Allegiance

    How did I miss this book before now?! The reason I have a copy is that when I find a EU Novel at a good deal I'll will buy it knowing I'm going to read it eventually. This has been a good practice and saved me the time and the pain of cliffhangers due to having to track down the next book! (I'm currently dealing with a cliffhanger in the New Jedi Order! Till I get my hands on a copy I picked up this one.)

   Really I started off reading Choices of One. I had been looking forward to reading it. I knew it was about Mara Jade when she was working for the Emperor as "The Emperor's Hand". It takes place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. About 2 chapters into Choices of One I realized I was missing something! Something came before this book... characters I have never heard of were too well established. It didn't take me long to figure out it was Allegiance. And as I said before I already had a copy. I had not looked at it sooner being the cover of storm troopers and I had never seen anything about the book being about main core Star Wars characters. I thought it was about some pack of random storm troopers. But it was a Zhan novel so I picked it up at some point in my adventures of Star Wars book hunting.
 
  The only other novel that takes place in this time period is Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Splinter of the Mind's Eye is a good book. I recommend reading it if you're a Star Wars Fan but it was written as an alternative sequel had A New Hope not done well in theaters. It's a good "what if" but doesn't work with Star Wars as it later became. I have to wonder if the next movies by Disney are going to turn this EU into something similar... we shall see...

   Why is it that Zanh is the only writer that is able to capture Mara and Luke dead on. I mean yeah, Zhan created Mara Jade but other writers can not capture her spirit, fire, and strength very well. He seems to understand Mara and Luke so well. I love the super hero type character Mara is in this novel. In the Thrawn Duology a point is made that Mara believes Luke has willfully gone to the dark side in the past and therefore effected in his life up to that date. But you're thinking, she has a lot of room to talk! She was the Emperor's Hand! But she claims she never willingly went for the dark side. The explanation seem to be that she is young, idealistic, and ignorant about what is going on around her. She repays kindness with kindness... you have to wonder if Darth Sidious is aware of Mara's rebellious nature for doing good.

 And what about Vader? They went to all that trouble to destroy the Jedi but now Sidious is training this young girl. Could the plan be to use her against him to take his place or at least make him uncomfortable that Vader could be replaced. After all he used Luke against him later on... and hey, they are Sith, they like mind games. It is clear Vader does not like the girl but there is no clear answer as to exactly why.

    I wish I could recall if Mara had a light saber ever before Luke gave her his father's. In this book she does carry one. The color being magenta. An interesting color choice being she's sort of a bad guy cause it's in the red spectrum but yet it's not red either. Ah, symbolism!

Mara Jade

    One inconsistency I noticed, correct me if I'm wrong, was Mara being able to put herself into a healing trance. In the Thrawn Duology Mara is injured but she was unable to put herself into a healing trance so Luke had to put her in it. As he does so she remarks that is something she needs to learn how to do.

    There were a few other flaws in the story but hey, don't really care. That was just the one that really jumped out at me.

    So... is Disney going to do away with Mara??? She is one of the most loved EU characters in the Star Wars EU galaxy! And she is such a strong female hero... I don't know if Disney will use her but it's a sad for those of us who love her if they don't. We can only hope they can create an equally dynamic female to replace her with... let's have it Disney.... gives us what you got!

Shadows of the Empire

   It was Ebay time again to search for copies of the next books and while waiting I back tracked to a book I missed, Shadows of the Empire.

  Apparently this novel originated from a video game of the same name. I really can’t say I cared for it a whole lot. Maybe if I had played the game it would been a little better. Maybe. But I felt as I was reading it, this could be a whole lot better… It takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  If you ever noticed there is a lapse in time between the two movies. This book fills in the blank.

  The connection between the siblings was kinda a nice touch though still rang a little on the author’s part of, oh, it would be really cool if I can make this point, and forces it into the story. The author’s writing style bugged me. It read a bit like a movie script and jumped back and forth and back and forth which wasn’t awful but just because Star Wars started out as a movie does not mean novelizations have to read like a movie as well… I personally like novelizations of movies cause they can tell a story with so much more detail and depth. I’ve read some people’s reviews and they like fast pace and jumping around like the movies and that’s their right but novels seem to me are a whole different medium and can’t be treated like a movie without selling yourself short.
  Secondly, I just didn’t like the author’s writing. It was just bad, in an amateurish way.

  What really bugged me was the story line which I guess you can’t blame the author being they had to go with the story line from the game but it was… just not great. Things didn’t jive. The Empire doesn’t like aliens yet the main villain is an alien competing with Darth Vader for the Emperor’s favor? I disagreed with some of the author’s views on some aspects of the story and the way things work in the SW world as well. Some of the twist of the story was just kinda out there.  It did not seem like a likely set of event that leads to Return of the Jedi.
 Another thing that bugged me was in TheEmpire Strikes Back the end is a shocker finding out that Darth Vader could be Luke’s father! What kind of emotional state would that put Luke in? The events are continuously pushed back for later thought in this novel. He just finds out this crazy news and he’s going to set it aside and not think about! What?! I would think he would be quite preoccupied with all sorts of scenarios at that point! He was a mess at the end of The Empire Strikes Back! How did he get from that to where he was when he appears in ROTJ. It did explain one part of ROTJ I had wondered about so I will give it that but to sum of the whole book, it could have been better, more creative, and fulfilling to the original trilogy.

Return of the Jedi

UPDATE; I have rereviewed Return of the Jedi...

HERE 

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(This review needs to be updated since I have reread some of it after reading Return of the Sith and Dark Lord... coming soon...)
My question is, did the writer watch the movie?! I mean for the most part it was OK but there were some spots left out of this book that I feel are very important to the story that are not there! One being when the Emperor is killing Luke and Luke calls out to Vader for help. The cry for help is not in the book. In my opinion that was a very important moment in the story. This was part of what brought out the good in Vader! His sons desperate cries for help. If a parent can’t come to the help of their child with that, they are lost. Otherwise your left there wondering… why did Vader change his mind there and not the other times Luke almost dies when he’s around :-/ Well, unless you think that maybe Darth Vader never wanted to kill Luke in the first place which I think could be likely and seems to be a trend in all the movies and even noted by Luke in this book but according to this author Darth Vader was quite willing to kill his son up to the very end… I don’t know what was up with the author of this one. I do under stand sometimes these authors have to work more with a script the watching the finnished movie... but still! Being this is my favorite SW movie I was very disappointed. But anyway, this is a different author then The Empire Strikes Back and the writing styles are quite different. Not in a bad way though, other then my issues with the above...

Top; the way I saw it as a kid
Bottom; The same scene as kids see it today!

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On to; The Truce at Bakura

The Empire Strikes Back

Moving all my past reviews from Pinterest onto my Blog. In case your wondering, I am reading throught the Star Wars Saga and trying to do so in as close to order as I can though, I do have to jump to the Old Republic stories from time to time due to not being able to get my hands on the next book but other wise is pretty much in order as they should be read.
I have been a Star Wars fan since I was little and they showed the movies on TV and my mom recorded this one and ROTJ for me. As a teenager they started talks of making the prequels and I again I found my VHS of the movies and started watching them again! I've never been too out spoken about my love of the movies untill recently and I discovered there is a HUGE library of novels! I wondered where these books had been all my life! First one I ever bought was on clearance for $5 at Books-a-Million.
Now with that said, let's star here...
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I read The Empire Strikes Back in under 2 days. Yes, I would have started with Star Wars: A New Hope but I have yet gotten my hands on a copy! But being I pretty farmilar with the movie, it wasn't a huge big deal though I would like to read it! Anyway...

My Copy

This was well writen and easy to follow. The thing that bugged me most was it didn't have the classic...
Leia - "I love you!"
Han - "I know!"You have to realize that these type of movie novalizations are often written before the movie is released so should a line be throw in there that is not in the script it could quite easily be left out of the book.

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On to; Return of The Jedi