Lit The Legendary 181st Imperial Discussion Group: The New Rebellion!

Hello everyone for another month of reading, discussing, reminiscing and complaining! It's the 181st Imperial Discussion Group with a look at one of the books that kind of always fell through in the 181st schedule (and in many other regards, too), making it a perfect topic for our monthly discussion.

It's The New Rebellion by Kristine Kathryn Rusch! An author whose name I only knew from her Star Trek Voyager books before this. And Voyager books were always dreadful. By the way, did you know that The New Rebellion is @Havac's favourite Star Wars novel?

- One thing I want to get off my chest right away is that stylistically, Rusch makes the rookie mistake of treating the established characters kind of like "free to fill with concepts" characters. Not because she's got interesting concepts, but more because that's what simple franchise writers do: They add their own take to the franchise, never realizing when it doesn't ad up with a pre-existing universe. All in the sake of that one precious paragraph that "really gets into their heads". Well, all of that sounds too grand. It's just little moments of cliché bancruptcy like Luke "never having drunk anything better than this tap water" or Han "never having flown the Falcon more carefully" because of the injured onboard. It's jarringly ironic that people who can't write good enough in such constraints only get washed up in the "cheap" categories of literature that have these constraints in the first place.

- There's one basic concept here that's quite heavy. It's so heavy it would have benefitted from the scope of the NJO or at least from that of LOTF. A New Rebellion. History keeps repeating itself. The goverment will disgruntle someone, and a galaxy-wide rebellion will come up. Can a hero-founded Republic ever be truly good enough? (This is kind of dealt with with the Insider/fake election plots in NJO after the Republic gets declared a lost cause). For just one book by a not brilliant author, this concept is an extremely odd choice. Kueller (I bet the combination of a Skeletor mask and the name Dolph has something to do with that one Masters of the Universe movie) is just one man with his own army from a part of the universe that's not even properly in the Republic. Kueller thinks he's about something that he is not about, and he shares that with the book.

- Then there's the basic concept of dealing with SW's droid angle. We're getting a lot of angles, actually; droids as convenient but also as easily made into unwilling weapons; droids dealing with memory wipes; droids being sentient and droids being tools. This book might have one of the best Threepio scenes when the professor almost talks his way out of a dangerous situation. But alas, for some reason it's not allowed to work (which I would have adored).

- The entire concept of the non-rebellion but rather terrorism plot is kind of intriguing, but of course it's unlikely that only one planet constructs all droids, that droids are really that omnipresent (I could buy that on the first planet, the one that got completely wiped out because they were ultra-dependent on droids - but after that?), that there's no CSI team that would pick up on all droids having blown up from the inside, and that this doesn't sound like an idea that someone wouldn't already have had done 4000 years ago, resulting in extremely good security measures against this kind of thing.

- I did love the idea that smugglers and thiefs would have diverted some of the boobytrapped droids. However the execution turned out, that idea was pretty nifty.

- Oh, and the "all X-Wings are to be rebuilt by the unbelievably cheapest contractor" - at least it goves Wedge something to do, and I love the dynamic of Wedge and the government actually doing something that non-Empress Leia wouldn't need to know about in detail. "What, you switched the coffee brand on Denon base? Why wasn't I informed!"

- Kueller. I like the in media res aspect of his existence. Him going from dropout that Luke doesn't immediately remember to mega-threat just because of "the dark side" kind of... misses the integrity of the movie universe. See, Kun powering up Kyp is something fundamentally different - that one works. Some guy being so angry that he's suddenly the biggest player around... Especially seeing how Luke could answer the grief angle with the Lars homesteda, with his father's history, but doesn't since the scene wouldn't reward that kind of psychological insight, thus playing it down and making Kueller more special again.

- Brakiss was strange, but in a good way. Him not really wanting to be in the conquering business, just sort of, was interesting. Knowing that he ends up in the Second Imperium or what it's called doesn't help, though; it's as if he's a different character here.


I'll stop here for the moment; I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about this month. As for the next month, I'm still undecided, so please join me in the HQ thread.

 

Havac

What if through sheer coincidence, the self destruct code for the droids built on Telti also activated the droid rebellion programming for the droids built on Mechis III?


I've had it pointed out to me that Brakiss was already written as a villain in the Second Imperium story arc by KJA, so Rusch's use of him here, if out of character, is her fault. It seems like her view of Star Wars was heavily impacted by KJA, whether it be through recycling the droid planet conspiracy idea, the idea of Luke's student turning to the dark side and being the next Big Bad, and using Brakiss from KJA's YA books. KJA seems like the post-NJO Denning of Bantam?

 

*Braces for Havac's carnage*

I confess that I've never had as much a problem with this book as others, although Havac has eloquently ruined the final space battle for me. I'll explain later what I like about this book, although I expect everyone else will be able to rip my statements to shreds.

 

Yeah, this is not a great or good book, but I think there were a few interesting or half-decent moments. I'm sure Havac will go into it in more detail, but this was the one with Cole Fardreamer, right?

This book doesn't really use the idea, but at least it was brought up that the government couldn't consist of only Rebellion veterans forever, and had to include former Imperials later. Especially with all that bureaucracy on Coruscant, outside of the Vong, most of it never changes that much after the initial invasion, all galactic governments need the bureaucracy to actually run the galaxy.

And possibly the only other moment I still remember from this book, for some reason, is when Lando tries to cheer up Han after his rescue attempt goes mostly well... just that almost all of Han's old smuggler friends backstabbed him and had to be killed. Han feels bad about it (though he did kind of force most of them to come along on his mission to rescue Lando), but Lando says they were never all that good people, whereas Han was always a good person, he just tried to hide that side of himself. Whereas the rest of Han's mentors were scum, Han never really was (rescuing Chewie, the whole Death Star thing, etc.).

Brakiss is kind of interesting, so this came after YJK? At this point I guess Brakiss is still wavering a bit, compared to his later megalomania, he's part of the plot against the heroes, but not that enthusiastic. I think Luke checks in with Brakiss' mother, before he was dragged away to join the Empire? Not sure any source ever covered Brakiss' time at the academy, or rather Luke's attempt to redeem him. He's not there in the original JAT, but I think I, Jedi references him a few times. And assuming I remember it right, I think its hilarious that he's driven off by Artoo and Threepio and Cole.

The X-wing plot is silly, that they didn't notice bombs being attached to all those ships (nor bother to scan droids for explosives either, though I think TotJ used that idea too). Although it was kind of nice to have E-wings and references to upgrading X-wings to keep them in service. This was years before they just moved on to XJ X-wings and just kept using X-wings. Sorry, I'll just take any mentions of E-wings, still sad they never caught on.

Everything else about the book... yeah, I can't describe everything else wrong with the book, though I still rank it as bad rather than "argh, why did they waste paper on this book?!" (which is how I'd describe a good deal of the post-NJO books).

 

Well Havac, this is the first google image search result.

 

I know, I was congratulating him.

 

I find it decent. Not the one of the best Star Wars books but not bad either. I liked the Artoo and Threepio parts and the scene where the Senate hall is bombed. I found the ending where Keuller is defeated to be hilarious yet also fitting for such a forgettable antagonist. I don't think it's as bad as people seem to think it is though.

 

One of the only things I remember about this book is being weirded out by my inability to form any mental picture of Kueller's mask other than something like this:

 

You can see what it's trying to do, but it just fails at all of it.

 

His mask was basically just like a thin skull thing that clung to his face. That's what all the pictures miss -- it was a clinging mask that conformed to and moved with his face, making it look like a living skull. Like Spider-man's mask but a skull, and also more advanced. Definitely not a big silver skull-shaped box with horns jammed over his head the way every artist draws it.

My life is complete.

I actually find Brakiss to be one of the only good things about the book. His complexity, his status as a reluctant, sorrowful villain, makes him really interesting. Rather than Luke's other failed students who were mostly bad seeds, he's sort of a lost sheep, a guy who didn't have to be evil but whom Luke was never quite able to reach. It feels more real, in the way a teacher might regret failing to reach a troubled student, rather than galactic evil. Brakiss is a guy who was nabbed by the Empire early on and as a result has never been able to convince himself he isn't evil and deserves to be evil even though it makes him miserable. In some ways Dolph is similar, a troubled young man who left the Praxeum with issues and let them fester. Honestly, a version of this book where he's a troubled local warlord making trouble in his home sector because he thinks he's doing the right thing would be interesting. The version we got, where he's a nobody with three broken-down old droid-manned Star Destroyers and a couple weirdos on the payroll and also Brakiss, who calls up the New Republic ("Hello, I'd like the New Republic, please.") and demands that they hand him, gift-wrapped, a box marked "control of the galaxy" or else he will blow up the galaxy with his stupid utterly implausible droid plan, is idiotic, because everything about this book is idiotic. Really idiotic. Really really idiotic. Really really really idiotic.

I did like it established Wedge as the head of Starfighter Command briefly, though. That's nice to have, even if it makes Wedge's return to commanding Rogue Squadron only in HOT (seriously, what were you thinking Zahn) extra-baffling.

 

I wanted to point out in my original post (but simply forgot) that Kueller is kind of General Grievous - blames his local situation on the galactic community, puts on a mask and comes back to haunt them. Only that Grievous wouldn't be as effective on his own, someone has to hand him an army and point him at the right targets in order for him to make a difference. Kueller not simply wanting to tear everything down but asking for that leadership box isn't really in line with what should go through his head.

Well, maybe - there's this point at which Luke wonders whether he shouldn't mention the dark side right away during Jedi training so that young Jedi wouldn't immediately know that it's an option (great thinking, KKR). Now, if Dolph is so simple-minded that he's filled with all these grand rebellion stories which only ever include Luke and Leia as the heroes... not knowing what he's actually talking about, he'd possibly think that leadership is a box, and that every rebellious or contrarian act is a Rebellion. This would both explain why Kuller's little empire isn't all that great, and make for a really subversive story showing that the New Republic hasn't learned to control just enough aspects of the universe, letting an economic door wide open for someone to produce stuff with bombs in it. It would, however, once again only explain a supposedly epic but failing story by the "oh they were all stupid/partly lobotomized" card. Like Daala's stupidity and the head injury. While we have bad storytelling to begin with, I don't like this excessive retroactive storytelling either.

Yeah, Cole Fardreamer and the Ex-Imperial senators, those are two things I wanted to arrive at at a later point.

Cole Fardreamer is really baffling since he sounds like even more of an author's RPG-based character than Corran did, and because there isn't really an original character on his level of importance. The smuggler bunch is a more traditional way of inserting new characters... but thinking about it, it reminds me of the time the droids needed Lobot as a babysitter (or does my mind make that up?).

By the way, did anyone retcon Sinewy Ana Blue into being an ancestor of Delilah Blue yet? Her having been said to be a human up to now would only help in bringing some genes in to help Cade and Delilah have offspring, right?

The Imperial Senators... it's another of those heavy concepts that you can't really address the way this book does - by being kind of black and white but in the end all is okay. Leia is extremely anti-democratic in this, and a lot of stuff she does and thinks isn't really fitting for a character who should be a shining example of a galactic leader who won against oppression. You know, when Sheridan and Delenn in Babalon 5 start off their Galactic Empire in a pretty non-democratic way and keep it on that level, it's a bit different. We didn't see them fight for "all that is good". They were extremely militarized and fought for their concepts of honour, for example. The Rebellion was different - there was a lot of fighting because it had to be done to be able to talk again. The grand lesson is, of course, to let go of your prejudices and work together. But it doesn't help that the Imperial Senators actually are backstabbing, greedy (and, if we'd gotten pictures, possibly gluttonous) cartoon characters. Who bow to Leia's masterful political mastership (i.e. blow stuff up with her friends until everyone sees she did the right thing).

Luke being on his own is standard fare; Han's story is kind of what you'd expect, and post-ANH stories almost always give him more of a heart of gold than you'd expect because we know he's okay (and a role model), it's the same as with Indy; but Leia is just lost in this. Being elevated to Leader of Everything in a story where there's evidently no place for a Leader of Everything in the main cast. And that's why NJO onwards chose to put her in the Falcon, to have her have adventures far away from her boring, abstract political calling. Which was better for Han's character, I suppose.

 

What do you mean by retroactive? (really asking)

 

In these cases it's about Daala and Kueller both having been intended as proper villains. To us, the audience, they seem pretty dumb. But that's mostly because the books didn't think everything through, not because the author was actually intending to undermine their own villains. Now, you could go with the fan interpretation in later instances and ignore the original intention; I'm not sure if Daala having had brain surgery and therefore ending up as a joke of a military leader was the canon idea in the end, but it "would make sense". That's retroactive retelling of a story that's already in print. I prefer things like the TOTJ era being enhanced by subsequent stories and sources; there. the canvas of the Sith War was made larger without pointing out weaknesses in the original comic book's concept. Well, except for the "the different designs were just a fashion fad" approach.

 

I also forgot to mention I liked Brakiss being the reluctant minion of Keuller. Looking back on it now I actually think it would of been better if he had been the main antagonist and Luke had redeemed him and persuaded him to come back to the academy.

 

Or maybe if Brakiss had been calling the shots, using Kueller as a puppet diversion like Sidious' Grievous, and Luke manages to redeem Kueller while Brakiss goes on to get his Empire elsewhere?

 

Brakiss' redemption would have clashed with his characterization already established in the YJK books. It would have required another new character be used, so perhaps a variation of Grey1's suggestion by giving Brakiss the characterization of Kueller, and having an original character fulfill the Brakiss role? I don't recall if Brakiss' backstory is established in YJK at all, or if it was an invention of Rusch in this book, so it might not work for that reason. Although I suppose you could really insert Kueller's backstory into Brakiss', with the understanding that he was an Imperial infiltrator of Luke's academy whom Luke managed to redeem, only for him to revert upon having his family killed in genocide.

 

I haven't read YJK so I just assumed Brakiss was a one off villain interesting to know he reappears. From the sounds of it though he's a typical overconfidentvillain in those books which seems different to his portrayal in The New Rebellion. Still I suppose it is later in the timeline though.

 

Ugh, I just had a wall of text response typed up and lost it. I'll try to reconstruct it, but I'm pretty annoyed and out of patience.

See, I'm like pretty convinced that KKR actually intended to undermine Kueller and the New Republic in the exact way you described. Maybe you came up with that idea not on your own, but from what KKR intended. I mean, it's all there in the book, from the very beginning to the very end.

I actually planned on reading this book weeks ago, but forgot. I just read it in the last 36 hours and came to a very similar conclusion myself, entirely independent from Grey.

On page one, KKR starts off by having Kueller look at the stars in awe, like a child.

KKR just established Kueller as a dreamer on page one.

Near the very end, on page 525, she again stresses his youth. I'm sure everyone is familiar with this part, but I don't think it's some random quirk.

This isn't just KKR saying "I haz a sad", she's saying Kueller was just a kid in over his head. He uses a scary mask to hide his innocent face.

On page 57, Kueller is critical of Palpatine, speculating that the Emperor was in it more for the destruction than power, which is not only dubious but hypocritical coming from Kueller. KKR uses Femon as her mouth piece to immediately point out his delusions and call his motives into question.

For context, this is right after the Pydyrians are wiped out.

There are plenty of examples of KKR intentionally undermining Kueller's competence, clearly designed to make him look like an amateur, but I'm not digging them back up all over again.

When Kueller tells Luke his story, it's just Luke's story....if he had "gone bad" early in ANH. Kueller races home to find his parents' bodies, swears revenge and destroys the Je'har. After that he goes on his own rebellion against the galactic government. Kueller is painted as a poor, tragic kid who is in way over his head. His plans fail because he doesn't really know what the hell he's doing, he's a kid, an amateur, not unlike Luke in ANH. Constantly comparing Kueller to Vader, even designing his appearance on him, adds to this dark Luke idea.

I think she even uses Cole Fardreamer as the new good Luke Skywalker to compare to Kueller's lost innocence turning him into a dark Luke Skywalker/delusional maniac.

This stuff is literally all over the book, it's referenced constantly. You knew that, right?

Kueller is constantly talking about Luke's old adventures, but of course his versions are skewed and his conclusions aren't hero stuff.

There are just tons of comparisons.

The book is called The New Rebellion for a reason, all these references are there for a reason, KKR is doing exactly what you're not giving her credit for.

The entire last chapter, and I think the end note is pretty important, is all about the New Republic's shortcomings and how it created this new rebellion.

Bold mine.

The last lines of the book.

Of course Kueller and his evil mirror New Rebellion has to fail, because as you said, Kueller is not about what he thinks he's about, he's really the bad guy and the bad guys have to lose to the heroes. Kueller thinks he's leading the New Rebellion, but he's just one man with his small little army because he's not the good guy and he doesn't have the ideals, the moral high ground, of the rebellion against the Empire to garner major support, he just has his personal revenge.

I think it's there, and I think it's intentional. I think this book is about what it thinks it's about.

I don't think it's retroactive. I don't think Kueller was really intended to be a proper villain, there's too much that is clearly undermining that, especially the comparisons to Luke, the emphasis on his child-like appearance, and his very goofy wannabe Vader appearance.

There are no later Kueller appearances to subvert the original intention, there is only The New Rebellion.

JMO

 

The version YJK gives is that Brakiss was a Force-sensitive imperial sent to Luke's academy as a spy, Luke know that he was a spy but saw good in him and accepted him to try to make him come over to the good guys. Brakiss could not stand one of Luke's tests of character where he confronted the darkness with in himself and instead flee from Yavin IV.
He returned around a decade later, now as the headmaster of an imperial "dark jedi" academy that he teach together with the new nightsisters.

In YJK Brakiss was portrayed as a indoctrinated fanatic imperial who wanted to believe that it was the surviving Emperor who was calling the shots but at the same time struggled with inner doubts.

 

I think Brakiss here is in line with the YJK. There's a definite undercurrent there that Luke wants very badly to redeem him, and knows that he's a redeemable kind of guy, but Brakiss just can't face his own weakness and accept forgiveness. He runs away from facing himself, which is really what he's doing here -- running away from having to think about himself and just retreating to this life where he doesn't have to be confronted with his failures and doesn't have to be a better person but doesn't have to be actively evil and strain his conscience and make him thus think about himself again. He can just hide out and make droids and live this little life. He's a little like a more-twisted Cade in that way.

As to Kueller, I think the truth is a little in-between. Rusch is clearly an incompetent writer. From Han being suspected of bombing the Senate with his wife inside, to Wedge getting his ass kicked by robot Star Destroyers so dumb he can beat them by shooting at his allies, to the bungled handling of democracy (Wedge's outrage at the Senate's ability to remove MON MOTHMA'S HANDPICKED SUCCESSOR is the best), I think it's clear that her plotting tends toward the dumb. I don't reject the possibility that she's aware that Kueller is in a lot of ways a pathetic villain inside, but certainly she's not nearly as clever in executing it as she thinks, because I don't think the execution is quite there. The writing just isn't good enough to really do anything with the concept of a callow youth reacting badly to tragedy and making himself into this villain who is not nearly what he thinks he is. I agree that Kueller's thought processes are childish -- especially note his belief that all he really has to do to be the most powerful Force-user and rule the galaxy is to defeat the most powerful Force-user in the galaxy, Luke Skywalker, and then he will just be the most powerful and control of the galaxy will just sort of descend upon him in a cosmic anointment, as if the guy watched too much anime as a kid or something -- but then again, all the logic everywhere else in the book where Kueller isn't involved is absolutely childish, too, because Rusch, like her buddy KJA, is a childish writer. It's too close to call. The bigger issue is that, whatever she meant, Rusch didn't execute it.

And the idea really is brilliant. I would love the idea of an intelligent, powerful writer who could actually do justice to it giving us the concept of a young student of Luke's -- let's say nineteenish, old enough to feel adult but young enough to be a child at heart -- struggling to understand how to use his power responsibly, and then tragedy strikes and he responds by running off and vowing vengeance and unwittingly makes himself into a villain in the process because he's just too immature and gets consumed by this sense of righteous anger and injustice, and he keeps striking out trying to make the universe right in his blind grief and self-delusion . . . that's dynamite stuff. Leave out the stupid droid plot, focus on the danger of this guy going genocidal and lashing out at the NR in his region rather than trying to build him up as this galactic threat, but keep the core of the character, keep all these childish delusions about what he's doing and what he can accomplish and how power and justice work, and it's quite a fascinating concept. Rusch just isn't the author to execute it.

It's the same with the senators -- a fascinating idea about how the heroes react to letting "Imperial" viewpoints into politics, about seeing ex-Imperials getting votes and opposing them within the bounds of the political process. Except Rusch bungles the execution by making the storyline all about the evil Imperials who are somehow elected on a platform of being giant ****s I guess, and the heroes just hate them and can't understand why they can't just wipe dissenting viewpoints out of politics and there's no nuance to anything that happens.

I do like Cole Fardreamer; I think he fits into the universe really well as a nobody kid who's suddenly thrust into a prominent role in events purely by a twist of fate; he's not the galaxy's best smuggler, he's not secretly Force-sensitive. He's just a well-meaning but completely average kid who stumbles into something by total chance, has an insane week as he tries to do the right thing with his meager powers and somehow succeeds, and then goes back to a completely normal life. Pairing him with the droids works great, too, because they're great companions for that kind of thing. It just feels like a very Star Wars storyline to me, and while it would have been problematic if this nobody mechanic had been pushed into the storyline afterwards the way the actually relevant people like Karrde and the Rogue pilots and the Jedi students were, by having him just be a guy who's there for one story and then his role in the galactic saga ends, it works.

 

The part I had forgotten about this book was the scene where Luke visits Brakiss' mother. It's suitably creepy and is a great set-up to their meeting. Unfortunately the showdown is a bit of a let down and was actually jarring. Early in the book, we have Brakiss talking with Kueller about killing Skywalker, and they have this weird, tense argument over who should get to kill Luke. This is reinforced by some other scenes with Kueller's lackeys, and I think one says something like, "they talked often about repaying Skywalker for failing them."

This...just doesn't line up with the Brakiss we see in the showdown. That Brakiss is scared of his own shadow and is actually kind of incompetent. I think the narrative was trying to establish that Brakiss IS a formidable menace, but that when he confronts Skywalker, he immediately falls apart because he is forced to recall his failure of his training. Unfortunately, before that Brakiss is actively thinking about going off to live as a hermit, and then he gets punked hard by Cole Fardreamer and the droids. He's just a weird bully and comes off very pathetic. Even his attempt to sacrifice himself on Luke's blade just loses its impact because of how meek he is. It's also weird how Kueller seems to get inside Brakiss' head. He says something like, "you hate what you've become Brakiss", and he tacitly agrees with that. I'm not even sure what that statement is supposed to mean in context. He's actively working with Kueller! He hates what he's become? What has he become? Wasn't he always an Imperial spy? It's such a weird line.

In YJK, Brakiss is much more self-assured. I suppose we can assume that he developed into this characterization since his last appearance, but it's definitely a stark difference. In YJK, Brakiss' inner monologue does have some self-doubt, but mostly he's a cocky b****rd who actually believes he can defeat Luke. He establishes the Shadow Academy for basically petty reasons, as a way to show up his former teacher, "Hey look who's a better teacher!" When they first see one another on the Shadow Academy, Brakiss is determined to attack and get revenge as he sees it. This doesn't line up at all with the Brakiss in TNR. That Brakiss is a broken man whose inner monologue is about to break down into tears. He's also insanely afraid of Kueller to the point that he doesn't ever talk back to him. All of their interactions have this weird tension where you want Brakiss to stand up to him or call him out for being a puffed-up, delusional lunatic. One interaction is basically Kueller saying, "Hey Brakiss, I'm not paying you for your work in this plot! Mostly because I know you won't stand up to me and I think it's funny to lord my power over you!" A formidable foe this is not.

There are a lot of interesting ideas in this novel, but I always felt that they spent more time on stuff that wasn't interesting. I remember that Thernbee scene just dragging on, even though it was probably only a couple pages. The entire Han plot is bonkers and takes away page time from more interesting plot threads like the Imperials being put in the Senate and Luke graduating to the Ben Kenobi role where he has to deal with a failed student. I still don't understand why the Kueller illustrations went the way that they did. Isn't the skull on the cover supposed to be a representation of Kueller's mask? Isn't the idea that the mask makes him look like he has a skull for a head? Why would they design this weird horned demon guy? Unfortunately that illustration has been used everywhere now, even in Union, so it never seems like anyone was really concerned about the disconnect.

 

Agreed.

I really do think she was going for it, but I agree the execution is sloppy and held back by her terribly stupid ideas popping up all over the place. Despite coming off as a Star Wars fan in the dedication and acknowledgments, the way she wrote that space battle (awful) and the way Kueller kept gaining unstoppable power just by setting off bombs definitely made it seem like she didn't have any idea how this whole Star Wars thing works.

I don't think the narrative ever tries to establish Brakiss as anything other than pathetic.

Even when they were talking about getting back at Skywalker....it's pretty clear that it's all hot air from Brakiss.

Brakiss is established as weak and afraid from the get go.

He just wants this "experiment" (not plan TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD) to be over already, so he can go back to Telti....where he would be safe. He's so cold. He's so cold, grandma.

I'm not going to bother quoting more, it just continues this way, over and over and over through the entire book. Brakiss is weak from the start and definitely scared of Kueller, scared of facing Skywalker (and especially the inner demons Skywalker showed him), he just wants to stay on Telti (which is completely devoid of organic life) and be left alone.

There was never going to be a big showdown between Brakiss and Luke.

"You hate what you've become" was pretty obvious. Brakiss hates this weak, scared, subservient coward he's become. It doesn't really have anything to do with being an Imperial...though Brakiss may hate the fact that he can't stand up to evil.

Having Luke talk to Brakiss' mom was a fantastic idea. What better way to humanize/sympathize a "villain" than to talk to his mother? It's like talking to the mother after some guy goes on a shooting spree.

Brakiss is a sympathetic anti-villain, he's so pathetic and pitiable. He might be the best part of the book. I don't care about any other version of Brakiss because I haven't read it. I don't care if KKR's version doesn't match up, her version is actually interesting.

 

CT-867-5309 I think you need to edit your post

 

Thanks, Gamiel. (btw I have alerts turned off, so tagging me does nothing. I just happened to check this thread again.)

I guess I'll try to make something of this post.

I'll start by citing the dedication:

Okay so she's seen Star Wars.

In the acknowledgments, she thanks all the staff like Tom Dupree, Lucy Autrey Wilson and Sue Rostoni, and writers like KJA, Rebecca Moesta, etc.

So she did a month of research and really enjoyed it, she seems like a fan. This is defintely backed up by the MASSIVE amount of references in this book, it's unbelievable the number of references to the movies and other works. It's like on the level of Luceno, just not done nearly as well.

I really do think she broke KJA's record for most movie lines re-used in one book. She uses even the most insignificant lines from the movies. There are like, dozens of references to Tatooine. Really, the entire novel is based on the movies in one way or another. A new rebellion. Leia is back in the Imperial Senate, in a way, fighting Imperials. Stormtroopers are back, at least their armor, anyway. Kueller is dark Luke/Vader, his backstory of finding his parents is an exact copy of Luke coming home to find Owen and Beru burned. Cole Fardreamer is Luke without powers. Wedge's final shot that makes the last Star Destroyer go BOOM is clearly just Luke in the trench. Han jumps on the targeting computer in the same way. Pretty sure the soft spot on the Victory-class Star Destroyers is just supposed to be their version of the thermal exhaust port. Luke decides to copy Ben and just give up and die, leaving Leia to fight Kueller with the pain of losing her brother.

It really does seem like KJA/Moesta had the biggest impact, KKR's ideas seem very similar to what they would come up with. The New Rebellion came out all the way back in 1996, so KJA/Moesta had written a significant percentage of the novels released by that time.

She could have used some help from Stackpole on the space battle. Rogue Squadron came out on Jan 1st, 1996, TNR came out in December. I doubt she read it.