Can't read, busy shooting things.
I've been thinking of trying to do some sort of post on the series for a long time. I don't mind saying that the whole New Jedi Order thing is probably my favourite part of the Star Wars expanded universe. With the possible exception of those Jabba The Hutt comics.
I'm sure you can see why.
But this isn't to say that the series isn't deeply flawed in a myriad of ways. Because it is. For all the cool new ideas and genuine attempts at FINALLY doing something different for once the very nature of the series as something somewhat experimental does result in many problems. That and the fact that nobody could make their damn minds up about what was supposed to be happening. But we'll get to that later. First a little background.
When I was young and foolish I was into the Star Wars novels in a big way. I still have a pile of books about as tall as I am that I'm saving in case I ever need to build an emergency flood wall or something. There are that many. But like many of the sci-fi and fantasy series I consumed when I was younger I eventually came to realize that there was a certain amount of repetition involved. I don't mean the sort of vague nagging sense of familiarity is the familiar team of characters is once again put through their paces. I mean the fact that used the same goddamn plot. EVERY. DAMN. TIME.
A rogue/former/ex Imperial warlord/General/Admiral/Whatever gets their hands on a super weapon of some description (usually some leftover or offshoot of the Death Star project), probably teams up with an evil force user of description, and then buggers around being an utter cockbag for 3 books. And then they die and it all goes away and there was much rejoicing. Oh, and Jedi babies probably have a wacky adventure somewhere in the middle of it all since all Dark Jedi are basically child molesters.
Like this, only you're smashing your face into a wall and sobbing.
Sound familiar? Like I said, every damn book. Of course sometimes you'd get a subtle variation on the theme. For example I think a couple of times they didn't stretch it out to 3 books.
So yeah, the world of Star Wars books had gotten a little stale. So the IDEA of the New Jedi Order sounded fantastic. A series where things actually changed and moved on from the standard template. And with a new and terrifying race of villains. At least in theory.
I really like the Yuuzhan Vong. I think they make a great threat in the Star Wars universe. For a start they have a lot more character and are a hell of a lot more compelling than the endless parade of Imperials the books had been trotting out. Religious fanaticism gives you a lot more to work with than one note moustache twirling, dramatically speaking. They were totally alien, but also understandable as the series went on and we learned more about them. The bio tech and extra galactic origins were all neat and interesting ideas. The notion of them being immune to the Force gave the opportunity for the characters and narrative to explore the concept of the Force in new ways. But one of things I liked best about them was the fact that they were actually competent.
It's a problem you see in a lot of settings, not just Star Wars. You ever wonder how it is the bad guys are always so fantastically BAD at their jobs? The heroes just cleave their way through the assembled legions of darkness like a chainsaw in a basket of kittens.
Aren't you glad I used this picture instead?
I mean, how is it economically sustainable to just keep pumping out that many untrained soldiers with substandard equipment? The classic example of course is the Imperial Stormtrooper. The armour offers no protection, the guns do no damage and the users aren't capable of hitting anything anyway. The only thing they have going for them is weight of numbers. Now, I can see why stuff falls into this trap. It's a simple way of illustrating how mighty the heroes are. Far simpler to just write "and then they killed all the bad guys!!!" than actually trying to choreograph a proper fight over the next 10 pages. But you can only do that so much before it gets silly. And it's been silly in Star Wars for a hell of a long time.
To the point it is enshrined in statuary.
But at the start of the NJO the Yuuzhan Vong turn up and proceed to kick everybodies ass. Suddenly the heroes are actually being CHALLENGED again. And since the threat is that much greater (I.E. it actually exists) the heroes are that much more heroic. Suddenly we become invested in the drama.
Of course, this only lasts for maybe two books before the Yuuzhan Vong just become another race of faceless incompetent fodder to be ground up with minimal effort. But just for a moment things really looked cool.
Now, I know that part of the story is the good guys adapting and overcoming the new technology and tactics of the bad guys. That's an important part of the plot. But having the Yuuzhan Vong come in as the superior force presented the series with a few problems. Firstly I don't think many of the writers were actually prepared for that sort of enemy. Remember that, dramatically speaking the whole point of them is to undermine all the advantages the heroes have previously enjoyed and force them to adapt in a new situation. But it seems like the writers are generally so used to doing things the old way that they have difficulty adapting. I think this is where the Chazrach came from. They're a race of disposable battlefield fodder introduced early on to give the good guys lots of something to easily kill. Problem is after their initial appearance the whole species is quickly forgotten as the Yuuzhan Vong themselves take on the role of fodder. But aside from this the major problem facing the writers in this series is pretty simple. If the Yuuzhan Vong are supposed to be steamrollering in and conquering half the galaxy, how can you write a book where the good guys still win?
Now, I can totally see how utterly downbeat endings to the first 10 books might be considered a bit much. But we do seem to have this weird situation where much of the Yuuzhan Vongs victories are happening off screen between books. Many times the heroes will swoop in, deal the bad guys a crippling blow, kill all the things and then escape. And then while waiting for the next book to start the Yuuzhan Vong get a whole new shipment of things or something. There is a strange disconnection between the feeling of how things are going and what is actually meant to be happening.
Perhaps this is just a result of the length of the series. There is, after all, an awful lot of buggering about over the course of the twenty odd books. Perhaps a tighter focus might have aided the tension. Really I think that the series major failings can be traced back to the length, but right now there's another major criticism of the series that I'd like to address before proceeding.
Rocks fall, everyone dies.
Chewbacca's death. This upset many fans. I thought it was awesome. For a start it was written really well, and the impact across the series and characters was both massive and handled decently. It opened up all kinds of dramatic avenues for character exploration. It established this Yuuzhan Vong as a genuine threat. It loudly announced the tone that series would be taking. And of course is helped the writers out immensely by getting rid of a character who never had any actual dialogue. As deaths go I thought it was pretty sweet. Big, dramatic, and most importantly genuinely tragic and upsetting. You're meant to be upset when a major character dies. That's rather the point in killing them off in the first place. To then take that emotion and channel it into death threats against the author.....
Well, that's a level of brainless fanaticism that even the Yuuzhan Vong would find baffling.
Thing is, for as much as Chewies death worked, I would have loved to see them go with the original idea of killing Luke Skywalker himself. The effect that would have had would have been incredible. If nothing else it would have explained the inaction of the Jedi at the beginning of the series.
This is one of the really odd things about the series. I mean, it's called the New Jedi Order. The Yuuzhan Vong are basically an anti jedi weapon, and they have a strong anti jedi agenda throughout the series. Yet to start with the Jedi themselves bugger about doing very little. Debating whether or not it might be a good idea to fight this huge galaxy spanning invasion force that has explicitly stated on several occasions that it is going to kill the lot of them. Now, if you'd killed Luke in the beginning then the whole Jedi order would have been thrown into confusion and would take a few books to start getting their act together. As it stands it just seems like Luke has far more interest in banging Mara Jade than anything else.
Seriously, in that first quarter or so books go count the times Luke actually does anything constructive about the invasion and the number of times him and Mara start or end a scene in the bedroom. I mean, I get she's a how red head and everything, but seriously. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SPACE MONK. FOCUS ON THE BIG PICTURE.
Focus on the whatnow?
But yes, back to the issue of length. The series is, undoubtedly, overlong with to many authors. This is hindsight speaking of course. The series was still a bold and valuable experiment. But the issues do need to be addressed. Characterisations have a tendency to bounce around between authors, and there is a certain lack of consistency in other areas. Not that I want to imply that any of the authors are particularly bad. But different people interpret things in different ways. Perhaps the most obvious example is that of the Force immunity of the Yuuzhan Vong themselves. Nobody really knows how this is supposed to work. In some books they're totally immune to Force Lightning, whilst in others they get zapped just like everyone else. Sometimes a force push will barely effect them, sometimes it will do nothing at all and sometimes it might work. This is because nobody has any idea of WHY they're force immune. And I don't mean the characters when I say that. Indeed it seems like those in charge had some ideas, but couldn't quite make their mind up. Throughout many of the books it's strongly hinted that the problem isn't that they don't exist in the force at all, but they exist in some spectrum of it that the Jedi are unaware of. This is a great idea and does make some sense, considering that they come from a whole different galaxy and all. And we have several characters over the course of the series who learn a "Vongsense", a way of perceiving the Yuuzhan Vong which is similar to the more familiar force perceptions.
And in the last book they change their minds and say that the whole species was deliberately and punitively stripped of the force en mass. Which does rather undermine the whole thing really. We've spent all these books wondering if maybe the Force is actually so much more greater and mysterious than we've previously understood, only to find out the answer is a resounding no.
Although to be fair there's an awful lot of those in Star Wars these days.
I can't help but wonder where this decision came from. After all, we know that George get's final say and stuck his boot in the series before. They spent several books setting up Anakin Solo for an important role in the series, only to have to kill him off and pass that role onto Jacen Solo instead simply because of his name and the fact the prequels happened. Or maybe it was just a way to wrap things up quickly and happily after all the controversy. Obviously the direction of the series took a turn after the whole 9/11 thing. Suddenly dark and dangerous stories about invading fanatics didn't seem so appealing to the American public. Whilst this is understandable I do have to wonder how things might have turned out without these external pressures.
Personally I find the parallels between the Yuuzhan Vong and the modern terrorist thing a little tenuous myself. To me they've always seemed a lot more like WW2 era Japan. A rigidly defined society, fanatically devoted to leadership they perceive as literally of divine origin. Not only that but a society which slowly starts to unravel as the military ambitions of the leadership lead them towards destruction. Indeed, one of the central themes of the latter portion of the series is the Jedi's search for a way to end the war that would not result in mutual annihilation. This was, after all, one of the reasons given for the use of the nuclear bomb on Japan. It's the alien fanaticism of the Yuuzhan Vong which means that the Jedi have to find a way to make peace with them, oddly enough. This is one of the best themes in the whole series in my opinion. The simple realisation that the war can't be ended just by fighting it.
Of course the resolution isn't without issues. Now, I'm not going to rag on Zenoma Sekot because I think it's a really fun idea to have a sentient planet. The fact it's a force sensitive, hyperspace capable sentient planet is like the icing on the cake. I do take issue with the fact that the Yuuzhan Vong who actually go there take one look and suddenly decide they should have been hippies all along. Divine awe is one thing, but so is an entire life submerged in a particular culture. Change comes slowly. But that's not the worst part.
See, at the end of the series the Yuuzhan Vong, broken from the death of their holy leader, surrender are sent off to live on Zenoma Sekot. Sekot is itself descended from the Yuuzhan Vongs primordial homeworld, back from before they trashed their home galaxy. Thus it should be able to teach them to stop being dicks all the time. All well and good. But the ENTIRE Yuuzhan Vong race is sent off to live on a single planet? A race that dominated and destroyed a whole GALAXY? Then crossed the unimaginable gulfs between the galaxies to a whole new one and actually conquered most of it?
I know that they severely overextended their resources in the war. I know they took astronomical casualties. Or at least the warrior caste did. But even so, do you really think even the tiniest fraction of them will actually be able to fit on one single planet? Remember, one of the major reasons the Yuuzhan Vong invaded the galaxy was because they actually HAD TO. The world ships carrying their race were dying, and they needed planets to live on. That's a plural, right there.
Now, outside of the fiction we know exactly why this happened. Because nerds fear change. the series had been divisive amongst fans at best, and many wanted the whole thing to just go away. They wanted things to go back to normal. And thus the Yuuzhan Vong were told to pack up their untold billions and bugger off to the unknown regions so some nerds wouldn't ever have to look at them again. Never mind that the whole point of their story was to change the Star Wars galaxy. Never mind that all that glorious good old days sameness is available in the vast library of proceeding books. None of which had been invalidated, kidnapped or destroyed by the evil new books. Never mind that there are all kinds of interesting stories to be told about the Yuuzhan Vong trying to adapt to life in the galaxy, to fit in and find a place for themselves. No, never mind any of that. Angry nerd says no, and so they go to life of overcrowding and environmental catastrophe on a once beautiful world that simply cannot support their numbers.
Suffice to say, my interest in the Star Wars books rather waned again at that point. Still, it was (at least in parts) nice whil it lasted.
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