Okay, I touched on several things in my recent blog, Immediately Prior to ROTS. I mentioned some things, and I'd like to expand with should be considered critiques, reviews, or rants.

Yeah, nothing important to say this time. Rant Alert 5. Code Red. Consider yourself warned. Let's get started!

The Courtship of Princess Leia
I mentioned in my other blog the main discrepancy of stories. That kind of bothered me, but I have more opinions on the story.

First, I applaud the author on his ability to envoke emotion. Tension, jealously, desperation, awe. Very well done. The important premise of the Hapans was kind of a big thing to suddenly appear, but crazier things have been invented in Star Wars. And the story was told well enough.

But while it started out great, the rest of the novel, taking place on Dathomir stretches on way too long with talk about the witches. They're cool and all, a great idea, but they're really not cool enough to warrant having them steal the book for most of it's duration. That was my biggest bone to pick.

The book dove into Luke's trials in trying to learn the past of the Jedi. But the author showed a lack of understanding about the way the Force works, and also about how skilled Luke was. Not to diminish Luke, but at the point in the timeline during which the book takes place, the amazing feats and Force powered miracles Luke preforms at times are beyond reason. Although, I can't entirely blame the author for the disadvantage of wrting an older novel.

Oh, and there was some interesting commentary on the logic of monarchies, and there was a running theme was about matriarchies worth pondering, although there was no clear message either way on that one.

Overall, a fun read that surely made me smile often enough, but hard to swallow as a true incorporation of the story.

Labyrinth of Evil
Great book. I got it because I had run out of books on hand and was anxiously awaiting another James Luceno Book, Dark Lord, Rise of Darth Vader to come out in paperback. I wasx interested in Dark lord before, but not the hardcover pricetag, and then hearing about the upcoming Luceno book about Plagueis and Sidious made me even more interested in the author and Dark Lord, and that eventually ended up getting me to get this one.

When reading this book, I was immediately impressed by Luceno. I wouldn't say he's the best writer ever, but I was so very appreciative of his great knowledge of what had to happen, what was happening, why it was happening, and how the characters actually thought about it. The freindship of Anakin and Obi, Anakin's own flaws and strengths, and Obi-wan's sage, freindly guidance was perfectly shown to display how it was.

And the humor was great, not just for being funny, but exactly the right type of funny for the situation and character, and at exactly the reight frequencies, that made the humor exactly fit into the Star Wars Style. Likewise, conjuring reminiscience of the movies was done exactly right also. In fact, that brings something else to rant about to mind; I'll get to that later.

It was the perfect supplemental fit into the story, and I'm so glad that it was done so nicely.

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader
Got it and read it within a day of it coming out in paperback. I was very pleased to continue enjoying Luceno's perfect perception of how the Star Wars galaxy is. And not only that, but this time, the book provided great insights that provided deeper, intimate meaning to Vader's internal struggle in really embracing the Dark Side, living in a new body, and forgetting the life of Anakin Skywalker. And that's just in addition to the real transformation from Republic to Empire, and the scattering of last surviving Jedi.

The Thrawn Trilogy
That thing I said I'd get to later? This is it.
Timothy Zahn is a great storyteller, but I wasn't as impressed with his writing as I expected to be by one of the most acclaimed writers for Star Wars there is. I loved the trilogy (it was so artistically done ) but my biggest problem with it was Zahn's uncontrolable urge to site the original movies as memories and the too often direct reusing of situations and lines. That's not unheard of in Star Wars, reusing lines, but only works with proper frequency, which is what borught me to this point. James Luceno worked in the image of the movies, both in memory of the PT and foreshadowing of the OT, as well as jokes and their style, and also repeating lines; it was all done exactly within appropriate accord of the movies, making the book fit right in. It was in that aspect that Zahn outright failed, obviously and akwardly stealing lines, and directly tying situations to previous mirrors in the OT through explicit lines of thought, and far too often.

Great books, though.

The New Essential Chronology
Finally, back to stuff that I actually mentioned in the blog this one is supposed to accompany.
This thing is awesome. It lays out every known thing that happened in the universe. The timeline of Star Wars history, right there, told well, with awesome illustrations to give color to the book.

Unlike some other "New" Essential guides, this one was smart enough to wait for Episode III before being released, making it actually complete instead of leaving a deliberate, important, and obvious gap in information. (Meh, General Greivous wasn't important enough to be in the Guide to Characters anyways. *rolls eyes*)
And unlike some of the other guides (I'm looking at you Vehicles and Vessels), this one doesn't have beg annoying flaws. This one's good.

By the way, what are my problems with the other guides? Well, Vehicles and Vessels has often akward image angles, and on occasion simply wrong information. Plus, it isn't useful. I want to use it to see what a Carrack Class Cruiser looks like, or a Katana Fleet dreadnaught, or find out the difference between a Victory and an Imperial class star destroyer. I don't just want bunch of pretty pictures and empty summaries of craft I've seen in the movies or named craft I've read in books. Actually, it's basically only good for seeing what specific ships in books looked like, like the Wild Kaarde.

Characters had great stuff, when it had it. Every entry is good, even if I pine for a little more elaboration at times. I'm only dissapointed when I look for someone who isn't there, like man prominent members of Rogue Squadron, or almost all of Wraith Squadron, or Kirtan Loor, or one of the many other characters who while small in relative importance still have fascinating roles worthy of at least a paragraph.

I haven't got my hands on any other guides, though. Lucky you. But the next rant is my last one.

Clone Wars Cartoons
Action. Cool! Awesome Jedi being awesome. Cool! Stupid total lack of logic. Err. UNDERWATER JEDI. Sick! Butt ugly character. Gross.

I watched the short documentaries on the Clone Wars Volume 1 and 2 DVD's, and it's obvious that the creators really understand what role the series plays, and they really appreciate how cool it is to be able to do what they did. But by watching the series, it's utterly obvious that they don't grasp how the Star Wars universe, indeed, any reasonable universe, functions.

There are small things and big things that just #### me off, and for every cool style choice that makes something look cool, there are two others that literally force me to divert my eyes from the screen in utter painful disgust.

Let me start by saying that all the problems I'm about to mention are largely balanced by general awesome excitement.

-Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Jedi witht he uncanny ability to by totally serious and entirely emotionless 100% of the time, just like the movies.
-Anakin Skwalker. The Hero with No Fear, Disgusting Giant Eyebrows, and a Lemon in his Mouth All the Time.
-Asajj Ventress and her totally cliche charge through and someone dies deathblow of the final combatant in Dooku's test for her.
-Ithorian with blue eyes. Let me say that again. Ithorian. With BLUE eyes. Entirely human looking, BLUE eyes. WTF.
-Creepy creepy Palpatine.
-Who, by the way, apparently knocks all his teeth out whenever sending a message as Darth Sidious.
-Ki Adi Mundi is apparently more of a desperate paranoid lunatic than I thought.
-Apparently it's a great idea to threaten to kill people with a lightsaber when you're waiting to secretly meet with someone you love, which a Jedi can't do.
-Superweapons are awesome. Giant shmash-o-trons and huge underwater death lasers are commonplace. No worry, though, just get a few eels to push it off a cliff.
-OH MY GOD. Little Anakin is SO HORRIBLY HIDEOUS that I pretty much want to kill myself right now thinking about it. Qui Gon, PLEASE bludgeon him to death with your GIGANTIC, ENORMOUS, INCOMPREHENSIBLY MASSIVE NOSE.
-Durge. WTF, man. Giant tentacle slime thing that makes no logical sense. Cool.
-But I forgot about Durge's jousters. That's a cool, unique idea for Star Wars, and the IG looking droid riders were a cool continuity nod with the banking clan, intended or not. But, then comes the proposterous notion that jousters would be at all effective against heavy artillery. Excuse me? Either rearing up an AT-TE and them spontaneously exploding it, or slashing the side of an artillery, which somehow (happened, and) caused it to explode, but for the most part they just rode around and stuff blew up all around them. Not to worry, the republic has a jousting squad on hand. Of course.
-No seriously, when little Anakin came on screen, my eyes started bleeding, but at least my TV exploded when Qui-Gon appeared.

Okay, that's it with my specific Clone Wars pet peeves. Those bother me, plus a few other things (like the retardedly exaggerated explosions). But the story (of the story that there was) was plenty good, and the action was usually good and always exciting, and the Jedi were total pwnage, even if exaggerated at times, but come on, he's Mace Windu, he's supposed to be awesome.



Okay, enough ranting. Look at it this way, readers, by me writing all this into one big blog, there's no possibility of me writing a bunch of dumb ones, because I've been wanting to get some of this off my chest for a while.