Agents of Chaos 2: Jedi Eclipse

  The best part of this book was the preview of Balance Point by Kathy Tyers at the end... hmm... James Lucendo, still not a fan...

  I guess a lot happened in this book but it had little to nothing to do with the book before it, Agent's of Chaos I: Hero's Trail even though this is suppose to be part 2! One thing it did have in common was at the end there is a scene that goes through what you just read... but it really wasn't needed in this one. I was able to keep up with events for once.

  A lot of stuff ties in with previous books going way back.


Cover are of Lightsabers from the Young
Jedi Knight series where Tenel Ka
loses her arm

  First off, and yes again... The Courtship of Princess Leia. At last the guy Leia ALMOST married returns to the picture. Leia goes to Hapes to ask them for help with the coming invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong. Isolder now married to the Teneniel and having one Jedi daughter with one arm, Tenel Ka who apparently must have been in one of the junior novels or something due to the fact they speak of an event where Jacen cut it off and I completely have never heard that before. Unless they are doing to her like with Mara sick with no back story. Last I heard of the child Luke was giving some prophetic spill about what great things this child would do... I did not like The Courtship of Princess Leia. So is it my luck that the new films will be completely written around The Courtship of Princess Leia??? I mean this book inspired some of the stories in The Clone Wars TV show! WHY?!?! Anyway... getting back on topic...
   Ok, now I know (through a Google search that yes, her arm was cut off in one of the Young Jedi Knights books. ways to get adults to read a kids book? lol....
  While Leia is in Hapes Han in continuing to search for his new friend's family who has most likely either been capture/killed by the Yuuzahn Vong or made it to a refugee camp.

Ziro the Hut from The Clone Wars

  Ah, speaking of The Clone Wars, this book explained the Drag Queen Hut, Ziro! Turns outs Huts are both male and female! Who knew?! Well, somewhere I missed it at least. So... at some point in Jabba the Hutt's life he was female?? But wait... didn't Jabba have a baby in The Clone Wars? Was Jabba female at that point? I'm getting confused... I'll leave it at that....

  Now we are brought back to the The Corellian Trilogy with Anakin and Jacen. A war on morals are heating up and even Han's cousin is playing a part.

Ring in the New Year!

Happy New Year 2013!

 It’s been a crazy year! Hard to comprehend I’ve been reading the Star Wars Novels for over a year now!

Ringing in the New Year

 I had a pretty good Christmas. Spending it with family for the first time in several years! Family in both blood and made. I didn’t realized how much I missed some of them! But I miss NY as well as in some ways I’m just not a southern girl... in many ways really. It's funny though that I left NY/NJ getting away from Sandy and Christmas day in AL greeted us with Tornados! Such a wild year!

  But, I wanted to share my prize of the season. :-) I saw these first on a blog about black Friday and thought that’s neat… I’ll never see them as I don’t often do black Friday. I think it’s silly after trying my hand at it a couple of times.

 I did go to the store later that day and found these! BUT I did not buy them as I just still thought they were overpriced for me. Christmas came and went and I was looking over the clearance and came across toys half price! I started looking for these as I had been watching them for a while… YES! HALF PRICE!

  One set is classic prequel characters and the other is Clone Wars characters which I started watching in Oct. on my trip to NY. What bugs me in nether have an adult Anakin Skywalker in it! There is a child Anakin and a Darth Vader but not a young adult Anakin... oh well, maybe I'll get one later... Oh, and I did go back later and find a cute R2D2 candy dispenser!

 Here's to 2013! May it be as crazy as 2012 but in a much better way!

Sandy and The Clone Wars 2/3

  What a month Oct ended up being! So much I can’t even remember it all at this point! As I said in my last blog post, I was up in NY working a show in Sleepy Hollow. Well… the show went well. Sold out nights, fairly warm weather for most of it, and good being with my Horseman’s Hollow family again. BUT then came the last week…

 You see, last year the last two nights of our show was canceled due to the freak Halloween Blizzard of 2011. So the chances of that happening again plummeted even lower! At least this year, our busiest night did not have to be canceled as it was last year but that Sat. night leaving I left with the mindset that I was not coming back for the next show… and I didn’t. The show was canceled the next afternoon. That night I found myself trying to find a hurricane shelter… The following week was full of firsts and hopefully LASTS… like finding out the Red Cross has MAJOR PROBLEMS! (If you want to give to help those effected by Hurricane Sandy this is not the group to go too sadly… basically they give you money and kick you out to the streets… it was a bazaar experience! I don’t want to put down all Red Cross volunteers as I’m sure some have their heart in the right place but some do not and sadly they seemed to be the ones in charge and making the rule and breaking them at will.) Maybe should take a hint with the color, red *sith*? JK... ;-) but I do hold some bad feeling towards the Red Cross.

I spent the actual storm in a shelter in a local Highschool. I went through
Katrina but this storm sounded so much worse noise wise. I ended up
sticking my earbuds in and watching Clone Wars.

 I ended up spending Halloween in a shelter on top of an ice rink. This is the first year I was unable to dress up for Halloween :~( It did help though that a young girl volunteering at the shelter gave a whole bunch of candy and Halloween bags were handed out. (You know you’re having a hard week when you nearly break out in tears when finding Star Wars goodies in your Halloween bag!

 With the events of Sandy and an oncoming blizzard I decided it was time to return to AL for a little while. On the drive back I finished up watching the 3^rd season of The Clone Wars. As I have said before, watching the show took up all my reading time, I didn’t get to read any in Oct. though I did bring a novel to do so.

 And I failed to mentioned somewhere in all that was the announcement of the NEW Star Wars movies 7, 8, & 9 and the merge with Disney! What a month… but I’ll save my thoughts on that news for another post! For now, on to my thoughts on The Clone Wars Season 2 & 3…

 I have noted that the first season of The Clone Wars, Anakin was portrayed as… well, too nice. The 2^nd season brought a darker Anakin for the first part of the season. I also noticed the animation improved a slight bit as well. But the ‘nice’ Annie returned for the rest of the season.



Padme' and Satine Kryze
Season 3 #05 - Corruption

 It was nice though to bring in an old love of Obi Wan! That’s right! Obi Wan had a girl as well! I would like to know if there was ever a book to cover the story behind that? You know, that is what I like about this show that it gives you a better insight of the characters and back stories that the 3 movies didn’t/couldn’t give you. You see the likeable qualities of Anakin and Obi Wan. Maybe it’s just me but Obi Wan never had much of a character… I mean not with a whole lot of depth…
 In the season #3 finale we get to see a familiar face! Chewbacca makes an appearance!

Captain Wilhuff Tarkin makes
an apperance in “The Citadel”

  The one question that kept eluding me about this show was when watching the first and even the second season was, is this show more for kids then adults? I think I’d have to say the first season is quite geared to kids and the 2^nd bringing more of the Star Wars Saga into the stories but still a bit kid’s adventure feel to it, then we get to the 3^rd season… WOW, George Lukas goes wild! The 3^rd season is not for kids… well, let’s rate it at PG. It gets more violent and the stories darken. And put your palm to your face and say “WHY?”! Of all the characters and worlds and beings brought to the Star Wars Universe, why did they embrace the Witches of Dathomir from The Courtship of PrincessLeia?!?! That book was about the worst! Witches just don’t seem right in the SW Universe! While I’m glad they are bringing the books into the stories, WHY the witches??? Ugh! They greatly annoy me if you haven’t noticed! But it is interesting that we find out that Darth Maul was one of them! Also there is a hint that Darth Maul is STILL ALIVE! They only hint at it and so I don’t know if that is the case (I’m guessing more will come in season 4) but it fits into a comic I recently got my hands on where Darth Maul was still alive when Luke was a baby… again another book/comic ties in? Interesting.

  In another 3 set of episodes in season #3 Anakin ends up on a very force strong world with this family, a daughter who leans to the light side and a son who leans toward the dark side and their father who keeps them in line… It was quite weird and honestly didn’t make complete since but in it Anakin learns what will happen to him and those he loves in the future, an interesting concept even though the episode didn’t make much since otherwise. What does Annie do? He sides with the dark side to try to save the day… this fellow has some personality flaws that luckily his son does not inherent!

This funny remake of a classic SW shot was found on
 http://starwarsprequelappreciationsociety.wordpress.com/

 I have to admit, the computer graphics are bugging me! The shows are good enough in story to keep me watching but I just don't like computer grapics.

 So now I’m finished with all three seasons and looking forward to season 4. I think I heard it was just released on DVD in Oct. and season 5 is now airing.

The Clone Wars - Movie and Season 1

 

This is me, and yes, it scares even me!





Actors have such crazy lives! I am currently working at a premier haunted house in Sleepy Hollow NY. As a child I did not even know there WAS a REAL Sleepy Hollow! Before I moved up here my mom was looking at a map of NY and said something about Sleepy Hollow and I was like, there is really a Sleepy Hollow?! I remember the cartoon and could hardly watch it when I was little! I found the ledged of the Headless Horseman a tad bit too scary for me! I’m not a lover of going to haunted houses either even today.  It’s interesting how I’ve come to now to specialize in them! Well, make that haunted houses based on history, the scary side of history… but that’s a long story… but oh the irony!

  Anyway, I spent part of this summer in my home town and returned for the show in Sleepy Hollow which meant a long road trip from AL to NY! I came across a copy of The Clone Wars (Movie and TV show) before I left and put them on my computer to watch if I felt like it. I knew nothing about the whole Clone Wars deal. I knew there was a show and a movie but otherwise that was about it. Oh, I can thank the movie for sparking them to sell lightsabers at Halloween some years back… oh if they had those when I was a kid… wait, what am I talking about, it’s fun to play with now! ;-D Better late than never?

 On the road I watched Episode 1 & 2 cause I haven’t watched them in a long time. I’m wondering if I had ever seen all of The Phantom Menace before because I didn’t remember the beginning. The Clone Wars movie comes in between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith so since I like to watch/read things in order I started up the movie not sure what I was about to see.

Not putting The Clone Wars down, but this is kinda funny!

 George Lukas must be having a grand time! Maybe it’s because of my interest in movie making since the age of 8 that I feel for him and his ability to make these movies with all the technological advances made since A New Hope in the 70’s. I grew up with a computer in the home (I remember having a Commodore 64 playing some sort of space ship war game on it) At the age of 8 I thought computers could do a whole lot in film making that they really couldn’t do. I wanted to upload videos and edit them on one, I wonder now what I was thinking because that was not really quite the way it was done back then but it was a good idea and did eventually come to pass… While today I am not a fan of computer animation (I feel there is something in hand drawn work that can’t be done with a computer, (life and emotion one can pick up from the work of a fine artist’s hand) I have to give them credit that computers somewhat worked with this. I didn’t completely hate it! There are some Disney (big Disney fan here)/Pixar movies that I cringe at the sight of because they made a mess out of it by using computer animation! In most cases I pretty much hate computer animation! I’m sure in time computer graphics will improve, it’s not perfected at all, if it ever can be. I do understand why Lukas has gone this route. For a galaxy far far away it gives much freedom! The battle scenes can be done with unlimited imagination! The cost of makeup artists, costumers, and numerous actors are cut along with fighting weather and Murphy’s Law on a film shoot. On the other hand emotion is limited on the human computerized form. It was much like watching the graphics of a video game like Knights of the Old Republic which I really enjoyed and have played all the way through twice. Playing KOTOR did help me except the computerized forms in this, if that make any since… anyway…

  The movie wasn’t too bad. It took Anakin’s story in a direction I wouldn’t have thought. The thought of Anakin teaching another padawan is weird for lack of better word to express it.

 I have all three seasons of the TV show and since I kinda liked the movie and was interested in where they were going with this I started on the first season.

 It seems I found at a young age that Star Wars is a great way to de-stress. I get caught up in it now and then at various times in my life. When they pulled it out of the vault in the early 90’s to show on TV is when it started, then they announced there will be three more made in the late 90’s, then when those three finally make it to TV… This last kick I’m on of Star Wars is combined from a number of things. Partly fueling it is that the internet has made it so much easier to find thing such as the novels and movies. Curl up and chill with Star Wars, nerdy? Don’t get me started… and I mean it!

 I just finished watching the last episode of the first season. Watching the show has basically taken up most of my reading time so I haven’t started on a new novel yet since I finished Shadows of the Empire before I left AL. Due to being busy it took me a while to get my review of it up in case you notice the date I published it was very resent. I actually finished it a while back.

  One thing that got me with this show was the showing of the good side of Anakin Skywalker. This is not the Anakin from Attack of the Clones! At times you wonder if this character is slightly based half on Luke. Ha! I actually like THIS Anakin and see why Padme does! At first it’s hard to see how you could ever get Darth Vader from this …well, hero! As the shows go on they do start the show his weaknesses, mostly centering around Padme.

Yes! Someone else had the same idea!

 Really, you have to wonder if at any time Leonardo Dicaprio was ever considered for Anakin?! Some reason I have ALWAYS thought Anakin should be Leo, I don’t know why… but yeah, going off subject a bit too much here… :~)

 I particularly liked E13 Jedi Crash & E14 Defenders of Peace which deal with Jedi’s struggle with attachment and a village of peaceful village who refuse to fight. And also E17 Blue Shadow Virus & E18 Mystery of a Thousand which are obviously about a deadly virus. The show seems to gain more depth as the shows go on and I hope as I start on the next season it will only get better!