Spoiler-free Review of Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber
For those of you like me who hear “spoiler” and run as far in the other direction as possible, you can finally find out if Joe Schreiber’s Death Troopers- the first officially horror novel to be released under the Star Wars label - is any good or not.
Kale and Trig Longo are alone in almost every sense of the word. The two teens have recently lost their father and have no friends aboard the Imperial prison barge Purge. Just as things seem at their darkest, a mysterious plague brought back from an empty Star Destroyer by the boarding party brings death and destruction where misery and squalor had been before. After things escalate from there, the boys begin to pick up other loners and embark on a near-impossible journey- simply to survive.
It’s hard to discuss this book without spoilers. I mean really HARD. Part of this is because one of the things I most want to discuss… well, it’s not a spoiler to anybody who’s even glanced at the news about Death Troopers even once since the spring. And yet it’s a spoiler, and I know some members and more non-members would indeed be spoiled to this if I wrote about it.
So instead, let’s start at the beginning. I was disappointed, but in a way I sort of expected it. The opening chapters were classic Star Wars. Let me tell you- for anybody who might have been afraid a horror author could not capture the expected look and feel of a Star Wars novel, Schreiber delivers. For those of us who’ve been looking for the universe without the popular (to put it more negatively, overused) tone, he doesn’t. Not so soon, anyway. The first, say, 90 pages of the novel could have been written by any Star Wars novel. It’s only the (refreshing) utter lack of well known characters that sets these first chapters of the book apart.
During these strictly Star Wars chapters, we’re given some pretty decent character development. We’re given some internal monologue, a flashback, even a little bit of exposition and narration. A fair mix, but not enough to take away all the secrets. In fact, we still don’t have all the answers hinted at here at the end of the novel- a fact that both invests us emotionally in most of the main characters and leaves me hoping the rumored non-sequel is a sequel after all. Only two important characters, in fact, are left without a backstory- and they’re two that I’m sure the author expected us to be invested in already. In fact, I found a few things wrong with this character. He’s a perfect choice for someone in a Star Wars horror novel, but some of the things that make him such a perfect choice are left out. Instead, he seems like the Bruce Willis or Samuel L Jackson character that he wants to appear to be… but isn’t.
Once we step into the second phase of the novel, the horror really starts. It sets in gradually. As a huge horror fan looking for King-esque writing here, I was gauging how far the horror went. As a casual fan, you might not quite notice it until it really hits you. This isn’t one of those novels where an ordinary day is so disgusting and grotesque you know this is a horror novel. It isn’t even a book that pushes the limits of its real horror scenarios- murderers, threats and operating tables- to their limits. It is, however, a horror novel.
The mood isn’t extreme, but it’s there. There’s real fear, real suspense. If I had to guess who lived and died in this novel, I would have been completely off in some respects. That said, everything that the mood did suffer from involved lack of detail. There was great detail in some areas but when it comes to horror, you can never have too much, and I felt like more was needed. The characters, too, provide just enough detail… but I felt like more was needed. Nobody is going to put this book on the top shelf or put it down halfway through because it’s giving them nightmares. No, Star Wars has yet to step into that world, I’m afraid, but I never really expected anything so adult from the franchise.
I don’t want to come across as too negative. While it’s easy to spot things that could have been more horrifying, this book really does come across as scary. With the non-zombie characters, we even get a chance to dip into several other horror subgenres. Some of the scenes just seem to be begging for a graphic novel treatment, and considering the promotion behind this… I could see it happening. I would double dip, no question.
This is getting to a bit of a ramble, so I’m going to try to wrap it up. Death Troopers is a superb marriage of what one expects from Star Wars and a classic zombie story. It carries the mood of both without going too far in either direction, and I definitely recommend it to fans of either genre. More Star Wars focused fans might be interested to note that I found myself several times wondering about the involvement of any of a small slew of Sith Lords, any of whom I would have liked to see an epilogue with. Or a sequel.
While I can’t really do this review full justice without any spoilers, I will be publishing a full spoiler review sometime next week at Fight-Evil.com
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