Are the good guys too...well good?

Do you ever get the feeling in some of the novels that the heroes are so far above their enemies that it takes away some of the drama? I mean, I know there are some examples of character death and what not, but I often feel that battles, space battles especially, often end up consisting of the heroes killing the crap out of their enemy while taking almost no casualties, or having several pilots in a row go EV. What annoys me the most is that the authors often try to make it seem like they are in danger through description and the dialogue...but it never matches the battle. I dont know if I am way off here, but it is just something I have noticed. I think the worst of it is in Rogue Squadron and some stuff in the NJO

 

I never got that impression with the X-Wing books. To me, the worst offender was Dark Nest. I never for a second believed that the Killiks were actually a threat to anybody, despite everyone's insistence that they were a major power and extremely dangerous and would end up in an eternal battle with the rest of the galaxy.

 

I, on the other hand, having read of hundreds of TIEs exploding in X-Wing books have never considered TIEs to be any more of a threat than your average target clay disk in skeet...

 

TIE laser batteries never seem to match up to any "good guy"'s lasers. Same goes for stormtrooper's aim. Yes, it's weird and it's an issue.

 

See Republic Commando for this. Hard Contact at least gave them some injuries, but in Triple Zero an armored commando essentially takes napalm to the face, and the only result is him saying something like "It sure is hot, LOLZ".

That said, I don't mind some character shielding. The problem is when it's at odds with the tone of the story. If you're doing the boisterous, serial-like ANH, then I firmly expect to see stormtroopers falling right and left and missing the heroes by a mile. If you're trying to go "realistic", then it's more problematic. That's not to say heroes should die all the time, but they should be kept alive through their ability, not enemy incompetence or deus ex machinas. And the problem with too much character shielding is that it creates a redshirt effect, where you know who's going to die because he's the guy who's just been introduced.

 

I completely agree on the tone of the battle being important. I actually can really get behind the sort of over the top style emphasizing how poerful a hero or character is, sort of like in Clone Wars where Yoda or Mace is just freaking out on batallions of droids. I thought this was done well in ROTS the novel, I can get behind the idea of a really powerful character, especially a Jedi. And I dont even mind characters being oK if they at least describe other elements of the battle not going so well (which they will do sometimes) but a lot of times I just got the impression that every character acted like they were about to die at any moment...but I just did not feel the danger. Especially when they are swooping around killing cap ships and tons of fighters...it just started to feel a little silly. Good point on the killiks...I did not like them much in general though.