Books CRUCIBLE by Troy Denning: The Official Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

No, this was not the worst EU book.

It's just that Denning has had too much influence over the post-NJO era, overexposure to him lost his novelty, and he hasn't improved much, at least not on our key criticisms of him. We were hoping there was some big plan with a huge payoff, and Crucible seems to show that there really isn't. By itself, it's not bad, it's just people being sick of this era and what has been done with it overall.

You should really stop gleefully counting down to this being called "the worst ever" or whatever you're waiting for. It's even more tiring than all the post-NJO books combined. So please, cut it out.

 

Have you considered that a main reason for the negativity toward Crucible might be because a lot of readers are seeing Denning's longstanding bad traits and penchants as a writer being perpetuated in this novel? Good characters behaving brutally and against previously established characterization, torture fetishism, even the most capable non-Force users being useless chumps compared to Force users... All those negative and IMO decidedly non-Star Wars traits were present in previous Denning books. And not only are they being seen again in Crucible, but they are amplified. So a negative reaction toward the book and its writer is to be expected.

Perhaps if Denning hadn't been involved in the post-NJO storyline and/or hadn't written so many post-NJO novels, some people might cut a Crucible a little slack. But I don't think so, and certainly I don't see that as a reason to go easy on Crucible. Even if Troy Denning's name wasn't on the cover, IMO Crucible doesn't fulfill its promise of a last grand adventure by the Big 3 and is a just a very bad Star Wars novel (if not quite as bad, from a structural standpoint, as Invincible and its hugely implausible deus ex machina resolution).

 

I had plenty of reasons to give Crucible low marks. You can read 3,700 words why I did so here.

I scored it a 3 here. Which is ahead of the score of 1 I would give to something like Crystal Star. It's not the worst book I've read and no where did I claim it was the worst, but it's still deeply problematic and flawed and not a good book both from a Star Wars perspective and a technical perspective. I scale things from 1 being the worst to 5 being mediocre, and this was somewhere in between those points.

 

Aite, aite, I'll cut it out.

But I will say this. With all this long-standing negativity on here about this book, and considering how more "vocal" negative criticism is, it's getting extremely difficult to see when something is being called "disappointing" or "downright god-awful".

I'm getting more of the latter vibe here. Maybe my tone will change once I actually read the book itself, but the way this thread it's going it's becoming more of a "10 more reasons why Troy Denning sucks" thread instead of going into why plot details and whatnot do not work. Personally for me, I rarely pay attention to author's writing styles or pet characters or using books to screw characters made by other authors.

If people accuse me of spreading negativity, then I'm sorry for coming off that way. I do not want a bad vibe to come in the forum, especially since at times Star Wars is one of the most depressing fandoms to be part of. But frankly, this negativity spreads by itself, with it outweighing the few people who actually do like the book or aren't that bothered by it.

Again, is it really because of plot points of the book or certain story elements? Or is it because people have got beef with who has essentially become the punching bag of Star Wars EU? If I bring up why I get a feeling this may be declared the worst EU book ever made, it's because the majority of posts here REALLY come off that way.

 

So, I read this a few days ago. Didn't buy. Denning gets no more money from me even if doing so would give me eternal life or whatever but I've had time to decompress on it and it will come to no one's surprise that I just didn't care for it. Is it the worst thing I've ever read? No. Is it Denning's worst? I'm not sure. Apocalypse is pretty awful and Vortex has the dubious distinction of being the only EU novel I've literally redacted parts of.

Crucible is weird. And not in an endearing way. There's some interesting things to be had. Barduun's situation is an interesting and one of the few things I legitimately found to be noteworthy of the book. And that's the thing. There's so little for me to note that's interesting or worth mention. I'm a speed reader. My mind contextualizes book pages as images and I'm usually able to call up those images quickly but as I'm shuffling through the Crucible part of my mental file cabinet, I can't find things that stay with me. Like, some small mentions make me pleased. There's passing reference to Cilghal being about to study a biot. That's a good image.

But everything else isn't great. There's a lot of Force blasting and disintegration and stuff. I can recall, vividly, an image of Leia. "She was one with the Force, her golden body an eddy whirling on its wild currents..a maelstrom of cold resolve and focused rage of a single purpose: to kill" or something along those lines, I can only do quotes so well after a few days. But there's so much wrong about just that sentence alone that I could write an entire post about it.

This is to say nothing about things like Savara Two, Creepy Leia, and such. Fine, Columi are cloners and it isn't as if the Star Wars universe is lacking in the clone department but something about it didn't click. Same goes for Base Prime and Denning's entire writing about the monliths. It's supposed to seem mystical, one assumes, but it just is nonsensical and incomprehensible.

Case in point, there's that whole section with Leia being the younger Leia and see Han and thinking he's old and slowly regaining herself and it just....doesn't work. At all. All I could do during that section was think "Man, Stover would have nailed this". Because he would have. Denning can't do mysticism. It's just not in his repertoire. I'll even grant that Abyss is a decent read if you like and that the Lake of Apparition stuff was really interesting stuff but even with that concession none of what's in Crucible really works on nearly the same level.

At the end of the day, it feels like we've gone nowhere and it feels like Luceno had it write a decade ago. If the intervening time and series were meant to lead to this conclusion for the Big Three, it really solidifies those series as wasteful.

 

I think we can all agree at this point: Stover and Luceno need to team up and take over the EU, rebooting it from TUF on. Of course, once VII comes out it won't matter anyways, but...

 

Or just ignore everything between NJO and the Legacy comics

 

But then we have no continued opportunity for Jacen and Jaina awesomeness (which the authors also missed).

 

Add Greg Keyes as well.

 

I sort of suspect none of these authors want to write in the Legacy era. Luceno wrote Millennium Falcon, but during interviews promoting Darth Plagueis he said he wasn't going to return to that era. And Stover said it wasn't his era. I dunno about Greg Keyes.

 

Maybe Troy (Denning) has been Disney's inside agent, its "Trojan Horse," all along?

 

Man these boards are getting depressing. All anyone ever does is complain.

This whole time I thought it was a fan board

You've both completely missed the point

Read into it again

If you read it as "Luke thinks non force-users are inherently inferior" then you read it wrong

 

It's a conspiracy.

Here's the pertinent quotes for Luceno and Stover, respectively: "When I wrote The Unifying Force, I was sort of writing the end of an era for myself. I didn’t want to write about Han and Luke and Leia anymore after that novel – although I did in Millennium Falcon, but there was a request that I set that book at a certain time. I just don’t find as much interest out there beyond The New Jedi Order, so I like the Prequel era now." source

"I haven’t read Legacy; it’s not my era. I suppose I’ll have to, if LFL ever gives me a chance at my fondest Star Wars dream: to write the final adventure of the Big Three. Since that job appears unlikely to be forthcoming, I’ll very likely restrict myself to the Clone Wars-through-Dark Times eras—the post-RotJ era is entirely too crowded for comfort." source

 

I would have loved a Tahiri-and-Corran book set sometime between TUF and Dark Nest, but unfortunately someone (Denning) apparently forgot that Tahiri asked Corran to be her master in The Final Prophecy.

Maybe it is because they didn't like where it was going? Maybe if they'd been allowed to take control from the start, with Keyes writing the above-mentioned Tahiri-and-Corran book, Luceno should've written a Jaina-and-Jag book, and Stover should've written a book about Jacen on his five-year journey. Then they could've done Traviss' Mando stuff from LOTF in one book (leaving out the parts with Jaina and the death of Ailyn, and maybe adding in the finding of Sintas), and the (modified to remove dark-side Jacen and make him the protagonist instead of Luke) Dark Nest trilogy by Allston. Then have Keyes do a post DNT series about young Ben and his friends-that-he-never got (like the Wookiee in Luke's vision).

Seriously, with Luceno and Stover doing the mystical stuff, Allston doing the more war-focused books, and Keyes doing the younger Jedi stuff, the post-NJO EU would've been unbelievably awesome.

 

Luceno, Stover, Allston, Keyes would be the perfect quartet!
The Crystal Star was way more entertaining than Crucible.

 

In my personal canon the post ROTJ books end with TUF. Everything from there I consider infinities. It had the perfect ending, the perfect tying up of every thread, epic battles, personal moments. Just everything.

 

Not to mention we could of gotten more of Jacen and Ben being his apprentice. I always sighed whenever I read the opening of Betrayal, such a missed opportunity.

 

Jacen and Ben working together was fun. Wish we could see more of that.

 

I just want to reiterate that I loved Crucible. I understand others didn't, but at least one person did. I couldn't put it down am planning a re-read in the near future.

 

could have

 

Oh superb, so we could of had Stover do his story instead of this. Real nice.

 

The beginning of Betrayal was awesome. Ben was snarky, Jacen was trying to be the serious master and totally failing, and they wrecked the bad guys. Epicness ensued.

 

Congrats on editing my spelling. Gold star for you.

 

Gold stars? I want one!

 

Grammar

You wouldn't think this was a literature forum.