Lit Opinions on Michael A. Stackpole's writing?1

What's the consensus on Stackpole? Because I just finished the Dark Tide duology and the Corran Horn focus was just painful. It felt almost unprofessional, but I slogged through it because Luceno's duology was next.

The Dark Tide books had a few bright spots (Elegos and Shedo Shai) but mostly they felt somewhat lacking.
I've never read the X-Wing books or I, Jedi.

 

He's fine, I guess.

 

I don't remember there being that big a focus on Corran. And besides, he is his character. You expect Corran to be focused on.

 

Corran is Stackpole's Mary Sue. He rewrote the Jedi Academy trilogy just so he could stick Corran into the story.


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Corran isn't really a Gary Stu though. He has weaknesses and he isn't always right. But its true, you did always know he would win in the end. But then again the whole new republic basically hated him for it, so it wasn't all good for him.

 

Between I, Jedi's somewhat-grating nature and the fact that Allston largely blows him out of the water, I feel like Stackpole's writing has gotten a bit of a harsher rep in recent times than it really deserves. As Jello says, while there's some nagging repetitive problems, there's also a lot of things that he does well. I'd add to what he said that while Stackpole's X-Wing novels were less of an ensemble piece than Allston did, there's actually a lot of really enjoyable secondary characters.

(Though I'm not actually certain about how he writes dogfights - it's extremely detailed, but in literary action scenes I find a vaguer evocative style is actually usually better than a blow-by-blow description of who shot what how many times).

 

Stackpole's fairly good, IMHO; his Wedge is a more palatable take on the character than Allston's, IMHO. And as noted, Stackpole was quite adept at introducing memorable B-list characters (Gavin Darklighter and Asyr Sei'lar foremost, but many others).

AFA Corran favoritism, I'm willing to be forgiving. His lack of telekinesis made for an interesting spin on the "later-in-life Jedi" concept so rampant in Bantam (not to slight that trope - Luke didn't exactly have a ton of young students at that point, nor, IMHO, should he have, given his own lack of teaching experience at the time).

 

Couldn't disagree more re. the Corran Horn thing.

Such a vast majority of NJO is effectively just the story of the Skywalkers/Solos that it is really refreshing having characters like Corran and Ganner Rhysode have decent parts in a novel. Having someone different is easily one of the highlights of the Dark Tide Duology for me. I don't really understand the complaints about Corran in those novels either, he wasn't portrayed as overly powerful or anything like that so I dunno it may just be because you haven't read any of his other EU stuff that you don't like it?

Anyway it always bugged me that in a 21 book series the focus of NJO was almost always the same family of characters who do all the important things. It could have been so much more and would have been cool if they had have gotten the opportunity to revisit the NJO with novels about other characters during the time period later on.

 

One of the things I liked about Stackpole's work was how he was able to incorporate Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie and the droids without them overtaking the story. He managed to weave them in almost seamlessly while still focusing on Wedge and Rogue Squadron as well as Mirax and Iella. We got to see those characters from a different perspective and they didn't overshadow. Heck, he didn't introduce any new fighter designs or capital ship classes, focusing on the designs both sides had. I developed a better appreciation for Winter and Borsk Fey'lya. He also proved to able to work with writer materials that troubled him and do his utmost to repair what he saw as damaging without alright removing it. It seems he worked very well with Timothy Zahn and Aaron Allston while respectful of Kevin J. Anderson and everyone else's work. I much enjoyed Dark Tide as it gave us the best glimpse of the Yuuzhan Vong and how dishonorable they can be while bringing us up to date with everyone who isn't the main cast without them overshadowing too much.

You can say that Corran Horn was his pet but so is Gavin Darklighter, Tycho Celchu, Aril Nunb, Ooryl Qrygg, Nawara Ven, Mirax Terrik and Traest Kre'fey. He introduced them after all and most been given prominence in later material. Though I'd like to think that if Stackpole had been given an extra chance in the NJO, Ooryl and Aril might've played a role as well (certainly better than most).

[Imagine what've happened if Zahn had been given a chance in the NJO.]

 

Yes his writing isn't going to be classed amongst the best of the EU/Canon compared to others like Luceno, Zahn etc but Stackpole and the Rogue Squadron books got me into the EU in the first place and will always be amongst my favourites. Whilst Corran was 'his' character to the extent he's the hero pilot then a Jedi etc he did have flaws and screw up plenty of times so whilst he may have been a pet character I don't feel it was so bad as to ruin things. In fact one of the reason I love the series so much is all of the other characters, we get to see Wedge, Ackbar and a cast of new characters take the stage with the big three deployed sparingly. We also got to see many alien characters, something I've always felt we haven't had enough of since, and the fact that not everyone from Corellia was a Han Solo clone, the story covers so many worlds and walks of life that it made the galaxy feel much richer and varied to me. I know it will never happen, but it would be nice to have him write something in SW again, he clearly loved working in the universe.

 

Like his X-Wing books...and I enjoyed I, Jedi...but he does tend to favor his pet characters in other works.

 

And yet they don't overshadow the big seven (Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Lando and the droids).

 

Stackpole's writing is fine.
I like Corran. His portrayal is always consistent across all books.
Corran didn't fall in love with any of the major characters and save him/her all on his own, so he's not really a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.

 

Didn't like the whole bit in I Jedi where Corran literally lectures Luke Skywalker on dealing with the dark side

 

It helps that later, he realizes that his attitude to the dark side was extremely naive.

 

If you're asking for the consensus, my experience here tells me that he is well loved and considered an all time great Star Wars contributor.

He is not often considered one of the greatest pure writers, but is considered to be good. His X-Wing series of novels (some of which are written by Allston) and comics are among the most beloved in Star Wars fandom.

He hung out with actual pilots (Navy, IIRC), learned actual dogfighting theory and tactics, and implemented them quite competently. He also played a lot of Star Wars: X-Wing, IIRC. I think they're the best written dogfights in Star Wars history.

I'm one of the few, I think, who prefers Stackpole over Allston.

 

He's a rare gateway author of mine that I still I appreciate. Yeah, his prose is workman-like at best, his dialogue can be stilted at times, and he definitely prefers heroes some might find excessively competent. But there's a coherency to his worlds that I often find lacking in a lot of action-heavy writing. A very effective balance between character and setting. Lived-in, I guess you could say, which obviously has always been a selling point for Star Wars.

 

Stackpole, alongside Allston, made Wedge into an interesting character, and fleshed out Hobbie and Janson. The way Stackpole used Skirmish at Brigia from X-wing as a Rogue Squadron training mission made the universe feel connected.

 

As others have already said, I think the consensus on Stackpole is that he's pretty good, not one of the top three writers of the old EU (maybe during the Bantam era, but including all of Del Rey, probably not) but I'd say still top ten at least. He helped establish much of the old EU, writing up several quite important post-RotJ novels. His X-wing books are overshadowed by Allston's books, and I can understand why (and mostly agree), but generally pretty well-respected.

I agree with many of the criticisms about Corran, but I didn't mind him too much. Whistler was a bit overpowered too, but it was fun seeing an upgraded police astromech (this was before the prequels had flying Artoo). Also as mentioned his politics weren't bad, serving as important world-building for the New Republic. And I'm still very fond of Bacta War, just for the sheer guts for Rogue Squadron (after resigning from the New Republic) taking on Isard's Super Star Destroyer. It has one of my favorite moments from the old EU, with the PL-1 scene. That was back when the New Republic seemed an obvious huge improvement on the Empire (before the rot set in with the Del Rey era and never left).

Corran lecturing Luke is a little bit annoying, but that was set during the JAT (I think?) so the JAT had a lot of stupid scenes, so it was also kind of nice to see Corran criticizing those scenes. Author's pet, yeah, but JAT had plenty of flaws. It was nice to see Corran as recurring character throughout old EU (Mirax here and there too). I also liked the idea of Jedi having different specialties (and I still remember FotJ throwing that idea out with his daughter because generic is better ).

 

I read Stackpole because I got the impression of a good consensus about his body of work for SW. I think he's very good at plotting, and he's good at focusing on a small group of characters and giving them character direction and growth. A weakness would be that the larger ensemble surrounding the more developed characters might be accorded greater importance in words and not necessarily in action.

I think Stackpole is very good at plotting, and keeping the story going with incident that keeps the attention. I can only recall two occasions where the story jumps forward quickly when there was an opportunity to flesh out a more interesting potential story alternative. Um...I, Jedi was good and I enjoyed it; however it's one of a very few books were I noticed pacing problems, none of the other books I read by him had anything noticeable in this regard.

 

Someone fix Leonia Tavira's ship's hyperdrive!