Books A/V Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson

Thanks!

 

100 pages in and I'm still of the view the two books, GE:BS and ACoF are akin to the old Survivor's Quet-Outbound Flight - you can go in publication order or chronological order without losing too much.

 

I'll probably go with the adult book first after I finish what I'm currently reading (Warhammer 40K The Lords of Silence).

 

Jedi Ben is absolutely correct that you don't lose much, if anything, by reading them in a different order but I'm a real stickler for reading chronologically. This is quite different to Survivor's Quest and Outbound Flight, those almost seemed designed to be read backwards (ie. in order of publication).

ftr I wouldn't call either GE books "adult", even by Star Wars standards

oh and Lords of Silence is a good read. I would recommend anything by Chris Wraight if you haven't already read it all.

 

I've read a lot of 40K books so I have probably read others of his. I'm about halfway through Lords of Silence and it is pretty good (though a bit gruesome in places. Not a book to read while eating.)

 

OK, I'm done and since he hasn't posted about it, for the first time ever I might have beaten @Sinrebirth to it!

This is the first, really major and substantive piece of post-TLJ story we have and.... it's a theme park tie-in? Surely some mistake? No, no mistake. Plus, if you think about it a moment, there has been a track record of defying expectations on this line of product. A Battlefront tie-in? Yet that gave us Twilight Company, which has to be in the running for most unexpected brilliant work going. Even Inferno Squad wasn't a bad book per se, it was just a book about a bunch of total bastards and relatively weaker than its competition.

So, ignore that completely, it doesn't matter, not in any real way. What does matter is that this is an excellent demonstration of how to do a redemption tale, without shortchanging any other characters, without downplaying past acts, no, Black Spire is unflinching in how it addresses its subject matter head on and is all the better for it.

Spoiler

We knew Cardinal was going to be in this, but not the degree. It's a major role - Cardinal, now Archex, is partnered with Vi on her mission to Batuu. Leia's belief is they can help each other, as each saw something in their character. Starting to sound like TLJ and Rey and Kylo? Maybe on a surface level, without having read the book, but the execution is far better than TLJ's. There's a wonderful complexity to how each character's evolution plays out. It never takes the simple road. Vi comes to embrace a wider role beyond that of the sole operator spy she is used. Archex comes to embrace the autonomy he was denied for so long. There's a telling section where he is left to his own devices and sees it as a slight, that he hasn't been given orders. The point being that he doesn't need orders.

Its final resolution is both expected and unexpected, but most importantly, fits. It works. It feels genuine. Archex lays down his life for those he cares about. Friends? I suspect he wouldn't go that far. Comrades in arms? Perhaps. But however you term it, Archex is willing to die for them and does so.

Nor is Vi the stereotypical "strong female". Battered, blasted, haunted yes, but also skilled, capable and very good at evaluating people and gaining allies - which probably surprised Vi too, but not Leia who assigned her the Batuu mission in the first place. Vi's initial resistance to Zade giving her the nickname of Mother Hen is telling, before she has to give in and recognise she has become that. She is leading and looking out for this group that is only together because of her. She picks her battles as much as she can, but improvises along the way because there's some actions she cannot let stand, which has all manner of pain for her at the time but which pays off later. Not that it matters to Vi, she'd have still done the same without any reward.

And then there is Vi's asexuality, (I might be using the wrong term here), which is a bigger deal than might be thought. Let's face it, in US and UK society if you ain't forever thinking about shagging, doing the act or how to get it, the view tends to be there must be something wrong with you. There can't be anything more to life than sex. It's bollocks but a whole lot of people believe it and measure their success in life by how much they have of it. What's also of note is that it doesn't exactly advertise this, it's a couple of paragraphs, easy to miss, but which renders SW representative to a new audience.

The only real weakness of the book is its epilogue pages which feel like a mandated tie-in to whatever goes on at the Galaxy's Edge park. It's really not needed.

As to whether you should read A Crash of Fate first or this, it doesn't make much difference either way. If you do ACoF first there'll be mysteries that this answers, if the reverse you have the answers and the wider picture. All in all, it's a neat bit of coordination.

Highly recommended.

 

Next time, Sinny, next time.

 

I didn't know they were connected. Aside from the obvious, what exactly connects them?

 

A lot of the same background characters basically, and of course locations. Presumably because they're all part of the theme park.

 

Yeah, I think part of the appeal of the old EU was the constant revisiting if certain characters like Corran Horn, Kyle Katarn, Jacen and Jaina, and even the big three. The consistency helped bring you more into the universe because you didn't have to spend so much time on character development.

EDIT: Character development is a good thing, and I'm glad the new EU has put it as a precedent over the world-building, but looking at reception to books it seems the ones where the characters are already established (Life Debt over Aftermath, for instance) have better reception.

 

I'm intrigued by

Spoiler

the ruins that Vi Moradi "Indiana Jones"-es her way through.

Could the "ancients" be the ones who created the Ark, sankara stones, holy grail and crystal skulls?

 

Man, I really need to get this. I'm so excited to read more about Vi and Cardinal. Got to finish up Alphabet Squadron first, though!

 

I'd rather if Aftermath hadn't had Wedge tbh. That was very strange for me, the way he was portrayed. Maybe because I was used to the Legends Wedge but in Aftermath he almost came across as a bit of a semi-competent-at-best dumbass. It's been a few years since I read it, but that's what's stuck in my mind.

 

I'm about 3/4 of the way through this and I'm enjoying it more than I expected to. Assuming Vi survives the ending I hope we see more of her - I like her character.

 

I haven't read this yet so this isn't a spoiler, but I would have to assume she survives, being that she's a character in the park. Doesn't the First Order occupation begin during the book? That means this is a prequel to the park.

 

Finished the book yesterday. I liked it - hope there is a sequel. Was sorry that

Spoiler

Cardinal had to die

though.

 

And pre-Disney, there were the Republic Commando books, the stature of which quickly dwarfed the game they were tying into.

 

Er, yeah.... It's a shame what happened on those books. Hard Target was excellent, but after that....

 

I've always lamented what happened to Karen Traviss in Star Wars. She's a really decent author but the inexplicable pro-Mandalorian anti-Jedi agenda that every one of her books became obsessed with went a long way to ruining what were otherwise excellent novels.
It would have been nice if she could have stayed in the universe, but maybe away from Mandalorians or anything excessively "political", even in-universe politics.