What Exactly Is Wrong With "The Crystal Star"?

I've seen a lot of people here badmouth the book "The Crystal Star" and I've always been curious as to why. I've never read it (the badmouthing I've seen here has made me stay away) but what is it that makes it so bad?

 

It's a bad book, but it's mainly just dumb and silly. A lot of people overreacted, I think.

I find it pretty harmless because nothing important happens. (Unlike, say, the Jedi Academy trilogy, which set up a lot of the Bantam era standards and was horrible.) You don't really need to read it unless you're setting out to read the entire EU or something.

 

Waru

 

Blasphemy!

JAT was gold!

Crystal Star was originally "bad" because of Waru and because the story was VERY self contained and episodic, and when it tried to be funny, it was more juvenile. Personally I think Crystal Star would've been fine and received less criticism if it went Junior Reader. Later Crystal Star got worse as all the baggage people had with Bantam was summed up in it. Some say Crystal Star was when Bantam "Jumped the Shark".

Personally I find Planet of Twilight to be far worse, but Crystal Star certainly won't be winning any popularity contests.

 

In a nutshell...

Child protagionists.

 

I dunno - I'd say that's only half of it. Personally I had far less trouble with the child protagonists (and hey, at least I was somewhat interested in the emerging personalities of the twins and Anakin) than with Waru who got ported over from Star Trek and Luke acting like Han's shrewish wife. Though of course, that was comedy gold.

 

That's absurd, and whoever said that must have been a recent fan without any idea of the real-world publishing timeline.

TCS was published in 1994. The majority of the Bantam stuff that is now considered "classic", such as X-Wing, Hand of Thrawn duo, and I, Jedi, (heck, the majority of Bantam stuff period) was published after that. If anything, it would be more accurate to classify TCS under "rocky start".

 

I loved the book, myself. The kids were neat, Waru was cool, and it introed Lusa.

What's not to like?

And to answer the question... nothing. It's a good book.

 

Child protagionists.

Nope. Jedi vs. Sith shows you can have a compelling story with child protagonists.

 

Juvenile writing. Inability to grasp the Star Wars universe. The worst fantasy aspects and the worst sci-fi aspects that don't belong in Star Wars. Waru. Loooooooong and boooooooooring.

Yeah, it's basically a manual of "What not to do in Star Wars."

 

I thought it was mildly entertaining at times. I enjoyed it more than Planet of Twilight and Darksaber.


But I still consider it to be on the lower end of the EU lit spectrum.

 

Lusa.

Centaurs don't belong in Star Wars. I have a similar problem with Farfalla, the Jedi man-beast featured in Jedi vs. Sith and Path of Destruction. I actually found his character interesting in the Bane novel until I found out he had goat legs and flew around in a hyper-drive equipped Spanish galleon. After obtaining those facts I can no longer take him seriously.

Crystal Star also shatters this suspension of disbelief throughout its storyline. God like Jello mold enemy (forgive me Waru, but it's true) and yet another kidnapping plot of the Solo younglings all composed at a third-grade reading level condemn this novel to mediocrity...although as previously stated it is slightly better than Planet of Twilight.

 

Long and boring indeed. First of all the characters are lame. Luke acts like he found some old crack rocks and is hitting the pipe, when noone is watching. Then there is the low-rent super-villain Hethrir, easily one of the most inept and silly villains in Star Wars history.
To top it off we have Waru, how the hell did this abomination manage to escape Stargate, Star Trek or where ever he comes from? And more importantly: what the hell was the point of Waru anyway? Smelly Force-eating jellyfish... why? And he tried to molest infant Anakin... yeah, not like that one hadn't been done before, just like the whole kidnap-the-Solo-kids thing.

Besides the shoddy characters, the story is boring and full of inane details like Threepio being painted purple to disguise him. Why? He's a standard-looking protocol droid, there's no reason to paint him purple, other than to say "i'm gay and cruising for a piece of tail".

The only thing´i liked about the Crystal Star, is that Han grew a beard.

 

Reading aloud form The Crystal Star during a gibbous moon will summon a shoggoth.

 

BTW, I believe Jedi vs. Sith the only EU that's actually worse than the Crystal Star.

 

...do you promise?

 

By the waters of R'lyeh.

 

And some of the rest of us believe its one of the better EU stories out there.

 

Tomcat: Come on! KILLING JEDI IS FUN!

;-)

 

I believe Abel sums up the badness of The Crystal Star the best

http://blogs.starwars.com/abelgpena/2

 

Good grief... he wrote a freakin' thesis on the thing!

 

This thread is sadly lacking in Church of Waru support.

And I never realized I was mentioned in Abel's blog until now...

 

I actually liked CS, though it's been at least seven years since I've read it.

The Charon species, as well as Waru, were native to a planet within Otherspace. Unfortunately, a nearby black hole threatened to devour their homeworld. The presence of this interstellar disturbance caused an enormous amount of stress on the Charon's part. Before long, the stress twisted their culture, giving rise to a death-worshipping religion. The members of this cult believed that it was their sacred duty to speed all life towards the Void of Death. After eradicating all of those who were unbelievers--which meant destroying all sentient life--on their homeworld, the Charon developed interstellar travel, and continued their holy mission. Eventually, all that remained was a multitude of barren, lifeless planets and a few biologically engineered Charon starships roaming the void in search of any remaining traces of life. - Wiki

Though there are some differences, I think the Charon sound a lot like the Yuuzhan-Vong.

Evil.