Lit A question on Karen Traviss and her work(s)

Golden and Traviss are like a study of opposites I suppose. One is a second stringer who mostly just pursues the plot-lines other writers have left her while having her own plotlines be as unobtrusive to the rest of the narrative, and has an awkward, long winded writing style. The other is technically a good writer albeit with a sparse, utilitarian style but takes the ball and tries to run off with it with her own story ideas and warps the other writers plotlines to match them.

Both of them need strong editors like crazy.

 

I think Golden had more influence on FOTJ than people give her credit for. Vestara was her idea -- she proposed having Ben romance a Sith. But maybe in that sense she's more focused on making her ideas fit into the overall series arc than the Mandalorians did with LOTF. I guess it depends on whether the Lost Tribe was her conception or if it was something that was already planned -- if she created them, it could be that the other authors were more willing to use her Lost Tribe arc, or she was more willing to let them?

I don't know if she just created Vestara or if she came up with the idea for the Lost Tribe. Though you might argue that the Lost Tribe is just as obtrusive to the main plot of the series, although TBH I'm not entirely clear what the main plot was intended to be. I assume it was Abeloth and the Lost Tribe are to some extent just as tangential to that as the Mandalorians were to Caedus, with the main difference being that the Sith fit the paradigm of emulating the prequel films and the Mandalorians don't, and so are going to see more story use.

 

I thought that was a scrapped NJO idea. Great minds think alike?

 

I'm pretty sure John Jackson Miller came up with the Lost Tribe, although maybe he just wrote their backstory.

 

Vestara was the one high point of FotJ. Of course, she had to be ruined by 2 consecutive Denning books.

 

The Lost Tribe was created for FOTJ and JJM was given the e-books to provide their backstory. Kemp also had Korsin appear in Crosscurrent.

 

I felt that Ascension's ending ruined her, and Denning's 2 consecutive books just ensured her burial for good.

 

It was probably the recycling of the basic idea but in 1998 there was no Twilight market for Star Wars to try to tap into which is, from my understanding, what motivated the whole Ben-Vestara romance. Of course, since it's in Vestara's nature to be evil, it can't work out like in Twilight.

 

Which one is which?

(Not a joke, I'm honestly curious.)

 

Golden is the second stringer that pursues other writers' plot lines -- Traviss runs off with the ball with her own story ideas and warps the other writers' plot lines to match them.

I don't think that's necessarily the case though. For instance, each author had their own "pet subplot" in LOTF -- Allston had Wedge and his family, Traviss had the Mandalorians, and Denning had Alema. This was to some extent true of FOTJ as well, with Allston having the Imperial conspiracy that cropped up every third book, for example. I think the biggest thing that set Traviss apart was that there was some -- very minimal -- cross pollination in LOTF, namely Allston killing off Alema and Denning using Fett. Traviss never had anything like that which I recall, but to be honest it's not like either subplot that Allston or Denning borrowed was particularly a big deal and they were all jarring.

 

But the pet plotlines of the other writers weren't so... let's say fiercely independent in terms of concept. Wedge was tied into the politics of the story and the second civil war, Alema was a part of the Sith plotline. While the Mandalorians came off as something more independent of the series with crossover.

This is why I say Golden was a second stringer. Because her main contribution to the central storyline ended up being aborted and concluded in another author's book. I don't know the actual story behind it of course. But I doubt that "Yep, she was evil all along. Guess that was a waste of time." was part of the original concept.

Actually, Golden did start that slavery plotline that atleast partially hung over the last parts of the series. But again we don't know the story behind that.

 

I'd argue Alema was just as tangential to the plot as the One Sith were, and that's really her connection -- but the One Sith were just as irrelevant to LOTF. She meets with Lumiya a few times but that just leads off on the One Sith tangent. The primary difference is that Denning didn't devote as much time to it as Traviss did the Mandalorians. But both LOTF and FOTJ are exercises in authorial excesses with the subplots with no real direction to them. I never understood why, if they were going to do a 3 author, 9 book series, they didn't just have each author write consecutive trilogies, so at least each trilogy would be consistent.

 

Alema is something Denning clearly threw in as an element from Dark Nest he was carrying forward, being a way to get Jag back into the story and give Jaina something to do while the narrative was otherwise completely ignoring her, basically. Allston ran with it as much as Denning, though -- she and the Jaina/Jag/Zekk team going after her are a big deal in Exile, and Fury concludes her arc. I don't think it really counts as being one author's pet plotline, because it was equally shared between two out of three. Allston really did more with the plotline than Denning did. She was tangential in the sense that she was just a way to kill Jaina's time, no other plot function, but she was a time-killer that was fully latched onto and played out by Denning and Allston together. I don't think she's really comparable to the running "Boba Fett has cancer and a sad family" subplot found in one and only one author's books.

 

Yeah it's just a terrible series overall with no clear protagonist or idea of what the plot is besides "Jacen becomes a Sith Lord and various **** happens depending on what the author felt like writing."

 

They are selling that stuff? I expected them to sit hard on the only thing that gave them a material/technological advantages in the modern age

The way the mandolorians have been portrayed in different medias I would think that the Verpines would be in some mutual aid pact with other worlds against them not with them. But than again real life don't follow what we call logic after all, so why should SW. And there is possibly tons of history that I don't know about that explains it.

 

I expect they are selling "export grade" stuff and keeping the best for themselves, like apparently with bacta.

 

That's how it's put in the LoTF series - there's two versions of the Besilisk beskar-armoured fighter - one for export, and a rather more formidable one for home defence.

 

I just finished reading No Prisoners and I found it very enjoyable. I feel like it's begging for a story where Altis finds out what really happened to Anakin Skywalker.

 

I've been trying to read that book for three years....I can only get about a 1/3 of the way through. I don't why, though.

 

I really liked No Prisoners, however I wonder how Altis' groups could just go unnoticed by Anakin. You would think they would be a sought after group knowing the issues he has with the mainstream order at this point.

As an aside I really liked how she handled all the characters in this novel. Anakin's trust issues, Padme's neglect, Ahsoka's adbandonment and latching on to Rex and the other troopers, Ahsoka's and the other Jedi's qualms about the war and using clone troopers, and the military's view of clone troopers. It wasn't too in your your face about it, but these questions were definitetely there.

I wonder were any further novels would have gone.

 

That's a good question.

At this point Anakin wants two things: Padame and to be a jedi so it feels that he would be rather interested in a splinter group like Altis'.

Also why don't he join them when he finds out about them? Or have I misunderstood things

 

I think Anakin is too wedded to the idea of there only being one proper way to be a Jedi.

 

A question: If I have understood right after the Vong war there were large deposits of beskar discovered in craters left by the Vong attack Mandolore and what I was wondering is there any explanation how the Mandolorians have missed all that beskar in all the millenniums that they have outfitted their armies?

 

They were very deep, and in isolated regions of the planet around which no one lived. Presumably Mandalorian miners just hadn't gotten around to them, having had access to other deposits in other locations that provided more ready access.

Also, per The Clone Wars and The Bounty Hunter Code, we now know that Mandalore was only one world in the Mandalore system "rich" with beskar, so there could have been a great deal of off-world mining, like we see on Concordia.

 

Huh, I was under the impression that it was only found on Mandalore.

It still feel like they should have found it in there over 3.000 years of mining