Reviews Books The JC Lit Reviews Special: CRIMSON CLIMB (Spoilers)

Todd the Jedi · Oct 13, 2023

Climb into a comfy seat and enjoy a new book! Here's the review thread for Crimson Climb by E.K. Johnston. Go ahead and give it a score on the 1-10 scale, as long as you have read or listened to the entire book. Reviews are not necessary but are encouraged, you wouldn't want to cross Crimson Dawn would you?

Todd the Jedi · Jan 8, 2024

Guess I'll start lol.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Qi'ra must use all her skills to survive as things go from bad to worse for her after her ill-fated escape attempt from the clutches of the White Worms. While Han faces the rigors of the Imperial academy, Qi’ra faces off against the nastiest scrumrats still on Corellia, a would-be slaver, and the deadliest gangsters in the galaxy. Suffice to say she has a rough road ahead of her, and we see how she figuratively bites and scratches her way through it all in the aptly named Crimson Climb.

EK Johnston brings us deep into Qi’ra’s headspace so we can see all the machinations within as she navigates through some perilous situations. Johnston does really well bridging how we see Qi’ra in the beginning of Solo to how we see her when Han reunites with her. Every skill Qi’ra utilizes as a scrumrat ultimately translates to her roles within Crimson Dawn, continually one-upping those around her, playing to the pride of whomever is holding her chains, and in general doing whatever it takes to make sure Qi’ra survives, even if it means trusting no one and being ready to throw anyone and everyone under the bus if need be. I liked her gradual shift from lowly thief and mercenary to leader and coordinator for some of the deadliest people around. Nothing about her journey is easy, from keeping on her toes within Lady Proxima’s gang to remaining useful for Sarkin, Qi’ra continually throws her all into whatever scheme she’s a part of. But Qi’ra is more than a simple survivalist- she’s cunning, quick on her feet, and able to hold her own in a fight or other sticky physical situations, which brings her to the attention of Dryden Vos. Vos sees her potential and begins grooming her to rise within the ranks of Crimson Dawn. But as we see the story strictly from Qi’ra’s point of view, we are just as in the dark about Vos’ motivations as she is- whether his actions stem from altruism or if he’s just the latest person who would use Qi’ra as long as she’s useful we can’t really tell, but she nonetheless does everything in her power to become an indispensable asset for Dryden. We get a dark mirror of Qi’ra’s ascent with the character of Cerveteri, a Crimson Dawn operative who’s never able to rise above mediocrity, and as such only becomes an obstacle for Qi’ra to hurdle in her own rise to power. And in the end Cerveteri’s lack of the sort of cunning Qi’ra possesses leads to her death, and subsequently Qi’ra’s rise to becoming Dryden’s right hand agent.

This is a really fun book, not only giving us a great introspective look at Qi’ra in this critical period of her life, but also giving us some great insight into how the criminal world has evolved since the rise of the Empire. We get a lot of stories about people who work on the fringes of the criminal empires, so it was cool to get a story about characters closer more ingrained within the syndicates. And as is often the case with Johnston’s works we especially get a great female perspective of the often chaotic power structure of Crimson Dawn, with both Qi’ra’s main rivals and main allies being the women around her, except of course for Dryden, who almost serves as a figurative patriarchal deity above all these little criminals fumbling their way toward either absolute power or continued subservience within the organization. And for some of them serving under others is fine and peachy, but Qi’ra has been through too much to remain beneath another’s heels. By the end of the story though she’s still beneath Dryden, she’s at the point where she’s confident enough that she could usurp him if needed, but she also has enough power that she can avoid returning to the trod-upon life she once had.

I give this a 9.05 out of 10 for a great deep dive into Qi’ra’s ascension from the sewers to the highest echelons of criminal society. EK Johnston did a stellar job of weaving in elements from all the stories Qi’ra has appeared in.

Soontir-Fel · Jan 9, 2024

e k is such a weird author for me. Ahsoka was fine queens shadow was great, the others sucked and then was middling and this was great! The ending in the temple was a bit out of no where but the rest of it was a well.crafted tale of a women breaking bad

Sturm Antilles · Feb 1, 2024

9.5 out of 10? Yowza. That would nearly be on the level of Darth Plagueis or the Thrawn Trilogy for one of my ratings.

I just finished this after about a week of reading. Crimson Climb was more or less a slog, with nothing pulling at me to keep turning the page. The prose and descriptions were as vanilla as they come and the environments, locations, and characters needed a much higher injection of description. All of Qi'ra's fellow Crimson Dawn crew on Thorum all become a blur, especially with so many of them being human or Twi-lek females (with a few other species on the side), and it doesn't help that three different characters are named Tallaria, Thallia, and Trinia. (That's some real great grammatical variation there.) Any details that fans would actually want to know are of course shackled by Story Group and their notion that any casuals might still remember and care about Solo after six years in the rear-view mirror, so aside from some very veiled hints about Maul, everything is kept in the dark on that end, as is any significant expansion about Crimson Dawn itself, or even the Pykes, Black Sun, or Crymorah for that matter.

There is some good exploration of Qi'ra's thoughts and character and all of the times she thinks of Han's smile to get her through difficult times (cleverly setting up her line about it in Solo), but none of it is particularly intriguing. Aside from some light fist-fighting and martial arts, some Corellian hounds, a running chase to a starship, and an all-too-brief moment of stormtroopers attacking a factory on Corellia (mostly off to the side), there is hardly any action whatsoever (absolutely nothing with starships or vehicles), and the same goes with humor. There was a decently-executed Jedi temple heist that seemed mildly interesting as the book neared its end, but again, the vanilla prose and the shortness of the whole thing just came off as glorified fan-fiction.

Despite all of this, my biggest gripe with all of Crimson Climb was that there is a casual drop of the SH word, feeling extremely out-of-place and coming off as trying way too hard to feel like edgy writing when all it really does is immediately suck the reader straight out of Star Wars. (I swear like a sailor in real life, but colorful Earth-like words that otherwise should be nowhere near a YA book, let alone Star Wars, particularly rankle me as there are literally countless alternatives to choose from. Not only is this bad writing, but bad editing.) Having just finished Battle Scars and now this, I am in serious need of something exceptional to read.

4/10

(It could have been a 5, but the unnecessary usage of language that would otherwise be censored here at the JC brings it down a whole rating.)

Todd the Jedi · Feb 2, 2024

Johnston has a proclivity for using the s-word, as evidenced by my sig. I'm not opposed to it, and Andor using it too I thought worked. "Crap" has become pretty common in books and comics.

Jedi Knight Fett · Feb 2, 2024

I have always preferred real swears to Kriff or Karabast or what have you.

anyway this one was good, but I feel like I probably should have read the comics first before this one. I may have liked it better. I would give it an 8/10.

Sturm Antilles · Feb 2, 2024

Todd the Jedi said: ↑

Johnston has a proclivity for using the s-word, as evidenced by my sig. I'm not opposed to it, and Andor using it too I thought worked. "Crap" has become pretty common in books and comics.
Click to expand...

Andor was nearly as perfect as can be, but it's usage was also a big no-no. I understand that we have older generations of fans and all, now, but my philosophy is that if these words weren't there at the beginning of the franchise, they shouldn't be there now. It would be like falling in love with a band for its clever wordplay among its otherwise aggressive sound, admiring them for not taking the quick and easy route of using those certain words, and then on later, crappier albums they suddenly decide to drop an F-bomb to sound edgy, making them just sound abysmally pathetic.

"Crap" is borderline okay (it really just sounds more like sloppy/lazy writing), and "a-hole" (fully-spelled; which the JC auto-censors and was used in the Dr. Aphra audio drama) was another one that bugged the hell out of me. Again, just as another example, if you can't say it at the JC, why should it be in a book for mass audiences? I think when it really comes down to it, it's not even the use, it's the fact that an author and editor think this is okay. It's not. It's sad.

I guess I'll be skipping the rest of Johnston's books out of principle. That's too bad, too. I was kind of looking forward to the Padme Trilogy.

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Reviews Books The JC Lit Reviews Special: CRIMSON CLIMB (Spoilers)

Todd the Jedi Mod & Bewildered Conductor of SWTV Lit &Collecting Staff Member Manager

Todd the Jedi Mod & Bewildered Conductor of SWTV Lit &Collecting Staff Member Manager

Soontir-Fel Force Ghost

Sturm Antilles Former Manager

Todd the Jedi Mod & Bewildered Conductor of SWTV Lit &Collecting Staff Member Manager

Jedi Knight Fett Chosen One

Sturm Antilles Former Manager