[Books] Star Wars Death Troopers
I finally, FINALLY found the book that Koogrr sent me a while back -- a sort of "care package from Canada," I guess you could say: "Death Troopers" -- a Star Wars novel, but with ZOMBIES. I'd give a quick "review" of it, but I'm afraid anything I'd have to say would have to be prefaced with "SPOILERS!" I'll say it was an INTERESTING read, and a quick one. I read it all in one sitting last evening. It was pretty much a novelty book, I think I can say.
Introducing a Major Named Franchise Character into a Horror Story in Act 2 is a Bad Idea:
If you are telling a horror story in the Star Wars universe, do not introduce a Major Named Franchise Character late in the story. It does not help that you have this major named character act pretty much as a "bit player." It does not help the "horror" when we know, thanks to the timeline, that this Major Named Franchise Character must survive through to the end of the book. It does not help when the character's distinctive attitudes are at odds with the mood of the story. It does not help when the major named character really doesn't add anything to the story; if anything, it DETRACTS from the story.
We know Major Named Character will not die or otherwise be permanently changed in any meaningful way by the end of the book. This is a horror story. I am invested in the new characters introduced in this story, and whether they live or die, and HOW they live or die. Dropping a Major Named Character in a nearly cameo role is a painful DISTRACTION, and feels like some sort of cheap gimmick. Like, "Hey, it has _____, your favorite character in here, so buy this book!" Except it wasn't advertised like that, so I don't know what gives. Was it some sort of executive decision from above that Major Character ____ had to be worked into the story somehow?
The Ending Matters:
Also, toward the end of the story, I found myself making comparisons to the "resolution" of Darksaber. This is not a good thing.
Spoilertag: In other words, don't present us with this big bad horrible thing, and then the only way our heroes survive is because the big bad horrible thing just self-destructs at the end. This reads like, hey, our writer wrote himself into a corner, and rather than doing a few edits, or even just plugging in a little bit of foreshadowing or establishing hints earlier on so we would feel like this was planned all along, he pulls a deus ex machina. I can tolerate this with War of the Worlds because, hey, it was a classic. But only once. The opposition just got worse and worse, more and more invincible and beyond the ability of our heroes to fight and then -- poof. It's over.
Not exactly a thrilling resolution.
Been There Done That Too Many Times:
This writer has a problem with recycling some of the same things too much within the same story.
There's a lot of fade to black. And then all was darkness. Etc. It reminds me of some of my lamer excesses as a GM on SinaiMUCK: Like, hey, let's end this session quickly. KNOCK OUT THE CHARACTER. FADE TO BLACK. We'll resolve this next time.
Once? Fine. Several times in the same book? Exercise some different tropes!
The other over-used trope was -- Oh, SURPRISE! FAMILIAR FACE AMONG THE ZOMBIES! Never mind how many thousands of zombies there are. The ONE familiar face that matters most WILL find its way front-and-center to harass our Viewpoint Character. And then the NEXT one will. Good grief, did we leave anyone out? NOPE!
(Sigh.) I am no longer shocked by this. I wasn't shocked in the first place. Any emotional impact from the first incident was robbed by repeating the same gimmick twice or three times.
Still Had Good Points:
I'm still grateful to Koogrr for sharing this with me. This story still had its moments of inspiration, and at times made me care. The trouble is, I think most of that was toward the FRONT of the book, when they were establishing characters. Was this really the story our author wanted to write? Was he rushed, or forced to cram too much into too few pages? I wish I knew; it just feels like there was some real potential here, but SOMETHING happened along the way.
One odd thing was that it presented an interesting view of the Empire as more than just a bunch of cackling evil people with British accents and vaguely space-Nazi-ish uniforms. The Empire was still a corrupt and reprehensible thing, but it was presented more as the sort of inherent danger presented by a huge, uncaring, authoritarian entity. The Empire is NOT out to get YOU. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and when there's a government that's tasked with managing MILLIONS of planets with BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of people on each one, how can you possibly expect that some bureaucrat back in Coruscant is really going to care that you got caught up in a purge meant to take out some Rebel elements, or that a clerical error resulted in the destruction of your livelihood? That's the sort of real threat I can believe in -- and, ironically, the sort of thing that could still be a problem whether it's an Emperor or a Galactic Senate that's at the head of it all (just a matter of degree).
The strange thing is that I actually found this depiction of the Empire to be SCARIER than the zombie threat (especially once we got to the end). It seemed more a cultural, societal thing, so deeply ingrained in the "system," that it would be hard to believe that it could all be solved by one kid in an X-Wing launching a torpedo in the right place (blow up that Death Star!) or some guy in black armor tossing a tyrant down a shaft. Those sorts of entrenched attitudes don't strike me as the sort of thing that would just GO AWAY because you "killed the bad guy." But then, perhaps that's just me failing to approach this from the George Lucas school of galactic politics. ;)