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

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Havac , Oct 19, 2009.

  1. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 228/38 = 6.00
     
  2. Cindrollic

    Cindrollic Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    May 6, 2007
    The Good:

    Schreiber's writing. I'm a fan of Stephen King and he has said that the King effected his writing style and it shows. The shorter chapters were different and I enjoyed it.

    The original characters. While not spectacular, they all for the most part served a part in the story.

    And it was a self-contained story. Which I liked. I want to see more of this and less of 'Galaxy Shattering Book Series That Keep Disappointing'.

    The Bad:

    First and foremost, it's just not scary. It was PG-13 kind of horror, and coming from someone who's father is a major horror movie fan, I would know. I was left unsatisfied. Which is odd, because I don't really like gore or much horror in general.

    The ending. I thought it was weak. hey just left the Star Destroyer and Purge floating in space? Sorry, not buying it. Perhaps that Trig and Cody epilogue could have been the last chapter and have an epilogue where a pirate ship or something drops out of hyperspace next to the ship and on the bridge, the captain boasts about the haul they were about to make. Then end with a line like: If only they knew.

    Han and Chewie. While I felt Joe did a pretty fair job with them, giving Han only a few cringe-worthy lines, they weren't integral. They could have been swapped out for two others and you'd never miss them. In the end, they felt like nothing more then a crutch for a new writer.

    This is going to sound strange, but the hype. They kept building it and building it, even giving the book a tour, and this is what we get? But of course, we also got a tour for Invincible...

    Overall, I enjoyed this book. It was short, sweet, and simple. And if your still leery about it, you can wait for paperback or get it at the library. I found it worth a read.

    6.5/10
     
  3. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 234.5/39 = 6.01
     
  4. qingauk

    qingauk Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 12, 2002
    I just finished this and I am not a horror fan at all. I had started to read it last fall but put it down. I did not like it all. I found it too bloody and not in the SW genre at all. I will pass this book on and it will not stay on my bookshelf. It was not just the gore but the whole story line idea repulsive.
     
  5. fanboyskywalker

    fanboyskywalker Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2008
    Man, this book stinks. I don't actually think i can finish it. I tried reading the book when it first came out (thank God I didn't have to pay for it) and couldn't get past the first 100 pages -- the writting was so average.

    Recently, I picked up the audio version and decided to give it another go. It started out better (listening to it the prose didn't seem so lacking and it kind of felt like listening to a ghost story), but I'm at the part where Cole and Trig have split up, with Trig going with Han and Chewie and Cole asking the Doctor to cut his leg off and, well, it's just pure garbage and not at all exciting or particularly scary.

    I was excpecting a bigger twist on the zombie genre than simply setting it in the SW universe... I actually think it would have worked better had the virus simply turned the crew into "zombies" rather bringing the dead back to life, which I feel is too much of a stretch and not particularly original. But it's not just that plot point that makes this book so disappointing. If I finish this book I'm go into more detail.

    I'm going to try to finish listening to this so I can give it a proper review, but it's a chore. On the positive side, at least it's short.

    Man, I can't believe they are making a prequel to this book... What a great concept this book had that had some real legs that was just ruined. So sad.
     
  6. fanboyskywalker

    fanboyskywalker Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2008
    Okay, finally finished it. For such a short book it seemed to take forever! It really was both a bore and a chore to read, sorry to be so blunt. The writing and plotting was uninspired... I guess I was hoping for something a little more intense, a sort of Poseiden Adventure with Zombies with the intesity of the whole horror/action thing in Aliens. Instead, we got a slow walk through dark corridors in which the zombies don't even show up until towards the end. And there really isn't anything special about them.

    Have you ever gone to a movie and it seems like you spent two hours waiting for the story to get going and then it finally just ends. That's what reading this book was like. I think it was a mistake to follow the exploits of the Imperials on the Star Destroyer and their intial discovery of the bio lab and the lungs. The author should have kicked off the story and had our heroes discovering that stuff as they tried to escape the zombies, so that the book would have at least broken up some of the repetition that plagued it.

    Another thing that bothered me is how it was way over written in all the wrong places, while still being only like 200 pages long. What I mean by this is that, for example, if a character fell down it took like 5 pages for it to happen because the character had to think about what was happening, describe the corridor around him, wonder what happened to the bodies that were lying in front of him, think about what the future would be like if he or she survived, try and figure out a way out of this... and on and on so that a simple 2 second fall to the ground felt like five minutes. Crazy!

    Another thing is that they needed more characters. Every good zombie story has a bunch of mismatched characters working together to get out of a bad situation that goes from bad to worse. Not only did this situation not really go to worse, but it had way too few characters to care about whether they lived or died. And since the writer spends the first half of the book setting up his characters (who are a little one-dimensional, but servicable hook us into the story) I intitally had hope that after all these prisoners escaped they might have to work together with their guards to escape or something. But, no, the writer took the easy.. the lazy... the unispired way out and killed off all the prisoners (except for the two boys - Trigg and Han Solo, Jr.) only to have a few of them come back as, gasp, zombies!

    It honestly felt like they just kept walking in the same corridors the whole time with the same five or six words used over and over to describe their surroundings. At first I was excited to explore the inner workings of a derelict Star Destroyer, but rather than give us different set pieces as the characters moved from room to room trying to avoid their attackers, we just got, as menionted above, a few corridors, a hangar bay, and a weirdly described bridge with what seemed like giant catwalks. At one point I accidently skipped my audiobook (borrowed, thank God) back like 100 pages and it took me almost twenty minutes to realize it!!

    I'm still confused as to the origin of the virus, what happens to it now, if the Empire knows about it's effects and wants to use it still (was that left unclear for a hoped for sequel of some kind perhaps??)... but you know what, I don't really care. I'm happy to move onto other books and not have to think about this one any more.

    2.5/10 stars. 2.5 being simply for the idea of doing a SW zombie book.
     
  7. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 237/40 = 5.93
     
  8. The2ndQuest

    The2ndQuest Tri-Mod With a Mouth star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jan 27, 2000
    Finished this one earlier today- I thought it was a nice change of pace and, even though having a hardcover be so short is a tad odd, I must admit I enjoyed the brisk pace and lack of too much fluff (and, really, not being one to read my horror, I think the shorter length is something I'd want for these kind of stories anyways- straight to the point, have your fun, on to the next, ya know?).

    The gory descriptions were quite effective (I think I'll have to grab the audiobook for this one) and I think Joe did an incredible job here conveying a sense of cinematic presentation that I can't recall ever coming across in another SW novel- there are multiple scenes that are written in a way that automatically plays like a movie in terms of making the reader instantly visualize the camera motions, angles, etc to maximize the scares.

    It's like they have a built-in storyboard and it's something absolutely fascinating to experience.

    I liked a couple of the new characters- was really sad about Waste, though. And I thought the means of containment was quite clever- it was an unexpected element that didn't make the Empire seem like the typical bio-weapon idiots that usually think a zombie virus can be deployed within a contained region without backfiring in these kind of stories.

    The inclusion of Han and Chewie weren't necessary but I don't think it detracted either- there were a few good Han moments that brought some levity, and the way events affected Chewbacca made for the rare semi-rift between them (though I'm dissapointed they didn't follow up on Chewie's reaction to Han killing the Wookiees.)



    It does what it was meant to do and doesn't waste us time while doing it. Hard to be really dissapointed by that.

    7/10.
     
  9. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 244/41 = 5.95
     
  10. Kyp_Skywalker

    Kyp_Skywalker Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Nov 7, 2008
    Death Troopers

    The Good:

    Always nice to have something a little different to read in the SWEU. I liked the prison barge setting and would of liked it expanded a little more than it was. The brothers were decently enjoyable characters. I felt the book moved at a good pace for the most part, with a fairly good ending and one or two geninunely shocking moments which was nice giving the cliched storyline.

    The Bad:

    A couple things irrated me with this book. The death of the Longo father was mentioned often but never really became a important storyline in the book. It caused Sartoris's sacrifice but still the actually death nor cause was really explained well enough. With a zombie book comes cliches and this had many, which hurt it a little. The "was he bitten" thing is too played imo and no moments of that kind shocked me in the slightest. The fact that certain people had a unexplained "Immunity" really irrated me. It could of been a high midi-cholrian count immunity or one of many other things but that certain people were immune without reason was unsatisfying.

    Debatable:

    Was the inclusion of Han & Chewie a good or bad thing? Well it was a nice suprise i admit when i first discovered them. But of course it almost means we have two invincible characters in a zombie book which of course caused problems in leading to believe they were in any real danger. Does having old characters we know and love outweight new characters who's fate werent decided book the end? I dont know. Also it seems that the reason for the actually creation of the virus ties in nicely with Palaptines quest for immortality. And i was actually suprised when then was never suggested in the book.

    Overall:

    Whats strange is that after reading the book i thought it was really good but sitting here writing this i struggled for things to put in the "Good" catagory. The audio book version is much better because the sound effects really heighten the fear factor. Im going to give the book a 6.8/10 rating. It was a good book and story with the flaws and cliches that usually hamper this genre. But definately a intruiging book, one that i have read/listended to 3 times infact. And not a jedi in sight! Hahaha! I look forward to the sequel/prequel!

    Rating:

    6.8/10
     
  11. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 250.8/42 = 5.97
     
  12. Robimus

    Robimus Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 6, 2007
    I finally caught up to this one(through the library) and found it to be a pretty easy read in general. It should be noted that I am in general a fan of the Zombie genre, though I had great apprehension about this book - thus why I waited for the free option to read it.

    As it turns out I found the book fairly unispired. I did enjoy the Purge, the descriptions of its various levels, compartments, engines, medical bay, so on. Santoris and Waste were both characters that I found I enjoyed well enough, though Santoris is very one dimensional. He honestly should have been the principle villian in the book.

    See thats the thing about Zombie tales. The Zombies are the setting and often don't work that well as the villian themselves. They are a hazard, nothing more. Santoris had the potential to become a real villian, he could have tried to plot a way to use the Zombies for his own ends, but he never does and becomes the typical anti-hero by the end. There just wasn't much to that in my mind.

    Kale and Trig didn't really do much for me either. They are very bland and kinda predictable. Zahara Cody, well she was much the same. I mean Schreiber does try to give these characters a sense of history and lives beyond their current situation, but it all is kinda flat once again.

    Waste is pretty much my favorite character, but even it isn't followed up on really. Droid sentience could have been a subtheme in the novel, instead the droids became generic.

    Enter Han and Chewie. I did like Chewie's POV's and Han was captured alright, nothing great but nothing bad either. The story probably could have done without them.

    Gore, this has lots of gore, and I guess it should on some levels - yet I found it over the top. I didn't go into this looking for Saw level stuff(most Zombie material doesn't even digress the the level of gore present in this book). I can't really fault it to much for this due to its nature but I do think it could have been handled much better.

    The Zombies themselves are one part Day of the Dead(the learning part) and one part The Cell(the hive mind part). How exactly the Zombies are tied to the canisters confuses me a little - its explained in a "because thats how it is" manner, not a great explanation by any means when a bio hazard is the reason for the outbreak.

    Schreiber does follow up on several of his small plot threads, like Cody delivering the letter to the prison guards wife, and that is a good thing. The book also comes together well, with all the characters and plot points coming together and getting somewhat answered in the last section of the book, more points in its favor.

    As for this being the first ever Star Wars horror novel, thats a stretch for me. I found Planet of Twilight to actually be much more of a horror story than this(and actually much better all around - yeah I know:p ). If anything this was the first generic Star Wars horror novel, and by that I mean it views the horror elements in the most simplistic manner available while presenting the characters in single minded way.

    As I said earlier, this book was dying for a villian, but it doesn't have one. The scariest monsters are always the human ones, and this book was in dire need of such a monster.

    And lol at the Zombies flying the space craft at the end.......that was terrible.

    2/10
     
  13. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 252.8/43 = 5.88
     
  14. Black-Dog

    Black-Dog Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    May 27, 2008
    After waiting for the paperback to come out, I got it this weekend and finished it today. I enjoyed Dead Troopers very much and its take on zombies. Though I found it to be quite rushed and felt that the brothers and the other characters introduced in the book could?ve been explored more. I was really liking their portrayals. Yep, the book could?ve been longer.

    As for Han and Chewie appearing in the novel, to me them being there seemed forced but found them written well and in-character. That and they didn?t hog the spotlight as I feared they would.

    8/10
     
  15. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 260.8/44 = 5.93
     
  16. Todd the Jedi

    Todd the Jedi Mod and Loving Tyrant of SWTV, Lit, & Collecting star 6 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Oct 16, 2008
    Star Wars meets horror! [face_skull] Does it work? Considering how many nightmares Darth Vader has given kids over the years, yes it does. So in Death Troopers Joe Schreiber decided to make horror and suspense the main theme, and did a pretty good job of keeping within the feel of the SW universe.

    This book felt like an over-glorified entry in one of the Tales of anthologies. But that's not a bad thing, since I enjoyed many of those short stories, and Death Troopers feels like a short story. It's quickly paced and the main characters are all introduced early on. I liked the interactions between the brothers, thought they reacted well and believably to the situation at hand. I liked how Han and Chewie were portrayed, considering the timeline. Han seemed like himself from Brian Daley's books as well as from Ann Crispin's. The scenes when the survivors discover the empty hallways were very chilling, as were the parts in the star destroyer. Having a fear of open catwalks I could really identify with Trig when he was above the giant chasm with zombies at the bottom. Very tense indeed.

    As for the titular menace, I wasn't disappointed, but I also thought some elements were a bit exaggerated for the sake of the story. For example, the zombies being able to not only hold blasters but to shoot them with some accuracy seemed out of place, since every fictional zombie population I know of lacks the cunning or motor skills to accomplish this, let alone fly ships. I did, however, like the explanation of how the disease worked and why it would remain contained on the two ships. Another plot-necessary attribute of the survivors I didn't like was the natural immunity to the disease, but whatever.

    I don't always mind when there'e an abundance of chapters, but here it got a bit distracting, like watching an hour-long tv show and having commercials pop up every 3 minutes. I think Schreiber could have easily grouped some of those chapters together and simply change the POV, since he already does that in the longer chapters.

    So I give this a 7.7 out of 10 for a really good integration of horror into the plot of a SW novel and a nice fun read. I look forward to Red Harvest when it comes out.
     
  17. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 268.5/45 = 5.97
     
  18. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    I have no real interest in screen horror; gore and jump scares don't do it for me. But the one element of horror I do find interesting is the ability to create an atmosphere of dread, to unsettle the audience, and that's the only aspect that can really come across in literature, so I was looking forward to seeing what Death Troopers could do with that aspect. The book starts out weak; Trig, Kale, Cody, and Sartoris are fairly generic, and Schreiber simply tries too hard to make the sitting-in-prison scenes creepy, with silly purple prose that thankfully dies down as the book progresses. It doesn't work, and comes off as strained. Once the plot kicks in, though, it works much better, and Schreiber does manage to convey an uneasy atmosphere of worry and imminent danger. I thought the stretch between the introduction of the Star Destroyer and the appearance of the zombies was actually the best segment of the book, with Schreiber having the confidence to hold off on rushing straight into zombie horror and simply building an atmosphere of uncertainty and mounting dread as the ghost ship is explored and things begin to unravel as the sickness spreads, until Purge is now itself an unsettling ghost ship, with the reader expecting zombies around every corner throughout the entire thing.

    Once the zombies are introduced, though, it gets less interesting, with everything just turning to rampaging hordes of zombies chasing them around, interspersed with the occasional zombie-in-the-closet when characters wander off on their own. One of the major problems is that the cast just doesn't fit the situation well enough; they split up too easily, giving us a handful of people wandering around on their own, which we already had during the earlier stretch. It's time to do something with the group dynamics. There are also simply not enough people; there's no opportunity for people to watch as others are dragged off, no sense that the zombies are going to get anybody before the climax. With only six survivors, all of them main characters, we can already tell how it all goes. We know Trig is going to survive; he's the kid, and his brother is obviously the sacrificial lamb. Sartoris isn't going to get out; he's the jerk. Han and Chewie have to live -- a fact which never bothered me itself; I'm fine knowing people obviously survive. The only problem is that you need more people to be in question. Cody was the only one whose survival was really in question, and that just doesn't cut it. There needed to be more of a group, both so we could get a group dynamic and so that somebody could die. I don't mind that basically all the main characters made it out alive; as a more positive Star Wars take on horror, that's fine. But you can't run people through a gauntlet of zombies and have only the two obvious dead men walking die off. Had they kept Gat, Wembley, maybe another couple prisoners and guards around, it would have worked a lot better.

    There were also a lot of plot problems -- a ton of why-don't-they-x? moments. I'd assumed, from the descriptions of the ships being piled around on the deck, that they were visibly ruined when none of the characters even bothered to check them out. Yet it turns out they all work fine -- so why did no one use them? Why didn't the people in the lander fire back at the zombies? If the fighters were mobile, why didn't the zombies keep shooting at the lander? Why was everyone so sanguine about splitting up? Once it became apparent the zombies were inside the Star Destroyer, why did Han and Chewie continue to think that getting the thing flying would make any difference? Why not get into the nearest turbolaser turret and shoot off the docking coupling? Why are there apparently only two escape pods on the prison barge, which play a major role, and then no one cares about the escape pods on the Star Destroyer? Why would people on an Imperial craft, at the height of the Empire, act as if there's no hope of a distress signal getting any response?

    On a slightly related note, why the obsession with the busted thruster?
     
  19. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    Average score: 275/46 = 5.98