Books STAR WARS: AFTERMATH

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I haven't read it yet but which character says this?

 

It does seem that way. I find it a bit unbecoming. Act like you've been there before, you know?

That I really can't stand writing in the present tense, or his snooty defense of it, is hopefully not related to this.

 

So page 118...

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Grand Admiral Ackbar? Nice to see that he got a promotion.

 

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Well, he already had a white uniform...

 

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Ackbar is only referred to that by the Empire. He is consistently called admiral in all the New Republic POV chapters. Ackbar gets tons of attention in this book and is awesome. Tough, smart, and feared by the Empire.

Some huge spoilers about the state of the Galaxy:

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The New Republic is on the rise. Mon Mothma is chancellor of the New Republic and a new Senate is inaugurated on Chnadrila. The New Repulbic seems to have the advantage in ships & troops over the Empire. Ackbar is overall military commander and is badass as I could hope for. Not tons of NR ship details, but Home One appears, as does an old Alderaanian frigate that is part of the NR task force sent to Akiva. The battle there costs the Empire two ISD's.

Apparently the Empire is down to one SSD, the Ravager.

The book implies the the NR controls more of the civilized Galaxy (ie, the Core Systems plus other worlds) and that the Outer Rim is starting to just join too. Makes the Galactic Civil War sound like it was fought mostly in the Core & Inner Rim.

I absently wonder if in the new canon Mon Cala is more Coreward. Akiva is considered one of the first Outer Rim world's to join the NR. Given the status the Mon Cals have in the new canon, I bet you Mon Cala gets a new galactic placement.

A tad minimalist overall, but a GREAT book.

--Adm. Nick

 

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I thought that was just a ruse and they had an arsenal in hiding, even something bigger than the Ravager.

 

Where the hell are these "gay characters" people are bitching about? I've seen Nenna's sisters mentioned... apparently since they live together that makes them gay and incestuous? Whose the "gay" main?

 

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The ex-loyalty officer, forget his name. It comes up in exactly one scene.

 

Really? Is it later in the book?

 

Chapter 29.

 

So I'm about a third of the way through now, and my take so far

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is that while the style remains pretty grating, the substance is awesome. I'm getting the sense that Wedge is our latest big name who's in the advertising mainly to sell people on a book that's largely about new characters, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

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Also, I'm still trying to avoid reading spoilers so I can't confirm if this is true right now... but something tells me AdmiralNick22 is going to love this book.

 

So... Mister Bones might just be becoming my favorite droid... ever, aside from HK of course. And to think he's a B-1. Honestly though, I think this book puts things into perspective with the B-1s. They have a really crappy reputation sure, but you have to think about what they were fighting. Super-powered warrior monks, and an army of organic beings made for nothing but war. Sure, the B-1 is also a being made for war, but Star Wars has always been pretty clear that specialized Organic beings > a droid in almost any situation. I think this books shows that against ordinary folks, like the gangsters, or even the conscript troopers, the B-1 is a force to be reckoned with. I mean, look at episode 1. They were able to oppress an entire planet, and nearly killed an entire species.

 

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Okay, finished the book earlier this evening. See, Legends? It took your New Republic 15 years. If only you had done whatever it was that they did in the New Universe, you could've had it done in one.

Yeah, I found that hard to suspend my disbelief; and Mon Mothma also declares an end to the fighting, indicating that the NR essentially controls the galaxy. Of course, that's undercut by the fact that Kashyyyk is still blockaded and Coruscant is embroiled in warfare.

Neowedge remains a cipher, even when Sloane point-blank asks him his motivations. His response: "You know, stuff the Empire did to my friends and family. The stuff to those people." or something to that effect.

You can see some of the future plot elements telegraphed a mile away. A Super Star Destroyer (the only one remaining? Really?) is mentioned a million times... gosh, could that be the one that's later on Jakku? And yes, the gratuitous inclusion of a scene on Jakku with the old cliche of "boy, I hope a big battle is never fought on this planet" before the big battle fought on this planet.

The Imperial Future Council? I mean, the irony aside, that was a pretty awful variant of the old IRC, IIRC and ERC.

It's weird that the Imperials referred to Ackbar as a "grand admiral" if that wasn't the title given to him by the New Republic.

The Neothrawn 'surprise' at the end seemed more Daalaesque in his plotting that a Thrawn, with his convoluted plan to have the "IFC" eliminated and to test Sloane, but whatever. What's more important is that Sloane has been revealed as the Neopelly. Now, where was she during the Battle of Endor?

Guesswork on the future: The First Order is obviously whatever Neothrawn is part of; the Resistance, I'm guessing, is originating from Mothma's declaration of peace and that the NR won't engage? Of course, there's got to be something about the BATTLE OF JAKKU since we've been hearing that over and over again from the very beginning; maybe the NR thought they destroyed the last Imperials there or something. I guess we'll find out?

All in all, a decent movie tie-in, but not really showing the novels standing on their own stories as Storygroup keeps implying. I guess we'll see how the next books shape up.

 

Blehhhh this guy's style. If he did what he wants to do with commas instead of periods, it would be at least 50% better. Not many people could use a poetry class and come out better for it, but this guy could. I get what he's trying to do, but the casual beat-writer thing just doesn't work for him.

Of course, I say this as someone who just changed my avatar to Peter Weller as an alter-ego of William S. Burroughs, so maybe I'm being too hard on it.

 

I think you misread that part. Norra has one sister who lives with her wife.

 

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I don't think the book painted that bleak a picture for the Empire. It seemed to me to be roughly comparable to the state of the galaxy circa the start of the original X-wing series.

It's not over until the Empire no longer has any TIE fighters and is reduced to Sorusuub Preybirds.

Speaking of the X-wing books, I'm disappointed that Wendig apparently only read Wikipedia summaries and not the actual books. Would it really have hurt to call the TIEs "eyeballs" instead of "evil eyes"? Or still have Wedge's parents' fuel depot be in space, instead of on the ground?

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I thought the crashed ship on Jakku was an ISD, not an SSD. Besides, in Legends how many known SSDs were running around at this point? Lusankya was buried, the one from the Black Fleet Crisis was presumed lost, Iron Fist was still under construction... Am I forgetting any?

 

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There are multiple ships crashed on Jakku, as seen in the trailers. At least one ISD and one SSD.

 

I stand corrected. I remembered the second image, but not the first.

 

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The one that the Falcon flew into? Pretty sure that was an SSD. As far as the SSDs, there were at least three known to be active circa 1 ABE - the Guardian, Reaper, and Whelm.

 

I am about half way done so I will wait until I am finished with it to completely formulate my opinion. But I was dying to know what others were thinking, and holy hell the notoriously angry Star Wars fan Amazon reviewers are not being kind to it.

 

Amazon reviews are just barely one step above YouTube comments as dregs of the internet go. I can understand why people wouldn't like it - the writing style is certainly a chore at times - but I suspect a lot of those reviews are not really about the actual substance of the book.

 

something something give us legends

Aside from people who hate it on principle, it seems to me like people either love it or hate it divided on whether or not they can actually read the writing style.

 

sooo i procured a copy because the preview chapter just looked so gloriously bad but unfortunately it settles into just being like, boring-bad pretty quickly. Sadly it turns out Wendig's weird style is more grating than entertaining, like, the only reason I'm reading this is to make fun of it lol but I'm still finding myself getting annoyed at how sloppy and inconsistent and just like... inappropriate it is. like dude, you are not cormac mccarthy, stahhhp

actual plot and content wise, I'm not really very far into it yet but what stands out the most so far is how, like... retro it is. like i know it's a new canon and all but i dunno, i guess i still didn't expect it to be such a throwback to the early nineties, when the galaxy was new and tiny and the films were the only reference points and the Empire was like, cartoonish in its villainy (and bumbling). It's like the thrawn trilogy mashed up with the glove of dark vader books, or something; a throwback to an era when there wasn't any actual plan and nobody seemed to know how the galaxy or the empire or anything even worked yet. the only difference of course is that this time we don't even have the main movie characters we actually care about to motivate us to read it. other than that and the prequel/tcw references (and some winkingly current dialog like "you're female. You're alien. You'll trend.") this is like straight up early nineties feeling, and-- for something that's a centerpiece of a very modern marketing campaign for a very mature franchise-- not in a good way.

(all that said though I'm only five or six chapters in and already someone's had a shiver run up her spine so that made me happy)

 

You mean, whether or not they liked the writing style?

Also, yes, something something legends fans kicked my dog.