Maybe I Should Just Rename This Blog To "Whining About Old Star Wars": The Crystal Star by Vonda McIntyre (1994)

The Crystal Star 

Cover to the worst Star Wars book ever?

Summary: The Solo kids get kidnapped (add that to my stock plot list) and engage in stock evil boarding school hijinks. Han and Luke go on a "vacation" to look for Jedi (Han doesn't quite fuck everything that moves). Leia gets DiD. A dark Jedi gets eaten by The Blob.

What It Introduces:

There was a little in the Zoo section of Dark Apprentice, but I think this is the book that really establishes the twins' personalities/abilities. Jaina: more impulsive, good at machines. Jacen: more level headed, good with animals. 

Commentary: 

The Crystal Star is famously the worst EU novel ever written. I'm not going to go out of my way to particularly defend it (it is a terrible book), but I don't even think it's the worst book I've read so far. I actually "skipped" over a book on my way here. I'm officially dubbing it the worst Star Wars book I've read so far, and will refrain from posting about it until (unless?) I find a worse one. I might write the entry, just so I don't have to go back and reread it a year from now or whatever. TCS is bad for all the normal reasons bad books are bad. The plot doesn't really make sense. (Leia doesn't start looking for the kids for several chapters because she's on a planet where kidnappings are normal? and doesn't contact the New Republic for help). Han and Luke's subplot is basically pointless. (Is there a Jedi here? Nope. Han almost fucks a succubus/ghost for some reason). No one is in character. (Leia either has DiD, or is written to seem that way, as she narrates her internal monologue as an entirely different character without Leia's memories. Luke is the angry one while Han is calmish). The antagonists are ineffective. (Constantly outsmarted by children). It's debatably out of genre. (More like someone wanted to write a high-fantasy-esque Star Trek than Star Wars). The writing is (mostly) clumsy.

But there's nothing "special" wrong with it. It's not substantially worse in these regards than the Academy trilogy. Just a regular ol' bad. With another edit pass and the Star Wars branding off of it, it'd be perfectly respectable "disposable" science fantasy.

At it's even decent at times. I liked the first line, "The children had been kidnapped." quite a bit. It's exciting enough, and, in the context of Star Wars it's easy to guess who the children are. Doing some fine work for a five word sentence.

Review:

Starting to think I should just merge these sections. 1/5: There's no reason to read this book, but, despite half the internet insisting it kicked their dog, it's not that terrible either.

I'm now mostly caught up on these, having only it read but not reviewed. I'm working on the next book Ambush at Corellia, which is well on its way to earning "worse than TCS" status itself. TCS is the final Star Wars book of 1994. '94 is the first year since HttE to have multiple books that weren't by Timothy Zahn/children's novels. It was a pretty terrible year. Force save us from KJA, TCS is bad, and it rounds out the year. 1995 isn't looking a ton better. The Corellia trilogy is off to a weak start, a full four out of nine novels are by KJA (I'm officially reserving the right to tap out on Young Jedi Knights, having suffered through them as a kid), and there's not much going on in the rest. I'm really looking forward to 1996 though. The first three X-Wing books, and Shadows of the Empire, plus a couple others that at least sound interesting.

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