Legacy of the Force – Legends) - Bloodlines (Star Wars

The characters in this book often make decisions that make no sense based on their values or past expereinces. I wonder if the authors in this series have read or care about the Star Wars universe. This book and the others in thie series seem bent on old allies becoming enemies and killing or attempting to kill each other. Luke tries to kill his nephew, Luke's nephew kills Luke's wife and tortures Luke son and on and on it goes. The inclusive of Bobba Fett and his "family" seems almost a "nice" diversive compared to the Jedi trying to kill one another.

I really enjoyed the first book in the series but had a tough time with the 2nd. I just didn't feel the characters hit home at all. I ended up speeding thru the last half of the book so I would have the content but really didn't enjoy reading it. I hope the next ones better.

Nice story. Well written and consistant with the overall Star Wars directions. Particularly like the character development of the main characters and the tension is well built throughout. Excellent read.

I've had the pleasure of reading several dozen of the Star Wars Expanded Universe books. This was the first one I actually had trouble finishing. It is dark and throughly depressing. If this is where the EU is going, I'm not following. I'll stick to the books before this series in the chronology. If you care about the Star Wars main characters, avoid this book and the series entirely.

On the other hand, if you are a great fan of Boba Fett, you'll probably enjoy his return. The expansion of his character was the only worthwhile part of the book.

First off, let me say that I absolutely hated Hard Contact. For a book under 300 pages, I struggled to finish it -- and it wasn't anything to do with the subject matter. I think the reason for the rough-going was that I find Karen Traviss's style to be ... well, laborious. Hard Contact is infested with sentences that could've each been written a hundred different ways that would've all been easier to read.

In fact, when I read Hard Contact, I found myself wondering if Traviss talks that way, or if she "hears" what she writes.

That being said, I think some editor took an interst in celaning up Bloodlines, because it was a much smoother read. Don't get me wrong ... there were still a bunch of Traviss-isms. This sentence on page 146 comes to mind: "Fett doubted that an ornamental river would be water enough for Taun We."

"Water enough ..."?! That would even leave Yoda shaking his head. And that's no typo. I could almost turn to any page (probably EVERY page in Hard Contact) and find an instance where Traviss bombards a sentence with unnecessary words -- and mixes up the tense with crazy syntax on top of that.

As if sentence structure isn't enough of a struggle for Traviss, story construction doesn't seem to come any easier to her: Boba Fett's investigation is completely monotonous, and the stakes aren't raised at all on each raid conducted by Jacen, Ben, and the commandoes. The story just keeps recycling itself over and over until it finally ends. But I guess that's a theme of the book, since it clearly owes a great debt to Revenge of the Sith.

And, hello ... Star Wars is an ACTION-oriented tale -- whether it's a novel, comic, video game, or anything. Even the most contemplative, abstract additions to Star Wars have a great deal of action: Traitor, Shatterpoint, and the Dark Nest Trilogy, which is very philosophical but always maintains a hard forward motion through adventure and escapism.

It would have also been nice for Traviss to flesh out the fact that Corellia is trying to be independent while enjoying aspects of being part of the Alliance -- that is after all the SOURCE of this conflict. If I recall, it's interjected somewhere near the middle as if she forgot about that point, and had to cover herself.

Also ... I hope Traviss buys a copy of STAR WARS: Myth and Magic to Traviss. It's the best way to describe Star Wars's use of visual metaphors to her. The book shows how for instance the Imperials reflect Nazi Germany, Han's costume is an homage to cowboys, and on and on. In short, Star Wars uses VISUAL references to evoke a sense -- it's not topical -- it doesn't take exact world events and plug them into the galaxy. As if Legacy hasn't ripped Star Wars of its grand sense of good and evil enough, it doesn't need to be a straight allegory to the war on terror. That with the lack of action, I didn't even know if I was reading Star Wars after a while.

I think Troy Denning is a spectacular author, so -- even though I'm not in love with the direction of Legacy of the Force -- I think Tempest will be good. Its sample alone had more of a Star Wars feel than did all of Traviss's book.

2/10. Traviss obviously cares about the Mandolorians more than the rest of the story -- and they are pretty cool. I just think she bit off more than she could chew.