Lit The Crystal Star: unfairly hated?!?

I sort of randomly stumbled upon an episode of Tapcafe Transmissions Podcast where they reviewed Crystal Star and said that it’s sort of unfairly hated on and that a lot of the hate comes from people bandwagoning on the meme of it all. They also said, and I quote, “I had more fun reading The Crystal Star than [Thrawn] Greater Good”, so I just laughed and put the audiobook on after avoiding reading this for years.

I don’t think we really have any modern threads on this topic, so, going into this, couple thoughts right off the bat:

1. I used to hate on all the weird force god EU stuff that eventually got overdone by the time Fate of the Jedi came around, but I can definitely appreciate that stuff more since the past decade or so has been mostly “pewpew stormtroopers yay” material in new canon. So I can accept something offbeat like Waru more in 2021.

2. Hethrir is Peter Steele from Type O Negative and you can’t change that mental image of mine

3. Hail Waru

 

@IG_2000

My guess that the story is probably not good but who says something has to be good to love it.

 

I’m not saying I love it, but I just wanna open the floodgates on discussion of Crystal Star being reappraised as a literary masterpiece in the Star Wars canon

 

I mean a lot of things that are hated are probably "Unfairly hated" being bad doesn't automatically means it should be hated...To me something that deserves hate is something that is like actively damaging or insulating.

 

Nope, the hate is completely justified. I haven't read many Star Wars novels, but this one was the worst.

 

Thx for this topic!

I love Crystal Star and, no kidding, it truly is one of my favourite EU novels for several reasons. For one it feels closer to the comics which are the field that usually do the supernatural looking stuff the more hard scifi novels shy away from. This book is a much needed bridge between that field and the rest of novel SW. More importantly though and primarily I love this book because it basically is "Young Jedi Knights #0" as it is the first to not sideline but directly star the Solokids and flesh out their character traits, special abilities and future fates. It is formative in that and essential to the later EU in its world and character building more so than its main storyline. Sure the Kids got some cameo roles of importance in the Jedi Academy trilogy, but this book really took them to a new level and made them personalities of their own, disattaching them from their parent generation and babysitters and giving them room to evolve.
That aside I think the entire concept of Forcesensitive children being collected, a dark side academy kinda and a lot more of that plot is what directly inspired YJK Shadow Academy storyline. Even some fellow students of YJK first appeared here, like Lusa.

Other characters like Hethir, Tigris, Rillao also are well crafted and interesting and not just cliché. Some throwaway line characters also are interestingly named and I wondered about them a lot:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Celestial_Serenity

And I love this planet name using some not standard letters from the alphabet (well unless you are german hehe):
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Öetrago

The Worldcraft are also interesting as they literally are miniature death stars minus superlaser but with an artificially made natural looking surface and atmosphere. Imagine a full DS built out like that to look like a moving planet... Zonama Sekot lookalikes? Celestials awakening recreated as planetary sized droids aka Silentium and Abominor? Hey sold!

The Empire Reborn from this novel also got expanded in other sources including Kyle Katarn games which shows how this book created its microverse within the SW EU thx to its worldbuilding!

Now to the obvious... Waru. Some hate him, some love him. I think he fits in with other SW oddities (like from Marvel) and even if unexpected is an entity that is akin to these other oddities paired with mystical Force stuff like Mortis and co where space and time go haywire for a while to enjoy his appearance.
The Church of Waru group of fans liking and worshipping him is still active btw!

The star collapsing to turn into a crystal also is interesting as it is something so unnatural and yet seemingly scientific that shows how this book bridges science and the odd mysterious supernatural. Maybe not only Waru but also said star have something to do or in common with Marvel oddities like those Supernatual Encounters elevated to godhood! While all thought Waru a sharlatan elevated to godhood... the true god was maybe lurking near by watching all the time, birthing itself in crystal shape, eh?

 

I've never hated TCS - I think feeling that way is more associated with a much older form of the fandom. Like Todd says, there's a difference between bad and offensively bad, and The Crystal Star is definitely not the latter. All memeing value aside it's totally harmless, especially as a one-off.

 

Yeah, like a mild case of food poisoning.

 

Finally, people who appreciate good art.

I completely agree. When I first read the book earlier this year I wasn’t too big on it, but as time went on I started to like it more for the reasons you’ve mentioned. I especially like your point about about it being a sort of Young Jedi Knights #0. The sections with the Solo kids was something I really enjoyed even when first reading the book.
I love this book and it’s one of my favourites as well. My favourite part being the Solo kids adventure.

Loved seeing 5 year old Jaina being the big sister looking out for her brothers (especially Anakin which was so wholesome) and taking charge while being as sassy and snarky as ever when talking to Hethrir. Constantly talking back to him and getting on his nerves. She even bites him in the leg at one point, which was great. Meanwhile 5 year old Jacen befriends a dragon, who he names Miss Dragon. Gotta love Jacen. Anakin is crying or unconscious most of the book but he’s 3 and a half so that makes sense. Another reason I love the Solo kids sections is because they gave me Temple of Doom vibes.

 

I wouldn't read it again, but I didn't find it offensively bad.

If nothing else, I appreciate Waru in a meta sense: he's a character who feels like he'd be much more at home on an episode of Star Trek, or in some other franchise that's more sci-fi and less fantasy oriented than Star Wars. And in-universe, he's a trans-dimensional being who somehow ended up where the heroes are but is trying to get back to his own parallel universe. It's fun to read that as "get me the hell out of the Star Wars universe and send me back to the Star Trek universe, where I belong!"

I also appreciate the book for giving us Xaverri. The concept of a mystery woman tracking down and punishing former Imperial war criminals who escaped punishment when the New Republic took over, like a very pulpy version of Simon Wiesenthal, is honestly great, and I wish the EU had given us more of her.

 

It's been a long time, but honestly I just remember it being really weird, as opposed to bad. And honestly, it wasn't any weirder than anything you'd have found in the Marvel comics line circa 1981-82 or so. It was just another in that run of Bantam novels that was landing pretty poorly with me at the time (the JAT, The Courtship of Princess Leia, this, and later Children of the Jedi and Darksaber) and led in part to my decision to step away from the EU. In more recent years I have often thought all of those books deserve a re-evaulation... but I can't even find the time to get caught up on the canon stuff, much less find time to re-read these!

 

The Crystal Star is unfairly hated because it's rarely criticized for the right reasons. I don't like The Crystal Star for its character moments with Luke and Han. There is a part that stands out to me where Luke flicks his lightsaber on and off during a heated argument with Han, as if threatening to dismember his best friend. However, overall The Crystal Star delivers a great story regarding the Solo kids, and its memed-on antagonist is hardly its biggest problem.

I strongly agree with some of the praise in this thread for how Jacen and Jaina get some character development now that they're of speaking age, and it's done in a way that I feel is fitting and not awkward like writing young kids can sometimes be. Hethrir isn't the best Bantam villain, but what makes him for me is his relationship with Tigris. Like most Bantam novels, I like Leia's depiction and feel that she is the overall protagonist of the era.

But now I want to talk about Waru. Waru did nothing wrong. Waru was first criticized in a time when the fandom had a tendency to be very rigid with the concepts in Star Wars's sandbox. Waru's cardinal sin was that Waru was weird, and people tend to react negatively to weird things, which is natural. All things considered, Waru isn't that weird; aliens with strange powers is a staple Star Wars trope, and maybe it's just because I'm a fan of Dunsanian fantasy but the interdimensional aspect never bothered me, especially considering that Star Wars already plays with that trope in the form of Hyperspace. The weird thing about Waru is when Luke starts talking about an Anti-Force, which is like the Force but... different? For me, it's Luke who breaks the novel, not Waru.

But now the genie is out of the bottle and there's a tradition among the fanbase of, without reading the source material, plucking a character or concept and pointing to it as a joke or the sole reason why the source material is bad. It happened to Jaxxon, it happened to Clone Palpatine, it happened to Waru, it happened to the Yuuzhan Vong, and it's happening to Geode. It's all so tiresome.

The good news is that looking at my above list, Jaxxon and Clone Palpatine have received their respective renaissances as of late. I think it's time for the people's voices to be heard, we need Waru to make a triumphant return.

 

I agree that Luke was out of character, though I do like it ironically, it’s quite funny at times. I might be wrong but IIRC, Luke being out of character had something to do with Waru’s influence. Still annoying nonetheless.

As others have pointed out, this book introduces us to Lusa, who was a nice character and unceremoniously killed off by Denning later on, but that’s a whole other topic.

The Anti-Force is really interesting, it’s kinda a shame it didn’t get explored more.

As @Golbolco pointed out, I think the hate for something like Waru is due to Star Wars fans having a rigid idea of what is and isn’t Star Wars (in fairness I think we all do deep down) and when something like Waru comes along with Anti-Force, it’s considered weird/bad because of how different it is. I can see why people think Waru is weird but that’s why I like him. He’s not another Sith or Dark Jedi, which is refreshing.

I’ve started getting into Star Trek the last few months and Waru is beat for beat a Trek villain, which I don’t consider a bad thing. I wish Star Wars had more villains/aliens like Star Trek does. Like the Hoojib’s who use telepathy as a means of communication, which is an evolutionary trait and has nothing to do with the Force. Then again I’m one of those (probably small number of) Star Wars fans who isn’t against the idea of the Force not being the only “magic” in the Star Wars universe. Maybe magic isn’t the right word but yeah.

Overall The Crystal Star is a great episode of Star Trek.

 

The Solo Kids were wonderful in this book.

 

Waru DID return (sort of). Check out the Futurama episode; The Beast with a Billion Backs.

 

Marvel SW did some Star Trek-esque villains before Star Trek itself did. Take The Darker for example. It is pretty much Armus, before TNG actually aired.

 

Also, the Lando Calrissian Adventures. The first and third books especially felt like they'd be right at home on Star Trek.

Bantam did some weird stuff, and not all of it worked, but I'm glad they reached for it anyway.

 

I really need to read the old marvel comics. What issue is “The Darker” from? Also does it have a Wookiepedia page? Cause I can’t find it.

Going back to The TCS, I’d say it has the same weird feel as the Lando Calrissian Adventures, in a good way of course. I say this because I’ve seen people compare the Lando Calrissian Adventures to the old marvel comics the same way people do with TCS. Also because the Lando Calrissian Adventures deserve more attention and love.

 

#67: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars_(1977)_67
The Darker was a Chewie, Droids and Plif issue in between stories about X-wing pilots and Mandalorians. All of the Marvel series has its strange bits, but The Darker stands out even in that company.

 

This is the Wookieepedia page for the creature itself:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Darker

 

Not surprising at all, as Vonda McIntyre's Trek work is (rightfully) held in high renown. Perhaps the "weirdness" we perceive today was in reality just difficulty making the transition from Trek to Wars.

 

Besides original Star Trek novels, she also wrote the novelizations for all the Star Trek movies from II to VI, as I recall.

 

Star Trek novels are almost as bad as Star Wars novels.

 

The Crystal Star is The Room of Star Wars. It's pretty much what I thought The Holiday Special was going to be like until I watched it and found out it was boring! I don't think it's a good book, but I'm definitely entertained by it.