Showdown at Centerpoint by Roger MacBride Allen (1995)

 Showdown at Centerpoint

Credit: Wookiepedia
I'm pretty sure you could take Han Solo out of this book and nothing would change.

Summary: The cast gets back together and goes to Centerpoint Station, which was the "starbuster" (stupid fucking name) all along! The conspiracy is revealed! It's... no one? The Sacorrian Triad, the rulers of one of the planets in the Corellian sector who have been mentioned a few times but never appeared, are actually controlling it, and all the psuedo-rebel groups. The investigate the station and find exactly one person living there. It's apparently been inhabited all this time, but no one really knows what's up with it.

There's a half-assed space battle, Ackbar shows up the save the day, Captison gets borderline deus ex machina'd/fridged, and Anakin saves the day mostly off page.

What It Introduces:
Centerpoint Station- We finally get some real details on Centerpoint, although still filtered through Macbride's garbage writing. It's apparently got a mini sun inside, and was inhabited until recently. It's got a giant repulsor that can fire through hyperspace to move planets and blow up suns and stuff. Used to build the Corellian system by yanking planets through hyperspace from elsewhere in the galaxy.

Ramships: Droid controlled ships less guns, more armor, and bigger engines. They ram into things.

Commentary/Review: 1/5 The other two books in this series are pointless, this one is just bad.

1. Like the Bakuran envoy in the last book and the trade summit in the first book, the exploration of Centerpoint could easily have been most of a book itself. Instead, it gets a couple chapters that don't really tell us much, or make sense. How did no one think to look at the giant ancient space station? Why did everyone evacuate off screen? (From a Doylist perspective, not a Watsonian one.) How does Macbride do so little with such a cool set piece? What's with Lando's half assed romance with the security officer?

2. Captison's Death: The Bakuran fleet manages to fight an hour long space battle against long odds and wins. An hour long active battle is nuts, but whatever. Luke takes off and lands several times on the way to the battle to rest. It makes perfect sense! They're pretty well winning, even before Ackbar shows up (dramatic tension is for suckers), but the ship she's on gets rammed (literally and our of nowhere) by some droid suicide ships. These haven't been seen or established in anywhere (even the RPG) before. Captison is critically wounded (it's Star Wars, slap some bacta and cyborg parts on it) and she and the admiral decide to self destruct the ship for... reasons... It just feels like a cheap kill to either a. say they killed off a named character and/or b. get her out of the way as a love interest for luke.

3. Anakin and the repulsor: While the good guys handily win the space battle, this doesn't actually stop Centerpoint from firing and blowing up another star. In the last book, Anakin accidentally fired off one of the planetary repulsors that can counter it, accidentally imprinting on it so he's the only one that can control it. They send him back down with Jacen, Jaina, and some techs to try to recalibrate it and fire if off at just the right time they can block Centerpoint's shot. It's a change of pace from yet another trench run. But, again, Macbride can't do anything with it. There's however much techno-babble and Anakin being super-kid, they can't figure out how to line it up in time, and then Jacen goes, "whatever, Anakin can wing it," and on the next page he does, with no particular fanfare. At least give me a paragraph of him dramatically calling on the Force or something.

There's been a lot of stinkers on this journey so far, but I think this series was the most disappointing. Yeah, the Jedi Academy series sucked, but it at least had a couple decent bits and moved the plot along. This one tees up Centerpoint, but does less with it than the Academy trilogy did with The Maw and its set pieces. Captison dies, which robs the EU of one of its first good original characters. Lando gets a girlfriend. Woohoo. Han Solo goes home, has to deal with a rebellion, ancient alien technology, bringing Bakura closer to the New Republic, so many good plot threads here, blown by Macbride's incompetence. Ugh. The next two reviews aren't any better. 1994 and 1995 suck for Star Wars novels.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

13: A New Hope Radio Drama (1981)

Image
ANH Radio Drama I've talked before about how the radio drama is my favorite adaptation of the OT. In many ways, it serves the role often played by a novelization by expanding on the original story moreso than the actual novels (particularly ANH). If you haven't listened, bounce over to Youtube: Or The Internet Archive  and have a listen. George Lucas cut the University of Southern California (his alma mater) a sweetheart dollar deal to license the story, music, and sound effects. Brian Daley (who wrote the Han Solo trilogy earlier) did the scripts. In the modern era of big budget podcasts and audiobooks, it's a little harder to express how freaking cool these were as a kid into Star Wars in the 90s (though the Jedi adaptation wasn't produced until 1996). I literally wore out my cassettes. Long story short, these are professionally produced, well directed, and make great use of John William's score (with a few additional cues recorded for the occasion) and a full cas...
Read more

1. Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978) by Alan Dean Foster

Image
Splinter of the Mind's Eye Sweet Ralph Macquarie cover art, courtesy of Wookiepedia! Summary: Luke and Leia crash on a swamp planet. Leia has PTSD. Luke has a crush on her. They go looking for the Kaiburr Crystal with cranky Force grandma and replacement Chewie twins. Darth Vader shows up and mostly kicks their asses, but he falls in a hole. What it introduces: Naming things X of the Y : Which would hold for 4 of the 9 movies, 70ish novels, and numerous video games, comics, etc. The Kaiburr Crystal: Shards of which would become the most desirable lightsaber focusing crystals in the later EU. Kyber crystals would make an appearance in the new canon as both lightsaber crystals and part of the Death Star's superlaser.  Commentary:   Splinter of the Mind's Eye is widely considered the first book in the Expanded Universe. It was published in 1978, about half a year after the original release of Star Wars/A New Hope.  Preceding it are a few of the Marvel Comics (which I'll be...
Read more

9. The Lando Calrissian Adventures Part 3: The Starcave of ThonBoka (1983)

Image
      The Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka How inaccurate is the cover? is a great game to play with the Star Wars novels (even the good ones!) Today we have another appearance of the non-existent DL-44, the Starcave being a literal cave (it's a nebula) and some questionable ship depictions.   (Wookiepedia) Summary:  Lando and Vuffi Raa find a space stingray starving to death. They feed it literal shit and garbage, and it agrees to make them precious gems (it can/cannot convert matter as the plot demands) and it flies off. A short while later, it contacts them to tell them about a blockade of their nebula by "The Navy" (The Centrality is/is not related to the Empire and is less characterized than the Corporate Sector Authority in the Han Solo books). Lando cons/sneaks his way through the blockade in the one of the book's requisite Sabacc scenes (taking place in the middle instead of the beginning. Smith is stretching his craft to the max here). They...
Read more