Silent Luke Humor



 

Cause it's just funny...

I bring you silent Luke Skywalker humor!

 

Star Wars 7 - The Force Awakens

 

 Coming in 2017, Star Wars 8 - The Force Speaks

The New Jedi Order: Traitor

   I have been looking forward to reading this one. Not because of the author but because I wanted to read what happened to Jacen. He's been missing for a while now.

   After reading a few pages I put the book down and in awe wondered, "who wrote THIS?!" It was completely different then any other New Jedi Order books I have read thus far. But, I slightly recognized the style, but could it be... I couldn't remember the name. It's been a number of years since I read The Revenge of the Sith. But I recognized the ability of this author to take a story to another level. I was right the author is Matthew Stover.

   Most of this story is about Jacen. I read on Wookieepedia that it was the first Star Wars EU to not have an appearance of an original character. It also claims this is the shortest. My paperback copy is 292. Dark Journey is close at 301.

    We are now learning more about this bird like alien named Vergere. Vergrere now claims she met Jacen's Grandfather when he was a child. But did not know of his fate with the dark side.

  Some ideas she shares with Jacen sound Jedi'ish but some stuff she comes up with sounds like it came straight from the darkside and is confusing the day lights out of Jacen. She seems to want to save one minute and turn him over to the Vong the next!

  The Jedi who has a history of reckless adventures Ganner enters in the story with rumors that Jacen Solo is still alive and takes on a personal search to find him believing if he is still alive it could make a differance in the war and help turn Jaina around from her Dark Journey.

   I don't understand why he goes to Jaina about Jacen. They had all been together when Jacen's death supposedly happens. Jaina does admit that she never told her mother what the Vong put him through before he died. She believes that they kept him alive just to hurt him and does not want to hurt her mother who still has hope that her son is still alive. So Ganner goes out on his own.

   One interesting point struck me. Is Anakin really dead? I mean, I think he is and at one point Vergere remarks that it is unknown if the dead can still feel pain after thier death... In the beginning of the book Jacen sees his brother in a much deeper level of pain then he.... He also knows about Jaina's slip into the dark side before he is cut off from the force. So... is Anakin really in pain... dead, and/or capture in someway by the Vong and being held by them. Where was the author trying to go with this... I don't have answer.

Survivor's Quest

  This one kept me up reading longer then I should have for quite a few nights. :-) It was nice that the whole story revolved around Luke and Mara. (Being they are two of my favorite characters) It was much like Tatooine Ghost where Han and Leia were the center of the story and by what I read from Wookieepedia that it was meant to be like a counter book. One about one couple and the other, the other. While Tatooine Ghost was good of course it's hard to be put up against Timothy Zahn.

  I tired to buy this book off E-bay a little over a year ago and could not get my hands on it. Being a Zahn and a newer book, 2004, you either have a hard time getting one or be wiling to pay more for it then you would for others. As I've stated before I have decided to buy only Hardbacks if one was available. I was into Visions of the Future when I realized I did not have the next book on my list. AH! E-BAY TIME! I was not looking forward to that thought.

  Then I got lucky! On a trip to a flee market I came across a book seller that had Survivor's Quest and Splinter of the Minds Eye (another I was looking for)!!!! YES!!! What are the odds? Really, what are the odds?!

  Being written after the Prequels they could incorporate parts of the Prequels. For instance Mara and Luke run into Clone Wars Battle Droids among other things.
The one thing you realize is this is not THAT far in years from the Clone Wars and the fall of the Jedi but all this time Luke has been running around trying to find out whatever he can about them and greatly in question was were the Jedi allowed to marry... duh, anyone old enough to be his father would be able to tell him the Jedi didn't marry! (Yeah, I know, it's not like Star Wars is real, haha, really I'm saying this with a little bit of amusement cause it's the biggest flaw that I have come across. There is just no way to fix that flaw!)

   This book starts off about 3 years after Visions but the story picks right up where the other stopped. Luke and Mara are again called to the unknown regions. There they find out a ship belonging to the Old Republic and the people who once called Thrawn their own wishes for them to come and let them return it.
As always it took me a little while to get who was who straight. The following will have some spoilers so.... that's your warning ;-)
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  Ok, I sorta saw the discovery of survivors coming. I know there is also a prequel to this book to explain some stuff but what I didn't understand was they had an area to keep possible Jedi and another for proven ones... While they did come across the not sure children they never said if any real Jedi were being kept in the other area?!

 

Then there was Evlyn. So many seemed to already know she had the power but she was never placed in the watch area... why? If the Jedi were so feared why was she left alone this long? And poor Evlyn, I found no illustrations of her online :-/ The image of her in the hall leading the groups to the turbolifts was a strong one and I chose it for my fan art of this book. I hope I run into her in a book again! At first I didn't like her cause she came across sort of stuck up to me (not sure why but she did) but the longer she was around the the more I liked her.


  I gotta love Luke and Mara's wake up call.
"I Love You"

  Using dead bodies as puppets... um... disturbing... kind of clever.... but disturbing...

  OK, The whole deal with Luke wanting himself and Mara to take on the Vagaari on their own was ridiculous!... Just saying. It was kind of like... well, Luke did you do that just to get you light saber back? I mean... he had a hard time getting away from these Vagaari and that was partly with the help of Evlyn. By now he knows these Vagaari love bombs... they get there and discover bombs. He thought this was a sure deal? And MARA WENT ALONG WITH IT?! Ok, it was ridiculous.... but hey, makes for good reading none the less ;-) And Luke got his light saber back!
 

   Now we enter the New Jedi Era

Before the Storm

  This is book #1 in the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. It's got a lot in it! Much more story and detail then The Crystal Star but again it was published before Planet of Twilight so again Calista never happened again. Anyway, you could retitle this, Luke and Leia Lose Their Minds, lol. The story got so complicated with new characters popping up that I was starting to feel like I was reading the Star Wars version of War and Peace! (actualy I've never read War and Peace but I hear it's hard to follow) I will have to say some things seemed a little out of character for Leia and Luke but some of that may play in the story line later so I won't put it down too quickly but I will say it annoys me no end when they have Luke speaking some sort of Shakespearean (for lack of better to call it) I am sensitive to speech patterns and it throws me when people are way off, come on, Luke is a farm boy from Tatooine, why is he speaking to his students like a collage professor? Makes you wonder, do Jedi have lessons in grammar?

A painting of a young Padmé Amidala hanging in the
 Imperial Palace during the Thrawn campaign

  I do like the depth the author is putting into emotions. There is also a lot of politics and war stratagies but not done in a way that is boring.
  One problem I see coming is, how much in 1996 was known about Padme'? In this book Luke is met by someone knowing about who his mother was. This was getting close to the making of the second set of movies but so far I'm not sure how much was revealed to this author... so far it is being done in a way to not give a lot of details to conflict with later stories yet it does still conflict! I guess we will see how it turns out...

Dark Lord - The Rise of Darth Vader

Following Revenge of the Sith this novel could have held so much promise of being a great book... sadly this being the second of James Luceno's books I have read I have come to the conclusion that he is not that great of writer. While it had it's moments they were equaled with boring battles and bland story telling... bordering on silly and pointless scenarios and too many characters but not enough quality of characterizations. But at least I didn't have flashback of 9/11 reading this one! (See my review of Labyrith of Evil)

You do get to know a Jedi named Shryne and another called Starstone who survive "Order 66". Others enter the picture but good luck keeping up with all of them and in doing so it is pointless due to very little is said about them other then they are there. Maybe they show up in later books but that is left to be seen.

I will give him this, he did an OK job at transforming Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader. And that's one thing that makes it sorta worth reading. You got to know more then you ever thought (or ever wanted to know) about what it was like to wear the black armor that is so well known.

Fan art I came across on Google.
Captures exchange between Sidious and Anakin.
Not sure what the caption says, looks Russian to me.

It's a thought provoking question on how did Anakin become such a killer... a man who did what he did because he loved someone (Padme) and ended up killing her and on top of that what was his thoughts on his Sith Master Sidious who was the master mind of it all. All this becomes an issue when his son returns later. I'm not sure I can buy all of this author reasoning but I give him a hand for trying.
I was happy to see Luke and Leia do appear in this novel! So does Chewbacca! Another thing making it worth reading.
On the cover it states that this is a "must read"! That's a little over hyped... at least in my option. While it's an OK read I just think this writer is not the best the Star War Universe has seen... sadly, far from it.

Revenge of the Sith

My Copy with holographic cover!

Wow... this book was pretty intense! Really love the authors approach in getting into the minds and feelings of the characters! A very important thing to me. I love depth! Long drawn out battles can be a bit boring partially when there is little depth but this author kept a fairly good pace with the action scenes adding the emotions and mind sets of the players in the scene.
Very different and dramatic writing style with a lot of insights in things there is no way you could spell out well in a movie. Too bad this author did not write a novelization of Return of the Jedi because I think he could do it justice! Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi are my favorites of the films. ROTJ being the top on my list which I have now watched it countless times. The official novel for ROTJ is not very good. I would love to see an updated one now that Darth Vader's story is known!
I haven't seen Revenge of the Sith in a number of years and not nearly as many times as I've seen ROTJ. I don't remember a quarter of this book even being in the movie... guess I'm going to have to go and watch it again now. But that was a good thing that I didn't remember a lot of the movie cause it made the book even better not quite knowing what was coming next.
The author sets a very dark mood with poetry and the book is segmented in three parts with a poem starting each one. The chapters are also named! Something I haven't seen in a book in a long time! In my own writings I have always liked to name chapters... just a personal thing maybe, I don't see it done much.
This has to go on my list of the best SW novels I've read so far!
By the way, I finished it on May 4th... May the 4th by with you! And this is being blogged on the Revenge of the 5th!

I, Jedi

My copy

For the past 6 months I have been writing reviews on Pinterest on each book I read in the Star Wars series. Since using pinterest is a bit hard on my phone and I have now discovered they have put a limit on text! I found this blogging app for my new Android so... hi blogger world :-) I'm not much of a blogger btw, I doubt few are even gonna read this.... but here goes... ;-)
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I, Jedi was quite a change from the past books I have read in the SW Universe. Mainly because it was writen in 1st person through the eyes of Corran Horn who throughout the book changes names quite a few times!
I'm skipping over the X-wings books right now. I may later go back and read them but I'm sticking to the orignal charictors right now (plus stories about X-wings sound so boring... I could be wrong, I haven't read them yet) this book seems to be a mixture of both. oddly and I was surprised by this, the book back tracks in time retelling the story of Champions of the Force through Corran's eyes. Then continues on from there with Corran's story. I had a bit of a time keeping up with it at points, mostly when they strayed from the main charictors but that may be due to I have not read the X-wing books and not that farmilar with all the charictors in those. I may have to return to this book again one day after I've read them.
Biggest complaint, LUKE why do some of these authors have such a hard time capturing the personality? This author did better then the last but not much.
This book was also the longest I have read at around 600 pages. I have to wonder why the author dwelled on some events in the story and skipped quickly over others. I couldn't quite figure it out.... Lastly this author is more based in reality... haha... which was a tad annoying because I enjoy reading to leave it and join another. Questioning things in the SW world that I hadnt thought about in a realistic way. Some things were thought provoking... I like the one about looking at yourself in the mirror....

 

My copy with my SW bookmark

Champions of the Force

  At last the last of the Jedi Academy Trilogy. This is the book that never ends…
 Haha, ok It’s not that bad :~) It’s just different that this author finishes off his story rather then having an abrupt ending which does kinda bug me when a story just stops like they ran out of ink :-/I don’t think this author is great with characters. He seems to get some yet others are one dimensional. He did better with Luke then in the last book but still some of it I just had a hard time visualizing some of the stuff said. I think the title of this one is a bit cheesy.
  All in all I would recommend someone read these three. Though the middle book was slow the third made up for it.

The Courtship of Princess Leia

  I  barely know where to start with this one… (If you ever want to read this stop here) While the story by it’s self was readable and somewhat interesting I had to wonder why this book was allowed to be published! I did read that this writer was suppose to write a trilogy. Glad to hear that didn’t happen. I mean the writer didn’t even get the color of Luke’s sword right! :-/ It’s green not blue! To say something good about it. The general jealous fighting between Isolder and Han was kinda amusing. I read some people complaining that it was a romance novel. Well, I don’t read romance novels but I hope they have a bit more romance in them then this one did cause a lot of it was running around with creepy women they called witches… “witches” in the Star Wars world? That just doesn’t seem to fit, maybe that’s just me. And also, what’s up with bumping this up to PG/mild PG13? Then there is the relationships between all these people! Luke and Leia are twins that are strong in the force yet Leia doesn’t even feel when her brother arrives on the planet! But she does feel when he dies? But yet he doesn’t die, no, nature around him heals him… come on, they are likening this to Luke’s

First cover for The Courtship of Princess Leia but
was thought to look too much like a romance novel.

battle with Vader and the Empioror but then when he really has a fatal injury the force saves his life… and after this revelation he’s suddenly Super Man! Make that Super Jedi! Is this guy saying it’s impossible to kill Luke?! I think the author went over the bounds & made this plain ridiculous! And Isolder’s mother was killing people to keep them off the throne and hated Jedi but then turned on a dime for really no reasons at all 8~/ I did think the whole idea of Han wining a planet and kidnapping Leia was kinda cute. But what happened to needing money to buy a planet for Leia’s people? Isolder was brought into the picture because of

Han and Leia's Wedding

this! But at the end when Han was paid by the witches Leia tells Han to keep it for their wedding… uh, what about her people? I have a few other  issues with this book, I won’t even bother going into everything! … oh wait, Luke was late to his sister’s wedding due to a mistake?! He is Super Jedi now who can tell people about their future children! How can that really happen and why didn’t they wait for him? I mean Leia couldn’t wait for her only living relative, her twin brother too to start her wedding?! Ugh!

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On to; Tatooine Ghost