Finally! Or "Courtship of Princess Leia" Roundup

Dathomir

This post has been a long time coming - I had intended to do a halfway post because I've had so much to say and so many different thoughts about this book as I read it. Sadly, October and November have passed us by with excuse after excuse piling up (on my end, anyway!). Rose and I are both ready to be done and move on with our fabulous project and with a large and highly engrossing trilogy upcoming, it's passed time. In fact, as I type this, I'm listening for the first time to my Christmas mix on my iTunes.

So! Courtship of Princess Leia ... I found so much of it highly unlikely (often completely ridiculous) that I'm going to ignore what I found to be ridiculous and focus on what actually works in the novel. For me, that's going to be a challenging task but I plan to give it a try. I started with lists, so I'll end with one.

Ro here! I'm so excited to be moving forward again! The break was much needed, for both of us, but Star Wars and Christmas go hand-in-hand for me. And not because of the hideous Christmas special... Anyway, on to Es's list. I've added comments at the end of each entry.

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Or why the unlikely works for Wolverton

1) Han Solo kidnapping Princess Leia - Okay, so it makes him looks like a raving lunatic but it also does aim to prove how much Han loves Leia. He does see her running into a marriage that's probably loveless and probably about Leia trying to save the galaxy any way she can. Han might not be an immature jealous asshole but he is a man in love - the moment it becomes clear that he's brought Leia into danger, he tries at every opportunity to get her out of it (like trying to send her away again when he thinks Isolder has a ship and throwing himself at Gethzerion when he thinks it will save Leia).

Ro: Oh, but having a man sweep you away to a lovely paradise planet to prove he's in love with you is SO ROMANTIC! Not really. Es is right, it's down right creepy, and no woman in her right mind would put herself in that situation. HOWEVER, Leia does trust Han, so I guess it's easier for him to abduct her. And I agree with Es, once he realizes the danger to Leia, he does his best to protect her and get our off Dathomir.

2) Luke Skywalker, Omniscient twenty-four year-old - Okay, so admittedly Luke's incredible obnoxious, lecturing Teneniel about her abilities, right and wrong, etc, especially considering she's been trained in Force useage since birth and Luke known about its existence less than ten years. But his arrogance also brings him closer to true understanding of his own limitations. Gethzerion herself knocks him over with a flick of her finger when they first do battle and when Luke thinks he's dying, he's able to visualize the Force for the first time. Earlier than that, Teneniel manages to sneak up on him and abduct him. That's no small feat. Fortunately for readers, Luke spends the entirety of the succeeding Zahn trilogy questioning his readiness to lead a new generation of Jedi, so obviously a vacation on Dathomir did him a world of good!

Ro: I agree with all of the above! Luke is awfully mature for someone who's known about the Force for all of two seconds. I like how Wolverton beats him up a bit, reminds Luke that he's not all powerful and he still has things to learn.

Not-so-tame Rancor

3) Tame Rancors - This, to me, is a very silly idea that actually pans out quite well. It gives a kind of validity to the strength and power of the witches. Their ability to tame rancors and the intercommication of the rancors and witches both illustrates the strength of the witches' Force abilities and adds dimension to the rancors by making them very intelligent beings in their own right, with, to all appearances, quite a complex culture of their own. Wolverton could have left them big, burly plot device monsters and instead he made them interesting and pivotal.

Ro: This is one of my favorite parts of "Courtship"!!!! I love the tame rancors, and how they aren't just animals but sentient beings. It reminds me of my relationship with horses (for those of you reading this who don't know me personally: I am a HUGE horse nut!), and how to me, each horse has a different personality, a different position in the herd, and they will protect each other. This detail, as Es said, was complex and amazing and really added to the book.

4) Magic in a galaxy far far away - It's goofy to use magic in the Star Wars universe, where science and creativity already make the world magical, and yet Wolverton not only makes it work, he uses it to great effect. Magic is often a way of explaining away ideas that aren't fully understood - so Wolverton endows his less developed society on Dathomir "magic" as an explanation for something they don't fully understand. Or maybe it's their interpretation of the Force - when Luke comes in and lectures Teneniel about her "spells," does his explanation render her abilities less potent?

Ro: So, so true! Excellent point! I studied this in a Religious Literature class in college (many moons ago). The first assignment from the prof: describe a sunset without using any colors. A challenging assignment, and one that from that day forward has be appreciating when writers use this sort of device in their stories, the way Wolverton does.

5) Luke's unlikely apprentice - I don't know if I remember any other author discussing the possibility of a Jedi disciple who isn't Force-sensitive, but Isolder's a wonderful example of how serving the Force and its guiding principles doesn't necessarily mean using and wielding it as a weapon. Isolder wields incredible power as a ruler and serving the light side of the Force, he has the ability to enact great good. However uppity I think Luke is in this novel, it's insightful of him to recognize the potential Isolder has to serve the light and do incredible good in his own way. This is a neat idea that rarely, if ever, occurs again in the EU.

Ro: I kind of wish this had gone a little further, honestly. I felt like Wolverton could have made it more of a thing in the story, but alas, there were Dark Witches to attend to.

6) Luke and his redheads - Hey, Luke gets very little action! It figures that he'd be drawn to a feisty redhead. There are even foreshadowy hints from Mother Rell about Luke's "wife and children" - Luke might not get the girl this time but the one he'll eventually get is just around the proverbial corner!

Ro: HAHAHAHAHAHA! And also, agreed!

In conclusion ... well, I thought this was a very silly novel but I actually really enjoyed it this time and appreciate some of the subtler ways in which it did contribute to the EU canon. Thanks, Mr. Wolverton!

Ro: AGREED!



The evolution of Star Wars

While reading "The Courtship of Princess Leia," (I'm not even 100 pages in yet, and enjoying the heck out it!), I've started wondering about the evolution of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Not of the books, or the movies (more like devolution with the new movies, I'd say...) but the actual universe itself. If normal science, physics, and laws of our own world apply - which they seem to, roughly - I feel like evolution would work the same way as well. So when Dave Wolverton wrote how a bar/casino in the underparts of Coruscant was built "90 thousand years ago," I started wondering if humans even existed as humans (the way we think of them) on Coruscant 90 thousand years before "Courtship" takes place. I'm sure it was an exaggeration, a way to illustrate how long it took to build the city-world into a city-world. But 90,000 years is a really long time, and I feel like some evolution of humanity and alien life would have taken place not just on this world, but on all the others as well. I'm pretty sure Cro-Magnon Man would not have been building bars, or anything more difficult than some sort of rough dwelling.

This all got me thinking about the timeline of the universe, the evolution of the alien and human worlds, and ultimately, how humans came to this universe. Is it really our own universe hundred of thousands of years from now (my secret, favorite theory)? Is this some far off galaxy - as George Lucas tells us - that humans were taken to and left to thrive? Or, the most likely idea of all, it's just a fictional universe where the main race is human and they don't evolve because that would ruin the story. These are deep and philosophical questions to Star Wars nerds such as myself.

I do think Coruscant was built over a very long period of time, however 90,000 years seems like a bit TOO long. Maybe there's a hard and fast timeline for this sort of thing now, but back in the day Wolverton must have had to make up his own numbers. I wish he would have given it a bit more thought than just plucking 90 thousand out of the air. Maybe have done some research to see where in the evolution chain humans were at on our planet 90,000 years ago and adjusted as needed. Just a quick google search turned up that 90,000 years ago, a homo sapien scientists call Y-chromosomal Adam existed. Basically, the first version of the modern day human. It's incredibly interesting, here is the wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam. I doubt this version of human would have been able to build a bar on some distant world, but that's just me.

The Courtship of Princess Leia

I'm so torn about this book. I know Rose is super excited about it so I hope it lives up to her dreams. As she pointed out to me, there is a planet-full of bad-ass women so Dave Wolverton gets mad props for that. I'm a list-maker, so I'm going to make a couple to help me cope with my conflicting feelings and memories of this book ...

Things I Am Looking Forward To

1) "I am Dathomir, hear me ROAR!" In other words, I seem to remember this planet being amazing. Not only is it run by women but the planet itself is described in exquisite detail, if I remember correctly. The colors, landscapes, and animals (I remember one having blue hide, never mind the rancors!) stand out vividly in my memory.

2) "Strong am I with the Force" In other words, Wolverton really goes to town building the Jedi from what we'd seen so far as readers by the time the book was published (Luke, vague hints about Obi-wan and Yoda, and the shape the new Jedi order takes) into something that basically became a teaser for the huge body of expanded universe that makes up what we now know in grade detail about the Old Republic's Jedi. There are references to Jedi lore, a flying Jedi academy, and data about the history of the Jedi that extends "a thousand generations" or more before Luke's own training even began. It's great that Wolverton took the time to develop that, when he didn't necessarily need to.


Teneniel Djo

3) "All the single ladies!" In other words, planet full of women who are allowed to be good, evil, and everything in between. I don't remember Wolverton trying to make Teneniel Djo or any of the clan sisters especially good or noble or even especially ladylike. I do remember him giving them spirit and ambiguity and a strong sense of culture. I also remember them getting to be the truly scary of the bad guys - the Nightsisters are really terrifying ...

Things I am NOT Looking Forward To

1) "I am Luke Skywalker and I know it all!" I absolutely loathe the novels in which Luke is written like wise old hermit. He's twenty-five, only been a Jedi a few years ... dude doesn't have a clue! Wolverton has him a bit more on the holier-than-thou side in this, as I remember (although I may be remembering wrong ... we'll see) - I remember lectures to Isolder and Tenenial about morality, etc. It rubs me the wrong way because I'm a fan of Luke as the farmboy-turned-pilot-turned-reluctant-Jedi who is doing his best under very adverse conditions but doesn't really know what the hell he's doing.

2) "I am Han Solo and I drank the crazy juice this morning." My biggest headache with this book was the premise that Han would go crazy and kidnap Leia. Props to Wolverton for using this as a plot device to precipitate an adventure that is pretty cool but it also is absolutely not the Han Solo I know and love. In Return of the Jedi, Han is fully prepared to give Leia up because he thinks it will make her happy - he says of Luke, "When he gets back, I won't get in the way." While I realize that this probably also to do with the fact that he cares about Luke and wants to see both of them happy, it's also just who I think Han is. Desperation to keep Leia should lead him to investigate the Hapans - Prince Isolder, specifically - but not go insane and kidnap Leia. It's just - I don't know, it's beneath him.

3) "I am Leia Organa and I, too, partook of the crazy juice this morning." Leia spends most of this novel being pretty bad-ass herself but in the beginning when she gets all swoony over Isolder ... let's just say I throw up a little inside my mouth. She straightens herself out nicely when she hits Dathomir's atmosphere and suddenly remembers that she's not a simpering pawn of the New Republic. Again, it's a great plot device to get Han and Leia out the door and on their Dathomirian adventures but it's also frustrating to watch her swan around like a twit selling herself to the Hapans for their battle dragons (not sexy talk).

Anyway, welcome to my expectations and apprehensions. We'll see what Wolverton has in store for me.

Rose's Expectations
Let me preface this with a little something about me: I am a hopeless, HOPELESS, romantic. I see a chick flick (and I do watch a lot of them, sans Husband who is always grateful I don't force the gooey cheeze on him...) and sigh my way through it. I read books with romance (and some romance books), and enjoy every last minute of sappy, mindsucking, disgustingly vomitous romantic interactions. So this book, for me at 13 years old, was the ideal. It was Star Wars and romance TOGETHER IN ONE BOOK! With badass warrior women who ruled their planet and had the Force. What could be better?! Nothing, it turned out to my 13 year old self, nothing at all.

And so, my expectations for this book are that I will go into delights of joy while at the same time gagging on the corniness of the entirety of it all. And I also agree with Es that lots and lots and LOTS of crazy juice was ingested by ALL parties before embarking on this particular Star Wars adventure.

And with that, start up the hyperdrive and punch it Chewie!

Rogue Squabbling

It's over. Finally over. For the last two weeks or so, I've been slogging through X-Wing: Rogue Squadron and grousing all the way. I don't think it would have been so bad except the last book we read, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, was also not my favorite. Coming off two Star Wars letdowns, I'm definitely ready for one that I know I'll like. But more of that in our next post...

 This book infuriated me, as I have already posted. Its pacing had more stop and go than a Seattle traffic jam, and the characters, while interesting at points, popped in and out of the woodwork and seemed to change to fit the author's whims. For example, Corran Horn's wing-mate, Ooryl Qrygg, is prominent in the first half of the book, but then disappears after he's injured during one of the space battles Rogue Squadron participates in. What happened to him? I asked myself. He lost a limb, was given a non-functional prosthetic, participated in one pre-op meeting, and then was gone. Stackpole's set up seemed to be leading toward Ooryl becoming Corran's version of Chewbacca, at least that's what I got, but Corran hardly thought about him after Ooryl was pronounced recovered (though without a limb? Was he traumatized? Did he drop out of Rogue Squadron? Or did he fight to stay in? I suppose these questions will be answered in the second book. Maybe.)Ooryl had a lot of set up in the beginning of this book, and then just disappeared without a peep.

Stackpole also set up a love triangle between Corran, Erisi Dlarit, and Mirax Terrik. While I think love triangles can be a good plot device when used the right way, I felt this one was just tossed in to illustrate how "desirable" Corran was supposed to be. Not that Stackpole gave us any indication at all of this at first. And I kept forgetting who both of these characters were because they appeared so infrequently throughout the story. Until the end, when Mirax comes into more prominence. There's a brief (verbal) scuffle between Erisi and Mirax over who "gets" Corran which I found totally disgusting. Almost like the daydream of an author who imagined two women arguing over him. If Stackpole is going to create a threesome that involves two women fighting over a man (which I have never liked, personally, because no woman I have EVER known would actually do this...), he had best do it well. And this set up did not instill confidence in me.

The rest of the book has faded from my memory, with only fits and snatches standing out on my mind.  Most of it was boring interludes followed up by intense space battles followed by more boring interludes. I know this series is beloved by many Star Wars fans, and I can sort of see why, but I just wish it was more well written...

Esme's Input

Well, I was all prepared to defend X-wing: Rogue Squadron but unfortunately, now I can't. I was really prepared to defend it on the grounds that I just didn't think it was that bad - except that, as Rose so astutely pointed out above, it is. The comparison to Seattle traffic (the stop/go) really resonated with me, as did the disappearing/reappearing characters like Ooryl. If you're going to have an ensemble cast, you've got to make every character unique, consistent, and interesting. Perfect example: Bror Jace is set up as a rival to Corran but we only see them actually go head-to-head once. And Jace and Erisi are supposed to be rival Tyfferan bacta mogals (or, at least, their families are) except that we never see them actual behave contentiously. And, come on, if you're going to create a character as potentially awesome as Mirax Terrik, don't give her two pages of screen time and a rivalry with another woman over a man. There aren't enough women in the Star Wars universe to waste them this way!

What it boils down to for me is a total lack of the critical SHOW-DON'T-TELL component of wrting. There are plenty of allusions to rivalries, group dynamic, friendship, and romance but no actual substance to support them. I won't rehash what Rose laid out so effectively above - I'll only say that we're actually in complete agreement.

To that end, I'm changing my mind about a reading choice I made when we first outlined this reading project. I'm not going to continue to read the X-wing series. I have a feeling that my hopes for improvement probably won't lead to anything and I don't want to waste the time when I have so many other reading projects I want to get to.

Ro, any ideas about how I should fill my time while you're reading the Thrawn Trilogy? I'm open to suggestions ....


Ysanne Isard, queen of the fabulous hair

As I'm slogging my way through X-Wing Rogue Squadron, there is one shining light for me. One, giant, amazing, fantastic bad guy. Or in this case, lady. I am talking, of course, about Ysanne Isard. The badass woman that got close enough to the Emperor to take over once he died. Or at least, that's how Michael Stackpole wrote it. For about two pages (I exaggerate, it's really more like 10). And I'm finding that she is the most interesting part of the book so far. The other characters are samesame, and the plot starts and stops like rush hour traffic.

But Ysanne, as Stackpole has created her, grabbed my attention right away. She's a woman who's reached power (yes, bad power, but power nonetheless), and commands legions of storm troopers and Imperial agents (through fear, sure, but still). Maybe I'm grasping because I don't want to read two horrid books in a row, and we all know my feelings on the previous EU book. Stackpole has created a character who is engaging and fascinating to me. He wrote that she might have been the Emperor's lover. All I can picture is the shriveled, lizard-esc Palpatine, and envisioning him having relations with a lady-friend just grosses me out. However, Stackpole's descriptions and explanations of Ysanne and Palpatine's relationships and interactions leave a lot to the imagination. Something I wish he hadn't done. Granted, I'm only about halfway through the book, but I'm starting to feel like I want a lot more of Ysanne than Stackpole is going to give me in this one book.

For instance, he describes her as growing up on Courscant, her father was the head of Imperial Intelligence. When he died, she took over. Very basic background, just like all of his other, colorless, bland characters. But she sparkles, in an evil way, and I really just want the rest of the book to be about her. She outshines all of the other characters, and I feel like a novel about growing up and getting involved with Palpatine would be much more interesting. I could read another 200 pages of that.

Prediction!

Emtrey (M-3P0; military protocol and regulations droid)

I am notorious for being slow on the uptake when it comes to reading. I rarely ever guess the plot twist or the hidden villain. I actually really enjoy my obliviousness as a reader because it makes those surprises that much more exciting!

So on the rare occasion when I do actually see something coming, I hope that either I'm wrong or that the author was deliberately leading me on. I hope that's the case right the prediction I'm making now.

Either way, let the record show that Esme predicts, as of page 200 of X-wing: Rogue Squadron, that Emtrey is the Imperial infiltrator of Rogue Squadron; or, at least, that he's a tool being used by Isard or the spy to collect and hand out information about the Rogues.

With that prediction made, I'm heading back in for the final leg of the book!

A slow start-up before the jump to lightspeed

I think I speak for both Rose and I when I say that the beginning of "X-wing: Rogue Squadron" did not fill us with a sense of security and reassurance about the reading experience ahead. In fact, Rose put it best when she texted: "I was looking at summaries of the other [Rogue Squadron] books and they all sound really interesting and exciting. I hope this one gets there because I do not want to read 380 pages of setup!"

I think what had me worried for the first hundred pages or so was that I felt as though I were sitting in a Rogue Squadron Historical Lecture. For pages and pages, Corran whines about Jace Bror and his ego. I can't think of a single time I actually had any proof of his ego being problematic until the post-battle party on Talasea when he tries to bully Gavin Darklighter into being his helper monkey. I actually lost quite a bit of faith in Corran as a result. I don't like being dictated to by the narrative; it makes me contrary. So when Corran kept insisting that Jace Bror was arrogant and egotistical, but without any actual substance to back it up, I thought, "Uh, what's wrong with CORRAN?" Some writers deliberately use a forceful narrative to allow for dramatic irony - showing the true nature of a character through that character's forceful manipulation of the narrative (perfect example: Mrs. Bennett in "Pride and Prejudice"). Michael A. Stackpole doesn't seem to be doing that, though - he seems to expect his reader to take his narrative at face value, which is a shame.

Having said that, I'm now halfway in and feel like I'm at last getting to the good stuff. I'm not sure if it's like Rose said, and Stackpole just needed to get himself set up for the good stuff or whether he'll backslide, but I'm appreciating certain elements of the plot quite a bit. For one thing, I really appreciate Kirten Loor. When he was first trotted out as the bad guy, I thought, "Geez, this guy's pathetic." But the more I read, the more I'm intrigued. Here's a villain who's far from perfect - his arrogance turns him into such a pathetic figure that his prisoner mocks him to his face. He's shipped off to Coruscant, presumably for execution, and instead gets a chance to learn from his mistakes. It's clear he is and what I enjoy as the reader is watching him learn. A villain who can learn is one I want to read more of.

Then there're the moments of truly excellent writing. The description of Ysanne Isard was impressive. The narrative didn't need to force me to see it, although it tried once or twice (come on, really?: "He knew where menace dwelt within her" [122]. Unnecessary coaxing, narrative!). There were little moments, like Loor's description of "Isard's predatory pacing" and the color of her eyes ("one icy blue - as cold as Hoth" and "the other eye ... a molten red" [122]). I was also impressed by Stackpole's description of the space Isard uses: "The only thing the room seemed rich in was wasted space. Then it struck him. On a world that is so crowded ... wasting this amount of space is the height of luxury" (121).

More importantly, there're the moments when Loor begins realizing important things about himself: "What I had seen as my brilliance in ferreting out [Gil Bastra's] errors had been him playing to my sense of superiority, leading me on after him like a nerf eager for slaughter" (125). While the narrative does lay on the revelation a bit thickly, it also commits the character Kirten Loor to a set of superior skills, creating a paradox between characteristics like his almost-perfect memory and the arrogance that blinds him to the ploys of his enemies. To me, at least, he's very compelling for his flaws because they soften his abilities into something more three-dimensional.

I can tell right now that this is one I remember relatively well from childhood that, because the writing isn't so good, might not translate well for me as an adult who has less patience with stylistic issues. On the other hand, I've had several moments that surprised me so hopefully, like Rose says, Stackpole is getting his setup out of the way to make room for a narrative that propels itself forward without a lot of authorial prop-up.

Also, I want to see Mirax Terrik again!