Author Analysis: Kevin J. Anderson

I've just got to say who cares about Madine? Why is it such a problem that he was killed. It kind of makes sense that in what amounts to a 30 year war somebody will die every now and then.

...and sorry, but Madine barely even registers as a character to me - he's just another face in the crowd

 

Anderson's writing in most of the novels feels extremly juvenille even when considering the subject matter. Like others have stated, his plot lines are unimaginative and his characterizations are lazy. Dalla is a poor man's "Iceheart". Not to mention how dumb and unoriginal the majority of his names are.

I view I,Jedi as cannon and JAT as infinites.

 

That's the point. Madine was far underutilized for what his role in the Alliance was, that of intelligence Chief. He headed over Cracken, Drayson, and all the others. He could have played a more important role in the saga, but KJA had to have a hutt kill him after a semi-irrational sabotoge mission.

 

I have to agree with that. Although, I didn't like Corran Horn smacking Luke around in hand-to-hand combat.

 

I don't recall Corran ever beating Luke. Are you sure?

And like it or not, JAT is canon. Let's ease up on those sorts of statements -- it doesn't change anything, and we're interested in writing criticism, not personal canon.

 

Yes. I don't have the book handy, but Corran and Luke have a lightsaber fight before Corran leaves the academy, and he turns it into h-2-h, basically scolding Luke for relying too much on a lightsaber in combat, IIRC.

 

Oh, okay, I think I might remember that now.

 

Anderson really needs to stick to the comics. Redemption was just amazing to experience, Sith War was fun in a B-movie way, and the rest of them were about average, but better than JAT. I did enjoy Darksaber, since I viewed as more of a comedy with action than an action story with comedy.

The thing is, I did enjoy JAT at first. Then after I read I,Jedi , I went back over them and that's whne the negatives started to pour in.

 

Madine's demise was great. I'd kill Threepio myself if I could. It'd be a killer finale, if done right, and why wouldn't I?

 

That my be true (I don't recall the details of how the fight progressed), but it's also not really the whole story. Luke's heart clearly wasn't in the fight, and it's also heavily implied that he's being manipulated by Kun in some way already (he refers to a "dark weight," or something like that, bring him down). The audiobook, while narrated by a guy with very annoying vocal patterns, does an excellent job shedding light on this dynamic.

So, in general, I don't think it should be interpreted in any way that Horn beat Skywalker because he was more powerful. It was more like Horn dueling a guy just out of bed, half-asleep.

______

As for KJA, obviously I'm not going to bash, given the request in this thread and the rules of the board, etc. His works are not among my favorites of the EU, suffice it to say.

 

Well, I'm not a big fan of Iceheart, either.

As for KJA, he's actually at his best in the YJK series. The JJK I find unreadable because it's clearly targetted below my reading level, but I actually like parts of the YJK if I turn my brain off. They're not what I would call high-literature, but they can be entertaining. His adult novels, I find fairly weak, but some of them can be okay. He's a good enough writer, even but I find some of his plots to be a little weak and his characterizations can be rushed.

 

I am currently 60 pages into Darksaber. This is my second time reading it. I havn't read one of his books in years. I am still a huge fan of Jedi Academy Trilogy. They were the books that really got me into the EU, so I'll always have a soft spot for then. I don't really like the Jedi Apprentice books. They never really interested me.
I'm deffinately noticing flaws with his writing rereading Darksaber. He references events from the OT on almost every page. And he has way to much exposition in the dialogue. But his books are quite readable.

 

Kevin J. Anderson doesn't write novels. He writes big budget movies in prose form. If one wants to read a novel then a Timothy Zahn or a Matthew Stover might be preferable but honestly how well would their works translate to the big screen? On the other hand there are some who might say that a movie and a book aren't the same thing and shouldn't try to be and they'd have a point.

But I don't care. Anderson's work is readable and it is fun and it is very much like the movies they're based on. And that's why I read Star Wars novels, to recapture the movie experience.

Anderson gives me that experience and God bless 'im for it.

I've long enjoyed Jedi Academy Trilogy comic book that it really is and enjoyed it. Is it the best written book ever? Heck no, but it's 100% Star Wars. It's big and noisy and fun. It has the battle between good and evil in spades. It has a few good laughs. It isn't deep but I don't think it's meant to be.

Darksaber will always be my favorite Star Wars novel. I loved the romance between Luke and Callista. I loved the asteroid mining resort that Luke and Callie stayed at. I loved the relationship between Dalla and Pellaeon. I loved Kyp Durron taking the fight back to the Empire and I loved the Empire striking back at Yavin IV and the Jedi response to that strike. It's one crazy book. If it had come out in movie form rather than book form it woulda been the biggest hit of the year. It's totally awesome.

I love YJK! I loved the development of the Solo twins and I loved their friends. Tenel Ka and Lowie and Zekk and Em-Teedee-rest his robotic soul all hold special places in my shriveled little heart. I'm just sorry that Jacen and Jaina became what they became in NJO because I really loved those kids. Especially in YJK.

Now TotJ are a mixed bag. Golden Age and Fall of the Sith were boring. DlotS and TSW were totally awesome though and would have been great movies.

All in all the entertainment factor in KJA's work is high and I forgive him his weaknesses because he did a good job making his SW feel like the movies.

 

KJA is like the Dan Brown of the EU, particularly compared with other EU authors like Stover, Luceno and Stackpole who write NOVELS and not films posing as novels.

And ex, you'd kill Luke Skywalker with your bare hands if it would make a good story

 

Absolutely.

Of course, the definition of death is highly subjective . . . is it not?

 

I'm currently reading the JAT. I'm near the end of Jedi Search right now. What is the opinion in EU of the creation of the Death Star was depicted in this novel compared to what is portrayed in the films?

 

LFL is going to do a book to retconn the differences. I believe Luceno is writing it.

On my more paranoid days, I suspect GL deliberately put the Ultimate Weapon plans in AotC just to sell such a book.

 

Nobody would ever claim, that George Lucas is a bad businessman.



Concerning KJA, I'll have to admit my POV might be a bit blurred. With TTT setting the benchmark things could only go downhill afterwards.

Some people claim, that JAT laid the foundations of the modern EU and wonder, how it would look without KJA's work. Not so long ago I would have probably said "a lot better", but considering how things have gone for a while and are currently going, I'm not so sure I want to know anymore.

The sad thing is, KJA got a lot of things in Darksaber right and in the next scene he got them totally wrong. And YJK was abysimal - or i was already to old for it.

 

I'll say of KJA what I've heard say of Lucas: that he's a good "idea man" but not the best storyteller.

I'm never read his comics so I can't comment on those. I'm looked through them, but couldn't imagine reading the whole things through as I can't stomach the obsolete artwork (I'm spoiled by Duursema, Wheatley, and Badeaux).

 

Reaves and Perry, actually.

 

Wow. More positive stuff than I'd have expected. I've gotta say that KJA is one of my favorites. Jedi Search was the first EU novel I ever bought, a decision I still do not regret. I really liked Darksaber, it was fun. It wasn't thought-provoking, or stimulating, it was just fun. As for YJK, I pretty much liked the few I read, though that was many years ago, so my thoughts on that are mostly...grey. I've read one TotJ, many years ago. Pretty good, but my memory of it has dimmed.

I've never looked for anything "deep" in KJA's work. I want something that is what Star Wars was meant to be: entertaining escapism.

 

I'll always be grateful to KJA for the YJK, which was one of my most beloved YA book series. It's not up there with Marsden's Tomorrow series, but it was pretty close.

However, his adult fiction always left something to be desired, and to a point it still does. His characters don't always 'develop', and when he wrote SW a lot of his characters were stereotypical or even caricatures. Not to mention his vocabulary is even smaller than Troy Denning's. There were occasionally lame plot points as well, and Kyp Durron could occasionally be a Gary Stu. And he has no control over 'angst' whatsoever, a lot of his books lack any sort of drama and meaning.

he's matured since those days, with The Saga Of Seven Suns, although Raymond is definitely Kyp redux. It's excellent escapism with some actual attempts at a thought-provoking message.

But most of all, SW fans will forever be in his debt for removing Callista from Luke's life. Thank you, KJA, if you're reading this!

 

Posted under the sock . . . sorry.

 

I saw a talk KJA gave at Dragon*Con a few years ago, and he had some interesting things to say. One of them involved the pressures of working professionally in someone else's universe. He did go out of his way to day that the Star Wars people were unusually accommodating and helpful, but in general, the life of a tie-in author involves brutal deadlines, inexplicable vetoes on critical plot points (sometimes *very* late in the writing process), and generally being treated like a fry cook at a busy McDonald's. One might suspect that this attitude shows in the quality of the writing. I can only hope the money is reasonably good, because the experience sounds horrendous.

As an example, he apparently got 5 weeks to write the full-length X-Files book, "Ruins," and had to figure in a 10-day trip to Mexico for research into that time frame. (TXF was famous for its obsessive imitation of real-life detail . . . other than the aliens and vampires, of course.) Then as he was finishing his final draft, the editor called and told him the entire ending had to go. (It might have been too close to that of the impending XF movie, which of course he knew nothing about.) So he managed to make the deadline by dictating a new ending word by word to his wife via a pay phone in rural New Mexico, while a flash flood was going on outside and there was a serious chance his car was going to wash away.

I won't lie--I do not like KJA's writing. It sounds like people are pretty well aware of the common reasons why some fans, well . . . aren't fans. However, I sure as hell couldn't produce a novel under the conditions he deals with, even a novel as spectacularly awful as "Ruins." Awareness of exactly what it was he did for a living gave me more sympathy for him, and pretty much killed any desire I might have had to be an EU author one day.

He also came out and admitted that he couldn't characterize his way "out of a wet paper bag" (pretty close to an exact quote), which really disarmed my longtime desire to yell at him, "You can't characterize your way out of a wet paper bag!" Apparently his wife carried the bulk of the characterization in the YJK series. (I think she's credited on several of them?) At least the guy's aware of his limitations and tries to work around them.

I can actually see him as a successful comic author, since in that case the character reactions are handled by the artist, and all he has to do is provide the storyline. TXF's "Antibodies" actually had a pretty cool idea, for all that I would have hated every character in it, if they'd had enough of a personality to engender hatred.

Anyway, that's all I've got to say that people haven't heard a million times before.

 

Personally I think KJA has a lot of depth - especially some really good Messianic imagery for Luke in JAT, which fans seem to brush over.

Luke as the man with a destiny, twelve apprentices, one betrays him, Luke walks on a lava lake (lol), Kun and the Sith as the devil to Luke's Christ, Luke rises from the dead, even a nice helping of redemption and healing by the power of the Jedi - Cilghal.