Lit The Legendary 181st Imperial Discussion Group: Allegiance!

Welcome everyone to another legendary discussion of a legendary book (well, that kind of legendary). It's Allegiance by legendary author Timothy Zahn, who's created such timeless and legendary EU characters as Thrawn, Mara Jade, and a bunch of stormtroopers.

We chose this novel on request by fett 4, who also has a few things to suggest for discussion.

But first, I'd like to break the ice asking all of you why you would recommend or not recommend this book (both if possible). My background for this: It took me six years to finally get this book and read it (seven if you count from the hardcover release, which I might have bought if I'd been really really really into it). Even though Timothy Zahn is obviously the most legendary author in the entire EU, and reading SW stuff started for me back with TTT. Still, DR couldn't really sell me this book (I'd hoped to get it for christmas for the last two or three years, though), only the 181st could.

What do you tell all the undecided people out there? Allegiance yay or nay?

 

I'd recommend it if you're looking for a simple adventure to pass the time with. I wouldn't if you were looking to meet interesting new characters or discover an engrossing story, because you won't find them in Allegiance. Mara and the Big Three are enjoyable to read about in this book, but almost all new characters fall flat (the stormtroopers were only barely developed beyond 'this one is a sniper, this one's infantry, this one's a pilot'). While the book has good premise that drives the first half, by the end I was waiting for it to be over so I could start another book.
(This book does, however, pave the way for the much better sequel Choices of One).

So yay or nay depends on what you're looking for.

 

I think Allegiance is worth reading. All Zahn's SW novels are worth reading simply because there's a guarantee of a certain degree of quality. His novels since Del Rey became the publisher are weaker overall than those under Bantam -- I'm not suggesting a causation, just an easy to make correlation -- but I liked the Hand of Judgement as characters. They're not particularly deep or strong characters, but it's more about the group than the individual. It's more light, escapist type reading than anything else. If I had to make a comparison, it reminds me a lot of Zahn and Stackpole's Side Trip just in terms of the type of story that it is -- and I loved Side Trip and need to re-read it soon.

In that sense, it's a novel length story of the type and scope that under Bantam were published as short fiction, whereas the novels under Bantam received the larger scale stories. Del Rey blew everything up in scale: the short stories and novellas of Bantam (and West End Games) became novels, and the novels and trilogies of Bantam became massive series.

 

I loved the Hand of Judgment. Like DigitalMessiah said, they're not particularly interesting as individuals, when you put them all together they become a pretty interesting group. The HOJ parts were actually the best parts of the book, IMO; the parts with the Big 3 are unmemorable (no seriously, I can't remember) and the parts with Mara can sometimes verge on the most extreme of Sue-ism, and this from someone who generally likes Mara.

 

As stated above, You should read it just to have a background for (Choices Of One). If `CO1` didnt happen then i wouldnt recomend reading Allegiance.

 

For me, Allegiance's marketing wrecks it - it was marketed as a big 3 book, but it isn't that!

If approached without that in mind, it's a good enough book. It shows how deluded Jade was when working for Papa Palpatine. While it's not done as well as it can be, I find Zahn's angle of the Force being utterly counter-rational to be an interesting one so can't begrudge his handling of Luke as much as others:

"Just concentrate and you can mentally rewire a door panel that's utterly inaccessible to you by any other method, it'll work, trust me."

Rendered in that way, Luke's difficulty with the idea of the Force is more explicable.

 

Exactly. I think if you go into it with the sort of mindset that it's a novel length story of the style of Side Trip or The Interlude at Darkknell, or even Zahn's solo works Jade Solitaire, First Contact, and Sleight of the Hand, it's much more endearing.

 

To a degree, the same applies to Choices of One.

 

Well, I think Zahn's name in itself carries the weight of a Very Important Book thanks to TTT, no matter the marketing. But as I said when we discussed HoT in here, I'm not even sure HoT was that much of a Big 3 duology - and next thing you know, TTT is kind of Mara's hero's journey.

 

I say it applies to all Zahn's novels published since 1999: Survivor's Quest, Outbound Flight, Allegiance, Choices of One, and Scoundrels. Don't expect them to be like his earlier works in scope and scale -- Choices of One comes the closest, but is still mostly confined to a single system. And none of them are Big 3 adventures, so much as adventures that the Big 3 might be involved in. Likewise with Outbound Flight -- it's misleading that Anakin and Obi-Wan even show up in it because they aren't even part of the action of the plot.

I think that this is something that's largely true of Zahn as a writer, even in his earlier works. TTT and HOT were about Mara Jade, not the Big 3, in terms of character development.

 

You mention Mara's hero's journey which is true, but what does Alliegance add or tell us about that journey ?

As for the plot itself, a mystery about pirates that leads too.. more pirates.

It's convieient that a supposed devoted agent of the Emperor, never fights the Rebellion and seems to help them more often than not and only go's up against Pirates and other Imperials, one of which (the ISB agent) decided to have her killed for the craziest of reasons.

The big 3 were pointless, I could have done without Luke being locked in a cuboard or need to read about Leia being a waitress. Obi-wan on ghost speed dial was a bit well...

Also as when Stackpole did it with Corran and Luke, Zahn's fight with Mara and Vader was pretty obnoxious, I mean she beats Darth Vader !

 

See, 1st time around Fett, yeah, I was irritated with the Vader-Mara tumble, but 2nd time round? She barely holds him off. Had Vader not decided to cool off, Jade was dead. She had nothing to actually stop him, only delay him.

 

The language and use of words is such that Mara (like Corran with Luke in IJedi) is ahead on points and had the best of the fight and was cleverer than Vader. Then there are all the other scenes between them in the book in which Vader is dumb/jealous and is no where near Mara's level. She even wins a stare down with him at the end of the book and he is reduced to whining to Palpatine about her like a kid moaning to his dad over something his sister did. Which was Zahn's intent I think.

Leaving that aside as a character what do you learn more about Mara in this story that you didn't already know ?

 

Zahn plays with reader perception and so does Stackpole. If you buy what you think they're selling.... Well, it's like thinking Mark Millar really is screwing his readers anally after reading the last page of Wanted.

As to Mara, that she was far more a deluded fool than she ever admits to being later, but CoO suggests some quite scary possibilities for why that may be so.

 

Zahn himself has backed up in page with what he says in interviews, so they are selling what they say they are selling.

Like I said though in this book what do you learn about Mara that you did not know about her before or that added greater depth to her. Besides her Mad SKillz

 

I'm not sure if we need to regard this book as a part of Mara's "journey". It's a bit of filling in blanks, using characters in timeframes when they were around but we haven't seen them yet. It's a bit like showing Han before A New Hope - you can either have him have adventures, or you can assume to show his "formative experiences" (which is the basic difference between the Daley and Crispin books, if you ask me.

Allegiance lives for the stormtrooper plot, if you ask me, especially since that's what the cover was priming me for. The big three are there to give the book gravitas, and Mara... well, I can't blame Zahn for making her the fourth Big Three. This was written when she was already so much more than just Zahn's personal character; the book came out after LOTF had already killed her off. However, as much as the "allegiance" theme kind of runs through all three plots, I think any combination of just two of these three plots would have resulted in a more "urgent" book, giving more punch to what's in it.

The very fist scene of Mara talking to Palpatine is really, really weird since it gives this extremely weird view of Palpatine. It's almost as if Mara's sitting on his lap while she's giving her report. A bit as if Papa Palpatine loves to have a teenager around to be admired by. That and the fact that Mara is only 18 years old here is really giving weird context to what would be just another regular spy story. By the way, why would Zahn feel the need to give a new name to the expression "cloak and dagger"?

 

That's like throwing out your own opinion of the films because you saw an interview where Lucas says X, Y, Z. Author can claim whatever they like but that doesn't dictate what people make of the text, nor should it.

 

That's an interesting tangent right there - a pretty big theory that's really empowering the audience. Personally, I don't really find it productive to remove the author from the reception process to such a huge degree. People misunderstanding art (e.g. using "Born in the USA" as an electorial campaign song without knowing the text beyond the chorus) is something that happens, and it's something that should be acknowleged. But saying that therefore the author's intent doesn't matter, and the original context of the work doesn't matter doesn't help. It's patting the audience on the back. It's avoiding situations in which the audience might huff and puff and say "oh yeah if it doesn't mean what I want it to mean then i hate your work, you stupid artist".

Giving all the power to the audience is a wrong approach, in my opinion. It's like a conversation - reception theory tells us that there's a lot you can take away from any message, on different levels, but it doesn't change that there was an original intent. If A says something and B feels provoked into a fight even though A wanted to be friends, it's too simplistic to blame A for not thinking things through before communicating. That might be the case, but B might have been responsible for the failure in communication as well. Why should it be different for art?

In that regard, it's your right to say "I take these things as I understand them", and there can be cases in which the artist apparently doesn't care enough to keep his original work and his sequel in the same context, be it intentional or unintentional, and in those cases you can definitely say "well he changed the context, the first work isn't about what the second work implies". But at the same time, if you're influenced by what the artist says, why wouldn't it be valid to factor this into your thought process?

 

I think that scene is meant to convey that Palpatine as Maras father figure further cemented with Vader as the brother fighting over his affections.

From what was said earlier about the Force, Zahn himself said it's the Force itself making Mara good, and having a hand it combined with her being good.

Tbh I saw Alliegance as a wasted opportunity as another one of those stories from the imperial perspective that has them just fight bad guys (in this case pirates and lots of them ) making the perspective theme itself pointless

 

Compared with the Xizor rivalry in other books I find it pretty harmless, to be honest. But another weird angle of it all is that it feels as if she's treated like a potential replacement apprentice without knowing it, or thinking she deserves it. Vader's jealousy makes sense if Palpatine is either using her to mock Vader, or if he's genuinely feeling something for his "daughter" and Vader is the only one smelling a rivalry. Jade has as much leeway as an assassin like Ventress, but without the straight Sith order promise. Does Mara even "know" that Palpatine is a Sith?

It's "she's been evil and Luke redeemed her" vs. "she's been misguided and luckily she was saved from that path", and I know there's strong opinion on that. The redemption story is a rather heavy thing, which can be great for storytelling. However - does Mara ever come across as "yeah I've been eeevil" in TTT? I doubt it. She's got the Palps-brainwash going on but does an excellent job of not simply killing Luke at first sight, no matter her own fate, which would have been true evil loyalty. So I'm kind of okay with her being one of those well-meaning, dumb servants. I mean, as I said above: She's freakin' 18 years old here. She probably doesn't know a lot about politics beyond what she needs to carry out "papa's" work; she's too busy with all that sports stuff.

Imperial perspective isn't really done to the benefit of telling a totally evil story, if you ask me (I think Plagueis is one of the few examples to do that; the new Maul novel, too, probably). It's done to give something to the Empire fans who love stormtroopers and star destroyers and military but aren't, of course, people who love massmurdering and enslavement. So it's best to choose soft topics for that kind of focus. I'm kind of okay with that, too; and you still get stormtrooper heroes who were so bent on "following orders" that they have civilian blood on their hands. Could Zahn have explicitly referred to Mara having done something bad? Well, yes. But seeing how her New Republic and Jedi time is never focused on her making up for the evil she did, but rather her going from cyncical frown-hard to family woman, I don't think it was necessary to delve into that.

Did Zahn do all of this rather to have her squeaky-clean for her own benefit? Yeah, I guess most authors do stuff like that. But then again, Mara was public property by the time Allegiance was written, and I think most people/fans loved reading about her without having to think about the consequences of her "evil deeds", so I guess it gets a pass from me. I can see why it was done beyond "pet character" shortcomings.

 

If I was to set a starting point for where Zahn is concerned it'd be this: What is the basis of the mass appeal of the Empire? He then explores that without ever having them be victorious villains - understandable and with clear motives? Yes. Correct? No.

With Mara I'd see it as being similar and likening her to Judge Dredd doesn't actually do her any favours as, despite questioning and losing faith in it for a time, Dredd retains his absolute faith in the law and how it is applied. I'd say it's likely Mara, when working for Sidious, did have that mentality but does that actually absolve her? Unlike Dredd, there is likely no law actually empowering her actions, she's doing because Sidious tells her to, no questions asked.

I'm sceptical that Zahn's view really is that he's a cheerleader for the Empire.

Re: Audience interpretation and limits of

I'd be inclined to say the rule is you have to explain where you get the idea or basis for your interpretation from - the king example of a battle of this is the Han shot first debate. Lucas says no, he didn't and changed it, loads of people then go: That's total arse for reasons A, B, C. Ditto for the NOOOO addition to ROTJ. I'd be inclined to see it as a minority occurrence though. The likely reason for people to diverge in their view from that of the author is where something does not track or does not fit and it leaps out at them as they work their way through the story.

 

The one good thing I can say about this book is that Zahn certainly gives his characters amusing names.

Choard, LaRone, Marcross, Quiller, etc. Names like that can't help but make you laugh.

 

I've read something a while back about fans of a fantasy or sci-fi book being quite strongly of the opinion that their interpretation of the book is correct, and the author doesn't know what he/she's on about. That was a bit much. Same for True Detective - just finished watching it, wanted to read up about it and found out there's been lots of fans who defended their fan theories against stuff that the creators openly said. It's not that you can't have your own interpretation of the material and say "that way it would be so much more awesome", but I think you should always have the reality check that your opinion is just your opinion and not "the cosmic truth" that the author ignorantly put to the paper without understanding it.

I think Zahn is a bit of an Empire fanboy, though - not at the expense of the big picture, or to the extent that he's wishing for a proper dictatorship. More like the guy who had an AT-AT toy as a kid and pats himself on the shoulder for realizing that every SW story ever should start with a star destroyer because that's what the first three movies did (save for that corvette, but hey). Which is funny, because there's no redeeming feature for the Empire in TTT beyond the aesthetics. Thrawn, while popular, is definitely a villain. After that, we got all this gray-shading of Zahn probably wanting good and knowing better, of the possibly "ideal" Empire of the Hand and the hyper-loyal-to-the-cause trooper quintet. The problem with all the gray-shading is that the New Republic can only go down while the Empire goes up and the fringe is the big winner (but that's not different from Han in the first place).

Basically, I think I'd have loved for this story to really work with the idea that Imperial believers are confronted with the evil nature of the Empire; not having them instantly turn into superheroes, but losing all faith in their previous lives. That's where you can see that this story doesn't really run deep and that it's for fanboys of the Imperial chic. Well, it's dedicated to one of the 501st, who also pitched the original idea, so it's clear that stormtroopers would never have been the absolute evil in this. By the way, has the original pitch ever been revealed to the public?

 

Allegiance is definitely the weakest of Zahn's Star Wars novels, by far. That being said it's not bad or offensive, just boring. I think DigitalMessiah has it right, that it's a short story blown up to novel length. Unnecessarily, I'd add.

I did like the idea of the Hand of Judgment, especially since in the run-up to the book's publication they were made front and center and I remember it being described as "The A-Team with stromtroopers". I also think the book would have been a lot more interesting if the four Hand troopers had been the sole main characters. And hell, why not go for a full-on A-Team pastiche? Scoundrels was very much a heist movie parody and it was one of Zahn's better Star Wars novelistic offerings, IMO.

I did really appreciate Zahn making Pink Five canon. A shame Stacy never took off in the rest of the EU the way that the 501st did after Survivor's Quest. I wonder what his next fan-canonization would have been?

I also will always chuckle at the scene where Mara walks in on Vader space-googling Xizor, too. I think this is one of the few times that their supposedly-big rivalry from SOTE is even mentioned, too.

 

Or at least, that's her initial guess, thinking "If Vader was trying to track down Prince Xizor's Black Sun connections again, the Emperor was going to be very annoyed with him" - and being surprised that the only name that's listed in the search is "Luke Skywalker".