REVIEW: Aftermath: Star Wars: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens by Chuck Wendig
Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The second Death Star has been destroyed, the Emperor killed, and Darth Vader struck down. Devastating blows against the Empire, and major victories for the Rebel Alliance. But the battle for freedom is far from over.
As the Empire reels from its critical defeats at the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance—now a fledgling New Republic—presses its advantage by hunting down the enemy’s scattered forces before they can regroup and retaliate. But above the remote planet Akiva, an ominous show of the enemy’s strength is unfolding. Out on a lone reconnaissance mission, pilot Wedge Antilles watches Imperial Star Destroyers gather like birds of prey circling for a kill, but he’s taken captive before he can report back to the New Republic leaders.
Meanwhile, on the planet’s surface, former rebel fighter Norra Wexley has returned to her native world—war weary, ready to reunite with her estranged son, and eager to build a new life in some distant place. But when Norra intercepts Wedge Antilles’s urgent distress call, she realizes her time as a freedom fighter is not yet over. What she doesn’t know is just how close the enemy is—or how decisive and dangerous her new mission will be.
Determined to preserve the Empire’s power, the surviving Imperial elite are converging on Akiva for a top-secret emergency summit—to consolidate their forces and rally for a counterstrike. But they haven’t reckoned on Norra and her newfound allies—her technical-genius son, a Zabrak bounty hunter, and a reprobate Imperial defector—who are prepared to do whatever they must to end the Empire’s oppressive reign once and for all.
Review:
Dear Chuck Wendig,
I bought this book for two reasons. I have wanted to try your writing for a while, but I usually avoid stories which are marketed as being in the horror genre, and I got an impression that this is what you mainly write. At the same time I enjoy scifi and I enjoy action/adventure, so I decided that a “Star Wars” book would be a better choice for me to sample your writing.
But even more importantly I saw the mention of your book on File 770, specifically the controversy over those reviews which were, amongst other things, not happy with the book’s gay protagonist and I thought – *sign me up*. Of course I had to go read those reviews on Amazon and yes, I found many along the lines of these “omg, why did the gay need to be explicitly introduced”. Do you know what this “explicit introduction” entailed? The hero telling a woman that he is not into women when she flirted a little bit with him in between them doing other stuff. That’s it. That would be the “in your face, explicit introduction of homosexual agenda” – three or four lines. Oh, and the sister of another female protagonist is married to a woman and they are briefly shown in the story, because they are relevant, and there is the boy in the orphanage who hopes to be adopted. He has a brief memory flash to “both his fathers” being killed. I thought the introduction of LGBT people was extremely well done, personally. Moreover I would love to see more of it, not less, in the next books.
Apparently there was also a controversy about people being unhappy that Disney decided to reboot the franchise and start the story anew. There were a lot of good books written in the original universe and people were unhappy that those stories were not canon anymore. I just want to stress that while I understand how many fans feel, I came to this book without reading a *single* one in the previous expanded universe. I was not interested in those books – I am one of those casual fans of the movies who thought the original movies were epic (still remember watching them in Russian translation in a movie theater back in Ukraine), I also liked the prequels (did not think they were just as epic but certainly liked them). I had nothing to compare this book with; I certainly have no regrets about Disney deciding to start anew.
And now we are coming to the complaint which many reviewers had and I found myself agreeing with it unfortunately – the way this book is written. I have to say that I have not found myself to be as conflicted about a book’s form vs. its substance for a long time. Usually if I am engaged with the story and characters, I forgive a lot. I loved the characters in this book, I loved that there were so many awesome women on the opposite sides of the war. I loved Norra’s and Jas’ bravery and resourcefulness, to me they came out as real people with flaws and good qualities, same as Sinjir and Tesmin. I thought the action was exciting and fun and at the same time war was not glamorized. The view of the war that book seemed to take was very close to how I feel about the war. I did think that so many Interludes were distracting, but I gathered that this is something that the author had to include in the book because of “story people” (not sure if that’s correct, but I took it that the overall continuity of the series is being watched over or something like that), in order to hint at the things that the next Star War movies will bring. So for the most part I enjoyed the “substance” of the story when I was able to read it without hearing, in my mind, the sound that fingernails on the chalkboard make.
I am sure that writing so much of the story in the present tense using fragmented sentences was a deliberate artistic choice on the author’s part and I respect that. The present tense actually worked pretty well for me in this one, because it increased the urgency of what was taking place in the story. However, I have to say that I personally prefer reading a book written in complete sentences, not chopped up. I am downgrading this to the grade you see not just because I did not *like* the style, but because I was wincing/cringing while I was reading it more often than not, Given I had paid so much money (I paid thirteen dollars for this book, although I would have been annoyed even if I paid much less), I was hoping for a much more enjoyable reading experience. I will leave you with a bunch of quotes which I retyped from the book at random which I hope will show you why no matter how much I want to know what happens in the next two books of the trilogy, I most likely will be trying to get it from the library.
“The bounty hunter has been here for some time. Waiting. Barely sleeping. She’s tired. Her muscles ache. But this is the job.”
“Her life is similar. But she knows not to give in to it. Paranoia is a deadly emotion. Deadly for you. But deadly for those around you,too.”
“That thrills her, honestly. It shouldn’t, probably. Bad news is, by its destination, declaratively and objectively bad. But it’s the reaction that matters. People are made under duress. They are formed by crisis.”
“Fifteen meters.
Both her hearts beat fast in tandem, outracing the speed with which she can pull the trigger.
Twelve meters.
Boom.
They shriek and click and swarm.
A hand at her shoulder – a voice, numb and almost lost underneath the ringing of her ears.
It’s the boy.
“We have to go,” he’s saying. “There’s too many.”
“I can do this!” she roars.
But she can’t. She knows she can’t.
You have to know when to run, girl.
Now is the time to run.”
Occasionally I managed to forget about the sentence structure – when the action sped up (there was almost always action, but some events were of higher speed than others), and when I was very worried about the characters, but the book surely did not let me forget about it for too long.
Grade: C
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I’m like you, I’ve been wanting to read Chuck Wendig for awhile now, but his previous books aren’t my cuppa. I might be able to get into this one though. I haven’t read a Star Wars book in literally decades, I’d like to try again. And the stacatto sentence structure doesn’t bug me, it instead makes me think fondly of Lee Child.
One thing (which I’m sure will point out my ignorance on the subject!) – is this book a summary of the soon to be released movie? Or a spin off of the same characters? Or is it completely different characters from the movie? Do you know? Curious.
You know, I find it curious that you bounced off the style that hard, because I did too. I have other problems with this book, and I am one of those who owns the comics, plays the games and have read the previous books – Grand Admiral Thrawn is a great character, and screw you, Disney, I RP as Chiss in SWTOR, favorite race – but that aside, I just could not get through the stylistic choice.
(There is some other stuff like omg, Stage Three proton torpedo, really? No shroud on the covert ship? I mean it’s not like it’s a Death Star tractor beam. Not to be pedantic, but that’s adding insult to injury. The successful use of Stage Three Proton Torpedo to escape a tractor beam by Luke Skywalker is described during his almost-capture by Chimaera, which is, ta-da, Admiral Thrawn’s flag ship, which was written by Timothy Zahn. Is Timothy Zahn’s work cannon or is it not? Pick one, Disney, seriously. To be fair, Lando’s Lady Luck was equipped with Stage 3, but I am almost sure that it came up later, past the point they are declaring to be the cut off. We’d have to ask a real Star Wars geek to be sure, because I am more of a casual user and my SW knowledge is spotty. Anyway, a lot of those details were likely not up to the author at all, because in the for-hire work the parent company usually dictates technical content.)
Maybe it’s a Slavic thing, but the cadence of the narrative is completely off for me. Unreadably off. And I’m usually quite found of short staccato sentences.
Using anon, as I am not here in my business capacity.
@Michele Mills: it is definitely not the summary of the movie – main characters are all new , however from what I read/heard it is possible that some/all of the interludes hint at the events to come in the movie . In one of the interludes we meet briefly two of the main characters for example. Again, I could be wrong but I believe new movie is set thirty years after “Return of the Jedi”. The book is set pretty much right after. I believe one of the point of the criticism was that we mostly don’t see main characters in the book. Personally I was delighted when I read that information because one of the main reasons why I did not bother with the old canon books is because I heard that so many of them continue stories of the main characters and I was not interested in flogging the dead horse . To me their stories reached pique in the movie – I don’t mind them as supporting characters but I was extremely eager to read something new .
@Anonymoussorta: I am so not knowledgeable in spotting what you just described . Sorry! But yes bounced off the style hard. Why would you say it is a Slavic thing? Russian is my first language and no it is not :).
@Sirius Because there are certain linguistic patterns that form early in life and they tend to be slightly different for Germanic speakers and Slavic speakers, for example. I don’t have the link handy, because I read this some years ago in a high school ESL class, but there was a study where they were trying to determine if the native language family affected patterns of learning a new language. They had people of similar linguistic backgrounds rate different literary pieces in English and found that people of the same linguistic origin tended to rate the same scenes higher. The sample was relatively small, but the results seemed to indicate that the native language tends to affect which narrative styles we like and dislike.
Curiously, people also tended to rate the literary work lower in English if they first read it in their native language, even if it wasn’t written in English originally. Again, this is anecdotal evidence at best, due to small sample size, and YMMV, but I found I couldn’t read Dumas in English. I couldn’t get through Three Musketeers in English and I can quote the damn thing in Russian, because I read it so many times. Same for Pushkin and Lermontov. I just can’t do it. I rephrase it in my head.
@Anonymoussorta: oh oh. I misunderstood ! Sorry. I thought you meant that Wendig wrote it as a Slavic thing. It is definitely possible – I cannot read “Three musketeers” in English and can quote it in Russian too. Lol.
I tried listening to this in audiobook, and it was just as jarring when it was read to me.
@S. J. Pajonas: really sorry to hear this.