aesmael

One of the first things that struck me about this novel is that it is not particularly well written. Rather clunky, and especially useful as a demonstration of why show is preferable to tell. At least to begin with every hint of back-story is followed by a narrative monologue explaining the details so that nothing but Official Mysteries are left to be wondered about, nor to emerge from the interactions of the characters with each other. I'm disappointed by that as I would have preferred more unfolding, more learning about the characters and their relationships and histories as a natural-feeling consequence of things actually happening.

This does not prevent me from enjoying the reading of this story so far, but it does mean I am not inclined to recommend it to others.

Story took a few perspective shifts to be setting up the board. A prologue of very military SF bent, a dramatic last stand on Mars against swarming invaders, a sergeant who at first does not realise how dire the situation is, before finally sacrificing himself to buy time for both his soldiers and ultimately for humanity to send off the colony ships that are the ostensible focus of this novel. Then, an archaeological dig on a colony world which puts me in mind of parts of Revelation Space if only the Amarantin had still been talkatively around. Finally, the scope is widened in a way which leads me to think the board is now set for the remainder of the story.

In that part some of my expectations were overturned. From the back of the book I had expected this novel to feature: a humanity wiped out in its home system by your standard invading hive aliens; and the story to feature the travails and conflicts of the scattered human diaspora in conflict with itself (and one other alien species with a mysterious past, in a role ranging from initial allies to potential galactic menace). Instead, this is looking a lot more galactic-political with a plethora of aliens and their competing interest, along with a looming vaguely alluded ancient menace which seems to be of the form 'artificial intelligence'.

Not fond of AI (what seems to be meant by allusions to “the dreamless” and the colonists' own bad history with AI) being portrayed as villainous, especially in the sense of beings without a direct evolutionary history lacking some essential quality that forestalls tendencies to diabolical evil. Also worried that the Uvovo are seeming a bit zen-orientalist in an attuned with nature kind of way.

The colony featured in this book is descended from a mix of the most northern of Northern Europe cultures – Russian, Scandinavia, and Scotland, IIRC – and so it seems safe to guess that the following two novels will feature the other two colonies; I am a bit nervous at how two presumably less white colony mixes will be depicted. So far, the main nod has been a mention of Indonesian soldiers during the Mars prologue sequence.

1. Dark Empire

Lines like this one:

“They're headin' straight for the Imperial City where the Emperor himself used to hang his hat – when he was alive!”

are pretty clunky, and it does not make much sense for a character to be saying this unless it will turn out the Emperor is not in fact as dead as believed.

Leia Organa, wife of Han Solo, already a mother of two, is above all things, a jedi warrior.

It would be nice if the rest of the story remembered this early statement. I do like Leia getting to call upon the force several times early on in this story to accomplish stuff like acting as gunner on the Millennium Falcon. Although, she did not get to deal with the scavengers' attack dog-things (neks) despite preparing to so I suppose we missed out there. Thanks Luke, ya big showoff.

A weird thing about this comic is the way it has solid blocks of colour schemes. A few pages through some red filter, and then yellow-green on later pages and so forth, as if any single page can only have a strictly limited palette. Ami assures me this is not typical for comics.

Very striking visual of Luke being sucked up into the force storm along with R2-D2 and all the junk from the planet's surface.

The planet they were on at the start of the story is not named so far as I can tell, except as “the imperial planet”. It is only identified as Coruscant in the introductory text prefacing Dark Empire; I was rather surprised by how much the appearance of Coruscant differs from what I had been accustomed to. Also shock that the New Republic managed to lose control of Coruscant and this does not seem to have been regarded as a big deal despite there being novels set prior to this in which they are comfortably ensconced on Coruscant as their seat of government. Suspect some of this is due to Zahn refusing to let Dark Empire be set before the Thrawn trilogy (by refusing to reference this story) and it consequently having to be moved later in the timeline, but doubt that could explain it all.