Welcome back to Go/No-Go, Tosche Station’s regular feature where we offer our spoiler-free opinion as to whether or not you should spend your hard-earned money on a book, film, or other entertainment. Today on the launch pad: Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. To mission control for the verdict! Continue reading
Category Archives: Reviews
Review: Thrawn: Alliances
If you’d told me three years ago that we would see Grand Admiral Thrawn not only brought back into canon as a major villain for two seasons of Star Wars Rebels but that we would also have two novels with his name in the title written by Timothy Zahn, I would’ve said that you were crazy and yet here we are. Thrawn: Alliances is out today. Look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now!
Thrawn: Alliances takes place in the aftermath of Star Wars Rebels Season 3 with everyone’s favorite grand admiral fresh off a defeat involving a giant deus ex Bendu. Darth Vader is less than impressed but that doesn’t matter to Palpatine who sends them to the Outer Rim planet of Batuu to investigate a disturbance in the Force. Funnily enough though… they’ve both been there before. It’s where Anakin Skywalker also met Thrawn while he was looking for Padmé who’s gone missing. It sure would be convenient if they were somehow connected… Continue reading
Review: Thrawn #1-6
I’m going to start this review with complete honesty: Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn was fun and I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my favorite book. I liked learning more about Thrawn and loved Eli Vanto, but the plot felt convoluted at times, and like too much was being shoved in for the sake of building out Thrawn’s entire Imperial past ahead of his appearances on Star Wars Rebels. So, when Lucasfilm and Marvel announced Jody Houser’s comic adaptation of the novel, I wondered how such an intricate plot would transfer to such a different medium.
Which brings me to the point of my review: if you were excited about this adaptation, you’ll probably love it – it’s exactly what you’d expect. Seeing Thrawn in all his imposing, blue glory at the helm of the ISD Chimaera is always a treat, and his dialogue actually transfers quite well to the comic format (I couldn’t not hear Lars Mikkelsen’s voice in my head as I read it). Bonus points to Houser and artist Luke Ross for making Vanto notably not white, as we got a sense of his isolation in the novel due to his Wild Space origins that’s heightened by adding the racial component to others’ disdain here. Continue reading
Review: Hullmetal Girls
This is a book that did the impossible: it made me wish my metro ride was longer so I could keep reading. Twice.
Hullmetal Girls by Emily Skrutskie is the sort of book that I’ve been wanting for ages. Two young women undergo a literally life changing procedure that turns them into mechanically enhanced soldiers who aren’t exactly human anymore, each for their own reasons. Aisha Un-Haad volunteers for the procedure in a last ditch attempt to help her family while Key Tanaka has nothing but a blank space in her memory when she tries to remember why she would give up her life of privilege to become a Scela especially since many don’t survive the modification process. Aisha, Key, and the two other members of their squad have to learn not only how to live in their new bodies but also how to work together. If they excel, a top placement would mean that Aisha’s siblings wouldn’t have to worry about money. If they fail… To make matters more complicated, there’s a rebellion brewing in the fleet and Aisha and Key find themselves swept up in it, whether they want to or not. Continue reading
Review: Kill the Farm Boy
A sense of humor is mandatory for reading this book.
Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne is delightfully absurd and laughs in the face of how one would usually expect a Chosen One fantasy story to go. Every last trope is engaged with in a way that flips it on its head and makes it hard for readers not to laugh out loud. (Unless you hate puns. Don’t hate puns when you read this book.) When Staph the Pixie tells the farm boy Worstly that he’s the Chosen One and also makes his goat talk, Worstly does what any Chosen One would do and finds a quest. But when his quest doesn’t go quite as planned, it’s up to a motley crew to try make things right and save both him and an entire enchanted castle worth of people. Continue reading
The Most Dangerous Game? Reading Jay Schiffman’s Game of the Gods
A judge who has lost faith in his government. An uneasy global political climate. A world on the brink of all-out war.
Jay Schiffman’s debut novel, Game of the Gods, has all the ingredients to be the action-packed, sci-fi political thriller for our times. Wrestling with huge, fascinating themes, the story pits religion against science, individual against country, and one man against a prediction that he will destroy the world.
In the Earth’s far future, Max Cone is the High Judge of the Federacy, one of the nations carved out of the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once North America. A former war hero and current arbiter of Federacy citizenship, Max is renowned for, well, being a really good guy–honest, responsible, and strong of both body and morals. All of his best qualities are tested, however, when he is drawn into a global conflict in the most personal way possible: His family is kidnapped by foreign government, propelling him on a revenge tour that takes him through nations run by rogue military factions, independent cartels, and a mysterious pope-like figure who is not as holy as he seems. Continue reading
Review: Darth Vader (2017) #13-17
In the “Burning Seas” arc of Charles Soule’s Darth Vader comic series, we take a bit of a time jump from the series so far: while issues #1-12 focused on the days immediately following the rise of the Empire, issue #13 opens three years after those events (so, around 16 BBY, for those keeping track). The Empire is consolidated, the military has built up, and the Emperor’s sinister servant, Darth Vader, has come into his own as the regime’s chief enforcer.
Whereas the series so has shown us the internal struggles of becoming Darth Vader, this arc focuses much more on external events – namely, the pacification of Mon Cala, the water world home to some of the future Rebellion’s greatest heroes. Indeed, these issues are full of familiar faces: Not-yet-Grand Moff Tarkin and his capital ship Sovereign (previously seen in the Tarkin novel) are pitted in a battle of wills (and weapons) against King Lee-Char of Mon Cala (who you may remember from The Clone Wars), Admiral Raddus (Rogue One), and then-Commander Gial Ackbar (c’mon, you know him). With such a cast of characters demanding page-time, we actually get less of the titular villain than one would expect; Vader plays the role of antagonist here, rather than the focus of the plot. Continue reading
Review: Most Wanted
If you’re like me, you walked out of Solo: A Star Wars Story wanting to know everything you possibly could about Qi’ra and read dozens of stories about her. Thankfully, Most Wanted by Rae Carson came out the same day as the film and I was eager to dive into it especially since I’m a far of Carson’s Fire and Thorns trilogy. Even better? Most Wanted definitely did not disappoint.
Most Wanted introduces us to both Han and Qi’ra not more than a year before Solo begins with Lady Proxima pitting the two of them against each other to determine who will be the next Head Child of the White Worms. Given that the promotion comes with extra rations (including real food!) and other “privileges,” both of them really want it. Badly. When a deal goes very wrong, Han and Qi’ra realize that the only chance they have of salvaging either of their hopes of becoming Head is to work together and find themselves on a crazy adventure that neither of them could have ever forseen. Continue reading
Review: The Mighty Chewbacca and the Forest of Fear
What’s a wookiee to do when the daughter of the Emperor’s advisor has taken his partner hostage and will only free him if said wookiee goes on a dangerous assignment for her? Complete the mission, of course! The Mighty Chewbacca and the Forest of Fear by Tom Angleberger is a middle grade book that teams up everyone’s favorite wookiee with a young woman who’s trying to help her people and the galaxy’s snarkiest KX security droid.
Angleberger has a delightfully wry yet fun style of writing, providing direct commentary on the story as the narrator. Writing Chewbacca can be a challenge since his words are traditionally not translated directly but given vague meaning. Angleberger finds a way to make it fun and feel logical. The narration is really what makes the book veer more towards special and away from “this is fine” and I actually found myself laughing out loud once or twice.
Star Wars, as of late, has seemed to have fun pairing Chewie up on his solo missions with a spunky and relatively young girl to be a foil. That girl also usually has her own agenda that just happens to somewhat line up with Chewie’s own mission but they end up doing good and becoming friends at the end. It could have very easily been tedious this time around but Angleberger found a way to keep it interesting. When in doubt, toss in the K-2SO wrench apparently. (I love that droid so much, I really do.)
The Mighty Chewbacca and the Forest of Fear is a book that kids in the middle grade age range will likely find delightful but may be less appreciated by the older ones/teenagers. It’s a fun little adventure with Chewie that could be an amusing divertissement for adults or a great journey for kids.
Thank you to Disney Lucasfilm Press for providing a copy of the book for review purposes.
Review: What Is A Wookiee?
We have an emerging reader in my house, which means our Star Wars bookshelf has gotten a recent injection of titles designed for the preschool set. From time to time, I’ll be popping in with words about how my little guy is enjoying the parts of Star Wars designed for enjoyment by the franchise’s youngest fans. I’m happy to report that the age-appropriate offerings are plentiful and entertaining. A current favorite is the DK Readers Level 1 book What is a Wookiee.
We were a little surprised that the book isn’t a tell-all about Wookiee culture as we’d thought. It is, instead, a primer on many of the creatures we meet in a galaxy far, far away, with spotlights on individual characters the kids may encounter in the Star Wars films. The book is from the point of view of C-3PO, who takes readers through this catalog of creatures and droids with just enough of his own editorializing baked in for the adults in the room to recognize him. The pages on what characteristics differentiate aliens from droids, and how to tell the difference turned out to be a conversation starter in our house. Continue reading