Books Bloodline by Claudia Gray (book spoilers permitted)

Just finished the book. Really good but I don't think I could rate it as high as Lost Stars. Had a good story to it but the characters weren't quite as fun to read about as Thane and Ciena were. Probably rate Lost Stars, Twighlight Company, and Lords of the Sith ahead of this one (maybe New Dawn as well) Enjoyed seeing the character of Leia though and her political mind around the time of TFA.

Wondering if we will see characters like Greer and Joph Seastriker in the Poe Dameron comic (I assume though with this book taking place about six years before the comic Greer would have likely died from her illness by then).

 

I KNEW you'd love that line of Leia's. It's a great way, I would think, of saying "If you only saw that slave getup I was wearing, you were paying attention to the wrong thing."

 

Going back a few posts--I don't know that I see Ben as all that anti-NR; I don't know that he really cares. He wants to finish what Vader started, not Palpatine--he just wants to end the Jedi. If he's thought beyond that at all I'd be surprised.

 

Yeah, long term planning is Snoke's department.

 

I could even marry that to the deep-cover theory and speculate that Ben's true goal is to end all Force users.

 

I don't think so. Snoke isn't Palpatine 2.0. He treats Starkiller Base and Hosnian Prime like afterthoughts.

 

Besides, he looks more like Voldemort 2.0.

 

Just finished reading the book, it was the first one I read after the EU wipe and I enjoyed it very much, especially the later chapters. Can anyone recommend any other books from the new canon? I am thinking of getting Lords of the Sith now (Tarkin is on my radar as well).

To elaborate more on Bloodline, it was truly heartbreaking at times. At start, I wasn't as invested into it but later on it was simply amazing. Things that stood out for me:

Spoiler

Leia's reaction to Ransolm's certain, unfair death. For the first time, she understood her fater, Anakin Skywalker, to some extent at least.

Death of the Populist candidate for the First Senator. That guy was nothing but pure good and I screamed in frustration upon realizing he was about to die...

...and possibly some more but those two are the only ones I recall now, I finished the book just moments ago.

I must say, I feel like the author really nailed down portrayal of Leia's character. Also, while reading the book, you can get the feeling of injustice that is so widespread in both the Star Wars universe and our own.

 

Actually, I think we got a hint about who Snoke really is from our friend Pablo.

Spoiler

Pablo just dropped this little bombshell in regards to the Inquisitors abducting Force Sensitives:



Or to examine them, see if they're useful as seers, and if they're not they kill them,


Snoke is the new Cronal.

 

Definitely a good book with awesome characters… and fits well into the new TFA universe, though this remark is not meant to be a praise. My main complaint against TFA was that it is a story in which almost everyone is a big failure, and Bloodline gives a good explanation, shows us the „how and the why”.

When in the beginning we get to see Leia it is clear that she is deeply unbalanced: a woman in late forties, a bit jealous of the young generation’s good looks and attitude, excepts to herself that she is doing nothing of value or meaningful, lives separated from her husband and cannot put her priorities straight about work against family, and most importantly cannot face the reality of her real parents. Her political views (and it is deeply disturbing since she should be a star politician) are at the same level as expressed by her father in AOTC (senate is useless, why there are different opinions at all, we need someone wise to make senators see the greater good, and this “someone wise” shouldn’t be me of course). She calls herself a Populist out of fear (while deep down she wishes to change the Constitution towards more powerful leadership)… She even goes into hysteria when confronts with her fellow Senator’s different opinion about the Empire… etc.

Seriously I would not vote for her.

Then we realise that – also out of fear and out of her inability to accept her real father – she committed the gravest mistake of her political carrier: she failed to inform anyone about her real father. Here I had to agree with the Centrists: people have the right to know about this "little fact".

If she had informed the Galaxy about the true identity of Lord Vader right after Endor it wouldn’t have been a serious issue now at all. And it wouldn’t have had such dire consequences back then. when everybody was perfectly aware how hard Leia fought against him. With such a huge and devastating fact a politician should know that 1. it will come to the open sooner or later 2. it better happen when she/he can control the circumstances.

But no, Leia based her political carrier on a half-truth.

And even more terrible that Luke Skywalker, the great Jedi Master did the same: he did not inform his apprentices about the complete truth about Lord Vader either. He lies to them. This way his New Jedi Order fails to overcome the weakness of the Old Order (so how goes the teachings about the attachments now, I wonder?!?!?)

Poor Ben Solo: he has got a liar as a mother and an uncle, and – I guess, because he is not an awesome pilot – he is a disappointment to his father… and that’s his family… So much for role models, I wonder what will happen to this boy?!?!

Then Leia claims that she wants to follow her real mother’s legacy. Sounds good, but still not true. The whole book proves that she is her father’s daughter fair and square (but I mean it as a praise ). Dear princess, let me inform you: your real mother would never give up on the Senate and would not start to collect an army before the war has started, she wouldn’t start to collect an army at all, she would try to stick to peaceful negotiation all the time.

But of course thank the Force that she is her father’s daughter because this way at least she would be moderately prepared for what is it to come in TFA.
I just hope that – besides taking revenge on Lady Carise – she will also have time to give some evidence in favour of the Casterfo guy, because it sounded as if she gave up on him and his fate (after getting angry).

Most awesome moment: when Han rescues Leia (and close second when he informs everyone that he knew about Vader and it was not a problem at all)

 

She doesn't "live separated" from him - it's simply that they spend a lot of time apart. They still share rooms (and Han apparently is prone to not picking his socks up off the floor"

I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea that Leia is "jealous of the young generation's good looks" from.

 

From the book , there are several remarks about Casterfo (before they got to be friends ), regarding his clothes, his looks... all the time she thinks that "oh, it is not practical, it is too theatrical etc...although she also chooses her robes to fit her political image), so it is clearly important to Leia, then she shows him the holocube in which she can be seen half naked - and if you accept that she does not want to brag about killing then she wanted to show him how pretty and fit she was twenty years before

 

"Poor Ben Solo"? Nah. Dude gets no sympathy from me after reading about Leia sending that message and knowing what he does later on.

 

Comeuppance is coming...

 

Yeah, that was a slap in the face to everything they fought so hard to build. No way I'm felling any kind of sympathy for his plight.

 

Seriously? That's what you got from that?

 

Yep.. and yes, I read the book, and I know that it was not the author's explicit intention. Still that was the first thing that springed to my mind. Frankly I do not have problem with it, even if I consider Leia as a character. Indeed I'm a bit convinced that she wanted both (bragging about killing the Hutt and show herself )
I had more problem with the explicit discrimination of the Hutt race in the whole book, even by those who are supposed to be the open minded heros doing everything for the greater good of the Galaxy (save the Hutts in general).
My opinion, my reading.

 

A troll who's obviously prepared to do violence to the English language too, it seems.

 

That addition is both unnecessary and inappropriate.

 

Almost done with this book and it is amazing. Why can't we have more Leia novels?

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

 

We don't know about everything that caused Ben Solo's fall. We do know that Leia feels partially responsible.

"I just never should have sent him away, that's when I lost him. When I lost you both."

Give this statement and the fact that Leia hasn't seen Ben in a while and that he's currently off training with Luke, we can conclude that the next time Leia sees her son, he will be Kylo Ren. At this point in the timeline, Leia has already lost her son. She just doesn't know it yet.