Saga TO ABSENT FRIENDS.......(EARLY ANH AU) - A reminder to my readers (12/31/03)

Interesting epilogue. Yes,but Darth Vader?? Are you going to write another one?

 

Surprise end, but no surprise that it was a thought-provoking read. It offers many questions with no clear answers.

A loyal friend, a devoted husband and father, yet he slew Jedi and believed he was right.

A Grand Moff, yet he has a healthy disrespect for the Emperor, and delights in jerking Tarkin's chain by wearing the familial garb instead of standard issue Imperial.

One need only turn to events of the past century to know that people in conflicts are not light and dark, like a chessboard. Instead, there can be evil players on the right side and good people in a wrong cause. Just as natural emeralds are almost always flawed, to one degree or another, so too are humans.
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Ivo is a neutral in the war between the Jedi and Sith.

I am reminded of the neutral angels in medieval legend: those who took no sides in the battle between God and Lucifer.

While Dante placed the neutral angels in the upper circles of Hell, other legends made them as either the bearers of the Holy Grail to Earth, or as the fairy/elven spirits.

 

As always, insightful comments from Falls_the_Shadow.... I am gla dyou enjoyed it....

Now, an up for a coming reader

 

Ah, GL, that was fantastic. And complicated.

It definately helps to round out Ivo's character, even if he's 20 some years older.

Very emotional and well done. I particularly liked the motif of Padmé's scent representing her presence.

The ending was very fitting. The Leia/Ivo interaction was very well written, and I like the relationship between Ivo and Vader.

Oh, and thanks for upping it!

Again, beautiful job.

~ats~

 

An up for reasons of continuity.....


Remember a Special Edition is planned....

 

An up for the Hell of it....


Remember, a special edition is planned....

 

I finished this over the weekend and I?ve been dilly-dallying with its review? That?s how astounded and delighted I am by this story and its protagonist, the original character of Kisalvalivo Arzhan, easily one of the most likable and controversial OCs I have read in SW fan fiction.

I?ll start by quoting my favourite lines and why:

I hate the Force.

If that isn?t a drop-everything, attention-grabbing start, I don?t know what else is.


It had been their first date, and he had been the subject of her laughter after he had fallen over an exceptionally well marked pipe in the Republic Botanical gardens.

There was something so refreshing about this? and other parts of the story when he has memories of his past with his wife and Anakin. Innocence. Freedom. Love? A sharp contrast to the present time of terror, hate and oppression and the role, honourable or not, that he plays in the new Order.


A life that never was. A life in which he had let Korva and his Task Force Nexu of the First Zhanin Rangers go to Alderaan to retrieve her nearly ten days prior to that awful night, instead of ordering a delay while they sought confirming intelligence of Padmé?s presence in Organa?s house. A life where he had reunited them on Kalinda as he had planned. A life where he and Dormé had helped them make the necessary adaptations to the world so that they could survive together. A world where their children grew up friends with his.

<sighs> This is the running theme of Star Wars? if only? if only? if only?


I?m sweating, not good, not good at all.

The fight with Anakin/Vader. I, like the others, was equally delighted and impressed with the fact that Vader and Anakin were simply different names for the same man, and not the soulless machine that is usually depicted in fan fiction. I have very strong opinions about the Anakin/Vader transition? but this is a review not the premise to a rant. And the fight was quaint. I loved the stalemate ending. The afore-quoted line made me smile? Ivo is obviously not as young as he used to be.


an educated, core accented, but some how less than cultured voice.

A thug will always show himself a thug, no matter his educational pedigree. The dynamics in the Imperial military was fascinating: the posturing, the secret misgivings? Excellent.


They had discussed their children, or more specifically they discussed the communication Korva had received from his wife that Ivo?s eldest son and Korva?s daughter had been caught in a compromising position.

I love little side-stories like this. I smiled at Ivo?s thoughts about the distance between his wife?s room and the kids? love nest? And it made me sadly wonder if there won?t have been a future coupling between one of the twins, or some other Skywalker kid and Ivo?s, if things had not gone so differently.


?To Absent Friends, those dead on the Field Of Honour, those missing, and those not yet found.?

Perfect finish.


Ivo?s character: Initially, there was the danger, as is the usual case of most strongly defined OCs that have a close connection with the known canon characters, of making Ivo Arzhan one of the dreaded Gary Stus of fan fiction. Then you dispelled me of that notion by not just by making him compromise his own strongly held principles and reducing him to the same level of the man he so clearly despises, but simply by this: having him accept that no, he cannot save Anakin, and neither can the recovery of a child. The only one who can save Anakin is Anakin himself.

Leia?s character: Very strong, very human, a female Anakin. And although I was alarmed at her apparently trivial betrayal of the Alliance, you succeeded in persuading me that that was actually plausible, giving her tendency to be as passionate and impulsive as her father.


Last but not the least, that shard of originality that almost cuts with its brilli