Books Thrawn Alliances Book - Summer 2018

I felt EXACTLY the same way. Phasma was the last novel I read until Last Shot, and that was 7 months ago.

I am SUPER excited for Thrawn: Alliances. I hope either the Killiks, Ssi-ruuvi, Nagai or dare I say, the Yuuzhan Vong are the threat, Vader and Thrawn must team up to stop. Also, it comes out the day after my birthday!!!!

 

Tell me about it. I'm still waiting for SW novels to explode. It's been frustrating as a fan, though it's let me explore other fiction more which I guess is a positive.

This will probably be one of those novels that could pretty much fit in both New Canon and Legends, which is awesome.

 

I expect having to make everything a cohesive canon in all mediums these days has slowed things down for them. It's probably why there's a lot of sporadic, one shot novels these days as opposed to longer series.

 

They’ve been trying to make everything cohesive since the 90s. The difference now is that there are multiple films and TV shows in the pipeline that are being used for long form storytelling.


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Trying being the key word.

 

I agree. They are probably reluctant to mine the wide and vast potential of the EU for fear of continuity errors. Already their was a big error and Disney canon is only 4 years old.

 

You missed a lot of books. After Phasma we had From A Certain Point Of View, Canto Bight, Cobalt Squadron, The Last Jedi: Expanded Edition.

 

Which error? You mean in the new Vader comics?

 

The problem for me is TLJ proved the films will do whatever they damn well like, regardless of everything else, including other films! Thus any attempt at coordination in this environment is pretty much doomed.

The sad thing is Disney absolutely could have pulled it off, if they wanted to.

 

Yeah that's the upside of the book releases being a bit more spread out right now. I wonder when the next series will be now that Aftermath ended a while ago

 

Yes

 

I have not been reading those, what happened?

 

Well it timeskipped 3 years and the whatever-number brother was present, even though he had been killed by Ahsoka in 18 BBY. The Story Group corrected it from 3 years to 1 year, but this still makes it a little fuzzy.

 

hahahaha that's one of those fixable but still funny errors, like those one dead guy at Luke and Mara's wedding

 

How did TLJ violate anything in terms of cohesive storytelling between the films? (Or anything else in canon for that matter?)

 

I disagree with Ben but only in the sense that it started off in TFA not TLJ. JJ wanted to press the reset button and he did. RJ had to follow on from that and did he do a good job, no not in the slightest but it was started there.

However if you want an example, where the hell did Phasma come from, how did she survive the 3rd Death Star when she was stuck in its Trash compactor
Anyway She is in one shot, right by our heroes about to execute them, then in the next shot, she’s at the other end of the hanger striding towards them

 

More to what my oiriginal point was, I think what happens nowadays is, they're kind of precious about how much content they put out and how much they can manage now that everything has to be "canon" instead of the old system where it was various levels. I think Zahn himself said it took them ages to give him the green light for more Thrawn books because they were backed up with work on TLJ.

Personally I suspect there might be a swell in book content to fill the gap between Solo and TLJ, especially since there's no Rebels in between.

 

Geez that is so annoying because an error like that is so insignificant and it's frustrating that people care enough about such stupid stuff that the publishers are hampering themselves from telling more stories as a result.

 

Yes, they did, which is why the whole mess with TLJ is so tragic.

At this point you have to ask? Those are pretty much the now eternally burning fires of controversy that TLJ is forever part of, things like:

• Luke throwing away the saber and being on the island to top himself.
• Force Ghosts able to do lightning strikes
• Etc... Eh, I don't need to list 'em, we all know these schism points by now.

But that's by the by for me. No, the bigger problems are on the bigger picture. So we now know the final fates of Luke, Han and Leia (probably). They die. The galaxy goes back to chaos. TLJ's final claim of 'hope' just doesn't work for me. It was a wonderfully shot sequence, excellent aesthetics, but it just doesn't land its point to me. Maybe Ep IX will be able to show it better, with a galaxy rising up against the First Order. Though in that case my response might be: Where the hell were you lot earlier?

If they did some really good continuation of the post-TLJ story, with a sense of where it's going, maybe, just maybe, TLJ would become less problematic, but I don't think they know. Certainly not enough to do this so it's probably not going to happen and we'll get another half-hearted 'Journey to' marketing blitz a few months before the film comes out. If so, it'll be another missed opportunity.

True, but TLJ doubled down on that to the nth degree.

I expect to enjoy this book and I'm expecting to enjoy Last Shot, though mixed with a side of 'how the hell can they do a story like this and something like TLJ?', as I expect the two will be poles apart. So much so I can't reconcile them, thus no sense of cohesion, or coherence might be the better term.

Well, unless you're Sinny and are deploying Apocalypse-level reconciliation ability.

There are a handful of upcoming OHCs I'm interested in due to the chatter around them here, but overall, I've concluded I no longer care as much about SW as I did.

 

They don't seem to be hampering themselves though. They made a mistake, and they fixed it. No serious harm done on either side

 

I meant that they seem to be hampering themselves by almost being "scared" to realise interesting material because of worries about contradicting something else in canon. This was working on the assumption that it is a big reason for the failure to publish much of any originality recently (or anything much at all really), which could be a false assumption and there's other reasons. It would be nice to be able to blame something like that though and not just have to conclude it's because they don't want to, or don't care about it enough to bother.

 

I'm very well aware of the problems you and others perceive with the film and its story. My question was specifically how the filmmakers taking the story and characters in a different direction than you expected or wanted them to leads to "coordination is doomed," "the films will do whatever they damn well like," etc. I still don't entirely follow but maybe it just comes down to differing ideas of "cohesive storytelling," hyperbole, etc.

 

See? This right here is why TLJ discussions get toxic so quickly. You ignored everything in that post just to focus on this.

But I'll give you an answer anyway: Because they don't know where they are going, because director latitude is the most important thing to them, they can't coordinate except in a very limited, cautious, reactive fashion.

Also, a large part of why I get so irked by the whole 'you should watch the film with no expectations' is:

• Marketing exists to raise interest and give rise to expectations - see trailer speculation
• In a series, expecting elements from a prior ep to follow through into the next ep is not unreasonable.

I watched TFA 24 hours before watching TLJ and it was certainly one hell of a launchpad, but according to the whole 'no expectations' theory, I should have entirely disregarded how TFA ended, how I felt when it ended and gone into TLJ as a blank slate.

 

I did think that whole sequence was kinda corny.

I'm sure they're will be a bigger resistance in Ep IX, because of course there will be, the trilogy has to end with a big battle. As for where were they? Bloodline, dude. The book that sets up Leia's political fall and moderate isolation as well as the fractured political climate. It's not like we'll get more of an on-screen explanation than "people really responded to us after Crait."

Bloodline-->Many people don't trust Leia-->Hosnian goes boom-->Many people think Leia might be right and forgive her past transgressions-->Many people join with Leia in the spirit of hope fostered by her brother's heroic stand on Crait-->Bigger Resistance in Ep IX

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