Star Wars Legends (Republic Commando) - A Republic Commando Novel (Star Wars

This was a really tough read--especially at 430 pages. Normally I can blow through Star Wars novels in a weekend or a little longer, but this one took me awhile. The problem? The story was just soooo stagnant and ultimately ended without ANY of the problems being solved or any meaningful insight revealed. This kind of storytelling makes it very hard to want to keep picking the book up enough times to finish it. The only exception was the section toward the end that took place during the battle of Coruscant, but even that eventually gave way to more plodding narrative. I also was extremely disappointed by the fact that Order 66 was totally incidental to the plot, which came as a surprise given that it's the name of the freakin' book. Granted, I fully appreciate that the book wasn't meant just to be the blow-by-blow account of O66, but c'mon, I would have expected more than this! And, as other reviewers have pointed out, the treatment of the Jedi was really harsh. Again, I appreciate that the story is told from the POV of the clones who don't necessarily like the Jedi--which is original and creative--but it would have been nice for the other side of that argument to have had a least some small voice...but no. Instead we're left with a longwinded portrayal of Jedi basically as the bad guys and Mandos/ARC clones as the heroes of the galaxy, which is hard to take even when trying to keep in mind that the author is just trying to tell the story from a different point of view...as Obi Wan might have said.

In the end, I suppose it's largely my fault for jumping into this series not having read the first three books thinking the story would cover different ground than it did, but I do think the misleading title does bear some responsibility here too. I'm sure that fans of the rest of the series will like this latest offering far better than I, but even so, I think they will still be left unsatisfied at the end when you realize the story really went nowhere.

Given the weak correlation between the title of this book and the actual plot, I have a feeling that the next in the series, The 501st, will also focus on the continued storyline of the main characters rather than the exploits of Vader's favorite unit disappointing another group of readers hoping for the latter.

I've read other books by Traviss, and always found them weak on action and heavy on internal thoughts. They are very different from their action oriented source material. But when found between the works of other superior authors in a series, they were passable. But this book, as a climax of a series, was simply awful.

Instead of building a story of the strong relationships the clone troopers were building with their Jedi generals, they would soon betray, we get only a Mandalorean back story, with nothing important or meaningful happening... ever. Not one moment of suspense, feeling or emotion.

This only answers the question, what if a third grader tried to write a Star Wars novel in the style of Hemingway? You'd have Order 66, a verbose, dragging litany of non-stories put together to form a larger nothing.

I always felt Order 66 was some kind of brainwash or chip-like action, but no. The author spells out the many orders the clones had to know and 66 was just another in many contingency orders. I also was impressed she introduced the idea that not all clones blindly followed. Many were effected by the Jedi thay followed. Great looked into what makes the clones tick.

Traviss did better than expected, but my expectations were low. In reading some of her other work, like in Legacy of the Force, she isn't my favorite author by comparison to the others in that series or NJO. She tends to make wimps out of heros. I thought this would be a real blood bath as it parallels episode 3. However, due to the clone perspective, this wasn't as unsettling as Revenge of the Sith. Traviss continued to develop the clone and Mando characters well. I like seeing the story from their perspective and can't wait to see how it develops under the Empire. Some SW fans may be disappointed in the treatment of the Jedi during this series, but hey, they brought it on themselves. Right? Right! Suffer!

Karen does such a great job of creating and expanding these characters..
If only the last movie was written this well..
Order 66 is what you'd expect from the title, It's takes you through the last year + of the Clone Wars culminating in Order 66..
Expands on Kal Skirata quest to save his clones from what ever was on the horizon..
A must read if you'd read the previous 3 books in this series....

This whole series is fantastic. I laughed, cried, cheered, cursed and hoped. I found it to be a refreshing look at what the 'clones' actually did and how they contributed to the republic. Who would have thought that each clone had a different personality! SPECTACULAR! I pray there are more to come! I'd love to know the trials Kad'ika goes through!

Kandosii Kar'ika! OYA!

Ke nu'jurkadir sha Mando'ade.

This book did a horrible job, everybody that rated it 1 or 2 stars has it spot on!

Book was garbage. Upholds Mandolorians as smart, invincible, all powerful, cunning, righteous, heroes and portrays Jedi as being egotistical, stupid, morons that dont know left from right, and whom are the root of all evil.

If you are a big fan of the Star Wars Universe, this book will piss you off.

Has almost nothing to do with Order 66. When you see ORDER 66 in the cover, you expect to read about the Jedi's last moments when the Order was give, the strife in the minds of Clone Troopers like the Main Characters... things like that. You dont expect there to be almost nothing about Order 66 and you certainly dont expect the "heroes" of the book to not care about the Jedi being killed, and for them to nod their heads at it. This book was so stupid.

Traviss had awful plot and character development, and quite frankly this is a joke of a book. No action, Could hardly even be considered Sci-Fi other than the fact that it has STAR WARS on the front cover. This is a dramatic, Romance novel, disguised beneath the Star Wars Universe... And it was so typical of any cheesy god awful romance novel, minus the sex scenes, which may have been an improvment, this thing was so bad.... Talking about forbidden love and stupid crap like that. Garbage. Not worth your time, not worth your money. What you will be buying is $8.00 toilet paper.

---Tmoney.

I love Star Wars (sometimes my wife thinks I love it too much), but I never got into reading the novels based on it. A friend said I should read the first book in the series (Hard Contact) and reluctantly I ordered it. I'm so glad I did. This series of books (Hard Contact, Triple Zero, True Colors, Order 66) is some of the best science fiction I've ever read. Now I'm going back and checking out some of the other series's.

I feel that Traviss, while a solid writer, has gone too far with her personal feelings in this book. If anything, I am really surprised Lucas Licensing didn't demand a rewrite considering her frankly hostile handling of one of the most iconic institutions in the Star Wars universe. She has a pretty twisted impression of George Lucas's World, to be honest, and Order 66 really runs that home.

As I read further and further into Order 66 I began to get the impression that the writer did not like Jedi. I don't mean that the characters in it don't like Jedi. I mean that Traviss personally does not like Jedi and it was bleeding through the characters and events. It oozes off the pages like a deeply ingrained prejudice. That prejudice slips out all over the book, from comments about Obi-Wan Kenobi being an arrogant glory seeker, to political ramblings about the moral corruption and overall impotence of the Jedi Order that is never refuted by a single character in her book. It wasn't just that the Clone troopers and mercenaries don't like Jedi, even HER Jedi don't like Jedi, and spend most of their time regretting or being ashamed of the Jedi order.

The book is filled with criticism against the Jedi order and goes out of its way to show that the things that lead to the Dark Side, as shown to us in the films, are not really dangerous. In fact, they lead to a better life. She has her two Jedi characters essentially follow in the footsteps of Anakin and Count Duku (Intimate personal attachment and strong emotions like anger for the former and leaving the order for political/ideological reasons for the latter) and it is shown that not only does this not lead to the dark side, but it makes them better people. When Order 66 goes down, it isn't a tragedy in the sense that the Jedi Order are betrayed, because none of her characters actually care that the Jedi have been betrayed. It's more of a nuisance than anything else, and is only important in so much as it complicates the various plans of her cast of characters.

The Jedi prejudice runs so deep that one of Jedi characters actually races to the rescue of clone troopers (unknown clone troopers to her, mind you) when several young Jedi are caught at a check point and the troops try to gun them down. The entire scene is just bizarre, as these poor betrayed Jedi who are trying to defend themselves are shown killing civilians with deflected blaster bolts. The reader gets the impression that the Jedi are responsible for this senseless loss of life. The bizarre feeling just builds as her Jedi character recognizes these young Jedi before it turns into a fire fight, but her thoughts are centered on the coming violence and the possibility that one of the clones might get hurt, rather than any real concern for these poor kids that just had their temple burned to the ground and their fellow Jedi slaughtered unmercifully by their own soldiers. The Jedi are almost seen as dangerous animals at this point. There is an overall sense of "too bad, but they had it coming," and the only tragedy in the whole affair is that innocent people and honest clone troopers are killed in the messy clean up.

I mentioned these impressions to a friend and he sent me a link to an interview she did

[...]

"But then I see Vader as a tragic character who's been betrayed by everyone, and I can't help thinking of the Jedi as self-serving unelected elitist spoon-benders making whoopee on Republic taxpayers' credits. It's an iconoclastic journo world-view. Believe me, Order 66 was long overdue. I have a couple of Jedi that I don't want to shoot on sight, but they're my own creations, so I could make them a little humbler and more aware of the consequences they create for others."
............
"Getting into Jedi heads was that much harder. But I swore I could get into the most repellent characters' heads and see them as they see themselves, so I had to. I still wouldn't trust the Jedi Council with my wallet, let alone with running my country, but you won't spot that in the books. I keep my spoonbenderist views to myself."

Well, it does show and you CAN spot it in her books. I saw it clear as day, long before I read her personal feeling about them, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth. I was that much more disappointed, because I really had enjoyed the first RC novel. The second and third were good, but I was already starting to feel uneasy with the way she handled the Jedi by that time: Jedi having love affairs and babies, Jedi wanting to be Mandalorians rather than Jedi Knights because Mandalorians were more honorable and more moral (?!?!), it was all skewing into a Bizzaro-World version of Star Wars. Order 66 simply confirmed my fears that she would continue down this Jedi hating path with her RC books.

I actually really enjoyed her take on Mandalorians and have been a big fan of Boba Fett ever since I received an action figure prior to Empire's release and wondered along with my friends who he was and what role he would play in the movie. I have never been a Jedi kind of guy, and was always more interested (from an aesthetic standpoint) in the armored guys (which happened to mostly be imperials and bounty hunters until the prequels came out) which makes it all the more telling when someone like myself stops and says "hang on a minute!" Jedi knights are a pivotal part of Star Wars. They are pivotally heroic and harken back to a kind of lost Camelot, when an order of peace loving knights would roam the world guarding the innocent and fighting evil. To portray them as morally impotent, incompetent, and politically dangerous is just not Star Wars. Take it to another universe if you want to moralize and rail against the possibility of Camelot and claim that Mordred was actually doing us all a favor by doing away with that old relic Arthur, or if you want to squeeze 21st century western political ideology into a fantasy world that is supposed to be different from our own. The Jedi Knights are guardians of peace and justice in the Star Wars universe, a universe whose politics and ideology are similar to ours in some ways, but quite different in others. I don't really appreciate someone with a large chip on their shoulder demonizing them because she has political and ideological differences with their order. Save it for the real world.

I give it a 2, simply because this is not very good Star Wars. It's not a bad book in and of itself, but it feels very "anti-Jedi" which is essentially "anti-Star Wars."

I suppose I should have checked it out more before getting, thinking it would contain actual star wars characters I'd ever heard of before in it. After getting over that hump then it was just the story itself that I went with. Blather, over wrought discussions, blather, self righteous diatribes, blather, honor and mandalore ways ad nauseum, blather, family and regret boo hoo hoo, blather, boring, boring, and then no real ending to it all either. Just dreadful. If you read the other books and could stomach them then by all means read this. Otherwise, flee for your life from this book and I imagine the whole series.

Really a book about order 66 and the actual jedi's we know of, well that would be awesome. This ain't it.

I generally like to start my reviews with something positive but the only thing that I can come up with is I was positively glad when this book was finished. I had to force myself to finish this, easily the worst book in the Star Wars collection. It was just plain awful. (The only reason this book got a star at all is because I rounded up.)

And why exactly was it called "Order 66"? It had absolutely nothing to do with the historic Order 66 other than there were events in the book that happened at the same time the order was given. It should have been called "The Mandalorian Mercenaries" or perhaps "My boys, my boys, I just love my boys" cause God knows you hear that phrase enough times throughout the book. (Does it really take 200 pages for us to know that the guy loves his "family"???)

The book was about 150 pages too long with little action and characters that you stop caring about halfway through the book. By the time there is any action in the book you can no longer remember why you even care. I still can't believe this trash was allowed to be a part of the hallowed Star Wars collection. It is a travesty that one of the most monumental events in Star Wars history was allowed to be covered by such a crappy, long-winded, and boring book.

Writing having your "shabs" blown off, Etain wondering if she did the right thing about her child, Skirata's motives, Clone longevity and endless boring fight scenes. The whole Mando commeraderie thing just doesn't work with Traviss' dour and limited writing skills. This book's characters are terrible and the inane dialog horrific. Is this, As The Death Star Turns?

the 1st time the clone/stormtroopers turn against the jedi/generals in the book but not on the dvd itself well, yes, revenge of the sith, but reading the clones of the republic/empire,it's very cool to find out more about 66 executed from none other than palpatine towards the clones against the jedi.

I really enjoy the Republic Commando series. I can't wait for Imperial Commando and hopefully Lucas Arts will do a Republic Commando 2 or call it Imperial Commando. This book is excellent and the characters and story grip you. It's excellent to read a book that doesn't involve any of the familiar characters from the Star Wars universe!

The ultimate culmination of the Republic Commando series. Couldn't have ended with a better bang. The Republic Commando series is a fantastic way to immerse yourself in the mind of the clones that make up this elite fighting force. You'll learn how they thought of the Clone War as it dragged on. It will expand your knowledge of the ultimate betrayal and give you new insight.