Lit I'll be honest...

I'm starting to sense you didn't like the series...

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

I loved the series. It was my first experience with Legends, and remains one of my favorite series of Star Wars novels.

That's why i'm so critical of it. Because it did start to drop in quality as the writer made it clear that nothing could top the heroes. That's why my favorite books in the series are the first three, with order 66 dropping off some with me, and Imperial Commandos being probably my least favorite.

 

It's been years, but I loved them all. I remember O66 and IC (only one IC book, BTW) both being pretty bleak.

I loved Travis's LOTF stories too. They were my favorites in the series...that series actually drive me to her RC books. I was a big fan of her character, not plot driven, style.

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

Are you implying that I don't know how many RC novels there are?

 

Oy...your sentence seemed to indicate plural for the IC book.

Really, I don't know what you do or don't know.

Chill pill man.

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I loved it hahhahah. I started reading that series while I was a conscript in the Finnish Navy/Defence Forces, with quite a few months still left ahead of me. Talks of desertion was more or less a meme over there and vacations were the only thing on anyone's mind, aside from keeping track of how many days we had left of service. That theme about brotherhood in those books and I guess the sort of thing about how to find the humor in living a drab, "optimized", institutionalized barrack life in an alien facility (Military base); how to best avoid going mentally insane, how to find enjoyment in the fact that your free will has been taken from you, all of that stuff actually comes down to the people you spend time with over there, that become your "squad mates". You don't stay in a place like that because you're loyal to your country or whatever or because law dictates it, you stay there for the bantz. I mean, our banter was perhaps of a slightly different sort than what you'd get with the clone commandos, but for the most part my own experiences really supported the mental imagery I got from Karen's books. And I don't just mean the stuff that goes on in ones head either, but also the more mundane things, as in what its like to prepare for a mission, eating tasteless garbage, being finally relieved from a two and a half hour long surveillance watch at three in the morning and going to sleep, only to be woken up again an hour later because **** is going down, or just dealing with unexpected bull**** while maintaining a cool head, maintaining that sense of humor (Officers and their subordinates talking **** together about their CO is a great bonding exercise during a 60km loaded march). And then there's the various quirks and stuff you get with army life. The absurdities you start to notice. When everyone has the same optimized hairstyle, the same uniform/camo etc, you start to differentiate and read people through different means, you start to take more notice of each persons own peculiarities. Everything becomes magnified. We even had our very own Kal Skirata (basically the cool dad of the company), protecting us from our smug, but actually very capable MacGyver-esque Lieutenant, Walon Vau/Arligan Zey hybrid. Pretty much every Full Metal Jacket stereotype was packed in there was well. Life in a garrison is like living in a bubble or like a TV show. It's really unhealthy, but it does build character for those who need it. Just a shame that those who actually do would never show up in a place like that. Anyway, I got to Order 66 by December and I still had a little over 3 months left of service. I figured I probably made a mistake in not reading slower, so I could've timed my ba'slan shev'la perfectly with that of Skirata's. Didn't work out. But then again, just as well, nor did things go exactly according to plan in the Travissverse either. I came back from my little Christmas break, we all felt like **** returning to that boring place, after spending time with our families and stuff. But I gotta say, I couldn't have found a better moment to bask in the gloominess of Imperial Commando. Reading about Darman and Niner made it feel like I'm stuck in there right alongside them, that I've burned all of my bridges and that I'll never get out of there, lol.

On another note, I like that epilogue Traviss posted on her website, where Maze and Zey become a Starsky & Hutch type duo and so on.

 

That's what made the Republic Commando series so frustrating for me, because you can tell Traviss is a good author and her books have the potential to be very good (she's not Christie Golden unreadable). But her obsessions and agendas become so overwhelming that it goes along way to ruining any enjoyment you get from her writing.

She loves Mandos, we get it, everyone else sucks, the Jedi are bad, every single point of view character in every one of her novels goes on about how great Mandalorians are and how bad Jedi are etc. Even if you don't hate it it still just gets annoying after being repeated constantly. Her LOTF novels steadily got worse in this regard as well. Sacrifice was great, then in Revelation she had a bunch of random Mandalorians easily beat Caedus, the main Sith Lord antagonist of the series, and only let him go because Fett said so. I mean, seriously . . .

She did almost the exact same thing with her Halo books, re. everyone hates Spartans and overdoing the "Halsey's a monster" angle. So annoying because she's actually a good writer.

 

Funny thing about Revelation and Invincible-Traviss had the mandos beat Caedus within an inch of his life. And in Invincible Caedus slaughters the Mandos without breaking a sweat.

It's almost as if Troy Denning and Karen Traviss were intentionally trying to one up and undermine each other.

 

DvT, huh?

 

They absolutely were. Denning really went out of his way to have the Jedi beating Mandos easily and regularly, and have characters say stuff like "they're only Mandos" etc. in his books.Not just Invincible but in his FOTJ books he did the same thing, Mandos sieging the Jedi Temple and getting ****ed up by random Jedi Apprentices. Kind of immature tbh.

 

Because who needs continuity when we all have our favorite peeps on top.

 

He is still supposed to be a master force user. While the Mandalorians are just elite commandos.

He shouldn't have been even close to being at risk.

 

There's also that one time the Mandalorians coated starships in Beskar and had near-invincible starfighter/bombers.

 

Seriously?

I don't remember that.

What was Traviss so attracted to with regards to Mandalorians?

 

Yup. Designed by the Mandalorians and the Verpine. It could fulfill most starfighter roles, had an outer coating of Beskar, and it was implied that, if further developed with the Verpine, they could make the hull out of Beskar as well.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bes'uliik

 

Where was the Mandalorians during the Yuuzhan Vong war?
And why didn't the Vong destroy Mandalore like they did Ithor.
I mean, come on!

 

I think it was mentioned the Vong did invade Mandalore and they heavily damaged the planet and killed a lot of people-the Mandos gave them a hard fight though.

The Mandalorians did successfully drive the Vong off their homeworld using tunnels and urban combat.

It also seems the Vong blasted off parts of the surface leaving open a lot of Beskar ore, allowing for an economic resurgence.

Mandalore did seem to take heavy losses-a third of its population was wiped out yet the Vong sustained heavy casualties themselves.

 

Traviss got the unique opportunity to flesh out Mandalorians, especially once Republic Commando became a series after Hard Contact, and she ran with it and never looked back, giving them a bit of a Celtic influence. Unfortunately, she also had the problem of condemning the morally questionable, unless it was "her" character doing it, which took away from what would otherwise be great books. I still like the Republic Commando series, Odds is a fine little short story, the GAR numbers not withstanding, which wasn't her fault, but I never bothered with 501st. Summaries told me all I needed to know about the Kilo-Five Trilogy, S.S.D.D. replace Halsey and the Spartan-IIs with the Kaminoans and Jedi, and the Spartan-IVs with the Mandalorians.

 

To be fair, Jaina and Raynar did all the heavy lifting in that fight. Take Tyria and Geffer away and the Sword and former Unu still clean house. Take them away though and the bucketheads would be taking Sarkin and Geffer's scalps as trophies.

I could never take Traviss seriously after she said "Order 66 was long overdue".

 

The tragic thing is that with Etain's help, those padawans may have made it.

 

I love what TCW, and subsequently Rebels, did with thr Mandalorian. Not at first, but its really grown on me since it all first went down.

 

You know I have always found Mando Legends history interesting. They originated from a species that waged war against early humans and then fled after their defeat.

Thousands of years later ironically humans joined their culture and dominated it. A fascinating part of Legends lore.

 

Seeing a series following the Mando's during the NJO series would be fun imo.