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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit Books Rereading the Aftermath Trilogy

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Sinrebirth , Jun 21, 2022.

  1. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Everything about Snap’s death is weird, because Abrams clearly thinks you care, I think he wants you to care, but he directs it in such a way (and the score farts out at some point, which doesn’t help) that the viewer couldn’t possibly care. The EU-related jarringness of the subsequent Wedge cameo is just icing on the cake.

    I suspect this ties in to some of my ongoing issues with Aftermath but I’ll wait to cross that bridge until I see if that’s still the case.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2022
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  2. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    I just found this thread. I’m in.
     
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  3. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    Chapter One!

    No, wait, we have a little blurb, floating-text through the stars. Very nice.

    Chapter One now?

    Well, actually, nope, we have a sweet-as Prelude to pick up.

    From Admiral Ackbar himself.

    Lots of emphasis of reports from Commander Skywalker that Palpatine is dead, lots of rumours that Palpatine is dead. Anyway.

    ... from the Coruscant Core to the farthest systems in the Outer rim. We must remember that our fight continues. Our rebellion is over. But the war... the war is just beginning.

    I quite like this. 'Coruscant Core' is not a saying we've ever had.

    Now! Chapter One.

    No, wait.

    Interlude.

    It's an interesting way to start things, with a triple staggered beginning, I do admittedly remember being amused by it.

    But the Interlude is on Coruscant! My difficulty with Aftermath was always going to be holding it up to Heir to the Empire, or comparable scenes in say the X-wing series, but I very much enjoyed seeing this scene. I know there are fans who want to emphasise that the Empire is done after RotJ, but neither Legends nor Canon followed that, and there is a very clear point here.

    "But the battle station was destroyed, Dad! The battle is over!"

    They just watched it only an hour before. The supposed end of the of the Empire. The start of something better.

    The confusion in the boys shining eyes is clear: he doesn't understand what is happening.

    But Rorak does. He's heard tales of the Clone Wars - tales spoken by his own father. He knows how war goes. It's not many wars, but just one, drawn out again and again, cut up into slices so it seems more manageable.

    It's dark, but it's also true, especially in Star Wars.

    I mean, the crowd being cut apart by airspeeder fire is point enough.

    It's a good scene, and, though I'll try not to do this too often, I enjoyed it as a callback to Castin Donn in Legends.

    So technically, we've not reached Chapter One, but we've a fair amount of content to get through so why not pace ourselves. ;)
     
  4. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    I think I want to get my stylistic thoughts out of the way up front. It never really clicked for me before, but revisiting these two… … introductions? kind of crystallized it for me: Chuck Wendig writes like he’s posting. I don’t mean the use of present tense, which has never bothered me and as an objection accomplishes little beyond accidental obfuscation of real issues (I swear to God when this book came out people were claiming “real” books didn’t use present tense. To that I say take a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow, TURN THAT SUMMA***** SIDEWAYS, AND- sorry, I’m losing the plot here.), I mean the cadence is literally Twitter or message board-esque. It’s hard to explain, but I think it’s the weird admixture of short sentences and repetition. If I’m reading posts here, and I see someone write “Oh, I read the prologue to Aftermath again, and again, and again,” I pick up their emphasis and a certain casual style appropriate to this being a substitute for an in-person conversation. If I see that in a book, I project that same casual style but… Star Wars isn’t quite that casual? Characters in Star Wars are casual, they can act casual, they can fly casual, some third Han quote, but the surrounding style is a bit more arch and deliberately reminiscent of self-serious film serials. At minimum it’s surprising, at worst it’s inappropriate, and as the FIRST NEW BOOK LEADING INTO THE FORCE AWAKENS (TM) (C) (R) (SM) (FFP) (TTFN) it’s… maybe not the best choice? It’s not helped by Wendig himself not necessarily being the best writer and frequently veering into a bad Joss Whedon dialogue pastiche in areas.

    Plot-wise there’s nothing to object to at the moment. If anything I’m right there with you, Sinre, I think it’s natural to assume further conflict would be necessary (you’d never explore it on film unless you were getting a bit meta, but this is precisely what tie-in novels are for) and I like the choice to weave it into the victory celebrations from the special edition. It’s also an effective opener because it braces you for the book to focus on characters outside the power trio, although if memory serves that prep work is about to be undermined a bit.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2022
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  5. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    Speaking as someone who didn't care for the style but also didn't especially care about it - I am absolutely convinced, based on what I saw at the time, that while there certainly would have been a lot of vitriol no matter what, it was definitely worse because of the book's profile. I think a decent number of people would have been more willing to experiment stylistically if the book had simply been sold as "a brand new group of rebels liberate a planet after Endor."

    ...Actually, now that I look back at this, I'm reminded of a proposed old One Sentence Or Less entry for Heir to the Jedi - "This is why we don't have first-person novels about Luke Skywalker" - which strikes me as a similar situation. But that might be drifting off-topic.

    I've said before that I think the "Journey to TFA" marketing... thing... kneecapped just about everything it touched, but Aftermath was probably worst-affected. (I'm curious to see whether that holds up, because I originally felt like part of that specifically related to the difference in scope between the first book and Life Debt, which I'm now somewhat less certain about.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2022
  6. FS26

    FS26 Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 2018
    As someone who greatly enjoyed the Aftermath books back when they came out, I think the style is greatly aided by being listened to in the audiobook rather than read on paper. I also wish that more SW authors were experimenting a bit more with the writing styles; I get that Aftermath and Heir to the Jedi weren’t for everyone, but I wish there would be more variety in styles
     
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  7. RogueWhistler

    RogueWhistler Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Aug 9, 2021
    I've never read Aftermath, but the complaints about the present-tense style always makes me wonder if people have the same issue with comic book narration, especially in the case of verbose authors like Chris Claremont.
     
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  8. Ginkasa

    Ginkasa Jedi Grand Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 13, 2002
    I don't think people really have an issue with present-tense narration, they're just not used to it. You don't see it that often in novels and such so encountering it can be pretty jarring and off-putting. Combine that with the short and rapid sentence structure @Ramza described and the writing can be off putting. Personally, I was able to get into it once my brain acclimated to it and I think the short sentence structure worked quite nice to give it a action movie kind of feel, but I definitely understand how others wouldn't have enjoyed it.

    (and as an aside: I've read a few other [non-Star Wars] Wendig books and he doesn't do this so this was a purposeful choice for these novels for better or worse; not just a holdover of some classic Wendig style)

    Regarding comic books, I think people are going to go into those with different expectations. When narration or prose is present you expect it more because while reading a comic book you feel more "in the moment" watching things live rather than reading about it afterward (also its just used more so people are more used to it). I think its all about context and expectations rather than anything against present tense writing universally.
     
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  9. Maythe14thBeWithYou

    Maythe14thBeWithYou Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 26, 2014
    Yea, even though it was 1 line I liked it. As for Temmin, it was cool seeing what he became of course. I'm sure the Poe Dameron comic had even more to offer too.
     
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  10. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    “It’s not many wars, but one, drawn out again and again, cut up into slices so that it seems more manageable.”

    This is the line that stood out to me the most from the interlude, although I thoroughly enjoyed the destruction of the Palpatine statue for more shallow reasons.

    I also may be an odd one out in that Wendig’s present tense and sometimes fragmented style never bothered me, in fact I prefer it over paragraph long sentences by some other authors.
     
  11. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    I mean, TBH, when I say I didn't care for the style but also didn't care about it, I mean just that. I also don't care for the way that, say, Stackpole tends to end his chapters with a single pithy and somewhat pretentious line of dialogue summing them up, but it's not like that's a thing that I spend a lot of time complaining about.
     
  12. Foreign32567

    Foreign32567 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 4, 2021
    Wish there will be eventually a story completely about Coruscant's resistance , this concept has so much potential for action and drama - battles in skyscrapers, rebels' interactions with the New Republic, the former's discontent about the latter's
    unwillingness to start a direct attack.
     
  13. Maythe14thBeWithYou

    Maythe14thBeWithYou Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 26, 2014
    I really liked the idea of the Alderraanian survivors and would like to know more about them.
     
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  14. Slater

    Slater Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Oct 12, 2014
    The present tense is fine in theory, the real problem is Wendig's prose is atrocious and clunky at the best of times, and when you couple that with present tense it mucks it all up terribly.

    It's a shame, I had high hopes for him at the start, but his writing and then him trying to get the Internet Archive, one of the most important digital resources of the modern age declared "Piracy" because they lent out digital copies of Aftermath makes it impossible to like
     
  15. Coherent Axe

    Coherent Axe Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 20, 2016
    They originated in the Princess Leia comic from 2015.
     
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  16. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013
    When the Alderaanians built Alderaan station in place where their planet had been with DS1 debris and asteroids both merged, I was wondering if Imperial headlines may have been something like this: "Alderaanians build another Death Star!" or "The New Republic Death Star Project, the truth about their Alderaan habitation sphere revealed!"

    Also why don't they use the concept of Intermezzos with other characters outside of the main plot in other books? It worked great for the Aftermath books and may be useful in other places like Bloodlines or Shadow of the Sith style books to open up the later post ROTJ era with more snippet intermezzos.
    It's like the rpg hooks in sourcebooks, or the adventures hinted at in other sources that may become their own stories in future works if gaining traction. Something authors hardly do anymore in new canon to not limit others. But if intermezzos like these are guided by Storygroup they could be truly a worthy addition.

    I miss the times where books got their own expanded universe like in early Legends when the Zahn novels got a comic adaption, their own sourcebooks from rpg, short stories and more, even toys. It surely would help a lot with important works getting that treatment. But with WEG stopping to sourcebook the EU works and wotc only too late attempting to recreate that nostalgia with their campaign guides, its a goner now. The rising conflict between novels and comics too did not help that.

    But Wendig's trilogy would have been nice as a comic with interludes. Maybe different interludes than the book even to keep both essential. Like movie comic adaptions added bonus scenes usually.

    In the early Disney canon works you feel the big decisions behind the writing. The major changes from Legends. Back when they rebranded Huttslayer Leia, or gave spotlight to the Alderaanian survivors and mapped out the post ROTJ without revealing all yet. How much of that roadmap is done by now? How much did it change over time? Like with Mandoverse tv affecting some.
     
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  17. Maythe14thBeWithYou

    Maythe14thBeWithYou Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 26, 2014
    Exactly. I forget all the interludes but Cobb Vanth was one that stuck out. Also, I agree they could start to plug in these holes now like with Shadow of the Sith coming out. And it doesn't even have to be a book. It could be a 5-issue mini, a story in an anthology, or something like did w/Cobb in live-action.
     
  18. Darth Winzer

    Darth Winzer Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jul 9, 2022
    These three books really don't do it for me, and I hate that because Chuck Wendig is a very good writer. I think this trilogy leaves such a bad taste in my mouth because I can't help subconsciously stacking it up against the Thrawn Trilogy. After all, where else do you go after ROTJ? Assuming you're fine with skipping over some of "X-Wing" to get to the meatier more eventful stuff, you're presented on one hand with Thrawn and a great new cast of supporting characters, each of whom feel fleshed out and totally necessary. On the other hand, the alternate route is the aftermath trilogy, where our beloved heroes barely play a supporting role, more than a couple of our new characters seem superfluous, and yes, we get a new Jar Jar Binks character in the form of Mr. Bones(who I love tbh)

    I don't want to rail endlessly against these books like there's no good stuff there. The revolt on Kashyyyk is pretty cool. But the little voice from the force can't help but remind me of things like the cloaked asteroid gambit, the secret facilities, Luke and Mara's rescue of Karrde.

    I literally can't help stacking these two side by side and it's really no contest.
     
  19. SWpants

    SWpants Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2004
    Finally got to the audiobook.
    I do not like Wendig’s writing in these books. So even though I own the first, I can’t do that to my eyes and brain.
    The audiobook (especially on 2x speed) makes the choppy sentences better since they are more attuned to aural instead of visual consumption.
     
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  20. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    The comparison is very hard to avoid, I appreciate that.

    Zahn was given a lot more freedom than Wendig, fundamentally, but the more unique hooks that Wendig set down are pure EU.
     
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  21. PCCViking

    PCCViking Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2014
    Most of the Legends/EU authors had a freer hand since they didn't have to worry about any sequel movies. The only restrictions were prequel era.
     
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  22. Maythe14thBeWithYou

    Maythe14thBeWithYou Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 26, 2014
    Plus too when the Aftermath trilogy came out they were a prelude to the ST. We know now the events in the novels didn't have much of an impact on them but at the time who knew. Ultimately, I think it melded well.
     
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  23. AusStig

    AusStig Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 3, 2010
    I think Zahn also had a lot more freedom just due to less being written. Zahn's TTT did expand the universe with new planets, people, species, ships, etc. Even Zahns harshest critic on this site (which I think would be me still) will not denny that.

    Wendig also expanded the universe, but in a different way, though I don't think it was a worse way (prose issues aside, also go audio books).
     
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  24. The Positive Fan

    The Positive Fan Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2015
    Well, that and Zahn simply ignoring what had already been written, though in fairness there's no reason to think he was aware of the post-ROTJ comics or that Lucasfilm had provided any direction regarding them.
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2022
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  25. Foreign32567

    Foreign32567 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 4, 2021
    IMO, the Thrawn Trilogy's biggest advantage over the Aftermath trilogy is that the former is a one global story about heroes (both from the OT and new ones) vs villain with big stakes and big scale of events and battles. There is one global storyline about the fate of the Galaxy in Wendig’s books too - Rax vs Sloane, there are Interludes showing what is happening with various people in GFFA, giving more information about the post-ROTJ era. The problem is that there are also the adventures of Norra Wexley's team, that occupy most of the plot, being too local and mostly a filler.
     
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