Review: Shadows of the Empire

[winter]

One of the few rules I have is that I don’t do Star Wars Extended Universe. Basically, it’s movie or bust for me – I might gleam a gem or two of inspiration from an interview with Lucas or from the novelisations, but if it wasn’t in the movies, it’s not canon. I also consider 99% of the EU to be mass-rpoduced drivel.

Shadows of the Empire, which fyrie made me read, is part of that 1%.

I’m not saying the book is perfect. But it’s highly enjoyable. All characterisations ring true, all interactions seem real, intra-movie introspection is plausible. And then there’s Vader.

Shadows takes place between TESB and ROTJ, so Vader is. And he’s written perfectly – impressive, impulsive, and just bratty (in a mature way) enough to make me believe this is both the villain I adored in the Original Trilogy and the rebel Jedi I grew surprisingly fond of in the prequels. Mind you, the book came out in 1996 – several years before we even got a look at Yippee Kid in TPM, never mind Hayden.

It’s not a dazzling intellectual endeavour – hello, Star Wars – but it’s certainly enjoyable. I would have preferred for Xizor to get his arse kicked worse, though: this was one fictional character that I was plotting how to assassinate fifty pages into the book. (I decided sabotaging his physical-training machine would have been the most elegant way.)

In other news, I’m still working on the Coldfire FST. I was listening to HIM’s version of Wicked Game yesterday and I realised it’s the perfect Gerald/Damien song:

The world was on fire, no one could save me but you
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do
I'd never dreamed that I'd need somebody like you

Yes, this FST is going to be highly on crack.

Comments

[winter]

I like the way you think.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I've been hanging out with vampires, Feanorians and Gerald. You pick things up along the way. ;-)

[winter]

Now all you need is Sheldon Jeffrey Sands and we'll have matching sets of psychotics ;)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Oh, Feanorians too?

Psychotics are fun. So much more interesting than those nice, sane guys. :-)

[winter]

Sparky himself was my most active muse in that phase, but I owe much inspiration to his offspring, particularly Mae, Mags and Carrie.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

He lets you get away with calling him Carrie? Wow, he must like you...

[winter]

I give him knives and pretty boys to play with. He's rather easy to please in that regard. I don't think I've ever posted anything with him, but my Caranthir is a particularly nasty number. Even Curufin can't really compare.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Oh, nasty Caranthir... *purrs*

I've had the other two C's in residence for a while, mostly so they could deliver smackdowns on Celebrimbor whenever he complained about how much his family makes him need therapy.

Feanorians. Psychos you just have to like.

[winter]

And such a wide variety of psychos, too :) I have to admit to being a shameless MaeFin fangirl, but they're all fun.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

MaeFin, my LotR OTP. *g*

I really need to get my Celegorm ficlet done. It's been gathering dust for two years by now.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm so glad I'm not the only one with random Elves hovering around ;)

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

It's starting to be scary how many people with the same obsessions interests I'm meeting lately.

Random elves? Which ones?

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

*grins* I think we all just tend to congregate, drawn to one place (apparently, in this case, vampires, Elves and Beth's journal ;D).

In a LotR AU game I'm in, I've somehow collected a legion (since only 3 of us play, it's fair enough): Thranduil, Legolas, Arwen, Celebrian, Rumil and Glorfindel (who we're playing as related to Galadriel, just because we felt like being random and having him with family, without creating a dozen OCs)

And speaking of OCs, I have a Mirkwood guard.

Those aside, I also have a modern day Maglor, who has been kicking around since he chucked the Silmarillion in the sea (And just had an amusing thought of the Titanic-movie divers finding the Silmarillion and going "Nah. Piece of shiny crap. Leave it.") and who has completely lost the plot. He's my emo-kid with his millennia of gradually going nuts means that any other Elves he encounters just kind of stare at him, then back away. He is nuts.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, that's quite a collection. I still have Ecthelion hang around from a now dead RPG, plus my little crowd of Feanorians (they just tend to come in groups).

Modern day Maglor sounds interesting! I always wondered what happened to him. And wouldn't Titanic have been a much nicer movie if instead of Rose calling about her necklace, Maglor had called about them having picked up his Silmaril? ;-)

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

At present, I'm sitting with at least 50 RPG characters in a dozen games (including 2 completely different AUs of Troy. I boggle. We took a crap film, added the classic texts and produced two huge scale games) and that's not including all the ones I seem to have as fic muses as well. It's a wonder my head hasn't exploded :D

The poor old modern Maglor travelled the world, keeping to himself and occasionally, giving into his broody instincts and raising street urchins into smart, cunning kids, before wandering on. Alas that he was so noticeable that he was suspected of being some kind of witch/wizard thing in Ottoman Turkey and his 'family' at the time were slaughtered because they were doing 'unnatural' things. Made him a bit disillusioned, so he headed West, aiming for home and landing in America, where he was viewed as a spirit guide type thing by one of the native tribes, whom he tagged around with for 4 generations before white men arrived and lo, things went belly up again. Never had such a cynical, bitter git before. He's fabulous and has such a dry, ironic sense of humour.