181st Imperial Discussion Group: Assault at Selonia!

Hey! This month we will be discussing Assault at Selonia, the second book in The Corellian Trilogy, by Roger MacBride Allen.

Here's a link to the TF.n Staff Reviews.

Here's some points to use as starting points for the discussion, though as always, chip in in any way you like and feel free to raise any other points!

- Pacing - this was an issue raised a lot in last month's discussion - how does it shape up in this novel? On the face of it, there's more happening with a much more physically separated cast. Leia, Han, the kids and Luke are all in different places, and physically unable to reunite with each other due to the interdiction field and political situation preventing contact. However, do you feel much more actually happens? Or does this novel, again, fill like it's too full of filler?

- Mara Jade. Mara plays a larger role in this novel, and it's one of the later novels that were published before she became part of the Skysolo Clan. Here we see the last vestiges of a potentially untrustworthy Jade, and that's something the author plays on, giving us reasons for Han and Leia to legitimately suspect her involvement, though we know, from scenes written early in the first novel, that her role as an unwitting courier is likely genuine unless she's playing a far more complex game. That's a situation full of potential dramatic irony as Han and Leia might take action against an ally we know they can trust but they do not believe, but that's not a situation that ever really comes to fruition. Is that a wasted opportunity within the novel? A notion that plays well retrospectively into the idea that Mara soon will be part of the family and above suspicion? The mad rantings of a Mara Jade fan who's been given control of the discussion points?

- The setting. One thing that the novel does is give us the opportunity to visit more of the Corellian system, with Han among the Selonians and the kids among the Drall. Was this well-handled? Did it feel alien and like it expanded the universe, or fairly by-the-numbers? Was one part of the setting handled better than another?

- Bakura and Gaeriel. I imagine at the time of publication, this was an unexpected return to a much earlier piece of Bantam-based continuity. Did it feel organic here, or contrived? On a personal level, she is used to illustrate the passage of time and changes that have occurred since the events of the Original Trilogy, the way the Corellian situation is used to make that point about the Rebellion-turned-Republic itself, but as always, the question is, did it work for you?

Off you go!

Next month we will be discussing Showdown at Centerpoint by Roger MacBride Allen, and you'll all have to forgive me if I succumb to my British schooling and spell it Centrepoint...

 

The pace in the previous novel might have been slow until the Solo family arrived at Corellia and at the end of the novel, but I didn?t have a problem with it. Considering the intrigue, the numerous hidden players, and how the back-history of the Corellian system played a critical role in setting up the scenario, it was necessary to go slow so that people wouldn?t feel lost. Or at least ensure that not so many people would feel lost while reading the novel.

This month, the pace picked up for Han, Leia, and Luke. Han and Leia managed to make their escapes from their respective prisons, while Luke is bringing in a rescue party. A lot happened in their respective plotlines. As for Chewie and the kids, their plotline moved at a slower pace, but it delved into the mystery that was a key theme in this trilogy.

The suspicion Han and Leia felt towards Mara stemmed from several sources. First of all, there?s the whole timing of the sequence of events. Next, the insurgents in the system consisted of former Imperials, and Mara was a former Imperial herself. You would think that after she helped save the twins back in The Last Command, they would trust her more. However, there?s also the fact that she chose to remain independent rather than swear loyalty to the New Republic. That?s the kind of attitude many in the political and military hierarchies had back in The Last Command. You had Bremen, Sesfan, and others who felt that those who were of questionable trust shouldn?t be trusted. That attitude nearly cost the Wayland infiltration team their lives and the New Republic their victory. Leia really couldn?t take any action against Mara because she needed her more than Mara needed Leia. Luke and Mara had to deal with the need for necessity back on Myrkr. As for Han, he wasn?t in a position to do anything in this novel. He could have in the next one, but they had more immediate concerns.

I think the Dralls were handled better because we started to learn about them in the previous novel, and the education finished in this one. As for the Selonians, we started to get a look into their society in this novel, and this will be completed in the next one.


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The pacing remains, and shall remain, abysmal. A grand total of about one event happens in each storyline. An entire novel, and the kids do nothing. They land, and look at a repulsor. Han escapes with Dracmus, who at least is hilarious. Leia and Mara escape. Leia, Mara, and Han meet up. Luke recruits a fleet and is in a battle. This is all that happens. It's like FOTJ, except without having to repeat itself three times in a row before it can move on to the next plot point. RMA just cannot manage to make anything happen in his books. He's hung up on these insane fifty-page action sequences that just go on and on and on and on and on, trying to distract you from the fact that there's just nothing happening. I don't know if it's just a total failure of economy of language or what, but it's amazing how long he can drag out even the most basic things.

I rather like the fact that they suspect Mara a little, as it's a nice move away from the lovey-dovey brotherhood of heroes nonsense where suddenly Luke is best friends with Booster despite never having met him, because they're both heroes. Mara's a shady figure, who's helped them in the past, but they've only had very limited contact with her, and most of her contact has been with Luke. On the other hand, it's a bit awkward here, because there's just so little motivation for her to be involved with crazy schemes like this, and she's been consistent in helping them in the past. It's a good concept, but it would play much better earlier in her contact with the Solos, or if she had an actual articulable motive. As it stands, though, it's not too bad, as they're vaguely suspicious of her without ever being paranoid or hostile about it, and settle into trusting her pretty easily. So it's more plus than minus, I guess.

RMA doesn't do a particularly good job of world-building. Some of the stuff, like Selonian sterility, is realistic and interesting, but much of it, like Drallish love of talking about family, is just rather rote and silly, and doesn't build any real sense of foreignness or interest. I would have preferred to see a more interesting, exotic pair of cultures developed. The Selonians, with their queen-bee structure and failure to grasp lying, aren't too bad, but the Drall are really just mannered, gossipy little lazy English stereotypes. Extra-furry hobbits, except boring.

I like the fact that RMA reached back to another Bantam book and made connections, which was rare enough in that day. However, the mechanism for doing so was inane, idiotic, stupid, and also moronic. The NR has no fleet? It forgot to leave a few ships off the refurbishing order until after some of them were done? Really? What? The entire fleet? Really? How stupid do you think we are? So, even once we buy that, we then have to buy that the place with spare ships isn't a big Core world, it isn't some regional power, it isn't a megacorporation . . . it's backwater nowhereland Bakura? I suppose the fact that RMA's idea of a big, powerful, threat-busting fleet is a battleship and three destroyers should tell us something about the failure to grasp scale or realism here. So military nonentity Bakura and its nonentity fleet are our only hope . . . and just coincidentally, industrial nonpowerhouse and technological noninnovator Bakura has managed to develop insanely cutting-edge new technology for defeating interdiction fields . . . because they figured they needed this offensive technology to defend themselves against the Ssi-Ruuk? Everything about this is stupid beyond belief. So, yeah, contrived. I liked the idea of Luke having to awkwardly reconnect with an old romantic interest who had moved on and married someone else (though Thanas? Really? The ex-Imperial guy like two and a half times her age? It didn't have to be another major TAB character, man!), but RMA doesn't do much with it, and all the circumstances around it are just mind-bogglingly dumb.

 

Just to bump this up so it's above the previous month's discussion again...

I feel like the Gaeriel subplot is RMA's shot at Luke romance that he wanted to do originally (in the supposed "Luke has to marry for political reasons" b-plot that got shot down by LFL), and maybe he even had mapped out Luke meeting Gaeriel in that story where both would still pine about having been in love but not coming together. Or better still - what if Gaeriel was meant as the political marriage, with that union securing the "mighty Bakuran fleet" which, of, course, would only exist so we could dig that Bakura girl whose name I've written enough in this paragraph up again for the romance plot? In that regard, the characters talking about the missed opportunity of their relationship would gain an insider meta level that I would totally applaud.

I'd like to add that I've got nothing against Gaeriel, and at the time of Truce at Bakura I wouldn't have been unhappy with her becoming Mrs. Skywalker. That ship had of course sailed long before Mara vs. Callista was ever a topic, but I feel (don't remember enough details to know for sure) that Tyers did a good job with that romance. And back then, I didn't even think of a possible Mara-Luke-relationship until I knew that it would come in HoT (in which I didn't feel any good romantic vibes, and then it suddenly was "you hard-boiled author-creation are not gonna make it easy for me, let's marry before the contract runs out").

 

I always saw the Bakura thing as mostly political. They were feeling lonely and ignored by the NR, and had the technology, so instead of scraping up ships away from normal duties, why not ask Bakura?

The lack of a fleet is somewhat odd, but other sorces have since made that a lot more reasonable. Most of the fleet is tied up in garrison/patrol duty, and the numbered fleets were chewed up fighting the remnant, and since it was quiet, they took the time to repair and refit.

As for the HIMS, it's actually Fridge Brilliance to have the Bakuran's figure that one out. The trilogy does a lot to link the Interdiction field and other cool effects to Centerpoint and the Repulsors. What is Bakura's primary industry again? Repulsorlifts (and namana fruit liquor). They probably broke into the HIMS theory as a side effect of the repulsorlift industry R&D.

 

Yeah, I gotta admit I really wasn't up with the pacing on this either. I think I actually noticed it more in this novel than the last one. It was somewhere in the Mara and Leia escape that it really hit me like a ton of bricks. Two kickass characters, teaming up despite distrust, stealth combat, adverse environmental conditions, no equipment, it should be a slam dunk of tension and excitement. But somehow it was dragged on so long, with things explained in such painstaking detail, that I just lost interest. I think perhaps it was this sequence that really hammered it home to me because I'm often not the most taken with action scenes - it's not why I read the books. It takes and extraordinary action sequence to really fire up my imagination simply by virtue of the quality of the action. I'm more interested in what's at stake for the characters or which characters and that kind of thing. It happens to me in movies to. I can zone out a little during action sequences so I often don't feel secure in judging them because I know I'm predisposed to be negative. But here's an action sequence with two characters I love that I was expecting to enjoy. I was like, all right! And yet I was still, not just disinterested by actively bored and wishing to get it over with by the end, and I just felt...uncomfortable having that reaction.

I wish I didn't - again, as my overwhelming reaction to the last novel, I think there are many good ideas here, but I'm not sure they're being done justice?

The distrust of Mara is a great example. I think it makes sense. Sure she doesn't have fantastic motives here, but it's a really nifty idea. She is trustworthy, but her own shady past and current circumstance conspire to make her look guilty. A hasty alliance is forged and...okay, it's in character for it to be proven accurate and I do like that there was the idea of distrust at all. But I can't shake the feeling that something really dramatic could have been done with unfortunate circumstances making Leia or Han believe she betrayed them, that they needed to take action against her, with us knowing that not to be the case. Great dramatic irony, the potential for our heroes to sabotage their own missions while thinking they're doing the right thing - hero vs hero! And of course, it'd ultimately resolve, they'd overcome the difficulties they set for themselves, and Mara would be proven innocent and it might even set the stage a little more for their trust of her in later novels (though okay, she's married to Luke by then). But instead there's just...there's the spectre of something more dramatic that never comes to fruition.

As to the worldbuilding, I did really like the Selonians. I think they're interesting and while okay, not truly alien in that they mimic hive structure, it's still interesting to see in mammals and the internal political struggles of the Selonians are an interesting additional conflict that flies into the humans vs aliens conflict that's ongoing at a potentially dramatic right angle. Plus, yes, Dracmus is hilarious.

But I agree with Havac that the Drall just aren't...really that awesome. They're pretty generic. Even Ebrihim's aunt is very...stereotypical. "Don't land on my prize flowers!" she yells, wielding a shotgun, in a scene that tries to trick the reader into forgetting this is the stereotype of every old, eccentric stereotype of an Englishwoman.

Regarding the Bakura plotline, first of all, okay, Havac has fair points about the unbelievability of the various excuses that there's no Fleet. Honestly that wasn't what bothered me most though? Like, it is ridiculous, but it also kind of feels about part for the course for the...tone of the series. Almost like it's such a big oversight I'm willing to just wave my hand and move on (which okay, I wouldn't in a novel I thought a bit more highly of, though as I've also said, I think these novels have good ideas; I don't hate them or anything). It was the way Luke literally just kind of...asked for a fl

 

BTW, does anyone remember that bit about Luke originally having to marry as well? I thought I'd look it up as nobody else mentioned it, but I couldn't find anything with basic keywords. I'm pretty sure it's true, but I don't want to start rumours I have no proof for. I think it must have been in an RMA interview...

 

Yeah, this was one of the weakest points in the book, IMO. The idea that the galaxy spanning New Republic couldn't muster a handful of available capital ships is ridiculous. Hell, if the Bakura loaned the NR a fleet consisting of hundreds of ships, I might take the bait and buy the general concept of the storyline. However, only four ships? How the frell am I supposed to believe that the New Republic couldn't muster less than half a dozen ships, so it had to borrow four.

Four.

I give Dan Wallace BIG props for trying to make sense of this mess in the original Essential Chronology. IIRC, he noted that the majority of the New Republic's battle fleet not undergoing repairs were tied down patroling the NR's border with the Imperial Remnant.

Still... the idea that Ackbar couldn't borrow ONE ship each from a handful of worlds to assemble a task force stretches credibility to the limit.

--Adm. Nick

 

I had a similar issue with the BFC trilogy - especially by the second volume it was clear that there was really a one volume story being told with a lot of padding.

I really didn't care much for the parts on Selonia. For some reason, Corellia had always been a world so ubiquitous that it had never really been involved with any stories prior (as far as I could remember). When we finally get there in volume one, I was expecting Boston, MA and got Lincoln, NB. Now in the second volume we go around the other worlds which rapidly lost my interest, although it's amusing that two of them were so nondescript that only the Galaxies MMO could use them. Corellia, the Corellian system and the entire Corellian Sector come across more like one of the Outer Rim regions rather than one of the most important and vital areas of the Core Worlds.

As far as the ridiculous "fleet" business was, I chalk it up to the "Bakura Curse" - any time there's a story to be ruined, Bakura is swiftly brought in to do the job. (Okay, maybe that's just my bitterness over the bait-and-switch storytelling inherent in "The Truce at Bakura"...)

 

Yeah, the books really don't make Corellia feel important at all. It's a totally nondescript planet that's been cut off from the galaxy for a while and is mostly a depressed mass of grayness, and then Selonia and Drall are rural, lightly-populated planets with goofy aliens, and Talus and Tralus are nonentities.

As to Thrackan, I love what's done with him as a villain, but there's really no reason for him to be Han's evil twin. That's just hokey. It takes a really great villain, and makes him unnecessarily cheesy. I don't mind having him tied into Han's past, but couldn't it at least be a distant cousin who doesn't look like him, or an old buddy from the Academy, or a childhood friend or something?

On the fleet, becca, yes, it's silly that Luke just waltzes in and gets a fleet. I think it's kind of symptomatic of the books, in that it bypasses these situations that are actually interesting and have story mileage, because it's too busy trying to move onto the next filler and fixated on excess-verbiage action scenes as the only hook for drama. And so we get like twelve spaceship crashes and random battles, because that's the only way RMA knows how to do tension.

 

Bantam made a big deal about it, too - in the back of their paperbacks were they listed teasers for the other SW books, they had:
"...worst of all, a fanatical rebel leader has his hands on a superweapon of unimaginable power - and just wait until you find out who that leader is!"

 

The thing is, that even the weird "let's borrow four ships" thing could have been interesting. I mean for starters, they conveniently have the technology to assist, well...if they have it and the NR doesn't yet, or hasn't cut a deal to buy it yet, or something, there's a reason right there to ask them for help. Or as someone else mentioned, play it as a political situation where they need to make Bakura feel needed. As has been said, the situations that could be more narratively interested tend to be skipped over in favour of more transparent tension, like ship crashes or escapes, which I'd have less of a problem with if it were only more dynamic.

And I think if Bantam were going to hype Thrackan's identity as something shocking, then they should have made it someone genuinely close to Han, like a sibling or a parent or if his cousin, then a cousin he was raised close to and knew and has feelings about the fact he's now pretty much an evil dictator. Give Han a kind of non-mystical Luke/Vader/Leia family moment? Instead it's someone who looks like him but for whom Han feels no sympathy or particular sense of connection; not on the level of a friend or close family. As Hav noted, an old academy buddy would have been more tragic and dynamic. For both of them. I'm quite taken by Ally's suggestion of how Thrackan views Han, but it'd be more believable and a better payoff, I think, if that emotion came not from distant jealousy but very close jealousy and personal experiences.

And I do get that it's nice to play up Han's connection to Corellia beyond him simply being from there. So while there's currently no need for Thrackan to be related to him and it just makes it a bit cheesy, it is a good idea to have Han linked in with the head bad guy. Just...not this way.

Again I suppose my feelings on these books is that they make great first drafts and plot outlines, but they needed someone to go through and tweak all this stuff and then a hefty rewrite, and probably condensation into a two-parter, or even one SBS-style epic.

 

I believe, way back, the Corellian Trilogy was one of the very first I ever read - certainly before the Thrawn Trilogy. And as much as I go back and say "Wow, how OOC is Mara here?", the series really did make me love Mara's character. Additionally, the old-school, kids/adults in captivity escape plot/explore ruins thing really hooked 10-year-old me.

 

I seem to have perfected the process of speed reading... I'll probably end up having finished books 2 and 3 in just three days tonight. And that's with doing other stuff at the same time.

Speed definitely helps, as it cuts the scenes and the "how the character feels" moments down to size. But as everyone else said, there's not much left after that.

Actually, I think this book wasn't half-bad. It's a nice idea to have a star system stand in for the ESB style all-over-the-universe adventure. It's also a very SF idea, as is the idea of the strange cat/bee species. It shows that RMA is more of a classic SF space opera auhor. Especially with the cat people, I think that's just a staple of otherworldly fiction. A nice relic of when EU wasn't as set in its groove as it it today, and something you couldn't pull off in today's variety of styles (horror/agent etc) because it's not mainstream enough. Which is because it's kind of between slow and boring, but it's still nice.

Same for the repulsors; I could see a hard-SF story explore the idea of planets having been aligned by an ancient race, but any plot would need to be secondary to this approach (as many SF books only have little plot and lots of great concepts). Again, it's a nice idea to try this genre in SW, especially back in the days when you could really expand the universe because nobody had a map. Today, you wouldn't get the crowd to read something like this (btw, when I saw the movie adaptation of 2010 again this year, I marvelled at the fact how much this movie wouldn't work with modern audiences and studios and what a great film it is for that alone).

The Selonians are okay. I could do without exploring them from Han's POV, as this style always needs to have the character go "man I didn't know this!". The best part about SW is when characters do not wonder about the scenery but take all that stuff for granted. OK, people who grew up where there's sand everywhere are allowed to wonder about it for a bit, but only for so long. In case of Han, it's best to have him in the "been there, done that" mindset and not reveal him as an insecure, highly emotional bleeding heart in POV.

Corellia as an out-of-the-way place makes sense as it's one of the few ways to have them have their "Corellian we're-all-like-Han-Solo" neutrality. But I guess it should rather be seen as a kind of Switzerland for starships.

Thrackan... I agree with becca, there are many better ways to have a connection to the Corellian dictator. When you mentioned this being kind of Han's Skywalker clan moment, I couldn't help but imagine an overambitious outline that had Han's unknown twin brother in it.

Having Bakura in the story isn't contrived (although RMA's real aim is to have Gaeriel in the story, so Bakura's just a tool anyway). The need for the Bakuran fleet is contrived, though, it's an obvious example of the result being in the author's mind before the reason.

While I still haven't found that interview about Luke's political marriage, Gaeriel's presence in spite of any logical connection to Corellia is a strong hint at this. Lando's marriage takes the backseat for some awkward emotional moments by Luke. Funnily enough, Mara doesn't come across as a potential love interest at all, and as I said, while I never got the subtext in TTT, there really was no subtext at all until HOT. Other than that, visiting your former smoochie boochie for a fleet - Dark Nest anyone?

Now, about Mara... I think the paranoia angle would only have worked if she had been much more mysterious, with some exposition how she's been away for some time and how she's acting strange. With some kind of "Actually, what reason do we have to trust her?" moment. Without it, nobody really believes in the mere possibility of Mara having switched sides (because let's face it, for the reader, she's been on the NR's side for some time now) and everything Han and Leia have to say and think about the matter is just filler to get more pages.

All in all, it's a nice reminder how much of a filler you could produce and get away with back then

 

Dude, I really wish I could speed read.... *jealousness* And yes, I can imagine it would help keep the pace up with a novel like this.

As to your comment on the space-operaticness of RMA's writing, that's actually really astute. I might think that the OT succeeds much more as an homage/pastiche of the Saturday Serial style of pulpy space opera, and the PT fails to hit the mark, but that's a personal opinion, and on a franchise-wide basis, there's no doubt that Lucas has always intended to play off those cultural markers. Arguably the Corellian system with its "animal people" style of alien species is the cultural equivalent of the movies' tendency to make planets consist entirely of one type of geography. I'll be honest, I don't really think it succeeds that well, due in part to the fact I didn't clock it and also due to how well I responded to the story in general (the original Han Solo trilogy is a better example of riffing on pulp space opera, I think), but it's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered before.

I also think you're totally right about the reader's perspective skewing our willingness to believe that she's gone over to the enemy. We get really well inside her head during TTT (which, for the record, I always did see the subtext in! But that could just be because the OT convinced me that in Star Wars fighting = flirting...) and then see her continue on the path she sets out on at the end, consistently, for a decade, even if we don't see that much of her during that time, we see enough to know she's not secretly plotting the resurgence of the Empire. If she was, then that would have been a gigantic retcon. There's just no incentive for the reader to distrust a fairly popular character in addition to the in-universe reasons. Again, it's a shame because I really think the author could have gone interesting places with the plotline, but hey, at least we actually see someone making use of Mara Jade in a larger capacity, which is something I always remember wishing authors other than Zahn would do, way back when these novels were being published.

And yes, it is interesting that it's much more Gaeriel than Mara who's the love interest for Luke with Mara mostly not even being in his plotline. While the author may simply have wanted to reprise the themes of Luke's first aborted romance with her, striking that melancholy chord of, "the one that got away," it seems likely that at least somewhere in the planning stage it was considered bringing Gaeriel back as a genuine romantic interest?

To reference bits of Bantam-era Star Wars lore that I'm not sure are real or a case of "internet telephone", was Bantam somewhat resistant to pairing Luke up with anyone romantically, and Zahn basically got to do it because by then he was a big name draw on Star Wars books and it was the end of the contract anyway?

Either way:

1) "Switzerland for Spaceships!" I LOVE IT. I MOVE WE MAKE IT THE NEW CORRELLIAN MOTTO.

2) Good luck with #3.

 

Re: Gariel and Mara - when I went back and reread the series a couple of years ago, I was startled to see how little perspective Gariel gets - and the funny moments when Luke and Mara meet in the next book...makes me wonder if Bantam had already signed the contract with Zahn for HoT and was trying to get authors to set it up...

 

I believe that Zahn was contracted fairly early on for HOT to close out the contract, and the intent was for him to set Luke up with Mara there, so everyone else was forced to stay away from permanent romances.

 

Either way, I don't feel like Gaeriel's comeback is based in something like DR's current "house cleaning" of Luke's former girlfriends. I suppose RMA really wanted to use her and, realizing that she wasn't allowed to fill the love interest role in the long run, put an end to that story, starting with all the "could have been but won't be now" talk in this novel.

About Mara in TTT... it's been some time since I last read that, so I might change my mind if I read it again. Still, thinking back, I think it's mostly that he's a man and she's a woman and they're in the same plot, and romantic/sexual tension is just one of those things that make a story a bit more exciting. So either they put it in for that, or the readers put it in because of storytelling convention. It should be noted that the next book, Bakura, went for the romantic subplot again, and then there was Callista, of course. So it's just one of those things you could do with Han firmly in Leia's hands and all the others like Lando (or Chewie) just not being important enough to really get such a plot going. Or like Wedge in JAT, it's a nice sidestory, but nothing of lasting impact.

Anyway, I think it's interesting that RMA's books dabble in that romantic stuff so much with Lando's marriage wish and Luke's past. They are not really all that romantic, are they? The Lando-Tendra romance is barely readable, if you ask me, as it's all general thoughts about how they do not love each other but think about each other very much. Luke's bits are done better, but I think that's mostly because it's only longing, not actual "fulfilled" romance.

About the space opera thing - I don't think the books are really good at it, I just think that's what they do best. This might have turned out better as a full world building story without the need for more than a minimum of plot and action. I don't know if RMA could have pulled that off; I'm not sure if the Selonia bits are already all he's got up his sleeve or if he could have truly expanded on the topic.

Regarding the Switzerland bit - I forgot, Alderaan is already Switzerland (thanks to the alps), which means that Tarkin blew up not only a peaceful, but also a neutral planet. More seriously, how does Corellia work in the role of a "Has Been"? It's where spaceflight originates from, but that's been quite some time. The planet could stay more or less off the radar throughout the conflicts, and rebels they may be, but they only get to be important because of Centerpoint. That's the reason for the crisis in these books, and it's also the only reason why the Corellians dare participate in NJO and LOTF. With the place (and Thrackan) gone, I wonder if anyone's ever thinking up a major plot for Corellia again. And let's be honest, the planet works best as Han's distant origin; they never got to make it all that interesting. Maybe in X-Wing, but other than that, it's a small Coruscant, a gardener's Sulon and nothing like Adumar, which is everyone's favourite place for starfighters. The real Corellia owns a few lousy patrol crafts and a bunch of uglies. Has Been?

 

Bringing Gaeriel back into play was pretty bizarre, both In-universe and Out-. The IU reasons have already been well-touched upon in this thread ("Where the hell did our fleet go?"), but looking at it from an OOU perspective: This trilogy came out just two years after Bakura. The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy, The New Rebellion, the X-wing books --- all of them were set during the fourteen years in between, and all of them were already in the production phase in 1995. Surely R-Mac had no idea just how many future stories would be published that bridged the fourteen-year gap. Regardless, he picks up Gaeriel's character, establishes that she and Luke went fourteen years without seeing each other, and then kills her off. ... The hell?

I've never really been sure why these novels, published relatively early in the Bantam run, were set so far down the timeline. Maybe it's because R-Mac wanted the kids to be old enough to have believable adventures, maybe he wanted enough years of peacetime to make his "We don't have a fleet!" subplot plausible, I don't know. I'm glad that BFC was able to exist despite the Corellian Trilogy's assertion of so many years of peacetime, but I kind of wish that R-Mac had set a few less limitations to begin with. Props to him for using an established EU character in a major role, but setting fourteen years of her life in stone and then killing her... I guess it's not the gravest sin he could have committed, but something about it doesn't sit right with me.

However, I absolutely loved what Sean Williams and Shane Dix did when they grabbed at the chains of the wacky and implausible "We need the Bakuran fleet!" plot and used its aftermath to craft a jaded, haunted, and incredibly compelling character in Refugee. Which, coincidentally, was part of an awfully-paced trilogy. Heh.

Also of note is the fact that R-Mac asked Kathy Tyers's permission to kill off Gaeriel. Even more interesting is that Tyers wanted Luke and Gaeriel to stay together while she was writing Truce, but she was too fond of the idea of a Luke and Mara pair... but that's a topic for another thread.

 

Jeff - that's a really good point and one I hadn't even thought of. I've never paid much attention to the publishing order of the Bantam era since they were all pretty much already out when I started reading them (though I do remember the release of Planet of Twilight and being thrown by having to go "back" in time while reading it), but yes, it's definitely an odd notion to write the novels set so far in the future - it's a miracle it didn't create more continuity issues. In part that's probably because they were writing more standalone adventures, whereas now the narrative style is more serialised and doing that would pretty much guarantee narrative stagnation that would annoy the fans - or at least would be perceived that way.

The return of Malinza Thanas was basically as unexpected as the return of Gaeriel here, but yes, I remember that and I remember being impressed by the use of the character, though, as you say, that trilogy had some pacing issues, I remember it fondly for the character work it did with Tahiri and really was sad that her familial relationship with the Solos never really...stuck after that. And then she went and apprenticed herself to Corran which was also pretty awesome but also never really...stuck. And now I'm totally off-topic.

To get back on topic, I can see RMA deciding to canonise that Luke didn't see Gaeriel for fourteen years. That's not too weird to me given the fact that Tyers wasn't allowed to set them up permanently, it puts her more firmly in the ballpark of one-shot romantic interest, so there was no reason to expect her to continue showing up, and therefore makes her a good character to use if he wanted to tell a poignant "could have been" type of story. What would, I think, be weirder would be the out of universe effect of someone reading in publishing rather than chronological order. It's something I think works better if we, too, have read a boatload of books in between and were totally not expecting her to show up again. Whereas if we read it fairly soon after reading Bakura it feels more like she's a character of the moment and her inclusion feels a little more on the nose and less like genuinely pulling a character out of history.

So in that, I kind of wish I still wasn't thinking about the publishing order, because it's cooler if she was a genuinely obscure minor character from a long-ago book? But...I do still think it's one of the more interesting narrative choices in the novel, either way.

 

Because I was an odd, young duck when I read Star Wars, I didn't read Truce at Bakura till a few years after I read the Corellian Trilogy - so it was actually quite decent in that way. It is kind of a tragic book, though (Truce, though Centerpoint probably as well).

I remember liking the ideas of the NJO trilogy featuring Thanas, but not much the execution. But I read most of the NJO in a blur, and only once (except for Stackpole, Tyers, Allston, and Cunningham). It felt sort of like the Luceno duology that brought back Kalanda and Showolter (and all those Black Fleet peeps) - great continuity, but kind of hollow story.