young Han chapters because they were fun, but I agree that they could have probably been shortened and more attention given to the current post ROTJ timeline.


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Works for me. For now anyway.

 

Probably feels like that because that's exactly what it is

you could say that about the entire existence of almost every new canon novel so far if we're being honest about it. It's the future of Star Wars literature, tie-ins to get people who are interested in the movie to spend more money, pretty much.

 

If the novels are good, does it matter?

 

Impossible to answer. Matter to some? maybe. Matter to others? maybe not.

IMO I don't think it really does but it's hard to tell until we actually start getting novels that are good

 

But we've had good novels, with a lot of them not tying into other media.

 

Obviously that's a matter of opinion. I don't think we've had many good novels at all in the last few years. New canon started strongly with Tarkin, A New Dawn, Lords of the Sith (Heir to the Jedi was garbage) but since then it's been one disappointment after another. Catalyst and Thrawn were pretty good. Bloodline ok. From what I remember the rest has been bleh.

In my opinion of course. Clearly this is a subjective measure.

 

The Approaching Storm existed to excite people for Ep II, Labyrinth of Evil for Ep III. All the Republic Commando novels owe their existence to a tie-in for a video game, same with The Old Republic novels, the KotOR comics, Ruins of Dantooine, The Force Unleashed I&II. Comics were done for the Ewoks, Droids and both Clone Wars cartoons. X-Wing games begat X-Wing novels and comics. Shadows of the Empire was a gamble to see if they could get movie-level hype (and sales) by doing everything but a movie. The Clone Wars multimedia project kept the hype going between movies. The entire publishing program exists to build the brand. It's not new, that's just no ongoing multi-book series to give us a counterpoint to the more obvious tie-ins right now.

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Well, obviously. That's exactly what I said. I wasn't suggesting that tie-ins never happened before, just that now it's almost all that is happening.

 

I would disagree with that. If anything I think they're showing the opposite. Could be we just have different understandings of what exactly that means.

 

How so? We're at a point where characters from cartoons are bridging the gap into movies, book characters are going to TV, and comic characters are getting into books. Tie-in material is now considered just as important to the overall narrative.