Status Updates From Soldier for the Empire (Sta...

Well, that was fun. I wish this had been longer; I was enjoying it. But I guess that's what happens when you base a novel on a video game that has a pretty scant story - you don't have much to work with.
I'll be reading the sequels, but not until later. They take place years later in the timeline, and I'm following the timeline.

You know, I just assumed Kyle mowing down dozens if not hundreds of Imps in the course of a Dark Forces level was merely due to it being a video game. And that a novelization of such an endeavor would be more tactical, stealth-focused, and only have like a few kills at most. Nope. Kyle's mowing down stormies just like you do in the video game. It's really dumb, but I kind of love how faithful this is to the game.

Lol, it's now at the point of the first Dark Forces level itself, and it's just a written account of how the level plays out pretty much. That's kind of awesome. I'm into this. I wonder how often this series will do that, for the various games.

What's up with these hyper specific numbers? When Mon Mothma was detailing the Death Star specs, she was saying things like it had room for 2748 officers and blah blah blah. That's such a weird thing to design for. Then Kyle requested 878 items for mission supplies, received 500 something, and had to scrounge up 165 things on his own. That's an absurd amount for 1 mission, and also very weird numbers to choose.

The Moldy Crow is one of my favorite Star Wars ship designs overall. Such a cool ship. Too bad it got destroyed at the end of JK1 and then replaced with the inferior Raven's Claw in JK2.

'Despayre penal colony,' lol. That's such a dumb name. Might as well have just called it Despair for real.
So this is basically the briefing for the first level of the Dark Forces games. I wonder if this is actually just going to be a written account of that level? Or maybe they'll skip ahead after this.

I like how the Kobo has more options for reading customization over Kindle. But some aspects bug me. Like, the only option to display book progress percentage also shows the full title of the book. No option to not do that. And the full title gets cut off, which annoys me, so I turned it off. But that means I can only see my progress on the home page or the lock screen. It's just slightly inconvenient.

My Kobo arrived today, 2 days earlier than expected. Still setting it up and getting used to it, but I have read a bit on it already. Seems nice. Some things I'm going to have to get used to.

While my Kindle is not 100% dead, it's very intermittent. I've only been able to use it to read a handful of times since discovering it's not fully dead. The rest of the time, it's still doing the faded/blank screen bullshit. So I don't regret ordering a new ereader. I just hope it doesn't take too long to ship...
Anyways, about the story, uhhhh... oh look it's Lando

Last night, my Kindle's screen seemingly died. Light came on, but the screen was blank. Nothing I tried for hours worked - resetting, plugging it in, etc etc. The screen remained blank. So today I ordered a Kobo, because I want a new ereader ASAP, and I don't really need to be in the Kindle ecosystem. But just now I picked up my Kindle on autopilot, and tried it anyways, and it's working again. Wtf. I don't know.

The military academy having a 'test' on literal graduation day that is potentially fatal is dumb. For one, who is going to march off a cliff to their death just because someone didn't order halt in time? That's idiotic. Two, the Empire has already spent years of time and resources in training you, so letting you be killed in a meaningless test serves no purpose and is a waste. There was no logic to that passage.

I can see this is a short'un. Haven't spent much time reading, but almost a quarter of the way through. I guess that's due to how it's a novelization of a comic? I'm actually confused about that. Not sure if they're separate or not.

I know you don't want to drag out the prologue too long. But Jerec asked Morgan Katarn only one question, which Morgan refused to answer properly, and then Jerec just decapitated him without any preamble. That seems like a pretty bad interrogation! What a waste.

Neat to see Jerec from the Jedi Knight game interact with Thrawn. I wish all of those JK characters had more material. They had the potential to be interesting, but that game was pretty thin on story for the most part.

This was the book I initially intended to start with back when I first decided to expand my SW reading project. Love me some Kyle Katarn. But then I went further back to read those shitty Han novels... not that I regret that, because I would've remained curious, but I'm glad to be past them.
ANYWAYS. Love me some Kyle Katarn. Dark Forces/Jedi Knight was one my absolute favorite video games series growing up.