Books CRUCIBLE by Troy Denning: The Official Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

That's people buying the book!

We can carp as much as we like - remember I bailed on this EU strand 2006, I have no stake in this - but wherever the profit level is set to determine a book is a success or failure, they are likely being met. Why? Denning write Invincible, it sold just over 100,000, so success, he gets to do FOTJ. Apocalypse sells much lower, just over 25,000 but, since he got the Crucible job, enough to be deemed a success by DR.

Years ago, people decided, in response to the excess gore and viciousness of NJO to cease buying - the criticism was made that that'd kill SW EU, the counter-response was if this was what TPTB consider EU to be then it's better off dead!

 

That's people buying the book because Star Wars is on the cover. My new hypothesis is that Del Rey puts its weaker authors on the Big 3 Legacy era novels because they sell anyway with the built in audience, whereas Zahn and Luceno outsell those books on reputation.

What SW book doesn't hit NYT bestsellers list for at least 1 week? I know books as obscure to a mainstream audience as Knight Errant have done so. Hitting the list isn't impressive. Staying on it for months is.

 

Quite so, but people keep asking if this book's quality being so low will mean no more SW books for Denning and that, to me, is missing the point. It sells, therefore it's a success thus yes, further Denning SW books are likely.

Can't say I particularly like it but it's the world we live in.

 

You managed to make me feel even worse about buying this book by pointing out I contributed to another Denning book, after I had bought and hated this novel.

 

I think you're giving too much weight to NYT bestsellers. Apocalypse sold just over 26,000. It hit NYT Bestsellers list at #2, dropped to #9 the following week, #16 the following week, and then did not make the list. Crucible hit the list at #17 for 1 week. People aren't buying this book besides hardcore fans.

 

Yeah, in author terms, on a conclusion series finale novel Denning shed or lost over 75,000 readers when compared to the figures for Invincible but again we don't know where the line is that determines success or failure for a SW book for DR.

On the fact he got the Crucible job, I'm concluding Apocalypse sold well enough, even at a much lower level and despite being out-sold by Darth Plagueis - which is quite satisfying - that it was deemed a success.

Way back when - check out the 20th Anniversary Edition of HTTE - it wasn't known how HTTE would sell, then it turned into this big surprise hit. That sense of caution and care is long, long gone - it's known a book that has SW on its cover will sell whatever its content thus the current status quo....

 

You managed to make me feel even worse about buying this book by pointing out I contributed to another Denning book, after I had bought and hated this novel.[/quote]

Well, as of right now, it's more a potential future SW Denning book, but yeah point remains, the only thing really taken notice of is money spent - or not.

 

And it also depends on how much Del Rey pays Denning vs. how much Del Rey pays Lucasfilm for the license. The books are work-for-hire, meaning Denning gets paid a flat fee to produce the book but Lucasfilm owns the copyright. And I'm guessing that's it - no royalties, no escalators, no additional payments go to Denning.

And Denning doesn't have any original novels, so he doesn't own the copyright to any works that he could use to support himself via royalties, selling ancillary rights, reprints, self-publishing, etc. He's dependent on getting work-for-hire contracts. So I'm wondering if that makes him fairly inexpensive to hire, which might be why Del Rey seems to like him so much - and might continue to employ him.

Just a semi-educated guess.

However, as far as I can tell using the oracle of Google, Del Rey's Star Wars license runs out at the end of this year. Hmmm.

 

Isn't the reason why Stackpole no longer writes Star Wars because Del Rey discontinued the policy which Bantam had for providing royalties? If so, then there wouldn't be royalties for anything published lately, so that all sounds plausible.

Del Rey does have the new Darth Maul book set for early next year, so I'm not sure their contract ends that soon. They also announced Sword of the Jedi and the Kemp duology so they had slots for them, so I'm not sure when those were supposed to see release.

 

Any news will probably come out of the Del Rey panel at SDCC, and the Kemp duology, and Sword of the Jedi, hasn't been heard of since before the disney purchase.

 

The Del Rey panel at SDCC occurred a month ago and there was no news.

 

I meant the NYCC, in October

 

And this'll be how many cons where we thought there'd be news of X now?

 

I thought this book started well - the Chiloon Rift and the asteroid mining set-up seems to have some thought put into it and has a great feeling of the Wild West. The initial intrigue about the mafia-style dealings is good as well. The asteroid impact was really well done and the aftermath was well conveyed. Several scenes where Han is playing sabacc with the villains reminded me a bit of Casino Royale.

Unfortunately there are some elements which are re-using tropes from previous books - the biots are similar to Human Replica Droids. Big Three Characters have been duplicated like Luke was in the Thrawn Trilogy. The villains have made their base in an ancient location. The ending features a meta-physical battle.

It also felt a bit like Star Trek to me - the meta-physical battle and the dark spirits in the monolith are a bit like the wormhole aliens and Pah-Wraiths in Deep Space Nine, or the scenes inside the Nexus in Star Trek Generations. There's also the whole handing over to a new generation, which again is like Star Trek Generations.

Given that the book states that the Jedi order are stretched thin, by the end of the book Han, Luke and Leia seem ready to retire too easily. Perhaps they've got a really good pension plan in the GFFA?

 

This is the latest press release I can find for DelRey and Lucas Licensing.

The contract was for 35 fiction books, 10 non-fiction books, through the end of 2013.

So Del Rey can conceivably commission books to be written through 2013 as long as slots are open, even if they are published later, but unless the contract is extended they would not be able to commission new titles starting in 2014.

I doubt we'll see Sword of Jedi. Del Rey has cancelled titles before, they can easily cancel them now. For all we know, it's already been cancelled.

And I also doubt we'll get any word about book cancellation, the license extension/cancellation or any new titles for some time. Presumably, Del Rey and Lucas Licensing would be in discussions by now; but Lucas Licensing also needs to figure out its relationship to and with the greater Disney Consumer Products empire. And then there's deciding when, where and how to discuss publicly the state of the current EU vs. whatever is being set up in the films.

So I expect radio silence for months to come.

 

Unfortunately, all this negative reaction simply means that a lot of people bought the book. We're nothing if not a self-destructive lot.

 

Oi, I didn't buy Crucible.

I've merely been reading it at the local B&N over the course of multiple visits.

 

That's what I did. Read it in 2 days coincidentally.

 

I haven't bought a Denning book since Vortex.

 

I haven't bought a Denning book yet, and the only one I have any interest in purchasing is SbS, which is the only novel of his that I have read and I am not really interested in any of his others.

 

Likewise.

 

Since we're confessing, I bought Tatooine Ghost. It's not bad.

 

I've bought Star by Star, Tatooine Ghost, The Joiner King, The Unseen Queen, The Swarm War, Tempest, Inferno, Invincible, Abyss, and Vortex. But I've been a completionist when it comes to the post-ROTJ novel stories. Fate of the Jedi finally broke me.

Denning's novels, apart from the general issues with the storytelling and over the top violence, suffer from inconsistency. His two earliest novels, SbS and TG, have some pretty good parts, but the rest of both those novels are a huge drop off in quality and it brings them down for me. I'd say Abyss was his strongest novel in terms of being consistently decent but it suffers from the lack of narrative structure that these nine book series define themselves by.

 

I've actually liked most of Dennings work (same w/ Traviss), but I didn't get Crucible. One of the only EU novels I haven't read, but I decided not to read it based on the reviews. Seems like it has no real purpose, doesn't advance the plot, and we still don't know how EPVII will fit into all of this.