Author Analysis: K. W. Jeter

Time for out first Bantam-only author: K. W. Jeter, author of the Bounty Hunter Wars Trilogy. Discuss his strengths and weaknesses as an author, how you feel about him, what does he do well/poorly, if you would like to see him return, etc. No bashing or gushing, just analysis.

Previous Author Analyses:
Sean Stewart
Haden Blackman
Greg Keyes
Michael Stackpole
Kevin J. Anderson
Matthew Stover
Michael Reaves
Aaron Allston

Go at it.

 

I noticed you didn't put in your full "No Bashing Header" in this one...

 

It's there.

 

Thanks for accepting my request, Havac.
Having read the Bounty Hunter Wars just the other day, I can say that Jeter has, rather, had promise: The collapse of the Bounty Hunters Guild was my favorite storyline, and D'harhan and Kuat of Kuat stand out as some of the best characters I've read.
Unfortuantely, characterisations are also where Jeter fails: Dengar has become a good deal less intelligent than previous incarnations, and inexplicably has lost his cybernetics, one of my favorite parts of his Tales of the Bounty Hunters story; Bossk is now a whiny moron, instead of the truly awesome merc we saw in The Prize Pelt, his TB story. Poor Zuckuss has suffered the most: Instead of the mystic bounty hunter who uses intuition to find his targets and talks in third person, and is partnered with 4-LOM, we get a nervous wreck of a Gand who speaks in first person, has lost huis mystical abilities, and is partnered with Bossk, of all people. IG-88 and 4-LOM don't suffer as badly, their apperances are more cameos than anything, even though Jeter forgot about IG-88's integrated arsenal.
And Jeter knows about TBH, becuase he references it multiple times in Hard Merchandise, unfortunately, whilst he knows its events, he couldn't give a Bantha's @$$ about the characters. I don't even want to talk about Neelah or whatever the heck her real name was.
It's not only characterisations that Jeter mauls to death, but words to. If I see "barve", "creature", or "Kuat" again, I swear I will burn his books.
Finally, the back-cover summaries on his books suck. Horribly.
[/rant]

 

I think he's a decent author, but he just doesn't seem to "get" SW that well. His books feel like generic sci-fi, not Star Wars. Moreover, he doesn't play well with established characterizations, but that's probably the editors' fault for not calling him on that as much as anything. I do like that he used Xizor again, but the plot was fairly generic, and for a trilogy which was supposedly all about Fett, we didn't get much of him.

He did invent some interesting new bounty hunters, like D'harhan and Cradossk, but ultimately he relied too heavily on the TESB bounty hunters. Man alive, are those the only six bounty hunters in the entire kriffing galaxy?

All told, he's not bad, just below average. However, when we've got some of the authors we've got, that's not good enough.

 

We can be objective about this, you know. I could offer many positive attributes of Crystal Star and Planet of Twilight, if I had to.

 

He's underrated. I loved the scenes with Vader and the blasterfight at the Shell Hutt's palace was fantastic as well.

Wore a bit thin and could have stood to be tightened into maybe one or two much better books, but on the whole, he's far from the worst the EU has to offer.

 

Oh, far from the worst, certainly. He's average or a little below, but he does have his strong points. The inclusion of large-scale galactic politics with Vader, Xizor, the Emperor, and Kuat (of Kuat ) was a definite plus, and there were some good action scenes, but overall, it just lacked the ability to make you sit up and take notice.

 

I probably wouldn't say that he's the worst SW author out there, but in no way is he the best either. His writing, while good in areas, mostly is just lacking that overall Star Wars feel. It seemed to me, from what I can remember as i read the trilogy over a year ago, that he just doesn't fully understand the charecters or why they do what they do. It almost seemed like he made them just do it, without really thinking about the why. I did like the action scenes that he wrote, the most memorable was the begining of SS with Bossk in his ship, but the storyline in general was very generic, slow paced, and not very interesting. It almost felt like he was trying to make a trilogy out of what could have been condensed down to a stand alone.

 

He. Ruined. Zuckuss.

That's all I have to say about that.

 

Well, at least he actually used Zuckuss. True, he turned him into a drooling idiot, but that's more than any other author has ever done, outside the short stories.

Kuat's plot (ha!) was interesting actually; just that idiotic 'of Kuat' thing kept distracting me.

Kuat of Kuat's plot . . . oy.

 

I don't think I finished even the first book of the BH trilogy, and even worse for me was his Blade Runner sequel. He's not just, IMO, a very interesting writer.

E_S

 

I know! I wanted Kuat of Kuat to Kuat to Kuat and Kuat himself ARGH!

And I had no idea Boba Fett was so chatty! He fails miserably in his characterisations with the exception of Vader who is absrudly easy to get right.

I could have been an interesting story, I give him that but he failed to interest me. His is the only SW book I've not finished as I couldn't be bothered (I only read Slave Ship). The dancing girl could have been interesting if he hadn't kept harping on about it, by the time I put the book down I couldn't care less if she was Boba Fett's long lost daughter.

My main gripe is his idioms, his expressions from our galaxy that he neutralises to adapt to GFFA. He could have just come up with new ones, as a lot of other authors do and as George does in the films (like Luke being strong enough to pull the ears off a Gundark).
But 'a piece of baked confectionary' and 'the nerf-droppings hitting the ventelation system' doesn't work.

The book could have been good, looks as if it might be but fails to deliver.

Sorry if that sounded like a rant, but it's just the way it is.

 

I'm truly sorry for Zuckuss, Rogue Ten.

 

What about what he did to Bossk and Dengar?

Now HERE is a writer who doesn't do his homework!

 

Depends what info was around about them. At least they had nice covers.

 

It's more what they didn't have: no Dark Jedi, no crazy scheme Lando, no big space battles, none of the cliches.

They were different is what I mean to say. Great? No, but different.

 

[image=http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0553525336.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg]

Xizor can see you...

 

Speaking of that cover, I hear that R5 droid had nothing to do with the book. True?

 

IIRC, R5 was part of that plot to connect Xizor with stormtroopers killing Owen&Beru.

''It's more what they didn't have: no Dark Jedi, no crazy scheme Lando, no big space battles, none of the cliches.

They were different is what I mean to say. Great? No, but different.''
QFT.

 

Of course, the back of Slave Ship also said that it had a 'sentient machine that fed on human spirits' and I sure didn't see that.

So, again, something it didn't have, despite the book jacket . . . maybe it was that R5 and the whole subplot of the vampiric R5 stealing souls got jettisoned in rewrites.

 

Couldn't have been. The droid described in the book was essentially a large box, used to contain radioactive material. It wasn't an R5.

 

What was this machine like?

 

The Gand people accept your condolences, Excellence.

 

Don't you mean, "That's all Rogue Ten has to say about that." ?