Status Updates From Luke Skywalker and the Shad...

'And I don't like redheads.' Har har, Stover, we all know what you did there.
This was... alright. I didn't love it, but I certainly didn't hate it It has FAR less issues than something like Courtship. (Which I'm only comparing because it was what I read directly before this.) I was a bit disappointed with how some aspects were handled, though. All in all, it's alright.

Leia wakes up and tells Han that he was with her when all else was dark. It is ridiculous to think that, three years later from this point in the timeline, they are A) still not married and B) Leia legitimately considers marrying Isolder after knowing him for ~10 minutes. So fucking stupid. God damn the Courtship of Princess Leia is a fucking awful book.

A thing that has continually annoyed me is how Stover gets cute with fake similes. Such as 'fell upon the civilians like a bunch of Nomarian thunder sharks in feeding frenzy.' It's always something made up like that. Obviously you can figure it out, but it's just dumb to cram in a bunch of random pointless shit like that. It'd be one thing if it's a character saying it, as a quirk, but it's always in narration.

Holy shit, Luke did the Captain America 'no, I don't think I will' meme ~11 years before Endgame!

This meltmassif stuff has been kind of stupid the whole time, and learning more about it right now is not helping. Reminds me a bit of the Yuuzhan Vong and their biotechnology - they're both a similar kind of stupid. I don't think it belongs in Star Wars, IMO.

A problem with this book, and the fact that it's written by Stover, is that there have been a few Clone Wars era references that are completely lost on me b/c I never really cared about the Clone Wars era EU. Like, just now, it was obvious that 'Kar Vastor' was supposed to be a significant namedrop. But I had NO idea who that is. Turns out, yep, it's from Shatterpoint, one of the Clone Wars novels that Stover wrote.

Confused as to why Han's first instinct was to run out of the Falcon. He knew they wanted to steal it. I guess they didn't have any better options, but it should've been expected that they were going to fly off in the Falcon once Han and co. escaped. Duh. I also am not sure if the Mindorese are supposed to be good or not? At this point, absolutely fuck them. They got rescued and their response is to steal the ship.

Ok, I said I was waiting for reveals, but... a massive expositional dump out of nowhere was a bad way to do that. So much info crammed into one chapter, and just as internal narration. Very inelegant. I'm rather disappointed by that. Also, another hitherto unheard of Force discipline from the Unknown Regions? Come on, now... really? THAT'S what you're going with? Laaaaame.

I know a book is doing its job when I can't think of anything to complain about. I also don't have much to comment on, because I'm waiting for the reveals.
I guess one thing I have been thinking about - this is (roughly) 1.5 years before the X-Wing series starts. Rogue Squadron here has Hobbie and Wes, but they are not in X-Wing until book 5. I wonder why. Maybe it was simply Stackpole's choice to not include them.

It may not be perfect, but it's fun. There's a real mystery here that's keeping you engaged. On top of it, Stover is clearly a Star Wars fan, specifically an EU fan as well. It comes across on the page. Wolverton may have liked the movies, but it felt like he was making a bunch of shit up as he went along as well. On the other hand, it feels like Stover knows what he's talking about.

Giving Chewie actual dialogue where you try and spell out the Wookiee noises instead of just leaving it narration (like most SW novels do )is a bad idea. It doesn't look good and it makes everything more absurd.

Hah, 'ImpSymp' is a good one. Obviously short for sympathizer, but in modern slang, simp works just as well, lol.

This has been decent so far. Definitely enjoying it more than Courtship (not that the two have any business being compared - just that it's what I read recently). But this guy's writing style is a little... ehh. He's trying a bit too hard to be funny. Like, the internal narration rant that Han just went on about Mandos was really fucking cringey and not funny. But it was supposed to be humorous.