JasperKazai > Recent Status Updates

Han overhears a group of people talking in a cantina. First they comment on how scruffy he looks, then start gushing over Isolder. This is ridiculous nonsense. One guy says that street vendors 'down on Corsucant' are selling Isolder posters, but they are on Coruscant. You wouldn't say 'down on' about the planet you are currently on. Wonder if he originally had that scene set elsewhere, then forgot to rewrite that.

God damn, I don't remember this book sucking THIS much. It's so bad thus far. Both Han and Leia are acting nothing like their actual selves. Leia falling so quickly for Isolder and just brushing Han to the side kind of shows that Wolverton must have had a fairly low opinion on women...
Speaking of Wolverton, he died ~4 years ago. Second SW author I've read in a row that has died early. Weird coincidence

I always kind of knew this, but it's never really struck me fully until now how... "interesting" the concept of Hapes/the Hapan people are. It's basically just whitewashed Japan in space. Obviously the Hapan - Japan connection is blatant. Their ships are called Battle Dragons. They are a cluster of planets (like the archipelago). They were isolationist. But they are very white-coded, often having red or blonde hair.

If Vader had hunted down this Jedi Master and killed him, there's no fucking way he would've just left the Master's lightsaber laying around. I know this was written in 94, so it predates Order 66 by 11 years. But taking (or at least destroying) lightsabers of the Jedi you are killing is just common fucking sense.

Solo Command leads directly into this novel - it even says so at the end of it. I've only read this book once before. I put it off for a very long time (I would see it on shelves quite often). I knew it was important, because it's about Han and Leia getting married. But I just wasn't interested in it. I remember not really liking it when I did finally read it - bit of a slog. Let's see what I think now.

Now Jan 1, so I can mark this complete. I totally finished it today, and not last night! Wink wink. Yeah, it's cheating a bit. But I don't care. Last year, I was reading Stormlight Archive 5, and I didn't finish it until like the second week of February. So I didn't get the achievement for finishing a book during January. I got all of the other months. So, now I have taken steps to ensure I at least get January!

The Lara Notsil plot was stupid until the end. That they'd let her get away with all her crimes is fucking nonsense, and that Donos would want to be with her after finding out the truth makes him a dumb simp. I had completely forgotten about her character in general. Now I know why - it's so bad that I blocked it out.
This is the end; rest is excerpts from novels. Not going to mark it complete until tomorrow, hehe.

I didn't know this the first time I read this, but all of the tension here is rather empty. This book leads directly into the Courtship of Princess Leia, written 5 years earlier, which is where Zsinj dies. He was created for that book, and was given more importance in retrospect in later-written novels.
Oh shit, I need to slow down. Don't want to finish before January. This ebook has excerpts that pads out the end.

Allston is trying to be cute with this mouse droid takeover plan of Lara, but like with everything else about Lara, it doesn't make any fucking sense. It states that Tonin has replaced 'many' of the mouse droids' wheels with magnetic strips, so they can traverse the outside of the ship. Ok. How? Where are they getting all of the materials for such an endeavor? That shit doesn't just appear out of thin air.

Yeah yeah Wedge finally turning the tables on Janson and pranking him is fun and all, but it really makes no sense that Janson was not even a little bit suspicious or skeptical about any step of it. Like, come on. Dude would realize something was going on way before the end of it.

I take issue with Janson's assertion that you have to get drunk or get slapped by a woman you're trying to court in order to be 'living life.' In my book, that's called being an asshole, and not in a fun way.

Ok, they have a discussion about Face's decision and timing, and Wedge straight-up says it was a bad call. But he also says Face's logic wasn't bad, which is just blatantly incorrect. The logic was 'I know she's potentially evil so I have to prevent it ASAP,' but waiting until she was in an armed vehicle is utter stupidity. Zero logic. Allston just took the easy way out for plot reasons. Anyways. Moving on...

Face finds out about Lara/Gara, but waits until they're mid-mission in X-wings to do anything about it. That makes NO fucking sense at all!! Why the hell would you wait for her to be in an armed vehicle capable of running away?! You do that kind of thing aboard the captial ship. This only happened so there could be the drama of the comm mistake with Donos, and Lara being able to escape. This is so goddamn stupid.

What is it with Allston and Ewoks? First there's all the crap with the fake Lt. Kettch and 'yub, yub, Commander.' Now there was a Sullustan whose brainwashing delusion was that he had Ewoks dancing in his nose. Ewoks were basically unknown until Return of the Jedi. That was only 3 years before this story in the timeline. Ewoks would still be new knowledge and wouldn't be so ingrained in the culture at this point yet!

Oh god, he's continuing to develop Face's utterly ridiculous skill of 'reading' people. Now he sees Lara doing 'Corsucant charm singing.' First it was everyone from a planet walking the same way, now it's a secret high society way of flirting. This is so goddamn stupid.
I noticed that Han keeps being addressed as Solo in the narration. That's weird. I don't recall many other books doing that. Feels oddly distant.

I get that this incineration room is a fun cinematic setpiece, but it's really fucking stupid. The Wraiths fell into a trap door pit. Stormtroopers had them at gunpoint. They want the Wraiths dead. But what do they do? Demand they throw up the demolitions, then close the door without checking the bag. Just fucking shoot them. Or capture them, check for sure, then execute them. What they did makes no goddamn sense.

Oh isn't it hilarious how they stole a landspeeder from an innocent, hardworking small business owner? Seriously, why include that? It just makes them look like assholes.

'At some point, Voort saBinring's squad mates will secure permission to visit the place of his birth.' Why is that a foregone conclusion? Yes, it's where the plot is going to go, but Zsinj has no reason to assume that will be the case. I feel like that's a standard in Allston's novels - characters make leaps in logic that guide where the plot goes, but they have no actual reason to make such assumptions.

The formatting of this ebook is strange. The text is very packed in, even at the highest spacing setting. Something I noticed, the capital ship names are italicized. Which is what I was used to back in the print versions. The past few ebooks have not been doing that. It didn't even occur to me until I saw the italics again.
Allston enjoys early action. Last time the ambush, this time the sleeper assassin.

Changed the edition to one I don't even have, because it's the only one not infected with the shitty Legends title. Once again, fuck off with that shit!
I've been reading some stuff about these books as I'm rereading them, and apparently, this novel leads directly into The Courtship of Princess Leia. Didn't know that. I put that book off for a long time, and I remember it being a slog. Might give it another go... IDK

And that's that. Moves right on into the next one.

He accidentally wrote 'New Alliance' squadrons instead of New Republic once here. Combined New Republic and Rebel Alliance, lol.
The climactic action scene only just ended, and it's about to be over. It always catches me off guard how little breathing room they give the ending in these novels.

Shalla, in her disguise as a Hawk-bat pirate, was a complete stranger to Zsinj's forces before this mission. She had not been present at the dinner. This insertion team that is responsible for taking control of the new SSD COMPLETELY relied on her to single-handedly clear the way for them. That makes absolutely no fucking sense. You would not rely on an utterly unknown factor for such an important mission.

Not sure what we're supposed to take away from the whole Castin Donn thing. The only characterization we got of him was that he was racist (well, xenophobic, but that's Star Wars' equivalent of racist), arrogant, and insubordinate. His death was 1,000% his own fault and no one else's. Are we supposed to feel bad for him? Because I sure as hell don't.

I wonder if the earlier bit about Phanan lamenting the fact he had no future was some sort of meta commentary about how he was originally planned to die in the previous book, but Allston changed his mind and killed Jesmin instead. I also wonder if Phanan's bitterness about a lack of love life was some of Allston's own venting. Far as I can tell, he never married, and he would've been ~37 at the time this was written.

I know we're not supposed to examine this, but... it would be impossible to fly a starfighter through a forest (below tree level) without hitting trees. It's possible on a speeder bike, because those are hardly bigger than a person. But a starfighter is like the size of a tank at minimum. The trees would have to be so far spread out that it wouldn't be considered a forest, or you'd have to go SUPER slow.

In the previous book, when they were undercover as the Night Caller, they had to rendezvous with a Zsinj-allied ship called the Hawk-bat. In this book, they named their fake pirate gang the Hawk-bats. That's confusing. Why use that name again? Also, in the wide galaxy of Star Wars fake animal names you could've used, why did you double up on Hawk-bat of all things? So many better options...

As I said before, there's a LOT about this Lara/Gara plot that is really fucking stupid. If I still feel like writing a review by the time I finish, I'll go into detail. Zsinj gets in contact via her cover's 'brother.' She tells Tyria 'oh, that's my brother, Firstname Lastname.' No one would call their sibling by their FULL name like that. That's so dumb! Also, why is she sad? She sent the initial message to Zsinj!

I know I criticized the previous book for having a sequence of filler D&D objectives, because it felt like nothing but padding. But reading off a list of objectives the Wraiths accomplished off-screen feels just as cheap, just in a different direction.

Silvery white with blood red trim is a fucking choice color scheme for an R2 unit. That would be awesome. But the problem is he described it as 'arterial red.' Blood is blue when it's in your arteries; it only becomes red once exposed to oxygen. So that's actually a bad description, lol. Tried to be fancy and screwed it up.