This is a consalidated review of the entire trilogy, consisting of Heir To The Empire, Dark Force Rising and . I received Heir To The Empire as a gift when I was in junior high. Nowadays, Star Wars has grown into an empire in its own right with six movies plus another three in production, video games, comic books and any number of animated cable TV shows. Back then however, most if not all of these had not happened yet. Lucas Arts as a brand name was not known for what it is now and truthfully, pretty much the only time we ever even saw George Lucas was when he was doing an interview for behind the scenes material for the latest incarnation of the original trilogy, released on video for the last time.
Let me dispense of this right up front, are these books particularly profound in their nature? No. Are they going to blow back your perception of the world and implant you with a plethora of new outlook on people and the plight of our world? No. Are these books going to leave you breathless with the quality of their precise prose? No. Are these books going to be fun to read and hit you right in those squishy, nerdy happy places? YES.
As I grow older, I am reminded that it really is all right to read a book purely for the entertainment value and Timothy Zahn wrote an entertaining trilogy. I still remember how impatient I was for the next volumes in the series to come out. This was pre-internet back then, or at least the version of the internet was not what people have delivered into their homes now so unless your local book store had information on a specific release, there was no way to even get an estimate of when the next book was coming out. It was frustrating but also lent a feeling of excitement to the whole experience.
This trilogy picks up several years following the events of episode six. The rebel alliance, now ensconced in the capital of the empire is trying to set up governmental office, while at the same time conducting what is widely considered a mop-up operation of what remains of the Empire's fleet. Little to they know that a Grand Admiral little known previously to anyone except the Emperor himself is now leading the fleet and is proving to be too skilled of a tactician for the alliance to handle. As the series progresses, he gradually begins to gain the upper hand, even finding a surviving dark Jedi who is determined to capture both Luke and Leia along with her unborn twins with the intent of training them all as his servants.
Overall, the series does a great job. The writing is a little cheesy at times, as he certainly resorts to a certain amount of gimmicky narrative technique that does annoy me a little. But the story itself is compelling enough and exciting enough to make me willing to overlook all of that. He seems to have a good grasp on the various personalities of the classic characters of the series and pretty much everyone from the original movies make an appearance, as well as some new additions that are great as well.
You have to take these books pretty much as isolated works. As they were written even before the new movies were made, they pretty much fail completely to hold up as a part of the continuity of the Star Wars universe as it exists now. So take it for what it is, a great piece of entertainment. If you love Star Wars, then I think you will enjoy these books. These were the first books that were authorized by the Lucas machine and while I have not been as big of a fan of later books published after these, I think that the quality of Zahn's prose is stronger and the books have held up well over time. He clearly had a lot of love for these characters and this universe and he does them great tribute. Zahn has just published two new books that carries on the story from this trilogy so I will be excited to see what he has to add.
I could probably boil my entire review down to one sentence. If this book isn't on your radar then there might be something wrong with your radar. This book was one of several to be put out in the golden age of King's publishing career and that isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed his more recent books, but there seems to be a raw energy to these earlier offerings that is so unique and special. Of course it's also possible that my mind is still entangled with the childhood thrill I got reading something that was considered taboo, books that were for the adults.
You might be fooled by the description by thinking that this is just another simple ghost story but the reality is that (as far as I'm concerned), this is THE ghost story. Reading it, I can't help but wonder why anyone bothers to tackle the genre again if only to pale in comparison to this classic. It's the kind of a book that, as a writer myself I often find myself wishing that I had written and then realizing that I am writing that book.
There will be the inevitable comparisons of the book vs the film. There has been much said about King's disappointment with the film and how it strayed from the book. Kubrick was known for straying pretty far from his source material and while King is an industry juggernaut now, then he was still just a fledgling author who just didn't have the juice to stand up to this director with a mega-sized personality.
As great as the film was and as amazing and iconic as Nicholson was in that role, why do I like the book better? One thing that King has always excelled at is taking the reader inside a character's head and showing us that internal dialogue. Very few writers write in the third person omniscient anymore and he has always done a really good job at it in making it feel natural. As a result, we get better insights into Wendy Torrence who becomes so much more than just the damsel in distress that we see in the movie. Danny becomes more real in his perceptions of his parents and their decaying marriage and his attempts to deal with these abilities that he is still discovering. Most important, we get to see into Jack's psyche and ride along with this character in his slow descent into madness.
A ghost story set in an abandoned hotel isolated in the middle of the mountains seems like a book that would almost write itself, with all the possibilities that would be available. That said, I doubt that many writers would be able to pull this off as King, in top form is able to make us both hate a character while at the same time feeling completely sympathetic for him. I have so much respect for a writer who has the gumption to hold off the meat of the story for so long, trusting that his reader will stick with it, and take time to really lay the groundwork for his characters so that when things start unraveling in front of your eyes, you really feel the impact of this family coming apart at the seams.
Foundation was a gift from my father when I was in Junior High school and it is a book I have come back to several times. Classics in any genre are always a pleasure to read, no matter how many times and this is definitely one of those. One thing I have always been amazed with Asimov's writing is that if I knew nothing about him and was just reading the book, I would almost never guess that the prose is over fifty years old. He had such an incredible grasp on the technology and issues he wrote about that to me, he still sounds informed.
The premise of the book is fairly straight forward. Set on an planet that sits at the center of the Galactic Empire, an intellectual - Hari Seldon is on trial for treasonous acts as in the course of his studies, he has made a prediction based on mathematics and psychohistory that a complete collapse of the Empire is rapidly approaching. And while the collapse cannot be avoided or stalled, he insists that by the creation of a Foundation devoted to the compiling of a galactic encyclopedia in which core knowledge of civilizations would be preserved, the period of chaos and destruction following the collapse of the Empire would be substantially reduced and that it would speed up the development of a second Empire.
The Foundation is established on an outlying world and the book is devoted to the beginnings of that society. While Seldon himself is only in the first part of the book, his presence is strongly felt as periodically a time capsule is opened to reveal recordings he left behind in order to inform future generations of imminent crises they may be facing.
One thing I like about this aspect of the story is how Seldon will hint in his messages about his true plans for the Foundation without giving specific details so as to not interfere with its natural progression.
The book takes place over several generations of the Foundation's development which is a hard task to pull off for a writer since the reader has to keep becoming re-acclimated to new characters. Asimov seems to be the master of this however and the book definitely does not suffer because if it.
Foundation is a great launching pad for an extended franchise of books but the story itself is also pretty well contained and would be worth reading even if you don't continue on into the series.
In the wake of Tom Clancy's recent passing, I have been compelled to go back through his catalog. Besides Stephen King and Tolkien, he was one of the predominant voices of my childhood reading, so much so that it led me to write a few god-awful techno-thrillers of my own.
Patriot Games is a great, entertaining read; a trend in publishing that would create a whole new language of genre and a character that would spawn as of portrayal on film by four different actors. The complexity of some of his descriptions of technical aspects, while not really germane to the actual story, provide enough density that the book still feels fresh even after a number of readings.
The characters of Patriot Games are not the most interesting or thought provoking - the good characters are very good and the bad characters are very bad. On face, it isn't the most compelling dynamic to find in a book but in a realm where many other writers have gone before, Clancy manages to pull it off nicely and there are few points in the story where I feel like I am rehashing things as a reader that I have seen far too many times before.
While not published first, Patriot Games is the launching pad for the Jack Ryan character and would lead to a healthy collection of further books. The quality of the series as a whole does not necessarily hold up as Clancy grew older and the plots of the books grew slightly outrageous (ie - President Jack Ryan) but this book stands as a solid introduction and plants the seeds for more to come.
I highly recommend this - a well written book that has a good balance between technical detail and plot that compels you to read on. The premise is solid and the pacing is done as close to perfection as can probably be achieved. For me, it was a good way of going back to a time in my life when books were just meant to be fun and entertaining.
Genius. What else can be said? I can't even fully conceive of the level of intelligence to be able to write with such a grasp on technology that even over sixty years later, the book still feels contemporary and relevant.
It's often said that when a movie is adapted from a book, the film often falls short. In some cases, like this, to even give the movie the same title as the book is actually an affront to the original author. Other than some characters with the same names and the use of Asimov's three rules of robotics, pretty much the only similarity between the book and the film is that they both have robots in them.
And I don't intend this to be disparaging of the film. I just think that the film makers should have just made the film their own instead of trying to inherit some notoriety by association to this classic book.
While a collection of short stories, Asimov still manages to create the feel of a larger cohesive story. There are plenty of gems to be gleamed from this collection but my favorite by far is the debate between the robot and the human in which the robot argues in pretty convincing fashion that the humans could not be his creator and that they themselves are merely imperfect constructs lacking self awareness; brought into being by the same creative being which made robots.
Anyone with the mildest interest in science fiction should read this just out of principle. Anyone who loves literature should read this because it is just that good.
This was an interesting read to be sure. At times I really enjoyed it, at others not so much and the funny thing is that in both cases I don't know if I could really say why. The characters were dynamic and interesting. The story for the most part held my interest although at times I felt like there was a certain absence of an overall larger narrative connection. And while some people would likely argue that books don't always have all the answers we may want as readers, I think that the book could still feel more cohesive. I suspect that this book got away from Neil Gaiman a little as the scope of the story got larger and larger. In an interview, he noted that the book was released a year late and I can't help but wonder if things would feel more tightly woven together if more had been left on the cutting room floor. The interludes in the book, while interesting, don't feel particularly relevant to the rest of the story.
I would be lying if I said I completely understood everything. Without spoiling anything, I had particular trouble with the tree scene, having to double back on the audiobook several times before I finally just resigned myself to getting through it, even if it went over my head a little. Sometimes I do suspect that writers fall for the trap of throwing completely random and meaningless imagery into the mix whenever they write scenes involving a character having a "vision" because naturally everything has to be abstract and bizarre.
I was compelled by the notion of the gods of old waging war against the new gods of technology although I felt like it was a little strange that the more contemporary religions seemed absent. I don't know if this was some commentary Gaiman was trying to make about American theological beliefs but it would have been nice if this had been made clearer in the narrative.
The story seems to be taking place on two levels, on one we have a fairly straight forward travelogue/adventure story. The second more metaphorical level is a little harder to fully digest and I suspect that multiple readings are likely required to fully take in all aspects of the book. I do appreciate the authenticity he brought to the mid-western back drop of the story as the roads that Shadow traveled felt like roads I had been on many times.
In all, I enjoyed the book. I thought he did a clever job incorporating so many different gods from varying mythologies - I think that the main thing preventing me from that fifth star was just that the story felt disconnected from itself at times and ultimately, I think that either it needed to be a lot longer or a lot shorter.
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Chad A. Clark
A native mid-westerner, Chad grew up on a solid cultural diet of Sir Arthur C.Clarke, Isaac Asimov,Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Steven Spielberg (to name a few). Regular, healthy servings of film, novels and comic books created and informed his passion for genre fiction and continues to shape his writing style to this day.
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