Lit Jedi Trial- Worth Reading At All?

Ghost: there are a lot of things freaking Star Wars books should never be. Boring is pretty high up there

 

I remember this novel calling tanks with living crews "tank droids." It had annoyed me so much when it first came out.

 

I had quibbles but what a show. What a show.

 

Why are you addressing me? I hadn't posted in this thread yet

 

I saw the G and my wires got crossed. Common problem in robots and idiots

 

I think the RotS novelization referenced it, kind of, in terms of "hey, they're using that communication jamming device from that novel!".

More recently (relatively speaking) I remember pondering once why they wasted a hardcover slot on rubbish like this while something like Dark Rendezvous was "just" a paperback. Probably because this was Anakin's Knighting (I think?) so it gets to be a hardcover, despite being a bad novel.

To echo the other better written posts, don't bother with this novel, at best it was one of the weaker Clone Wars and Star Wars novels. At worst, it was just stupid and pretty unnecessary. Not the worst Star Wars novel ever, far from it (as Havac mentioned, a Republic Commando novel or something from LotF or FotJ or Crucible would qualify as "worst SW novel ever") but no reason to waste time on finding a copy and reading it (especially because its non-canon by now).

While its nice to have Nejaa show up and they try to attempt to fix his whole "married Jedi" thing into the prequel-era stodgy Jedi Order, its better to not know about it and just ignore it.

 

I'm most surprised by this thread from the revelation that the last two Repuvlic Commando books are that level of bad. I knew they were divisive, but the first two (more so the first) were enjoyable enough

 

Eh. They go down the rabbit hole a bit. You know the trope Flanderization? That's basically what happens. All of the little problems that happened in the earlier books become bigger problems, to the point where it's nigh impossible to overlook them. It doesn't help that the series never wound up being finished, so the whole story sort of leaves off in a cliffhanger.

 

There's like one sentence with Darth Sidious that's sorta worth reading. Not sure if you want to get through an entire book for that one gem. Especially since it's at the very end.

 

I think there's a tendency as authors settle into series to get into a rut, to lean into their own tendencies. And all of Traviss's worst instincts became more pronounced as time went on. Hard Contact remains a really good war story. Triple Zero is really not as bad as it's sometimes said to be; it hadn't gone entirely off the rails yet. But True Colors settled completely into the Jedi hatred and Mando worship, with the series giving up any semblance of action and just becoming a bunch of identically voiced characters sitting around in rooms, beating Traviss's pet issues to death in constant repetition of the same conversation, while nothing happens all book except for low-grade domestic drama.* Order 66 was pretty much the same thing except more stridently so, and with truly awful strawmanning and possibly the worst death scene ever. Imperial Commando found a way to be even worse, by reverting to complete inaction and even heavier rewriting of the universe. They're bad, they're offensive, and they're incompetent.

I can summarize the entire rest of the series for you in two points:

1. Everyone becomes a Mandalorian.

2. All the women marry hunky Mandalorians and sit in the kitchen on Mandalore discussing their hunky Mandalorians.



*This is the same exact trajectory of Traviss's original series.

 

Are they worse than Traviss' Legacy of the Force entries? Because despite the glaring problems in those books, I managed to overall enjoy reading them (Revelations was more of an effort). And yeah, I can already see the transition of Bardan Jusik in the second RC novel from "only good Jedi in the galaxy because Traviss wrote them" to "Mandalorian who's seen the light about the evil Jedi and will be a mouthpiece from here on out".

(Oh and Havac, absolutely interested in hearing what your quibbles were on the Mad Men conclusion; I personally can't remember ever leaving an ongoing series more satisfied, save perhaps Breaking Bad)

 

Traviss was still a good and interesting writer... even if she was too pro-Mandalorian and anti-Jedi and sometimes inconsistent with the other authors.

Books like Jedi Trial are just... bad.

 

Yeah, the thing with Bardan is, in TZ he was interesting. He was swaying toward the Mando side of things a bit, but mostly his thing was "we're Jedi, we're supposed to be helping people." And he's right, even though his criticisms aren't all in a row (they're just exaggerated strawmen on Traviss' part). Him wanting to stop being a General and become a combat medic? Not a bad thing. The fact that he instead chooses to be a Mandalorian warrior? I don't have a problem with him becoming Mandalorian, necessarily, but his whole criticism of the Jedi basically revolved around "we've lost our way, we should be helping others not ourselves" and then he immediately joined a family whose only ultimate goals were "help ourselves." So...it's really odd. And yet somehow I overall like the series, even if I see the flaws it has (but I'm not as critical of it as some are).

 

They're not screwing up the ongoing story and mangling existing characters, so they're not as bad that way, but honestly yes, they're worse. The writing is stale, the characters are all identical, and the strawmanning is just soooo over the top. The books just pile on the Jedi and laud the Mandalorians to the skies, and nothing ever happens to Traviss's pet characters except for Etain dying tragically hilariously in Order 66. They're all so genius that they figure out that Palpatine is manipulating the war, so they all just check out and go off to Mandalore, where the Nulls, RCs, and some of their clone buddies become Mandalorians, who are all identical good ol' British soldier blokes, and basically sit out the war while they all get married to women who can't resist them, including the Coruscanti woman who was kidnapped and taken there against her will but oh wait Mandalorians are so dreamy I think I like it here and I'll marry one of the clones I forget who they're all the same anyway. Oh one of the clones gets hurt and that's like huge drama, that he's hurt. And he has to be nursed back to health by some hot Mandalorian chick and they fall in love. It's the sarcastic one. You know, as opposed to all the other sarcastic characters who totally don't all speak in the exact same authorial voice anyway. And then in Imperial Commando Darman's mad at Kal but no one would ever possibly take this seriously considering that no actual conflict has ever lasted more than a second in these books.

As for Mad Men, I love Peggy and Stan together but it happened too abruptly because the show hadn't done any work building their relationship in recent episodes. There was good work there in prior seasons but the show at least needed something in the two or three episodes before it to hint at it, so that it wouldn't feel like a total finale ass-pull, which it kind of did. It's a good relationship but the resolution comes totally out of left field. Also just on an emotional level I would have liked to have seen more resolution for Don on a couple issues. After the arc of Don's attempt to regain some control over his life and improve as a person, and that incredible emotional catharsis, I was disappointed to end on the note of Don estranged from his family and probably just going back to McCann. I would have liked a little more sense of his trajectory. In a way, except for a few stray elements of the finale that weren't addressed yet, I actually prefer the penultimate episode as a perfect Mad Men finale. It hits the tone I was looking for a little better.

 

Havac my biggest issue with her books that I've noticed this time around (I'm actually reading O66 right now) is that no one dies (except Etain). People die in war and it's really screwy that none of these characters die. I read a quote somewhere about how "war stories without death aren't war stories, they're war pornography." Fi should've died in TC, honestly. One of the most tragic character deaths is killing a character off in the middle of their story arc, and Fi was right in the middle of an arc, struggling with not having a normal life or a girlfriend. Kill him off before he achieves that? Tragic. But he survived and got better. I'm not opposed to that in and of itself because I liked Fi, but if someone was going to die, that would've been the time. Or Niner should've died in 501st (or been unable to recover from his spinal injury in O66), cutting Darman's last tie to the Empire. Basically, there are no consequences for anyone except Etain (and those characters affected by her death), because Fi completely recovers from being brain dead and Niner completely recovers from a broken spine. I love these books, but...consequences.

 

There are no consequences for anything in the books. Nothing actually bad will happen to any of these people, except for the pure obligation of Etain dying. Not even ****ing Zey could stay dead.

 

I heard Scout from Dark Rendezvous was in one of those books. Did Traviss ruin her? I really liked that character but I am terrified to read those books.

 

Traviss writes her as, "replacement Etain". I kid you not, it's so bad that the mandos have to remind each other that they aren't the same person.

 

Don't read Jedi Trial. It's trash and it should be left off of even the completionist's reading list.

The opening pages literally read like they're part of a nine-year-old's creative writing project for school. I'm barely paraphrasing when I say that it was "Anakin went to the training room. He trained and trained. It was very hard. Then Nejaa Halcyon came. They trained together. They got very tired. They agreed to do it again the next day."

Characters that are supposed to be likeable protagonists are given the names "Erk" and "Odie." In the middle of a pitched battle, a few pages are dedicated to a random and pointless droid talking about all of his functions. There's a truly terrible scene at the end of the book with Darth Sidious that nobody should have allowed to happen.

With the old EU dead and gone, we should be going back and discovering the good stuff we missed and leaving the garbage in the garbage bin. We are richer for having lost this book.

 

I'm applauding myself for so far navigating this thread safely between my desire to read every ounce of scorn dropped on RC (oh, and JT) and a vague attempt at evading all Mad Men spoilers. We just started again yesterday, will probably finish the sixth season today.

I guess someday, karma will catch up with me in here.

But this was 181 kinds of fun.

Jeff_Ferguson, 2010: 'A lot of this book is just unspeakably awful. The opening pages literally read like they were a fifth-grade student's project for creative writing class. I'm barely exaggerating when I say that this is what was on the page:

"Anakin practiced lightsabers all day. He was very tired. Then Nejaa Halcyon came. He asked if they could spar together. Anakin agreed. They sparred all day. It was tiring but they had fun. They agreed to do it again the next day. The next day, they sparred again and they were both very good."'

 

At this point I really only have five or six templates that I draw from whenever I post. That's why they're all starting to look the same.

 

This is honestly the most interesting thing in this thread so far.

 

I am going to have to re-read this now. I genuinely cannot remember a single thing from this novel.

I've read every Classic EU novel and can at least generally recall the overarching plot of every one. Most I can recall some specific scene or other from.

I genuinely have no memory of Jedi Trial.

That itself implies it is quite bad.

 

It feels like we should summon sombody who are not so anti later RC books to deffend them, maybe Mia Mesharad ?