Lit The Legendary 181st Imperial Discussion Group: Vector Prime!

I bid you dark greetings, everyone. I was just about to write "I know it's late, so we better get started" just to realize that it is late. With the hype pendulum having completed another swing, it's only five more months until Episode 7 is out and Legends EU is finally relegated to an alternate universe status.

Personally, I'll see this as a good way to get one thing out of the way that I wanted to do for some time now. The closest thing to a sequel trilogy for me never was the Thrawn trilogy - those were good, obviously, and important, but they are just further adventures. The EU's sequel trilogy is, rather, The New Jedi Order. [Meanwhile, a melancholic song comes on. Come on! Make this easy for me.] And while complete re-reads aren't uncommon (I never managed one, though), the thing that always interested me was the "Episode run", reading only the supposedly more important hardcover volumes as if they were episode movies, seeing how much you have to patch together of what happened inbetween. Since this was the original plan that didn't quite work out - most of the paperback books don't really qualify as filler - I'm intrigued to see how this will work out.

And yes, I'm heavily implying that the EU timeline should end with The Unifying Force, then we all drink our farewells and go to the cinema. Fun while it lasted, it was.

So, where does the end begin? At the edge of the galaxy, as the expanded universe that was built on the foundation of the OT is put to the test by being invaded by something so strange that TCW was about to embrace it... something out of horror sci-fi movies, something out of another time, more ancient and more modern at the same time. Entering the expanded universe on its Vector Prime (thanks to R.A. Salvatore).

I know that there's a lot of opinion out there on whether the NJO is any good or not. This is not really the place to talk about that. If you decide to reread the books with us and any founded criticism comes up, this is the place to talk about it. Just popping in to say that everything NJO was bad isn't very productive. Any remarks that LOTF was a trainwreck are okay, though. Obviously.

No opening questions this time. Go.

Next month, Balance Point, obviously.

 

Oh hell.....

 

We survived Hard Contact without major incident, I'm sure we'll be okay.

 

Time for a confession. I was never really big into Star Wars until Vector Prime, sure I had watched the movies and such and read the Thrawn Trilogy (only realized later that there actually were the Hand of Thrawn books as well) but Vector Prime sounded so interesting and unique when I got the book, especially given that it was by Salvatore who’s Icewind Dale books I had really enjoyed.

And I was hooked, sure upon rereading Vector Prime is actually surprisingly weak compared to the other NJO books, but back then it was a great time to get more SW. Ep 1 was around the corner, the X-Wings book and all the older stuff were around, the NJO was ongoing and Dark Horse was about to start on its epic run of comics, which really never stopped until the end. And when a friend of mine started showing me his collection of WEG SW material there was just no way for me not to start soaking it all up and try to get as much SW stuff as I could.

So… is Vector Prime great… not really… but I still love the book for other reasons.

 

I definitely agree that the NJO is the "sequel trilogy" of the EU to me, in the sense that it's the defining saga of this generation in the same way the OT was for Luke's and the PT for Anakin's. Not unrelated, I also agree that my headcanon stops at The Unifying Force. I wasn't exactly disappointed that Luke, Leia and Han didn't die in the NJO, but I definitely thought they should've taken a back seat and let the next generation take the spotlight... oh no, I'm off on that tangent again, aren't I? Sorry.

Absolutely. For my money, they were the best villain faction the EU ever introduced.

 

Well, the first one that came to mind is unwillingly controversial since there was so much criticism of Salvatore back then due to what he had to write. I'd like a critical assessment of how Salvatore writes. AOTC is a bit over the place, but you can never say if that's because the movie script was never finished.

Here, though, my first impression coming into the book again is how clunkily exposition is dropped onto the pages. It's bearable with stuff like Leia's career and Jaina's characterization/life, but it makes loud metallic impact noises when Mara's illness is shoved in by-the-way and then Jacen's philosophical trouble is checklist-checked. It's not particularly engaging, and I guess especially not so if you're not living and breathing EU at that time (as in, already caring/knowing about the characters. What do you mean, Luke has a wife?). And then there's the conceit that Mara's shuttle and the X-Wing apparently don't have communication equipment. By the way, Mara's shuttle having a screen - I tried to imagine a SW ship built like that and ended up with the Enterprise anyway. I'm getting carried away.

So, firmly keeping in mind that Salvatore got the basic elements for this book delivered (Vong invasion - Chewie dies - proactive Jedi go rogue - possibly introducing Danni who I don't think was his idea), what is there to say about the actual construction of the novel, about the fleshing out of a barebones story that needs to cover the bases I mention above?

I feel kind of sorry starting with this topic, you know.

 

Oh I actually don’t think he is all that great a writer, I just liked Icewind Dale, whilst I already gave up with the next book in that series.

 

Oh, I totally forgot, we should probably feel obliged to look at the first new material Mark Hamill did as Luke Skywalker.

 

Can we switch the ethics of the Yuuzhan Vong War discussion to this thread

 

No, your thread is permanently cursed with that, you'll just have to live with it.

 

Memory of it is really foggy, but didn’t his explanation for Padme going for Vader boil down to her just being really, really “under satisfied” ?

 

Only the ethics demonstrated in VP, sorry. You'll get rid of torture Vergere in October, though, when we do DW.

The illness was meant to be one of those "anyone could really die" things that were meant to creep in with Chewbacca's death, and I guess Mara was a fairly good choice if you wanted to keep it in the Jedi family. The pregnancy (and thinking about it, possibly the cure) actually came in earlier than planned because Tyers wanted more good news in her book. But here, we're meant to think "oh would they really kill her off before there's a little Skycrawler OMG OMG OMG" which is funny since it was always very probable that Luke would become like Old Ben, not caring for women and having children; marrying him off and expecting children is so traditional.

Well, how should I put this... are you sure that you read an official adaptation of the movie?

 

I am pretty sure

 

Well, it definitely wasn't the young readers adaptation, was it.

 

I thought Ben was Tyers idea and wasn't originally part of the series at all.

 

Possibly. There was a lot of making it up as they were going along, wasn't there - I'd be surprised if they had more than 10% of what was to come locked down by that time. Rogue Planet and Zonama Sekot probably only got tied into this thanks to Bear coincidentally coming up with living technology on his own, didn't it.

 

iunno

Someone needs to interview Luceno and demand full disclosure

 

We'll never get full disclosure on NJO. There's a Del Rey employee who's got dirt on Luceno. Possibly the employee that Denning has got dirt on.

But as much fun as this is, back on topic. Does this book appear like a book made by people who have planned four years and roughly 20 books in advance?

 

This book is pretty good. The beginning of my most favorite era in SW and my ST.
Love the asteriod belt scenes. The OT Big 3 remembering Vader's Tie Fighter type. Anakin, Jaina and Jacen with the meld.
Han yelling at them after Anakin jumped after Chewie's death.
Chewie's death. Amazing.
Nom Anor!
The Yuuzhan Vong. Easily the best villains of the EU.
Borsk. As much as I hate that guy, it is kind of nice reading about him again after reading DNT/LOTF/FOTJ.
Danni Quee! Her job at ExGal Station would be pretty cool I think.

 

Well, there's a little bit of dissonance (what TVTropes calls "Early Installment Weirdness.")

One of them is Nom Anor. The NJO in general reveals him as a professional cynic and opportunist who only believes in himself, not to mention an atheist. But in this book, he still comes off as a believer, and a normal member of the hierarchy. A crafty person, a spymaster more than a warrior, but not the pathological cynic you see later (towards the peoples of the galaxy, yes; towards his own culture, no), and not the dirtbag that the rest of Yuuzhan Vong society wouldn't touch with a ten foot amphistaff.

Another one - the Praetorite Vong. In this book they seem like an elite force in the Yuuzhan Vong warrior class (a Praetorian Guard, as the name implies). In the rest of the book, if they're referenced at all, they're said to be part of the intendant caste, and held in contempt by the actual warriors. I suppose they're the equivalent of the SS or KGB's combat units, with the professional soldiers resenting them the same way the Wehrmacht and Red Army did.

Another one - anyone else find it weird that we don't hear much about the Osarian-Rhomamool conflict or the other wars Nom Anor's been stirring up to distract the New Republic, after this?

 

It's interesting that the torture/pain philosophy supposedly got dialed down in later books to the point that the Praetorite was mentioned to be super fanatical about this. Did Stackpole already do this or was it later, so that it might have been a countermove to reactions to the brutality of the first book?

I must say that I never saw a jarring difference in what the Vong do. There might be variations, but this is generally what different authors bring to the table, and what different perspectives bring to the table. A book that introduces the Vong as a horror movie force-of-nature will focus more on the gruesome parts than one that intends to show the Vong as a society with different castes and possibly understandable, if not relatable desires. From memory, I wouldn't say that I would have made a distinction beyond "okay, the shapers and leaders and slaves and shamed ones aren't as brutal as the brutal warriors". Especially since there was still a lot of brutal stuff going on.

In that regard, Vector Prime holds a special status because never again will the Vong be as alien as here. This truly is a first act.

 

Things that greatly irritated people about VP a long time ago on a board far, far away....

• The regression of Mara Jade - Quite a few saw this as a backwards step after VotF.
• Borsk as Chief of State - It may be 6 years later, but did everyone forget Bothan secrecy near killed the NR in HoT?
• Shieldships to blow up a planet.
• Kyp got shafted by being deemed bad for? Law enforcement

Things that people loved / hated about it:

• Solo brats / kids - the term applicable denotes your allegiance.
• The Vong warrior culture
• Danni Quee
• The horror vibe with Yomin Carr killing the scientists
• Nom Anor - Yep, he was consistent from the start in this respect.

As to whether it felt like an opening shot, certainly. Did people want to believe it was indeed planned out? Certainly. It was a more civilised and less cynical time in this respect, though there was great fear that if NJO flopped SW was dead. That flawed line of thought was, in part, the trigger point for why the VP discussions turned so sharp.