Books STAR WARS: AFTERMATH

The ENTIRE "Journey to The Force Awakens" thing was nothing more than a bogus marketing gimmick. For instance, Weapon of a Jedi, the junior Luke novel, was great, but its advertised connection turned out to be a blink-and-you'll-miss-him extra. I don't know why people seem particularly resentful of Aftermath in this regard.

 

A bigger connection than Sarco would be Jess Pava in the prologue and epilogue.

 

I admit, the whole "Journey to The Force Awakens" was kind of mishandled. There was hardly anything besides cameos that could be considered a huge connection to Episode VII, so marketing that collection of books in that way made it seem like they were going to shed a lot of light on things when they really didn't. At this point, we still have no good picture of what is going on.

Regardless, shedding the odd marketing scheme, Aftermath was a really good novel. It's the kind of Star Wars media I used to enjoy as a kid: a story of a group of characters outside of the Big Three fighting their own fight against the Empire ala Shadows of the Empire or the Jedi Knight series.

 

I buy Aftermath and Shattered Empire as Journey to TFA pretty valid, they have characters that are in TFA and seeing the Empire fall apart is a pretty important step since they've been replaced by the First Order.

 

I could not and still can't make it through Aftermath after the initial read. How Wendig got the gig for the flagship post-ROTJ trilogy is beyond me when they could have tapped Zahn, Freed, or Luceno. His characters outside of Sinjir and Sloane (who wasn't even his) are vanilla and boring, I absolutely cannot stand scenes with Temmin and Nora.

Life Debt was, admittedly, better, and of the two is only one I'll listen to multiple times. However, I skip every scene with Temmin and Nora, and cannot stand how he tries to equate his pet BH with Han Solo as marksmen/markswomen. Also not a fan of how he downgraded Sinjir, who I actually enjoyed in Aftermath, to "gay best friend" to the pet BH character. I find myself only following the scenes once they hit Kashyyk, and the Imperial perspective before that. I just can't bring myself to care about the Wexleys.

The interludes are pretty good though, I'll give him that. Does a fair amount of general world-building. The only one I didn't like was with the multi-gendered pirate captain. It just read really weird to me, and kinda felt contrived.

Hoping Empires End will be better. Hoping even more that Temmin and Nora won't be there. Or anywhere else, ever again. Yuck.

 

Life Debt:
The story itself was very good. I really enjoyed it, had a lot of great characters (Sinjir, Rae, Gallius, and of course Han Solo), the interludes were great as well and finally gave some information that's important for TFA.

BUT

The style of the book dragged it down very hard. The constant innuendos were embarrassing, forced, and unnecessary and the particularly violent scenes were unnecessary and un-Star Warsy as well. Fortunately the Hungarian translation was written in past tense so I didn't have to deal with the infamous present tense.

Both Aftermath and Life Debt saddens me a lot because I feel like they had potential to be much better then what they've become. These books are very important to the overall story and I feel like it was the wrong time for experimentation. But Life Debt was much more enjoyable than Aftermath, so hopefully Empire's End will be finally the book we wanted all along.

 

Just finished the book today!

I tried reading it once already. I got about to page 150 before giving up and going to a different book.

I tried reading it again these past couple weeks, and I will say that it was a lot better than I remembered. Especially after page 150

I enjoyed Wendig's characters, and the interludes were awesome. My one problem is it was just too slow and irrelevant in the first 150 pages, but other than that, it was a fun read. I'm gonna give Life Debt a try when I can get it at a good price.

 

I think that Life Debt is considerably better than Aftermath. And it's finally relevant to the overall story.

 

I started reading this book like two months ago, but after reading four or five pages I was turned off, the initial pchapter was exciting but then it felt like it went downhill and only goes up until the last arc.

I'm about to finish it, 70 pages left, but the whole time I feel like I was reading and episode of Rebels or something that could have happened in Rogue One, Temmin is just so annoying, the only great characters are Sloane, Norra and Jas, Mr. Bones too and because he was first I feel like K-2SO is a carbon copy of him, because Mr. Bones sounds badass and creepier, the interludes are great, some of them even better than the main story.

I hope to finish this tomorrow and start with Life Debt and then EE.

I hope to finish

 

Managed to pick up the trilogy for £10 from the works.

 

How did empires end turn out for tbhose that read it?

 

I'm one of the (few--maybe) people who enjoyed the first book. The second was incredible, and the third even more so. I just recently read through them all again and where in my first read through I enjoyed Life Debt more than Empire's End, I found myself really loving Empire's End this time around. I think I was in a bad place reading it the first time.

 

Not alone! I really enjoyed the entire trilogy truth be told. Life Debt is the clear stand out in my opinion whilst Empire's End, whilst great didn't quite have the pay off I thought it would. But when this happens in media - and it happens a lot (SW prequels, matrix sequels etc.) that can be down to the strength of the media that preceded it (OT, first matrix film etc.) Life Debt set quite a high standard that Empire's End couldn't quite follow in my opinion.

The first aftermath is tricky. Once you get past the writing style, it's a great read. I really like the characters and think Wendig, through the trilogy got the opportunity to make you care a lot for them. Yes, he had the benefit of Snap being in TFA, but that was it and he wasn't exactly a pivotal character. Mr Bones, Sinji and the rest are fleshed out well and with Wedge introduced later on, when read as a trilogy it did give us that great state of the galaxy / Empire's destruction that we wanted post Endor.

Also Han and Chewie were written well as well as Sloane. I would imagine some pressure for Sloane as she was already at that point a fan favourite - but in all her portrayals she has been done well.

Also, when playing Battlefront II - the audio with Snap was simply brilliant as was the references to Rax.

 

I never had an issue with the writing style, and doing a re-read of Aftermath highlighted Wendig's worldbuilding. He puts a lot of detail into Akiva in particular.

 

Started playing Battlefront II and noticed a Rax reference and Beard Han which is in Life Debt

 

Fans of The Beard might also enjoy something from the recent Poe Dameron Annual #2.

 

There are quite a number of Aftermath references in Battlefront II. The game most draws from Shattered Empire, but the Aftermath trilogy is next. Along with some scattered Lost Stars, Blade Squadron, and Marvel references.

 

Although thinking on it more, there actually is a slight discrepancy in one of Battlefront II's Aftermath(- adjacent) references - Admiral Versio says that "Vice Admiral Sloane" ordered the retreat from Endor, when in the short story covering that, she was a full admiral.

 

A comic one-shot told entirely from Sinjir's point of view, with him commenting on the action via yellow thought boxes, would be an awful lot of fun.