StarWarsClassics

 As I've discussed before, part of the point of this blog is to look at the books that influenced me as a kid. Interestingly enough, I found out that I read (and remember liking) another Barbara Hambly book in middle school: Those Who Hunt the Night. Looking back, it feels like an odd choice for the Reading Olympics list, but whatever. I grabbed the chapter one sample and read it. It's very Hambly. Rambly, repetitive, nonsensical, uses the word "leggy" to describe attractive women.  I did learn that boot knives were a thing from it when I was a kid, so that's cool I guess. But yeah, I thought maybe she was just bad at Star Wars. No, bad in general. Somehow, this won the 1989 Locus for horror. Must've been a slow year.

One of his fellow crewmembers on the New Republic escort cruiser Adamantine found him slumped across the table in the deck-nine break room, where he’d repaired half an hour previously for a cup of coffeine. Twenty minutes after Barak should have been back to post, Gunnery Sergeant Gallie Wover went looking for him, exasperatedly certain that he’d clicked into the infolog banks “just to see if anybody mentions the mission.” HOW DID SOMEONE GET PAID TO WRITE THIS SHIT? 1. Repaired. This isn't some novel of manners (I guess it could be if Leia showed up), repaired means fixed something, not went somewhere. (Adler would yell about coming to terms.) 2. he’d clicked into the infolog banks “just to see if anybody mentions the mission."  That's not an English sentence. I have no idea what that means. Is it saying that he started doom scrolling looking for their own mission? Infolog sounds like it'd be a log book or something, shouldn't the mission be mentioned repeatedly? ...

Darksaber Most of one good book+Half of one bad book=One long Darksaber Was not expecting a Kevin J. Anderson outing to be as good. After the "one book stretched to a trilogy" of the Corellian Trilogy, it was kind of weird to see this pretty complicated doorstopper. Summary: Durga the Hutt gets the Death Star plans and use it to build THE DARKSABER, which is basically just the super laser with engines strapped to it for greater efficiency. Meanwhile, Callista and Luke go on dates/try to reawaken her Jedi powers. Meanwhile, Daala is back, and is actually kinda competent until like 80% of the way through the book. Introduced: The Darksaber : This week's Death Star variant. It's a failure. Insanely Overpowered Jedi: Like 12 Jedi (barely even done training) hold off an entire Imperial fleet. Bevel Lemelisk: Not the first mention, but first use as a proper character. The Death Star's designer. Repeatedly executed and resurrected by Palpatine. Commentary:  Like I said a...

 As you might've saw on the other blog (no one reads this.) I'm doing a mental health calendar that work put out this month. Today is journaling. I've never been a big journaler in the traditional sense, I don't really think whatever random stuff I'm thinking or feeling that day is worth writing down and remembering. But, I've been doing these blog every day for almost a year and a half now, so jokes on me, I guess. Star Wars Classics began as a way to read something a little more relaxing in between the classics I was doing for the other blog. If you've followed along. It is, honestly, not really all that relaxing right now. The 1994-1995 class of  Star Wars  novels aren't very good. The Jedi Academy Trilogy is hamfisted, Courtship of Princess Leia is vaguely offensive and nonsensical,  Crystal Star  is just awkward, and Children of the Jedi  will hopefully be on my top 5 worst books for as long as I live. But I am looking forward to next year, The X-...

  Children of the Jedi Kevin J Anderson might write the best book in this trilogy. So, I thought it'd be fun to keep the review for the worst Star Wars book I'd read up until that point in my pocket, and release it if I came up with a worse book. I really thought Courtship of Princess Leia  would hold up for a while. I was wrong. Summary: Luke gets kidnapped by the AI of a crazy asteroid super weapon that's summoned by a kid using the Force. He falls in love with a computer-ghost, his student sacrifices herself and the computer ghost takes over her body. Hand and Leia... exist? What It Introduces: The Eye of Palpatine:  The dumbest superweapon the Empire ever created (and that's saying something) no superlaser or anything, it's just a ton of turbolasers strapped to an asteroid. Controlled by literature's dumbest super-ai. Callista Ming: Dead Jedi Knight computer/Force ghost. She wants to bang. Cray Mingla: Luke's super hot student, who kills herself because ...

  The Courtship of Princess Leia Is Isolder on there twice, or did the artist not know how to draw Han?      I was pretty excited for this one. Isolder's an interesting character, we get to go to Dathomir, Han and Leia usually have good chemistry. Instead, it was (for approximately a year until tomorrow's novel came out) the worst Star Wars book written. What It Introduces: Dathomir and Hapes: Two female led planets! Wow, isn't that so weird and coincidental. One is a death world and the other is rich. Happan Battle Dragons and Nova Crusiers: The Happan starships. They like ion cannons and their turbo lasers are less good, so they just stack a million on there. The Battle Dragons look like space Lazy Susans and spin to shoot faster. Nightwitches: Force witches! Orbital Night Cloak: It's the umbrella ship's from the Thrawn books, but now it's a super weapon. Summary: President "My Only Character Trait is Being Fat" wants to whore Leia out to secure fund...