Retro Review: Darksaber Part 1

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           For those of you that have looked at my reviews in the past, you know that I have a propensity for hyperbole.  And snark.  Lots of snark.  Kevin J. Anderson is a writer that I’ve thrown a lot of flak at in the past.  Really, he’s been one of my favorite targets, and I’ll say this, he really does seem to bear a good bit of it.  At a time not so far back, I’ve referred to him as being a kind of nemesis to me.

But to be honest, that was before I read some of the SWEU material that I was steered around the first time I was going through the Bantam/Spectra era books, which has been a long time ago.  You know that the last review I did was for Children of the Jedi in a series of posts that went on for a bit too long.  Barbara Hambly is likely not as bad a writer as she came across in that book, but it really seemed like she was pretty far outside her wheelhouse.

That book gave me a big dose of perspective for the concept of bad Star Wars.  I had held that Anderson’s books were bad Star Wars up to a point, but something else has come to my attention.  There’s a difference between bad Star Wars and not good Star Wars.  Children of the Jedi was bad.  Darksaber isn’t bad Star Wars; in fact it fits in with my usual prerequisites for being pretty good, but it has a pretty long list of bad features that throw it out of that.

I can say something good about Kevin J. Anderson up front.  I swear, just watch.  The Jedi Academy Trilogy established some very important aspects of the Expanded Universe at large.  I didn’t like it.  I didn’t like the way it was written, but for anyone who is coming into the EU from the start of the Bantam/Spectra era, it’s pretty much required reading.  For anybody who is wondering where the Academy came from, it’s important.  Let’s be honest, if you’re looking at anything except the core of the New Republic Era, anything later pretty much encourages you to read it.  The characters and concepts that get to be important later on have their sources there.

Now, you don’t want to read this; it isn’t the funny bit.  Me talking about the stuff that’s wrong–that’s what you want.  So, here’s where we stand, I’m going to break this down into just two parts, I’m not running a page by page analysis, you’re going to get the problems at large as I see them.  For me, Darksaber has two fronts of problems.  There’s the distinct storytelling issues and there’s the technical issues.

For today’s post, we’re going to focus on the former of the two.  Hit the jump to see the story elements of this book that crawl under my skin.

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Trope Tuesday: Darker and Edgier

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It’s Tuesday, which means I’m about to bludgeon you over the head with another entry from that great timesink in the cloud, TV Tropes. This week, we’re examining one we like to call Darker and Edgier.

A Tone Shift that seeks to make a work of fiction “more adult”. Usually, this is practically interpreted as “add more sex, profanity, heavy violence, and controversial content”.

This trope usually means that a show will attempt to shift towards seriousness, cynicism and grit. In theory, archetypes which we are usually accustomed to acting in a more noble setting will have to act in one where they must think and act grimly in order to make progress, thus forcing re-examination of the tropes involved and making a different sort of character. In practice, though, writers often are too lazy to make use of what most of those words mean, and ending up randomly “spicing up” a work with gratuitous gore, cursing, and sex. See Not A Deconstruction

When a show uses this trope as a tagline, expect anything that can go wrong will go wrong, the setting to be a World Half Empty, everyone to be bastards, lots of unpleasant things happen to the characters or backstories giving the characters a particular issue they can spend time angsting about.

As we can expect, this is fairly easy to screw up and poor use of these tropes can just result in Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and Narm instead.

Thankfully, the Expanded Universe hasn’t fallen victim to this trope. I mean, it’s not like fans are keeping a running tally of how many major characters get killed, abandoned the tone and philosophy of the source material, or shifted the villains from tactical geniuses to more trite Eldritch Abominations or any…

Erm…

Cat Taber Confirmed for Star Wars Weekends

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Rancho Obi Wan publicist and all around awesome person Consetta Parker announced another guest for Star Wars Weekends, Clone Wars voice actor Cat Taber.

If you’re in the Orlando area that weekend, you can catch Taber and other guests at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Maurice Sendak Passes Away

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Beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak passed away today at 83.

Known for breaking children’s books norms by incorporating somewhat dark illustrations and tone into his works, Sendak was considered by many to be the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century. Many of us are familiar with perhaps his most famous work, Where the Wild Things Are.

I loved this book growing up, but I admit this isn’t my fondest memory of Sendak’s work. For me, it was December every year when my family would go to Benaroya Hall to watch the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s world-class production of The Nutcracker. It was Sendak’s costumes and sets that transformed the classic production into an extraordinarily visceral event.

Sixth Batch of ‘EG to Warfare’ Endnotes

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Author Jason Fry released another batch of Essential Guide to Warfare endnotes on Monday. This time around he’s covering the Separatists and Order 66.

Order 66: The Road to Empire: Lucasfilm passed on a very cool diagram drawn by Dave Filoni of the galaxy’s powers and institutions and their role in Sidious’s plot; it was extremely helpful in seeing this section clearly. Making Kol Skywalker the narrator seemed like a natural move, helping tie the Legacy era into the more-familiar era here and adding a poignant note to the story of the Skywalker clan.

Finally, I like the point that Sidious was telling the truth when he accused the Jedi of plotting against him, trying to kill him and scheming to take over the Senate. He’s leaving out some key details — such as, oh, being a Sith Lord — but he isn’t lying. The best plots depend not on lies, but on manipulating your opponent to do what he’d rather not.

For more tidbits from this batch, head on over to Jason Fry’s Tumblr.

‘The Old Republic’ Loses 400,000 Subscribers

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Bad news for Electronic Arts, Bioware, and Lucasarts. Their massively-online Star Wars IP is having a very hard time retaining subscribers as 400,000 have left the virtual universe according to an EA earnings statement.

To put this into perspective, subscriber totals peaked around 1.7 million and have crashed down to 1.3 million. Nearly 25% of subscribers have bolted since the game’s launch. Those are numbers that no one involved with the development of the game ever wanted to see, especially this early in the game’s life.

You have to wonder, would a proper Knights of the Old Republic III have been a better choice in the long run?

Via Kotaku

Roqoo Depot Interviews Timothy Zahn

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They’ve got five questions with one of our favorite Expanded Universe authors, Timothy Zahn.

What’s the best Mara fan experience you’ve ever had?

TZ: Best (and most gratifying, humbling, and on-going): The various women who dress as Mara at conventions, and who thank me for creating her.

Second-best: *All* the readers — in costume or not — who appreciate her. (I’m pretty easy to please.)

The interview is part of their month-long celebration of Mara Jade. Keep tabs on them all month for all content Mara.

The Avengers Appeal

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And continuing our Avengers post-mortem, The Wall Street Journal dug up a pretty interesting little tidbit today in a piece examining why Marvel’s newest film is pretty much printing money.

3) Multi-Generational Appeal: Characters like Captain America have been around since the 1940s; Thor, The Hulk, and Iron Man have been around since the 1960s. “The Avengers” felt fresh to kids, and was comfort food to adults. Half the attendees were over twenty five years old. 40 percent of the audience was female, so the film didn’t just appeal to boys.

I should say so. As I was sitting in the theater on Thursday night waiting for the movie, I couldn’t help but notice just how evenly split the gender ratio was. Good on you, Marvel. You’ve got yourselves a franchise we all can enjoy.

‘Avengers’ Obliterates Box Office Record

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I think we all expected Marvel’s The Avengers to do pretty well on its opening weekend. I don’t think we expected it to do quite this well.

Hulk, smash.

That’s what Captain America tells the Incredible Hulk to do in “The Avengers,” and that’s what the Marvel Comics superhero mash-up did at the box office, smashing the domestic revenue record with a $200.3 million debut.

It’s by far the biggest opening ever, shooting past the previous record of $169.2 million for the debut of last year’s “Harry Potter” finale.

If these numbers hold, it would be the first time in cinema history a film has opened north of $200 million domestically. That’s not even factoring what it made in overseas gross. It’s two-week run beyond the US brings the film to a staggering $641.8 million worldwide.

Kneel before Joss, The Avengers is a winner.

Via CBS

Why Star Wars Needs Women – Now More Than Ever

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The majority of my teen years sucked.  I was one of those kids who was a permanent outcast—I was geeky and nerdy, and for a teenage girl, that can be the kiss of death.  I had two friends in middle school, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for Star Wars.

But I wanted to be part of the cliques.  I wanted boys to notice me, not because I was weird, but because they noticed me.  Every time I was skipped over for an invitation to a party, left out of a social activity, or out and out ignored, I felt like I was being stabbed in the heart.  We take these things more seriously when we’re 13.

TPM had just come out.  My best friend and I soaked up every piece of information The Star Wars Insider had to offer.  And most importantly, for Christmas in 1999, my aunt bought me Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta’s Young Jedi Knights: Shards of Alderaan.

I immediately fell in love with the character of Tenel Ka.  She was strong, she chose who she wanted to be, and she got past being different to find acceptance.  I wanted to be Tenel Ka.

As I got older, I moved on to the adult novels, and I wanted to be Mara Jade.  She was even better than Tenel Ka, because Mara had emotions and wasn’t afraid to show them.  She was who she wanted to be, with no apologies.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that there were other people like me, but by the time I got there, I’d finally come to grips with the idea that I could be whoever I wanted to be, thanks primarily to the characters of Tenel Ka and Mara Jade.

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