Will Allston be able to make Rebel Stand & Rebel Dream work?

ok, allston is one of the most respected writers of EU... i love his books, they're funny and light-hearted as well as action packed... but was he the best choice for the njo? his writing style is good, but does it fit?

so far, njo has been very dark and depressing... granted, it would be a nice change and a relief to have an amusing book in the middle of all the doom and gloom, but will it work? the njo will hopefully start to swing back towards the light, but is this too big a jump?

i really hope allston can make it work... but i don't think that rebel stand and dream will work if they're written like the X-Wing series... humour isn't the njo trend, and i don't think it's the real answer either...

so what do you think?

 

Of course he will make it work, I have no doubts whatsoever!

 

so you're opting for blind optimism?

us star wars fans are good at that...

 

I think you underestimate Allston. His writing is much more than humor. Try some of his non-SW work. Even within the X-Wing series, he wrote tragedy very well. Ton Phanan anyone?

 

Please Face, no need to open up old wounds. . . . oh Phanan . . . . (runs to the back room crying)

 

Blind optimism for me. I have complete faith that Allston can work just as well in the NJO as he can in the X-wing series. (unlike Stackpole, IMO). His writing works on just so many levels. Very Star Warsy.

 

Hey, DJ went over to the funny side here and there. Remember, "If you still have your own hands, you're probably not as far up the ladder as you wanted us to think. Put someone else on - someone with real authority and a few more replacement parts."

I can't wait to see what kind of sadistic taunts Allston puts up. "Your opponent, Tsavong Lah, is Kettch, and he's an Ewok. Sorry we couldn't bring him to the banquet earlier. He bites."

 

I personally welcome the idea of some levity before the Stover books. Haven't there been enough nearly humor-absent 'dark' books in the series for now?

Honestly, the idea that the series must consist of books only taking the darkest of perspectives on an entire war seems kind of narrow-minded to me.

I think Allston is just the man for the job of lightening the NJO a little.

If the NJO is really aiming for the 'realism' aspect of SW, then I think they best include the realistic perspective that some people don't go through their entire lives without ever laughing. The fact is that no matter where you are, there is always a class clown, someone who makes life worth living by giving people the outlet of comedy.

Really, the lives that the SW characters have been living recently are frankly not worth the defense from my perspective...

 

Allston's style is perfect for NJO.

i love his books, they're funny and light-hearted as well as action packed... but was he the best choice for the njo? his writing style is good, but does it fit?

They are funny, yes, and the funny scenes can be lighthearted, but he is to SW as Hans Zimmer is to soundtracks -- he wrings it for every last drop of emotion. I could be laughing one page and ten pages later be crying and then ten pages later be feeling Zsinj's despair as he realizes that they're killing him.

so far, njo has been very dark and depressing... granted, it would be a nice change and a relief to have an amusing book in the middle of all the doom and gloom, but will it work? the njo will hopefully start to swing back towards the light, but is this too big a jump?

I actually haven't found NJO to be very dark. Bad things have happened, and a few of the books have been dark, but some of the books, Keyes' especially, have actually seemed kind of light in tone, if not in content. And while SoA was full of slapstick, the Wraith Squadron trilogy was packed with tragedy as much as, or more than, with humor.

i really hope allston can make it work... but i don't think that rebel stand and dream will work if they're written like the X-Wing series... humour isn't the njo trend, and i don't think it's the real answer either...

Of course they're not going to be SoA-style romps. And I seriously doubt Luke's going to be making hilarious one-liners when he's whupping Vong. But I can't wait to see what he does with Han and Leia especially.

 

Allston, possibly the best of the EU writers,(Up there with Stackpole and Zahn) will no doubt make the 2 books work. His Wraith trilogy was amazing, I dont know about anyone else but the way Ton Phanan died was more heartbreaking to me than Chewie(no disrespect, Chewie's death tore me up),The guy was only in one and a half books but it utterly destroyed me. Allston will pull it off with room to spare. Although if he doesn't include Face in the books i'll barage him with emails until he writes another book with him in.

 

Phanan's death affected me enotionally more than Chewie's or Anakin's did. Not because the character was better, but the way it was written was so much better in comparison to the other two. Not that Denning or Salvatore did a bad job, but Allston's just that good.

 

Allston will do well with Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand. He has injected more humor into his books than any other author I know. He does tragedy very well and he can write battle scenes of any type as good as Stackpole if not better. I'm glad he is not doing a hard cover as i believe he is extremly well suited to a paperback format. He is one of the few authors capable of getting the most out of a story in a paperback. The other authors in the NJO haven't quite been able to do so as yet.

 

I'm glad he is not doing a hard cover as i believe he is extremly well suited to a paperback format. He is one of the few authors capable of getting the most out of a story in a paperback.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say..."Huh?"

The only difference between the two is the binding, and the fact that the author gets more money for a HC. To that end I'd have liked to have seen Allston get one.

 

I'm afraid they brought him in for killing off Wedge.
Wedge is not important enough to die in a hardcover, but has too many fans to be killed in one paperback.
Two paperbacks, however, are a totally different story ...

 

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Wedge dying??, blasphemy blasphemy.....
uhh sorry bout that.
I think that Allston will write the books that finally turn the tide of the war, with the Jedi a little more in the background and more emphasis on the New Republic military.

 

On the note of Wedge dying....unless I'm wrong (and I might be) Wedge isn't mentioned in the summary for the second book, Rebel Stand. Maybe it's just because he's not that big a role, or maybe...........

And this is just my opinion on the subject of "Will Allston be able to make them work".....

Allston's SW books are generally classified or stereotyped as "funny" or "light-hearted", and that is certainly accurate. His books are hilarious. But if you only consider Allston a "comedy writer", I think you're doing him a huge dishonor or injustice.

I won't mention Phanan's death since it seems to be somewhat touchy 'round these parts, but let's go to another aspect of Allston's writing...his characterizations.

For my money, no one did a better job characterizing Wedge Antilles than Allston. SoA was fantastic in the job it did for Wedge (and fantastic in so many other ways). Allston has this knack for really making you care about a character, giving him/her an interesting and emotional backstory.

So while I'm sure Allston will bring his trademark humor to the NJO in some degree, don't think it's just going to be two books full of jokes. Allston is so much more that. I expect it will be two books of humor and tragedy wrapped around a great story filled with interesting characters whose fate I actually care about.

I'm torn on the topic of Allston getting a HC or not, but for purely selfish reasons. If he did a 600 page HC like Denning, I would be all for it because it's like us getting 2 Allston books, AND he's making for money. If they're going to give us a 332 page HC (like BP), I'd rather he do a duology of books with equal pages or more. Like I said.....selfish reasons.

 

Lucas, from what I have read, created wedge antillies for the movies to be common soldiers, the guys that has no super powers, nothing special about them but do there part to end the war, and survives to the end doing it. That was symbolism that lucas had intended for the 7th character that could be seen in all 3 movies. Do you think that lucas would allow his "Everyman" get killed, especially in a bridge novel?

 

Wedge wont die. He is the comforting face of Star Wars, so to speak

 

I am sorry IAMTHEDARKSIDE I have not explained myself correctly. Throughout the NJO I have enjoyed the paperbacks more than the hardcovers. I feel that the authors have been overwhelmed somewhat by the hardcovers and their importance to the overall story.

VP was good, BP was not as good as Truce at bakura and was the weakest book of the NJO series. SbS was excellent but according to people who have read Troy Denning it was not his best.

With the greater freedom in the paperbacks Stackpole, Luceno and Keynes have produced their hightest quality of work (in my opinion) and I believe that two paperbacks is a better forum to showcase Allston's talents than a HC.

 

I trust Aaron Allston. The fact that he has not one but two books coming out is essentially the only reason I've kept reading NJO. I wish they were hardbacks, because he deserves the credit. If you consider him strictly a "humor" writer, please, pick up "Doc Sidhe" and "Sidhe-Devil." In fact, buy them anyway. They're good, and the more copies that sell, the more likely Baen will ask him to write another.

 

Should be reading his free e-book this weekend

 

Do you think that lucas would allow his "Everyman" get killed, especially in a bridge novel? >>

Yes. I seriously doubt Lucas cares if Wedge Antilles lives in the books, since he really has little to nothing to do with the novels anyway. If Del Rey asked Lucas permission to kill Wedge, I have no doubt he would give the okay. What does it affect him if Wedge is alive in a novel series 20 years after ROTJ anyway? He's got more important things to worry about. "Everyman" or not, Wedge is in as much danger as any other midcard player.

 

First, I've been hearing all this about HCs and paperbacks and I have to wonder what the real difference is besides price?

Second, Wedge can't die. Wedge is like Luke, Leia, Han and Lando. You can kill all of Han's children, but to get rid of Han or any of those other characters takes away somebody that you could always count on in SW.

Third, Allston is one of my favorite SW authors. He has always done a very good job of writing tragedy and humor. I must say that of all the NJO series, I've been most anticipating his two books the most and hoping that he might get another series of books in NJO because of his writing style. The death scenes he wrote affected me a lot more than Chewies death did because he was able to continue the story, but still hit you with the impact of the character long enough.

 

Allston is good at humor, granted. But only to look to the humor he adds to his books is to do him a disservice. He did well with character creation and characterization in his X-wing books, as well as doing well with character interaction. But of all the authors so far, he is only one of two to really provide emotional scenes surrounding the death of characters. Look at how he built up the emotions concerning Ton Phannan's death. He used character interaction between Face and Phannan to build on the emotions of the scene. We knew Phannan was going to die, we had to know. But Face didn't know, and he wanted to save his friend badly that he tried so hard to do so. And so the emotional level of the scene built until the point where we'd find ourselves wishing Face had been able to save Phannan.

The same thing happened when Wedge had to write Admiral Ackbar about the death of his niece Jesmin. We already knew she was gone. But it was the sense of how do you tell someone that they have just lost a member of their family. The scene was less emotional, but it offered us, if we wished to take it, the chance to feel what it must be like to have to write just such a letter when we can't really detach ourselves so as not to be hurt when we loose someone we managed to get close to.

The only other author who has been able to do that, to build the emotional level of a death scene, has done so in the NJO already. R.A. Salvatore, with his writing of Chewie's death. This is one of the scenes we all remember so well. Perhaps it would be less remembered if the character was someone we really didn't know. But nevertheless, it is still a memorial scene.

And it is because of everything I mentioned at the top of this post that I think Allston will be able to make his duology work. Already other authors have been able to make their NJO books work. But Allston may be the first to actually deaden the edge of the NJO by featureing more dark humor than any other NJO author in their novels. Even so, he's up to the task.

 

I think that Allston will be great for the NJO. If you think about it, we ahve already seen a lot of dark humor in many of the books already. He can carry on with that, and he is an excellent sci-fi/SW writer overall. I didnt like Stackpoles NJO that much and I think that Allston can pull it off.