Sort of random post today that will probably get moved to a different blog if I decide to do more. My wife and I moved recently, and I loaded my ereader up with some fluff. It took a little while to get internet setup, arrange my office the way I wanted, etc. so I just wanted something light and easy to entertain myself for a bit before bed or whatever. I decided to dig back into my childhood and read some of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. I could (I think I did at one point) write an essay about how The original EU (now "Legends") Star Wars novels were instrumental in making me into a reader and writer, and I was excited to dip back in and see how they held up (honestly, probably everywhere from absolute crap to great, same as I thought as a kid. It's easy to bell curve when you have a couple hundred books). Initially, I thought I'd start with the X-Wing series, since they were the earliest ones I remember reading (I think I had a couple chapter books before), but I realized how many others I'd missed, read out of order, etc. So, instead, I decided to do the publishing order. I made it about three pages into the novelization of A New Hope before the weirdness of reading a not entirely accurate novelization of a movie I've seen a hundred times kicked in. I jumped to the second book Splinter of The Mind's Eye.
From a purely historical perspective, Splinter is interesting. It's generally considered the jumping off point for the EU, but Marvel technically beats it to the punch for original stories by about 6 months with some comics, and there were also various adaptations of A New Hope even earlier. Splinter was written by Alan Dean Foster, who is probably best known today for his ghostwriting and adaptations. He did the novelization of A New Hope, which I'm going to take a second shot at, and Alien, among other things.
Splinter was partially intended to be a hypothetical low budget sequel to Star Wars. There's minimal space battles, and a lot of opportunities to reuse props, cheap sets, etc. Han Solo is briefly mentioned, but he and Chewie never show up (Ford hadn't agree to do a sequel) but are replaced by Halla (a sort of Han/Obi Wan amalgamation/grumpy old Force lady) a pair of big fury aliens. There's a few things that would later show up in Empire or other movies (Vader flinging stuff at Luke via the Force, force ghosts sort of possessing people, Vader falling down a big hole), and a bunch of stuff that's weird (Leia and Luke obviously want to bone, Vader shooting a Force hadouken, Vader chopping an officer in half instead of choking him). None of the Imperials recognize Luke or Leia, which seems odd. Luke, maybe, but Leia was famous even before the Death Star.
The plot is pretty by the numbers sci-fantasy adventure. Spoilers for the rest of this paragraph if you care? Luke and Leia crash on a mysterious planet on their way to a diplomatic mission, get captured by the Imperials running a mining camp, get bailed out by bruiser alien sidekicks and weird Force grandma, find a magic crystal that enhances the Force in the statue of Not-Cthulhu (to the point where Luke can bring people back to life) that conveniently only works in that area, fight Darth Vader (Leia holds him off for a while and actually gets a couple hits in before some gratuitous torture. Luke wins after being semi-possessed by Obi Wan) by knocking Vader down a hole, they leave to go to the conference. The whole thing only sort of intersects with the wider EU.
As a novel it's passable. I wanted light and easy, and that's what I got. Foster isn't a great writer (at least here, I haven't read much of his other stuff) but he keeps the plot moving. Leia gets almost as much character development here than in the whole original trilogy, though it's basically all about her having PTSD from the first movie. She spends the front half of the book getting treated like a slave, and Luke's a total asshole about it, then Vader tortures her. I don't think Foster quite knows what to do with her, since she bounces from hyper-capable to worthless and abused every three pages. There's a couple fun body horror scenes, and it's interesting to see what Foster does with the still uncodified Force. He really likes the adjective "batrachian," which means "frog like." It's odd that it shows up multiple times in a 150 page long novel, but at least I learned something.
All in all, this is about exactly how I'd expect the EU to start. A traditional, pulpy side story with lots of weird bits. If you like Star Wars (particularly this era) or want to see what the beginnings of Expanded Universes in general look like, it's worth reading. At ~150 very light pages, it won't take long. If you're a 70s pulp sci-fi fan, go for it. If you've never read/seen Star Wars, I wouldn't recommend it as a first taste, and harder/more modern sci-fi fans can probably skip it. 2/5 mediocre writing partially saved by historical significance.
Check out this beautiful Ralph Macquarie cover art:
I remember this book being on my big brother's bookshelf, but much as I loved the original Star Wars trilogy, I never had much interest in the EU, then or now. I think I suspected that fiddling with it was more likely to mess it up than improve it! But I enjoyed your review of this book. And it's a great title!
ReplyDelete(Sorry, the above Anonymous was me, visiting from A to Z.)
ReplyDeleteLike I said in the post, with a couple hundred books, short stories, comics, etc., there's really something of everything in the EU. Some of it is great! Some of the top sci-fi/fantasy authors of the time period writing at the top of their game. Stackpole's X-Wing novels are my definitive "WWII Dogfight In Space" series out of all the zillions of them that've been done. Zahn's first Thrawn Trilogy will probably always be the bar for Star Wars sequels, even if we get them for another hundred years.
ReplyDeleteSome of it is total garbage. A lot of it is just weird. Some of them fit with the style of the movies so well you could easily forget they're not just adaptations. Some of them are so divorced from the trilogy that they only reason they're even Star Wars books is because a Solo shows up for a one scene cameo or something. During the Goosebumps craze they did a YA horror series with freaky 90s holographic covers!
I admit it's a soft spot of mine because of when I grew up (I maintain that the 90s through 00s was the second best time to be a Star Wars fan, the first being when the OT premiered), but it's hard for me not to recommend the EU to any SFF fan.