My favorite Jedi Knights book is DEFINITELY this one. Actually two. Look at the cover pages on google images. They are SO tight. The first one is Hero Rising: Blue Waffle. The second one is just called The piercing of Prince Albert
Those are really cool. Are both of them out yet. Personally I think Blue Waffle looks better. The cover page is AMAZING. Sorry for the caps. You guys should check out the covers.
Based on the reviews at TFN, it sounds like the book isn't very good.
Which doesn't surprise me because really, SW authors can't write. I can write better than they can, and they have the benefit of professional editors and time to write out five drafts and make it polished and perfect.
Their is a select handful of SW authors I like. Stover, Luceno and yea, that's pretty much it. Zhan is passable if ridiculous. Denning sucks, Golden sucks, Ailsteen sucks. Drew is alright I suppose, but hardly on the level of Stover or Luceno. I suppose now that Kemp now belongs on the list of SW writers I like. Although he was writing for FR long before SW.
If I seem critical its because I'm in a position to be critical. I'm a writer myself and as a writer I notice all the small screw ups or poor prose. The writers of LOTF and FOTJ all read like fanfiction. Good fanfiction, but not anything I'd pay for and certainly not in hardcover.
I did like Stover so much that I bought his non SW books, which were amazing.
I agree with you, the LOTF and FOTJ writers make me want to commit murder. However, there have been plenty of good SW literature, even if it's not the majority.
If it's writing style you're criticizing, I'm probably not in a position to judge; I wouldn't categorize myself as a writer, and I pretty much exclusively read Stover and Luceno anyway, with one book by Barnes [Cestus Deception] and a few others here and there.
Now if it's the quality of the fiction (in terms of cohesiveness, creativity, and badassery) that you have a problem with, ditto.
Technical style mostly. The type of stuff most people probably don't care about. I guess for me it just drives me crazy because I have to stop and wonder what their editor was doing.
I've always wondered why Drew Karpyshyn's storytelling merits are always so highly praised in the video gaming world (Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Knights of the Old Republic) and yet in the much smaller world of Star Wars literature always seen as just slightly "ok" (Path of Destruction, Rule of Two, Dynasty of Evil).
Its the difference of medium. In a video game, Drew is simply guiding the plot, but he's also working with a team of other writers. Its a mistake to believe that he does all of the work. Plus, he doesn't have to write descriptions or worry about grammar etc, because all the visuals are being taken care of by the textures and 3D modeling team.
When he writes his books, it all depends on him and his editors. He has a lot more direct application with a book then with a video game.
Mar 6th, 2010 09:07 AM
http://darthglentract.tripod.com/index.html Go Jawa's!!
I but in all the hard work
