I listened to the first six chapters of the Phasma novel audiobook, and so far I’m unimpressed. In the third chapter, when Vi’s getting electroshock tortured, at one point she spits out a mouthful of blood “from her bitten tongue.” The previous several paragraphs had been describing the sensation of getting tortured, including muscles seizing up and her jaw involuntarily clenching. Notably, it never mentioned a bitten tongue before Vi spitting up a mouthful of blood. It’s not a big fucking deal, but I feel like it’s pretty indicative of my major complaints with the novel, mainly that things just don’t seem well thought through. It ends up justifying things retroactively rather than having scenes build up organically. It reads like a first draft, like the author’s just putting shit down when she thinks of it, not where it’d benefit the narrative. There are some cool concepts that I’d love to see explored, but, at least so far, everything introduced seems simplistic and shallow. And the central concept is. Okay, I don’t really buy that anyone gives enough of a shit about Phasma’s past to make this huge fucking fuss about it. Cardinal is described as a model Stormtrooper, but he’s so certain that there’s something in Phasma’s past that’d ruin her standing in the First Order that he goddamned hijacks a known Resistance spy (which, Cardinal is in charge of the baby stormtroopers, their training and conditioning in their early lives. How is it that he’s privy to that info? How am I supposed to buy that Vi is any sort of competent at her job if the FO’s glorified nanny recognizes her on sight?) that he jeopardizes his own standing to oust her. Why is he that fucking certain that anything in Phasma’s past is worth his time that he’d risk his career? And, I also don’t buy that Vi got all this info on Phasma. Like, the planet Phasma comes from is more or less post apocalyptic (cool concept which the novel doesn’t seem interested in expanding on or explaining) and she was born into a tribe whose average lifespan is about 35. How the fuck did Vi find people who knew Phasma growing up? There’s no paper trail for her to follow, and a whole fucking planet’s worth of scattered clans and raiding parties to question. And if “Phasma” had been an assumed name and not her birth one then the search would have stalled completely. I feel like I'm being really unfair in not listening to the whole thing, but. I really don't like it. I kinda wanna hear from someone who liked it. Like, does it get better later on?
figured out why I'm so sore about the blood spitting thing. It's cause before that happened, one of the aftereffects of the shock torture was that Vi's jaw muscles would take a few moments to un tense, and she literally couldn't speak for a while after getting a shock (which could have been used to ratchet up tension and show how Cardinal isn't an experienced interrogator instead of having Vi tell us that at a random point in the scene, if he got impatient and thought she was being defiant when his treatment was making her incapable of complying with his demands, but.), so imagine a competent writer describing how it would feel to have your jaw sealed shut, blood welling up from where you've likely bitten through your own tongue, breathless from pain, terrified of drowning in your own blood while you captor watches, completely unaware of how he's fucking killing you. And then when you can move again, you fucking gob blood all over his shiny snowflake armor, because you're actually kind of a fucking badass and you sincerely won't break after three or four shocks. It would also make Vi "breaking" and telling Cardinal what he wants to know feel less like it had to happen cause the author was getting bored and needed the scene to change, and more like a character made a decision that makes sense for the situation they're in. Seriously, there's fucking no tension whatsoever in the torture scene. The electric shocks were a bad move. Supposedly Cardinal was ratcheting up the voltage, but the author never varied how she described the sensation or mentioned the pain intensifying. And there was no real breaking point, either. At some point Vi just decides that she's gonna try and manipulate the situation to her advantage, and that part of her end goal is to fucking turn Cardinal to her side, and it's. Goddamn. It's not a well written book.
behold. star wars novels. Can't say if it gets better sadly as I haven't read it myself but. Star Wars novels man. I'll probably read it soon though. Just because I like her armor.
I can get that. As far as really quality books the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Zahn's Thrawn novels and the Republic Commando and Imperial Commando novels. Everything else's just been kind of fun but not great. It was quite the jump from holy shit RepComm is so great to I think it was Death Troopers that I read next? Like it wasn't awful but it wasn't amazing or terribly compelling. I wasn't making any life decisions based off that thing.
I just started Heir to the Empire, and it's pretty good so far! I'll check out Republic Commando when I'm finished with that and Princess of Alderaan.
RepComm also has continuation of its plot in the Legacy of the Force series, but I've heard...questionable things about that series. It's also probably best read with the New Jedi Order series read prior to LotF given how much of its plot centers on shit that happen in the NJO. But the main books are the RepComm books, the ImpComm book, and the summary of the cancelled second ImpComm book.
