Reviews Books The JC Lit Reviews Special: DEATH STAR (Spoilers)

5/10 For me.

This was a pretty big letdown for me, I had some high hopes because of the authors. The book was too scattered for my tastes, and with too many throwaway characters.
Conceptually, the book is interesting, and there are some good points for it, but Reaves and Perry both need to really bone up on how the military operates, because it's horribly done here. There's too much drama, not enough in depth discussion and it essentially follows A New Hope for half of the book.

 

Average score: 151.6/21 = 7.22

 

I enjoyed the book, but I hate to say it, the book didn't have much of a plot. It seems like the biggest reveals were how the venting port got created, and how Despayre blewed up. Vader being smoked by Vil is odd, but Vader had other things on his mind at the time, and may have been out of practice. He had recently fought a ghost, and "completed the circle", mind you. I, too, would have liked more of a back-story, like combining the Qwi Xux era, the end of ROTS, and all of ANH, but I guess I'm happy with what was written. I'll tell you one thing, though, reading all those memorable quotes from the movie was very powerful for me, and brought back a ton of memories and emotion! The novelisation of ANH, which I happen to have not 2 feet from me, doesn't have it quoted directly.

More tidbits:
-I totally buy how the main cast's demeanor about being on the DS shifts almost on a dime, after the destruction of the planets.
-Vil Dance will (he has to!) appear in future novels. I was hoping he'd have been mentioned in some of those X-Wings novels, but alas, wookiepedia said otherwise.
-The foreshadowing of the destruction was overdone.
-"Teh Roxxor" Are you kidding me? I got a KICK out of that!
-Loved the nod to GL: "Perhaps one day someone can put stylus to screen and write the story of the destruction of the DS"
-The names were confusing, and not the best of the EU. Kept confusing "Atour" and "Ratua". In fact - there were too many characters.
-It will be interesting next time I watch ANH (plan on it tomorrow).
-Would have liked one final scene, where DV talked to palpy. I LOVE it when Palpy shows up in novels, we never got enough of him as Sidious, even in ROTS. Hopefully they'll make his novel one day.
-Oh, yeah, no matter how well they described the lightsabre fight, it still sounded lame.

7.6

 

Average score: 159.2/22 = 7.24

 

Death Star is now one of my favorite SW books of all time.
After reading the continuing drek that is the Legacy of the Force series, DS was a nice change of pace.
I loved 'seeing' the scenes in ANH replayed with the scenes extended or from different points of view.
Although some of the plot-points seem a bit contrived...this is nothing new for SW books.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would like to see a sequel involving the 2nd Death Star.

Rating: 9.5/10

 

Average score: 168.7/23 = 7.33

 

An all right read. It has a slow start, but begins to get interesting when the many characters begin meeting up. From the beginning, some of the stories were more interesting, and more familiar, than others and made me look forward to seeing their stories more than others. It actually reminded me somewhat of the early episodes of "Heroes" last year, giving a slow buildup that got better as the storylines intertwined.

The inside look at the more familiar characters, Tarkin, Motti, Vader and others, provides some interesting insight, especially for Motti and Vader. I actually kind of feel good for Vader when, for that one moment after he's killed Kenobi, his feeling of triumph is so strong that he almost seems to reach joy. Knowing how long it is since he's had that, it's a nice moment, made even better by his reaction just seconds later.

Which brings up one aspect of the late books, the inevitable overlap with movie scenes that the writers pretty much recount word for word. Personally, I thought that Stover did a more interesting job in the ROTS novel, though like him we get a few alternate viewpoints on familiar events.

If anything, this book is one entry that seems to take the term EU literally, as its main purpose is to flesh out the final days of the Death Star's construction and the people who were there, just working in the background while hinting and working toward future events in the Star Wars saga. In that it succeeds, though as a standalone story, it could have been better.

6.5/10

 

Average score: 175.2/24 = 7.30

 

After all the hassles of moving, I finally got around to reading & reviewing this novel.

View it here: http://www.theforce.net/books/reviews/r_DeathStar.asp




Sadly, I was unimpressed, and gave it a .4 out of 4 which (if I did my math right) translates roughly into 1 out of 10

 

Average score: 176.2/25 = 7.05

 

I'll be brief, basically be cause I feel like being so.

Thoroughly enjoyed all of the characters bar Ratua, found 90% of it utterly fascinating, Vader is characterized properly, which is a bresh of freath air after the travesty that was Allegiance. Actually enhances the film, which is what I think all EU that can should aspire to do. Simply put, the best Star Wars product of the year.

9.5/10

 

Average score: 185.7/26 = 7.14

 

Got it for Christmas, and it's a very interesting read. The gang of new characters were all fairly interesting, but I never felt like they got developed quite enough. Either Ratua or Riten should have been cut, or possibly both if they could have made someone else a decent slicer -- his ability to access information was Riten's sole reason for being in the plot, and more than any of them, he really stood out as being extraneous. And as much as I really liked Uli and seeing him, he was really redundant, too. Cutting down the amount of characters (and defectors, and Force-sensitives) really would have helped flesh out the rest more. I also would have loved to see more of Motti, Vader, Tarkin, and the higher-ups, too, but the aspect I would have most preferred to see in a Death Star novel was given the shortest shrift. They did do some really interesting things with the characters, though, and the book is amazing simply for turning The Man Who Killed Alderaan into a likable character, even when he was pulling the lever. Tarkin and Vader were both undercharacterized, however. Their POVs were very tell-not-show, and just came off as very thinly characterized. Almost all Vader's good moments were through the POVs of others, with Dance and Graneet being in awe of him.

While I do like the fact that the destruction of Alderaan was treated as something deeply gut-wrenching, I didn't like how quickly everyone came together and decided "The hell with this." The whole escape/plot/ANH section of the book felt really rushed. It also suffered from an awful lot of filler despite that, as Reaves and Perry basically just transcribed every scene from ANH on the Death Star, whether it was really that necessary to the plot or not. And when I say transcribed, it's pretty much "X said, Y. A said, B. Z, replied X. End scene." They didn't even take the opportunity to really expand the scenes. Sometimes we get one or two more lines after the cut, but they were never anything special. When we got the POVs of the scenes, they were paper-thin, rarely giving us any real insight into the characters. There are a few interesting bits where Motti is revealed to be the guy who took the order to destroy Alderaan (I don't recall seeing him onscreen), and it's basically stated that, the first time we see the Death Star in ANH, the rubble of Despayre is floating just offscreen, but those moments of expansion are all to rare. As a rule, if some nameless aide shows up in the movie, he's a nameless aide in the book. Tarkin can't be bothered to know Lieutenant Jimbo, everyone's just Some Aide. The first scene from ANH, where Vader captures the Tantive IV, was awesome. It felt like stepping back into ANH, or the Radio Dramas. It really felt like the PT, the Dark Times, were suddenly linking into the OT. But from there, it just went pedantic.

Ultimately, Reeves and Perry are strongest working with their own characters, where they achieve some hits and craft a fun, if not particularly remarkable, novel. When they work with preexisting characters and plot, they suddenly go shallow with the exception of a few meaty passages. 8

 

Average score: 193.7/27 = 7.17

 

Unlock n' bump by request.

 

Many thanks, Rogue Follower, for unlocking n' bumping for me. Death Star got bumped up in my summer reading, as I hope to read Jedi Twilight soon, and I figured it couldn't hurt to have this one in the bag beforehand. I've never done a review like this before, but I think I'm going to go for the style of the classic tfn reviews, by listing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good

Death Star shone for a lot of the same reasons that the Medstar duology did. Reaves and Perry have created a group of original characters who live and work everyday professions, and written a book that excels in characterizing them and getting the reader interested in them. Thrown in are a character from one of the films or two --- before, it was Barriss Offee, and now, it's Tarkin & Motti. This was a Tales book without being a Tales book, and Reaves and Perry pulled off another a great, character-driven story. I found myself particularly interested in Tenn Graneet, Nova Stihl, Vil Dance, and Kornell "Uli" Divini, the latter who I found myself cheering for above any of the others, possibly owing to my having liked him in Medstar.

The stories of those everyday characters were, unsurprisingly, what made the book. There were also some fun little references to other continuity thrown in --- I'm not quite sure what the continuity errors people have mentioned are. I read recently that apparently a whole new stolen-Death-Star-plans scenario was introduced, when really, there was just a throwaway reference to the plans being taken from Toprawa, which was already in continuity. There was a really neat reference to the house of Tagge (anything Marvel for the win!), and teras kasi was in the book, which is always awesome. I also particularly liked how the confusing mess that was the continuity of the Death Star was cleared up in a single paragraph. When this book was announced, fandom was like, "Oh, good, now we can have a book tying everything together. It's such a mess, it will take an entire book to do it!" But really, there was a single paragraph of Tarkin's thoughts that very simply tied the Geonosians, Raith Sienar, Qwi Xux, Despayre, the prototype in the Maw, and everything else together, mentioning that there had been a lot of setbacks and red tape over the past nineteen years. And that was it. And then the rest of the book was free to be dedicated to great character stories.

I do wonder, however, why they didn't tie into continuity the planet-buster that destroyed the planet Equanus, that Klo Merit said the Republic had been testing during the Clone Wars in Jedi Healer. Considering that it was Reaves and Perry who came up with that, I thought that it would be brought into the fold.

Reaves and Perry do a great job with humour. I had to put the book down, I was laughing so hard at "Teh Roxxor". That was simply fantastic, and easily the funniest thing I've ever read in a SW book.

One thing that I greatly enjoy about Reaves and Perry's works, is that there's quite a lot of page-time dedicated to the thoughts of the characters, and sometimes, those thoughts will randomly stray to some sort of physics aspect of the SW Universe. In Medstar, somebody randomly thought about how hyperspace travel is only possible because you go faster than the speed of light, and in Death Star, there were several similar instances. Even though they're sort of tangents, they enhance the story for me.

In addition to coming up with interesting original characters, the authors did fantastic jobs with Tarkin, Motti, and Vader. I just wish that there had been more of Motti. It sometimes seemed like his scenes were building towards something that never came. I find myself really wanting to listen to the ANH Radio Drama now.

I also loved that after thirty years, we finally know where in the galaxy the Death Star was during A New Hope before it went to Alderaan!

The Bad

A lot of this is going to seem nitpicky, but a lot of it wo

 

Average score: 201.7/28 = 7.20

 

I know this one seems pretty unpopular, but I thought it was brilliant. Essentially a collection of short stories and character sketches. A very different kind of SW novel.

And I loved the detail about Naval life and nomenclature. The authors really played around with form, style, and wording.

Well done.

9.5

 

Average score: 211.2/29 = 7.28