I picked this up from the Library a couple of days ago and finished it last night. Was it Crystal Star or Jedi Academy Travesty bad? Nope - but it was relentlessly dull. Boring bad guy, dull good guy (bordering on "I really hate you"), a threat that could have been cool but was totally paint-by-numbers and a plot that was merely a sequence of events in chronological order as opposed to an actual, engaging story. I finished the book, but only because it was free. If I had paid for this, I would have felt ripped off!
Just finished the book- ok, it's not deep, it's not a classic, but it's great fun- I thought this was one of the most enjoyable SW books I've read in a long time. And, I am proud to announce, finishing Annihilation leaves me with only Scoundrels left to read and then I have read every single adult SW fiction book that is currently available! I can see the peak of Everest.
I actually enjoyed this, because it was referencing ToR continuity itself fairly neatly. Mekhis, Ziost, the other Dark Council members, Satele and the trooper-whose-name-escapes-me getting some screen-time, development and closure. Some actual development of the Empire and it's policies, references to the issues with Darth Malgus, placing this firmly post-ToR... but perhaps pre-Hutt expansion. Oh, and it gave us lengths for everything. Which the Encyclopaedia didn't. Kudos.
To me this book was the ONLY good book in the Old Republic timeline except for Revan. But even Revan had some issues and inconsistencies. Hated Fatal Alliance, hated Deceived. This book was actually very entertaining.
Fatal Alliance has probably been my favourite of the TOR books. Red Harvest I actually enjoyed in a camp horror B-Movie kind of way, though it's much harder to really "place." Revan and Deceived I probably would put together... Kemp definitely is a much better writer than Karpyshyn but I'm just not fond of Malgus, so both books came off rather flat to me. Annihilation admittedly sounds interesting story wise, but I'm miles behind on my reading so it'll take a bit before I get to it.
Karypyshyns my favorite author. Revan and the Bane trilogy are my favorite SW books, so I'm looking forward to reading this after I finish up vision of the future.
Probably it just comes down to different preferences, which is fine of course. I actually don't mind most of the TOR-related novels, although I'm a bit more forgiving with them since these don't involve killing relatives of OT characters at least. I'd probably rank Revan and Annihilation as lower than the others though, especially as Fatal Alliance and Deceived were released well before the game was launched so they were still tinkering with things. Well, that and the Revan novel was such an... anticlimax after all the hinting about the True Sith and such (not that Revan in the game itself was all that great either). Annihilation was just forgettable (well, it doesn't help that it follows a somewhat similar plot to Lost Suns and that was much better written), not horrible, but also pretty generic. A darkside-enhanced ship that is basically better than any other ship isn't exactly that original. A glimpse into the post-Chapter 3 Sith Empire is slightly interesting, even if it only shows that they're barely making any progress.
This book blew me away. I've liked Karpyshyn's books in the past, but found them to be mostly forgettable. Even the last Bane book, which I remember thinking vastly superior to the first two, was something I hardly remembered when I thought back on it. I read Revan last week and liked it quite a bit. I love this book, though. Just a total blast to read. What I'm wondering, though, is do we have a review thread for it? I couldn't seem to find one. And if not, can I start one?
I'll start one. Apparently no one cared enough about it to ever request a review thread up until now, and I certainly didn't care enough about it to pinpoint its release date.
