Books Star Wars: Last Shot by Daniel Jose Older (Out on Apr 17, 2018)

DJ Older seems to here to say it is Qi'ra (the third woman is Sana):

 

Authorial intent =/= canon. Also, the Last Shot timeline is a bit of a mess in light of Solo: The Official Guide's timeline.

 

Wonder which will be considered more correct?

 

Yeah...I'm gonna go with this book as among the worst in the NEU so far.

But not necessarily bad. Just your average, boring Star Wars book. Very old EU in that regard.

I continue to maintain that the novels are inherently no different than anything we got pre-Disney. Some I really liked, some not so much.

And there has not been anything as bad as the worst EU books yet. Yet being the keyword here. I'm sure it will happen. Actually, Canto Bight comes pretty close for me. I can't get through that thing.

And OMG the Caf! This will be the fire that ignites the spark for Rebellion 2.0. I would guess even the FO officers will rebel when they realize what they've done. #neverforget

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

According to Matt Martin, "approximately" is the operative word when dealing with the Last Shot dates.

 

Yeah this is what Matt Martin says:



So I think the pre ANH Lando parts in Last Shot will have to be moved to about 10-11 years BBY, and the pre ANH Han parts to about 7-9 years BBY if Han is in his "early 20s" to fit within the timeline.

 

A frequent occurrence with our books is that some readers often delete or ignore words like "about" or "approximately" or "nearly" or any other number of adverbs when referencing dates.

Words have meanings friends.

 

How much is L3 in this book for? Considering getting the book but this could be the decider for if I get it now or later when the price has dropped.

 

There are very few "young Lando" chapters in the book, so L3 doesn't show up much.

 

And even in the chapters she is in - there is such a threadbare story that you don’t even get that much L3. Unfortunately, the L3 chapters are the weakest part of the book and have the least content. Her characterization is also slightly off from the movie. She is mostly in charge in the book, where Lando has control in the movie.


Sent from my Ornithopter using The Force

 

I'm a little over halfway through this book, and I feel pretty bad cuz I'm just not liking it much. And I'm the one complaining there's not enough humor in SW all the time, so I know I should love this book more than any they've done so far. But there's something weird about the way the women are written (Kaasha, Sana, Leia, etc). It's all about their appearances and sex. At first I thought this was going to change in some sort of twist later on since the author seems to be trying to move away from the traditional gender thing with Taka, which is cool, but the women so far have been treated entirely as sexy objects for the guys to fawn over. Even when capturing miniature crime lords. I can try to give Lando the pass, but he hasn't really thought about much else throughout the whole book so far and even Han and the side baddies/crime lords keep making passes at all the women and ogling over their appearances.

I really like the Utapau/droid plot though. The Han plot is a mess and doesn't make a lot of sense, since it's there's not a lot of discussion among the heroes regarding what they're actually doing. I can see it working as a comic in that regard.

I think the idea of the different time periods is creative and we need more writing that breaks conventions like that (since the 70s the books have tended to be written ultra-conventionally -- I recall I Jedi always being touted because egads it was first person!), but at the same time it took so long to move between plots in some sections that you forget some of what's going on.

I should probably defend myself cuz I know most people have really liked this book. I'm not saying it's awful. I don't rate books like an emperor at the gladiatorial arena with either a thumbs up or down. But I definitely don't like it nearly as much as some of the other new stories.

 

See, you don't mess with the coffee supply. Somewhere, in a GFFA agency, Gibbs is pissed.

The other thing I forgot to mention - I loved Aro, great character.

 

The Caf must flow!

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

in "Star Wars: A New Hope The Princess, the Scoundrel and the Farm Boy" Luke said Han isn't too old than him so... I don't know

 

The exact wording from A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, is that Han could not have been "more than ten years older" than Luke. Yes, 13 is more than 10, but not that much. Also, this book was released early in the new canon, remember. And there's also the fact that Han's birt date in the Official Guide is an approximate one. So there really is no problem.

 

@unicorn already gave other example that happened in Last Shot. The Official Guide just said an estimate to his Han's birth but I just find weird we know Rey's and Finn's age (although none of them had a normal life to know their age) but Han's age seems to change and published in a implicit way. We know Rey is 19 and Finn is 23 since 2015

 

I suspect the difference is that the Powers That Be decided to have those characters have an officially locked-down age, while Han's isn't exactly set, the way an RPG gamemaster might lock down some data points for his own reference, but leave others vague for the sake of future storytelling?

 

Matt Martin says that the Lando parts are around Han's time in the Empire and the Han parts are about 5 years pre ANH. He said Han lied about his age being in the early 20s to Maz. He also said the girl Han is sad about might not be Qi'ra but a different girl. Guess we're going to have to see poor Han get his heart broken again sometime between Solo and Last Shot.

 

I finally finished this and... I'm definitely of multiple opinions on this book... it was sort of all over the place with great ideas that wrapped up way too quickly.

I loved the part where Lando was on the lost ship -- that was very Teljkon Vagabond-ish. Lando always ends up with lost ships for some reason. And the whole Pau'an droid plot backstory was interesting.

The problem was (besides the sexism issue with all the women... gah) that there were too many interesting characters and not enough to do with them. Most of the characters existed in the story to serve as backup guns. They didn't do anything substantial. You could have replaced them with anyone else and the plot would have carried on the same.

Taka for instance -- starts out a super interesting character. Serves as hired muscle.
Kaasha -- Lando's GF, at least serves as the equivalent of Ben/Leia in Han's life to make him wonder "who am I?", but she doesn't do anything but aim a blaster and sleep with him.
Lando's Ugnaught -- doesn't do anything but throw explosives in the couple of scenes he's in
Peekpa -- KOTOR's T3-M4
Chewie -- fights stuff
Taka's Worrt -- if this was KOTOR, that character you invite on your ship and then forget exists

The "story" element to these characters is lacking. They're just there as backup force, without much to add to the overall plot. Taka eventually has a vague sort of plot twist partway through, which is underwhelming considering it doesn't affect their quest in any way, and has been done before (Winter, for starters). At least in KOTOR when someone tells you something about their past (Carth: my son was killed), it effects you later in the game (oh **** Carth your son is actually a crazy Sith student).

That said, it was a good Han and Lando caper. Older did an awesome job with those two and how they were grappling with post-ROTJ life.

 

I'll be honest. I've always found peacetime Leia to be weird even back in the EU. The focus on politics and governance makes sense, I guess, but as in the movies we've only ever seen her as a military leader it just never felt quite right. I thought Leia in this book seemed more or less consistent which her post-RotJ portrayal in Legends.

 

Unfortunately, I could not enjoy this book. I disliked the fact that the narrative constantly jumped between three or four time periods. I felt this to be very jarring and it really took me out of the experience. It felt like listening to a vinyl album and having the needle jump every minute or so.

I disliked the poorly fleshed-out villain and his army of Frankenstein droids.

Spoiler

I also felt it was a little lazy and contrived to add Wookiee parts to the droids, thus shoehorning in the well-worn trope of Chewbacca having to save/avenge his people.

Throughout this book, I felt like the author was trying to subvert our expectations of a Star Wars novel. Part of me liked the idea of an Ewok slicer. That said, it was far too contrived and forced in. The Ewok were a primitive and tribal species. In RotJ, they were ready to cook their enemies alive and worship the shiny guy as a god. I find it very difficult to believe that, after a few years of exposure to wider galactic culture, Peekpa could have gone from a member of an isolated Tribe to a fully-fledged tech genius.

On a more positive note, I did enjoy the interactions between Han and Lando. I think that the author nailed some of these moments. I liked the idea that Han felt useless as a father and husband and lacking of any role models in this regard. Some of the interactions between Han and Leia were very well considered and executed.

I found the initial interaction with Aro the Gungan to be quite amusing. I enjoyed how he objected to the Gungan stereotype being thrown at him. I'm not, however, sure that Han would have been quite so patronising.

Taka had the potential to be an interesting character. Taka appeared to be non-binary and was referred to as "they" throughout the book. I was disappointed that this wasn't explored or explained in any way. Perhaps the fact that it was simply accepted without comment or question was the point that Mr Older was trying to make. That's fine, but I felt like it was a bit of a disservice to the character and it left me wondering how the rest of the crew automatically knew the correct pronoun to assign.

Spoiler

I also felt that the choice to make Taka Alderaanian was tacked-on to add some much needed depth.

All in all, this has been my least favourite of the new canon. Older was clearly trying to give us something different in a Star Wars book. He was also trying to draw parallels with real world social and political issues. I don't necessarily object to this, but Mr Older does so with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. I could have put all of this down to noble intentions and poor execution, had the narrative been well written and engaging. Unfortunately, I found this book to be a rather tiresome read.

 

@Dannik Jerriko -- That was pretty much my take as well. The Han and Lando interactions were the best part, but there was a lot that just didn't go anywhere.

On the subject of the villain, his first couple of flashback scenes were pretty great. When Gor's casual friend covered for him unexpectedly at the beginning, I thought it was leading somewhere interesting. Then Gor just... sort of turned evil in a flash. The setup was great, the execution (no pun intended) was rushed and patchy.

I read this before I saw Solo; in retrospect, L3's role in the book could have been a lot more significant. It would have actually been interesting to tie L3 and Gor's backstories together, since he's preaching an overboard version of what she wants for droids... in a way (the difference being he'd be their God; that's a bit like the plot for Bladerunner 2 I suppose).

 

I totally agree about Gor. I really liked the background of the character, but I felt that his fall from grace was handled in a very ham-fisted manner. His sudden turn really came out of nowhere and left me wondering where his obsessive veneration of droids had come from.

I hadn't considered the parallels between L3 and Gor, but you do make an interesting point. Although, I do think that Star Wars should be wary of digging too deeply into the question of droid sentience. That area is best left for dystopian Sci-fi such as Blade Runner.

 

I don't understand how anyone is calling this book the "weakest of the new canon" when Dark Disciple is, y'know, right there.