Author Analysis: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Analyze and discuss her writing style, strengths and weaknesses, etc, without bashing or gushing.

Previous Author Analyses:
Roger MacBride Allen
John Ostrander
Steve Perry
Brian Daley
Barbara Hambly
Dave Wolverton
Troy Denning
Ann C. Crispin
K. W. Jeter
Sean Stewart
Haden Blackman
Greg Keyes
Michael Stackpole
Kevin J. Anderson
Matthew Stover
Michael Reaves
Aaron Allston

Go at it!

 

The New Rebellion was ... interesting. I honestly don't remember much, but I felt it, whilst not strong, at least managed not to be weighed down as much with exposition as, say, Children of the Jedi. I think I managed to read the whole thing in a day, so I guess that is a credit to her.

 

I really enjoyed her writing style... esp. how she wrote about the characters thoughts and moods. My biggest complaint about ?The New Rebellion? was how she wrote Luke about to sacrifice himself for Leia via Obi-Wan style by being killed?--fortunately Han cam with a ysalamiri and broke his Force contact and thus he dropped the idea. So overall plot was ok?characters good.
In fact it caused me to go and get the first in one of her own personal series; ?The Disappeared? have yet to start it as I have a habit of getting a little excited at used bookstores.. but we shall see

 

I really liked her work as well. This came right after the Black Fleet Crisis, and I found the transition to be very smoothe. It's hard to follow a work given to us by McDowell, but she really did it. My only major gripe was that the enemies screamed of having an earlier backstory, and yet we were given nothing in previous books. Still, her writing just made me want to devour the book.

Although the bit about Luke pulling a Kenobi still rubs me the wrong way...

 

Utterly forgettable. Not even terrible, like Hambly. Simply bland and forgettable.

 

Black Fleet Crisis light.
A lot of extremely obtuse, awkward, or unbelievable situations, such as Han being thought a traitor, a second vote of no confidence right after BFC, and the entire battle with the droid VSDs vs the NR fleet.

I did like the segments on Smuggler's Run and the Cole Fardreamer bits, especially the T-65 upgrades.

 

I'd agree with the assessment of it as rather bland and easily forgettable. I only remember it happened when somebody brings it up.

Her writing style wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything spectacular either; nothing in it struck me as being particularly noteworthy either way. I don't think she's a bad author, and in fact I think she did a pretty good job overall with the characterizations for the situations the characters were in - though, as some have noted, the situations themselves weren't really that credible in many ways - but I felt that she really weakened Luke in an absurd way and just didn't get his character at all. (Am I the only one who thinks it not coincidence that in the whole Bantam era, the only authors to really get Luke fundamentally wrong and make him really weak were Rusch and Hambly? ) She also demonstrated a lack of understanding of fleet battles... the one weak spot on the bottom of an SD? I'm really tempted to go find that ORLY owl pic. Kueller was... alright. He could have been a lot more interesting - and a lot more enigmatic, which was obviously what she was going for - than he ended up being, which speaks to her skill; but to be fair he could have been a much worse villain, as well.

As I said, she's very much in the middle... not bad, but certainly not spectacular, either.

- Keralys

 

7 / 10

It had a specific style of writing, which perhaps is where the problem lay. One-line sentences are best left for emphasising something notable, and visually sets it apart on the page. With a vast number of one-line sentences here, this book was far fatter than it should be.

I just felt the characters were not in character. Solo came across as too sharp and edgy, which perhaps was necessary considering his locale. Lando was stale, just not at his best, while Luke and Leia were fine.

What really added fun to farce were the droids. At last: someone gave them some serious page time. The ending was utterly ludricious, of course: Artoo's jamming signal "just leaping out across interstellar space" and preventing the activation of two years' production of detonating droids. But they had adventures, they had character, and had a role.

Infortunately, there's only so much you can read "Artoo whistled" or "Artoo trilled" or "Artoo rasperried" page after page. How that got past editorial scrutiny, well . . . And before Fardreamer identified himself to Luke, she wrote "the boy" around 30 times in the preceding pages.

The villians were ruined, of course, by showing scenes from their viewpoint. Brakiss was an immature weakling, some child trapped in a man's body. He was no scary villain at all, so why try to make him such? Kueller, it was a grievous mistake to show any pov from him. Sith to stars, he was more administrator than sinister. Nothing vicious about Nandreeson either.

But the humour was good, I'll give the book that much. Wookies look smaller when wet. Han felt himself starting to grin, but Chewie growled it away. Samples like that were worth a quick smile.

Only way to make a martial confrontation more even as to disable Skywalker, yes. But having his outmatched in a fight, it does stretch the bounds of credulity.

Why "Y-words" are so popular in sci fi I can't fanthom, which is why we had a lot of "Y" names here like Yanne and Yane and yuck all round. Saber fights were rare in those days. You got three entire duels in this book!

How can bombs really take out a planetary population, really? As though there are no detection units at all anywhere, as though most sentients are around droids all day long. This was a massive issue, and it elasticised creduality to the snap.

But it was the ending space engagement that had me laughing big time. I seriously haven't read any major space batbles by a female author that can do one, and that's no jibe intended. On the other leg, few are the men who can really push the emotional range of a character the way a lady can. Ah well. And what's the deal with the no-confidence vote? We just had one in Tyrant's Test right before. Book wise, and timeline wise months before.

The classic one shot and the target explodes. Yeah right. Star Cruisers are more than a match for Vicstars. Even if their crew complement were droids, the battle was only dire to make it dramatic for the reader. And since when does a New Republic naval officer have to say they think the fighters look like TIEs? Been that long since an Imperial fight, sonny?

The final battle was awfully done, all right.

Good to see an author making attempts to show new and different aliens. Who wants to see an endless barrage of Rodians and Twi'leks every single damn book and comic? Though the 'Phibs were nothing but reptilian fire-breathing dragons, the book was packed with new species names, and I appreciated that.

The New Rebellion wasn't a bad book. It stands alone, had some good creativity and equally shoddy fare, and it's not a book written for younger ages like most SW books these days, so it ain't all bad all up.

 

I agree that she was mediocre, forgettable. Not the worst, had some creativity, but she created so many utterly unbelievable situations that the book just becomes laughable. The entire plot made no logical sense at all.

 

She could be blamed for the Remnant shrinking down to eight sectors.

In McDowell's works, the Imperials had about one fifth of the galaxy, but in the New Rebellion, they had literally vanished off the galactic plane.

 

"The New Rebellion" didn't live up to the title. When I originally saw it in bookstores, it instantly conjured up images of the Empire turning the tables and engaging in guerilla warfare against the NR - sabotaging trade, defeating larger NR forces, winning propaganda victories. Basically forcing the heroes to deal with the situation of having the tactics of the Rebel Alliance turned against them.

Instead, it turned out to be another "Dark Force User Threatens The Solos and Skywalkers" book. Leia's outrage over former Imperials gaining Senatorial seats was interesting, but that was about it. Thoroughly mediocre story, and one that "Jedi Outcast" ended up recycling and making into a far better plot.

Did the Empire and the NR just not believe in monitoring planet-sized droid factories?

 

Hey, now that would be a book!

 

I remember she was fond of really short chapters. Not unlike Dan Brown, King of the One Page Chapter.

 

If Brown was king, Bear was Emperor. Rogue Planet's half-page chaptering looked absurd.

On the other elf, Reunion didn't even have chapters. I bet a jolly Zsinj heaps of you were tricked into reading full sections at times. Bad mistake, wasn't it? You never try to rush a book's completion.