Book 44-45
A Calm Before Storm by Peter David
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'll be honest one of the those stars is for the art. The art is very good. The story is mediocre. This is a tie-in with Castle. I have to think if Richard Castle was this blah, he wouldn't have afforded that home he had on the show.
I've not seen the first two Derrick Storm graphic novels nor do you have to. This one can best be summed up as Derrick's past is back to haunt him and kill him if it can. He finds out the truth about his ex-love interest, his mother's death and his father's real job.
It's utterly forgettable as in literally I just finished this and I can't even remember how it began or the point of it other than it can be summed up as 'Russian spy thriller.' Naturally Derrick and his dad are going to triumph in the end and the bad guys captured. It follows along just as you'd expect with no real twists.
The only memorable thing was they somehow get blamed for a shooting that they have to get out of even though they were with witnesses when the shooting happened and it made no sense. I mean literally, they were with the secretary when the shots were fired and yet they're blamed. I would have quit there but this is short so it wasn't worth stopping.
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The Mandalorian Armor by K.W. Jeter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'll be honest I gave this one more star because I'm not sure if this was a case of its me not the book or not. Admittedly I have a love hate relationship with movie/tv tie in books (more on the hate side or maybe I just suck at picking) I wouldn't have bought this one if not for the author. I got to meet Mr. Jeter at a steampunk con and the bookseller there was out of everything but this book of his and I wanted his autograph...
Because while I do love the original Star Wars trilogy I'm not one of the big Boba Fett fans (which tells you how much I wanted that autograph) because this is all about Boba Fett. It tells the story in two parts, the present which is just after Boba Fett is fished out of the remains of the Sarlacc by Dengar, another bounty hunter, and Neelah, a mind-wiped dancing girl from Jabba's palace. (She is, hands down, the most compelling part of this story and we don't get nearly enough of her). The second part is in the past when Boba has been hired by a strange spider-like alien Kuat of Kuat to destroy the Bounty Hunters guild at the behest of an alien prince Xizor to serve in theory the Emperor but really is serving himself.
Honestly this whole thing felt overly long. Well written but too long. I had trouble caring about the what Prince Xizor wants as we see only a wee bit of him with the Emperor and Vader. We see far more of Boba Fett trying to infiltrate the guild to destroy it which brings him in conflict/contact with Bossk (and his father who runs the guild) and other bounty hunters like IG-88 and that whole storyline didn't interest me in the least because no matter how much trouble is thrown at them we know they have to make it through because it's pre-hunt for Han.
Neelah and who she is and what her connection is to Boba Fett and why anyone would mind wipe her and toss her to Jabba is the far more compelling storyline and one we don't nearly get enough of. Mostly we see her and Dengar trying to nurse Boba Fett back to life and get him off Tatoonie before anyone knows he's alive and kills them all.
I wish that had been the only storyline but I'm sure Jeter was hired to do a trilogy so we get all this unnecessary story padding to drag it out to three books and this one ended in the way I hate the most in a trilogy. I don't mind series. I love them in fact but i want book one to have an actual ending not just ramble to an end which this did. The only plot line that wraps up is getting off Tatoonie. Nothing else is resolved and I just didn't like this enough to go on to book two. Maybe I should have rated this a two star...
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