JasperKazai > Recent Status Updates

Now that I'm done with the cantina tales detour, it's back to Zahn block. This and the informal sequel Choices of One are back-to-back.
I've actually read this book before, around the time it came out, probably 08 or 09. I still have the paperback on my bookshelf. But I remember NOTHING about it. Not a single thing. I distinctly remember reading it, but nothing about its contents. Very weird phenomenon for me.

The final story taking place during the Battle of Endor with flashbacks to the cantina and Hoth was mildly interesting. But the fact he treated it as some sort of metaphysical Force flashback where the characters acknowledged it was a flashback was kind of dumb. Wasn't much of a fan.
And that's that. Finally done. All in all, pretty meh. Im probably still going to read them, but not looking forward to the other Tales

'It was clear she didn't support Eyvind's ideas about my ideas.' Come on, that's just bad writing. There are a number of ways to phrase that better. Stance on my ideas, response to my ideas. It's not hard.
Noticed that this the second-to-last story. I'm glad. I am quite ready to move on from this. It hasn't all been terrible, but it's also not terribly interesting. (Ha.)

'I hoped for the good, that's what I hoped' is a sentence that should've been caught in a proofread. Looks like he reworded it after initially writing it but forgot to completely edit what was originally written.
'I'm sure you guys don't want to be arguing with me five weeks before your wedding.' Lmao, what? That doesn't make any damn sense. Five HOURS before, maybe. But five weeks?? Bad excuse

10,000 days to repay a loan is insane. That's 27 years! Unless days are somehow tracked different in the Star Wars galaxy. No one would ever give THAT much leeway on a loan. That's a loan you're not expecting to ever get paid back.

Wow... that was shit. One of my most anticipated stories in this was Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba. They're the biggest part of the iconic cantina scene! I was hoping for some explanations or whatever. But, nope, the ENTIRE story takes place after EpIV, and not even on Tatooine. The only story in this so far to not include the cantina at all. And it was like Dr. Frankenstein bullshit... what a disappointment.

I wanted to like that story more than I did. BoShek stealing Luke's speeder, and then somehow using the Force to trick the same stormtroopers into repeating the 'these aren't the droids we're looking for' interaction, is way too convenient and nonsensical. Got too cute trying to connect it all. Not everything has to be directly related! Also, what the hell kind of human name is BoShek?

I know that Obi-Wan was shown talking with the spacer before he spoke with Chewie in the movie. But having that conversation be about the Force and Obi-Wan warning him of the dark side is very lame. Also, BoShek getting ready to help Han against Greedo now makes two people in these stories that have done that. I can't remember who the other one was. Too many authors trying to insert themselves into movie events...

The Anzati story was bad. A couple of the other stories hinted at that guy being dark or evil, but did not give any other detail than that, so I was looking forward to what that was all about. She (the author of this) tried to get too weird, and when you force weirdness like that, it just comes off as tryhard and bad. What a disappointment.

I liked the premise of the story, but execution was a bit lacking. Obi-Wan noted the sandcrawler damage was done by stormtroopers, not a tank. Interesting to see Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru get killed, but once again it was by a tank instead of troopers, which waters it down. Describing Han as "athletic" 3 times is weird. Davin shooting the captain in the back being the reason Han gets to escape is kind of lame.

Not done with it yet, but I can't believe they wrote a story about the specific stormtooper that says "look sir, droids!" Lmao. What a dumb idea (in a good way). Although one thing that doesn't make sense is he was shipped off to a bumfuck nowhere assignment to hide the AT-AT flaw he discovered. But he found that out literally his first time in an AT-AT. If a new recruit can find it, surely other people have...

Yeah, it makes sense that KJA's wife would write a companion piece to his story. But the fact that it delivers what essentially is the punchline for the Jawa story is meh. Having a punchline be contained in an entirely separate story is not great. Also, her story has no other purpose aside from that. It was pointless.

KJA's story was lackluster. I liked how he found a way to have a scene with Obi-Wan that wasn't just a rehash of the cantina scenes from the movie. That was neat. But it felt like he had no plans other than that, and had no idea how to end it, so he just ended it quickly.

Empire Blues was a weird story. Not bad, just weird. I'll take not having negative feelings towards a story any time. Did not know the famous cantina song was titled 'Mad About Me' in-universe, and that fact is apparently still canon even though this story was the first time it was identified as such (and the story, like the rest of the EU, is not canon anymore).

What the fuck, Barbara Hambly? No, really, what the fuck? Didn't expect to read about a misogynist Gotal wanting to date rape a woman. That was... beyond fucked. What an awful story. And yeah, it has the praying mantis style twist ending, but that doesn't excuse it.
Also, a Gotal would not be an Imperial official of any level on any planet. The Empire is racist towards nonhumans. They'd do grunt work, but that's it.

Alright, the Wuher story is now my lowest ranked (thus far), because it kind of pissed me off. When he went to collect the droid, they started speaking in ridiculous flowery language, to the point where I thought it was a joke. Like it would turn out to be Wuher recounting and embellishing this story to someone. But nope, it was played straight. Also, him making alcohol from Greedo's literal corpse is fucked up.

Yet another story that contradicts Greedo's earlier story. In this bartender story, he is a seasoned bounty hunter that has traveled enough to call Wuher a bad bartender, and invokes Jabba's name. But in his own story, Greedo was a fresh-faced 19 year old who was a new arrival on Tatooine who barely met Jabba. Those two things clash. Having these contradictions in the same volume makes this look really amateurish

Eh, this one was a bit more shaky. I liked how it overlapped with the previous story. (I hope more of these do that.) But some aspects were... questionable. Ithorians are unable to kill, but Nadon has 4 skeletons of dead humans in his house?? Uh... what? The trees said using the plants to kill was just as bad as doing it himself. Those contradict. Also, planning to clone the dead Imp officer is really fucked up.

I actually didn't completely hate that. I would rate it above both the Greedo story and the first one. Perhaps Crispin works better in short form, or maybe it's because these are less-established characters than Han Solo. Or maybe a combination of those two factors. Regardless, it was passable.
Wolverton next, huh? That's another author I've recently reread and disliked. Really hitting the all-stars here...

Zahn's story was decent. Not amazing, but that's about the best I hoped from this. I hope more of them are on the same level, but I'm not holding my breath.
And of course, it gets followed up by the story I was dreading the most - the one by A.C. Crispin. After the abysmal Solo trilogy, I was hoping to never have to read anything from her again, but alas. I now see she also has one story in Tales from Jabba's Palace.

It's kind of funny how this story incidentally makes the previous one more ridiculous. They said it'd cost 30k to hire a band of mercs for guard duty, and the Imperial doctor balked at that. Which makes it all the more ludicrous that the previous story claimed Imps paid 60k for mere information. Also, their identity scanner thing shouldn't have been able to ID Greedo, because he was a nobody new arrival at this point

The Greedo story was also bad. The idea that hunting Han was literally his FIRST job ever is stupid, and also him seeing a vision of his dead mother hinting that he's about to die moments before he confronts Han in the cantina is also very stupid. I didn't hate it, but it's not good. It deserved to get retconned by Episode I.
Hey, next is a Zahn story. That'll be good, right?? Right? ...

The money in this makes no sense. In EpIV, when Han sets his price to take them to Alderaan at 10k, Luke remarks that they could almost buy their own ship with with that amount. In this, Greedo wants to use 20k to buy a ship, so that roughly lines up. But what doesn't make sense is the fact that Imps would pay 60,000 (20k was one third of the take) for merely informing on Rebels. That's ludicrously high!

Yeah, that Kathy Tyers story was awful. It was written in first person, but it felt inconsistent about it, which made it hard to follow. It tried to be comedic, which mostly fell flat.
I'm guessing this Greedo story got completely retconned by the fact that Greedo is shown as a child on Tatooine in Episode I.

Should've read this before Scoundrels, since most of the stories within take place right around the same time as EpIV. But these compilations were not on the list I had been using, and I forgot about them.
First up is a Kathy Tyers story. Rereading her book Truce at Bakura last year is technically what kickstarted my whole EU reading project. I don't think that's a very good book. This story doesn't seem much better

Should've finished this yesterday, but I didn't devote time to reading.
Just like in Scoundrels, I feel like the villains here are little too agreeable and permissive. Like, there's absolutely no reason why they should've accepted Bink/Tavia's claim that the sculpture was fake. She offered no proof - not even of her own supposed expertise. But they bought it without question. But, whatever, it's a short story.

This did occur to me during Scondrels, but - Bink and Tavia are really weird names for a set of human female twins. Tavia is a fairly normal-sounding name, but then Bink is completely out of left field. You'd think either both of them would have normal names, or both of them would be weird. Not this mix.

Man, I got thrown for a loop. I thought had the next handful of books all lined up. Then I saw at the end of Scoundrels that A) there's this prequel novella and B) some of those Tales of/from short story compilations take place now-ish. Turns out, the Wookieepedia list I'd been using only had novels, and excluded compilations etc etc. I found the more complete list now.
Anyways this'll be done in a sneeze

I realized as I got near the end that this was yet another ebook with 30% at the end taken up by excerpts, which is why I started looking at the timeline again to prepare. Turns out I might not be reading a Zahn book immediately next - TBD.
Anyways, pretty good book. Not amazing, but entertaining. Did not see the twist coming at all, which I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. Wasn't something you could glean.

I guess one aspect I also did not consider until just now was the fact that we know Han does not get any money from this, seeing as he's still in debt to Jabba in both TESB and RotJ.
Didn't realize that I'm in for a bit of a Timmy Zahn block. Hadn't looked at the timeline for a few books, went to consult it now. The next two novels are also Zahn's. No one else was writing (non-junior) 0 ABY novels, lol.