Why didn't I read it first time around? I'll level with you, I had no idea this existed.
Ancillary reading. I read The Old Republic: The Lost Suns, a graphic novel featuring Theron Shan, Teff'ith and Ngani Zho, all of whom cast a heavy shadow on this book. Much like Annihilation, it's mildly entertaining if ultimately pointless.
===
Why does this exist? It's a by-the-numbers romp with few surprises and even fewer interesting things to say. It's hard to see anyone beyond puberty finding the protagonist, Theron Shan, in any way interesting. He's a top ranking intelligent agent, who doesn't play by the rules and who is constantly hounded by that mean intelligence director and his lame parents. But the cool Jedi Master loves him, and in the end, he wins the day - no character growth or self-reflection required! "Lighten up Bitterman! That youngster will make a perfect addition to my cabinet."
I mean, this is mildly enjoyable (and with weird fantasy-adjacent technology, a surfeit of quickly killed Sith lords with silly names, and an absence of any sense of stakes, it's very true to TOR) but it really just reads like someone wrote up a fairly pedestrian RPG campaign. Why?
===
One of the worst trends of late-era EU is an obsession with the "seven lightsaber forms", a sort of rock-paper-scissors classification of lightsaber moves developed for a magazine article. There's a whole lightsaber battle in this book which is just a list of which form is being used, which reads like what it is: a list of made-up words. Whatever good Star Wars is, this ain't it. (I checked Wookieepedia and of course the new continuity raced to re-incorporate this shit).
===
So, farewell to the Old Republic Quartet, as it's sometimes called. What a strange set of books. We learn about the existence of an impossibly ancient and powerful Sith Emperor, poised to invade the Republic. We then discover that the Empire have sacked Coruscant, and meet Malgus, who is disenchanted and plotting a coup. We then check in with some randos up to their own things on the other side of the galaxy. We then learn, offhand, that both the Emperor and Malgus are dead. What is one to take from all of this?
No comments:
Post a Comment