Tosche Station Radio #127: Aftermath!

Posted on by

Logo

Play in new window | Download

Dunc from Club Jade joins us this week to review Aftermath and where it stacks u to what we had seen in Legends!

Kicking off the show, the hosts highlight What’s New on the Blog. We had our Dragon Con 2015 coverage! There were Aftermath reviews from Bria, Emily, and a Go/No-go. Nanci reviewed Lost Stars and Bria wrote about Nash Windrider and the True Power of the Empire. Nanci reviewed The Weapon of a Jedi and Bria reviewed Moving Target. We have a new staff writer, Matthew Bowers! He reviewed the Rebels Season 1 blu ray set and the Rey’s Speeder LEGO set. Finally, Bria reviewed Darth Vader #9, Star Wars #9, Lando #4.

From there we head to Fixer’s Flash, where the hosts have been busy with Dragon Con and reading. Deak’s Dirt is light this week, but Biggs’ Bull#&$! brings word of Rogue One and Episode VIII filming!

On Camie’s Concerns this week, we take a look at Aftermath. What do we think of it, and where does it stack up to what we saw in Legends? Could it be that our memories of Legends might be a little rose-colored? Tune in and find out.

Tosche Station Radio is the official podcast of Tosche-Station.net and a part of Majestic Giraffe Productions. If you like what you hear, please leave a review on the iTunes Music Store. We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.

This podcast has been brought to you in part by Her Universe and your support on Patreon!

Her Universe - Flaunt Your World - www.heruniverseshop.com

The Dragon Con Aftermath Panel

Posted on by

Two weeks ago, I had the honor of moderating the Aftermath panel with author Chuck Wendig. I was super excited for this event because, as I explained at the start of the panel, I love Star Wars, I love the Expanded Universe, and I love Chuck Wendig’s writing.

I was nervous, of course, as I always am before panels. Even though 2015 marked my third year (!!!) doing panels at Dragon Con, and even though I’ve been co-hosting the podcast for over 3.5 years (!!!!!), I still worry about freaking out while talking in front of a crowd. Not only that, but this was my first panel interviewing someone famous and my first panel without Brian on stage as well. I was all on my own. Could I handle the pressure? Would I say something really dumb? Would I have to run off the stage to barf?

Thankfully, none of those things happened. (Of course they didn’t. Anxiety sucks!) And most of that had to do with the fact that Chuck Wendig is a hilarious and awesome human being. I’d had a few Twitter exchanges with him prior to the convention, and met him the night before the panel at his Barnes and Noble signing. It was comforting to know he was just a regular guy, and that he would be just as tired as I was come Friday at 8:30 pm after not going to sleep until some godforsaken hour that morning. (We were up all night to get Star Wars!)

Continue reading →

Review: Star Wars #9

Posted on by

Things aren’t looking up for Han, Leia, or Luke this week as they find themselves betrayed and in the Empire’s crosshairs and chasing after a lightsaber respectively. Star Wars is back this week with Issue #9 from Jason Aaron and Stuart Immonen and, well, we’ve still got a lot of questions.

But first, a bit of unsolicited advice for my fellow reviewers. Try reading a comic issue and then getting on an exercise bike and mulling over the issue in your mind because boy doe sit do wonders. How else would I have thought of the idea of just reviewing this issue in hashtags and then determined it was a poor one?

That said, #NotAllHutts would probably be Grakkus the Hutt’s hashtag of choice because, see, he collects Jedi antiques which makes him different from other hutts who only do the whole smuggling drug ring thing. Not all hutts. The Star Wars universe seems to be hell bent on exploring the heck out of how Luke goes from knowing nothing to knowing slightly less than nothing about being a Jedi over the course of three years. It’s not Jason Aaron’s fault in the least as he’s just one of at least four different groups within Star Wars that have decided to tackle this issue but it’s starting to feel a little old for me. Mostly, it just seems like this is the only plot line he’s really been given lately. Leia may be sent on a lot of missions but at least they’ve all resonated for different reasons. And speaking of the other Skywalker twin…

Leia is a delight in this book. It finally hit me (during the aforementioned cycle time) that Aaron has really nailed her attitude during the Death Star rescue mission over the past few issues. He’s seemed to find the perfect mix of take-charge and over-your-crap Leia in this book.

On the art front, Stuart Immonen is perfect. Please let us keep him for forever. (Except for the Kenobi interludes. Give us Simone Bianchi for this.) But Immonen the rest of the time, please and thank you.

Review: Lando #4

Posted on by

Okay, that’s it. From now on, Lando’s real surname will always be Draper in my mind. Lando Calrissian-Draper. Lando #4 by Charles Soule and Alex Maleev is out today and boy oh boy is our favorite charming scoundrel in over his head.

This review contains some spoilers for the issue because it’s impossible to discuss otherwise and if we’re honest, this review is really just a bunch of thoughts about the issue.

Continue reading →

Review: Lost Stars by Claudia Gray

Posted on by

lost starsLost Stars, the young adult entry in the Journey to the Force Awakens, reads like fanfic.

For many people, the phrases “young adult” and “fanfic” give Lost Stars two strikes before even turning to the first page. There’s a big stigma out there against YA fiction, because, and let’s not be blunt here, teenage girls read it. That’s not to say YA is all great — it can be melodramatic and poorly written — but the same is true of adult books, is it not?

Then there’s the fanfic comparison. Many people like to criticize Expanded Universe books they dislike by calling them “glorified fanfiction.” To me, though, fanfic is not an insult. Fanfic represents a land of opportunities in Star Wars literature. You can write about whoever you want, doing whatever you want, whenever you want. You can stick to canon or split into an alternate timeline. There are no rules. So you could, for example, create your own original characters and have them live through key events of the Galactic Civil War.

Lost Stars takes that common fanfic premise to the extreme, and that’s a good thing. Continue reading →

Go/No-Go: Aftermath

Posted on by

nasa-mission-control-3Welcome 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: Star Wars: Aftermath.  It’s our first book set after Episode VI in the new canon and is the tentpole of the Journey to the Force Awakens. No, it’s not Heir to the Empire, but the start of something entirely new. Is it worth your time? Does it live up to the hype? Should we stick to Legends instead? To mission control for the verdict!

Continue reading →

Dragon Con 2015 Recap

Posted on by

Just one week ago, Dragon Con 2015 was wrapping up and Brian, Nanci, and Bria were on their ways back to their respective homes. We posted a whopping twelve panel recordings, ten of which at least one member of Tosche Station participated in. We also got to meet awesome people like Chuck Wendig and Vanessa Marshall, and hang out with the awesome Star Wars fan community.

Nanci will be writing a post soon about her experience moderating the Aftermath panel. For now, here’s a breakdown of all our coverage from the convention itself.

Continue reading →

Review: Moving Target

Posted on by

There’s very little I love more in this world than a well-written Leia Organa story and Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry have definitely delivered with their contribution to the Journey to the Force Awakens: Moving Targets. It’s a middle grade book which means the writing style is a bit more simplistic but that certainly doesn’t take away from the impact of the story nor from how much I enjoyed reading it.

Worrying reports have reached the Rebel Alliance of the construction of a second Death Star… something that absolutely no one wants to see in the hands of the Emperor. The Rebel Alliance must strike back but they’ll need time. Princess Leia volunteers to lead a decoy mission and serve as a distraction… a moving target if you will.

Continue reading →

Review: Aftermath’s Prose

Posted on by

AftermathI usually hate reading present tense prose, at least in professional fiction.  It’s always lent itself to fanfiction in my mind for some reason, so when I read the first excerpts of Aftermath when they were released, I wasn’t impressed.

Boy, was I wrong.

I read Aftermath in between feedings and diaper changes of our new little Jedi-in-training, and every time I set the book down, I looked forward to picking it back up again, and had the book come out before Little Jedi’s arrival, I probably would have read it all in one sitting.

Many of you know that I am, by trade and training, a professor of literature.  So while the rest of our staff has reviewed Aftermath based on its content, I want to focus on the style and why it works so well for this novel.

Continue reading →