Lit Books Cynically Reliving the X-Wing Series

^ I believe that's The Jem'hadar, final episode of season 2, when the DS9 story really starts building to the Dominion War.

 

Wait, didn't the Wraith books come first chronologically?

I think one can make the case that Courtship serves as both a direct sequel and epilogue to the Wraith books, though it certainly wasn't intended to be such when it was written. That Allston makes his novels tie so nicely with Wolverton's book (and actually makes that book more readable by the inclusion of additional context for the story) is just one of the reasons I felt he was one of my favorites in that period. That, and "Yub nub, Commander"...

 

Yep, the Wraith Squdron trilogy does take place before Courtship.

 

I made a mistake with the chronology, which was noted later.

 

"I have a Tie Wing on me and can't shake him."
"Hobbie, If you can't shake a T-Wing, you deserve to be vaped" Damn Janson, that's cold.

 

20 year Anniversary of the release of Wraith Squadron!

 

And now I feel old.

 

yeah, I can’t believe those came out 20years ago.

 

Loved the Wraith books but damn I feel old

 

I had Iron Fist for years before I actually read it. Early 2000's I believe. Maybe late 90's. Didn't read it or the other two Wraith Squadron books at the time until 2007 during a massive SW read through. Or that I remember reading it anyway.

 

Solo Command was my favourite I just liked that book a lot and it still holds up in Jmo

 

It really does

 

I’ve been rereading this series and I just finished the Bacta War. Something I really found odd was that Isard used to have the entire Empire to command. But after losing Coruscant, it seems that Thyferra is the only world she commands. Only three Imperial captains join her there. She’s reduced to leasing warships from the Warlords and bartering bacta for TIE fighters. I think it’s heavily implied that after she gave away Coruscant to the Rebels, Imperial High Command ceased to follow Isard’s order.

It makes me wonder just what the days and weeks after Coruscant’s fall were like for the Empire. Isard remained onworld, hiding inside the Lusankya. But I imagine that she spent the weeks folllowing the fall of Coruscant trying to assert her control over the Empire and failing miserably.

I also was thinking about the Lusankya and how it was buried under the cityscape for seven years. Isard must have started allocating personnel to the buried ship as soon as she devised her plan to give away Coruscant. There’s no way that ship was staffed and operational for the many years it remained entombed. I imagine the weeks she remained on Coruscant after it’s capture were spent preparing the ship for it’s maiden voyage. That vessel would need a lot of prep work before it could leave it’s underground berth. That behemoth sat unused and inoperable for seven long years.

Considering this, it’s not too surprising that the ship performed so poorly at Thyferra, months later. That ship participated in a single battle prior to it’s deployment at Yag’dhul and Thyferra. It’s crew was inexperienced, it’s systems weren’t broken in, and it’s captain was an imbecile. Joak Drysso’s utter incompetence makes a lot more sense when we consider that he had never commanded a dreadnought in combat before. He was used to commanding an Impstar Deuce, not a nineteen kilometres beast of a ship.

We see in the first four books that Isard is completely inept as a military commander. Her blind faith in the unstoppable power of an SSD leads to her ouster from Thyferra. Any captain worth their rank insignia would know that a freshly deployed warship can’t be expected to fight very well. It needs to be put through it’s paces, it’s crew needs to be properly broken in, and the ship needs to be tested in low-risk combat before actually entering a major battle. The fact that the Lusankya takes such a pounding at Thyferra and is still in one piece is a testament to the ship’s sheer size and power.

The Lusankya’s captain and crew were horribly inept. Rather than retreat with his intact, albeit heavily damaged ship, Joak Drysso loses his mind and tries to crash his ship into the nearby planet. His still-sane crew then execute him, as they well should. And then, instead of doing the sensible thing and retreating with their massive warship to fight another day, they surrender. Acting-Captain Waroen may have been a marginally better commander than Drysso, but the man clearly lacked any real tactical sense. It makes me wonder where Isard even found the crew for Lusankya.

The Battle of Thyferra was won thanks to the ingenuity of the Rogues and the sheer idiocy of their enemies. At least their next opponent was considerably more savvy. Zsinj knew how to use his dreadnought properly.

 

We beat you to it:

 

I think it has to be, to explain how poorly the ship does. It’s a nineteen kilometre warship with an entire fleet’s worth of firepower. The only way it can go down to two ISD’s, an antiquated light cruiser, and a couple wings of starfighters is if it’s not fighting at 100% effectiveness. I’m still astounded that the Lusankya had zero support ships. No light cruisers, no corvettes, not a single frigate. Just the SSD, all by itself.

 

I think it's also important to point out that at this point in the EU, the Executor-class SSD was thought to be 8 km long. Still enormous, but not nearly as ridiculously huge as the SSD is now said to be.

 

They weren't exactly alone in that issue.

 

It's over 20 years later, dated would be a fair charge.

 

I'm part of an EU/general Star Wars discord server where I spend most of my time cheerleading for people to read these books, often for the first time (and man, did I not realize how real the "I don't just want to read about ships and space battles" thing was - I always loved ships and space battles, but the characters and themes are what really stick with me from them, perhaps my most beloved Star Wars series). There are a few people who point out particularly Stackpole's writing of female characters, but I'd push back against the idea that they are simply "dated". I think that there's certainly a values clash with today's writing practices and social attitudes, but I think that there's a lot of nuance even in Stackpole, but particularly in Allston, in writing female characters, and the conflicts/relationships between racial groups. They don't match closely with what we'd expect from a book written today, but I think there's a lot more to say than dismissing the books or even just that element of the books as "dated."

 

I do often wonder how much to the general audience Star Wars is more about the Jedi/force then the Ships and Spacebattles ...not that i don't enjoy the ships and space battles

 

Yet in the Wraith trilogy Iron Fist never destroys even one NR capital ship. Not even a frigate or a corvette. Zsinj's forces suffer loss after loss, while the New Republic only loses starfighters and small commercial vessels. Zsinj was very clever and skillful at prolonging the life of his SSD, but that's about it. That's my main criticism of the Allston books, which apart from this I'm a big fan of. Iron Fist herself never causes widespread destruction or terror to the NR. She's just a vague, lurking threat.

 

I don't have a really empirical sense for it, but I do feel that a very large portion of the fanbase just wants more Jedi and SkySolos.

Well, to be fair to Allston, he portrayed Zsinj as generally being very unwilling to bring the Iron Fist into pitched battle, especially after Razor's Kiss. So I think it made sense. Both Zsinj and Solo were not particularly "spend ships to get victories" types of commanders - they hoarded their resources. So I think it makes sense from a character point of view. Also, Allston's Zsinj is a huge bully - killing villages from orbit, killing crewmembers for playing sims on the bridge, etc. So his cowardice and unwillingness to take on a roughly equal opponent (and whether or not Solo's task force was supposed to be equal according to current ship sizes, Allston conceived of them as roughly equivalent at the time) also makes sense.

I think Erisi is a weakness - she's basically played as James Bond but for the wrong side, deep cover agent, willing to use sex to get what she wants - but the problem is that because of the way Stackpole structure the plot, we don't see her agency, so it feels very flat. And she does tend to fall into the "femme fatale" tropes a bit too easily. Especially when you compare Erisi to Lara, who is in a very similar circumstance, but who takes control of her situation many, many times, and we see her motivations. The really narrow POV that Stackpole employs hurts him here more than Allston. But even in Stackpole, I'd argue there's nuance going on.