A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… I started reading these books

The Star Wars Expanded Universe is a big place, and one that’s easy to get lost in. That’s why it’s my mission to help to guide you through the EU with (generally) chronologically ordered reviews of Star Wars novels. Today, I guide you through the firestorm of fierfek that was Michael Reaves’ and Steve Perry’s Death Star.

The Death Star is the ultimate power known to the modern galaxy- but it wasn’t always that way. Before Alderaan and Yavin IV, there was Despayre. Before Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, there was Ratua. Before Bevel Lemelisk was introduced to us, there was Teela…

There was a disturbance in the Force. It was as though millions of readers cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. That disturbance was Death Star. (No, that quote is not from where you think it’s from. Not the second time, anyway.)

Let us start with the cover. They tell you never to judge a book by its cover, and the authors have no control over that anyway. Still, let’s take a look at it; it’ll tell us a lot about what the publishers thought about this book.

We have an image of the Death Star, painted in light and midtone blues and greys. The Death Star is in progress of being completed, on top of a background of midtone to dark blues- there’s some black, but the gradient indicates that to a well trained eye, these would be dark shades of blue as well. There’s a small orange ship pointed at it, along with motion lines indicating that it’s moving toward the station at a rapid pace. There are no TIE fighters or other defensive mechanisms, and the similarities between the near-transparent Death Star and the background indicate a warmth and familiarity that’s not often associated with the superweapon. There are even a small few bright, happy stars. To add to this theme, there are no solid lines separating the Death Star from the background- it’s a very soft, painted distinction.

Let’s compare to this random stock image of the Death Star from A New Hope. We have a black background, with a smattering of cold, distant stars. The superweapon is largely in ominous shadow, but what’s visible is very distinct, a surgical white reminiscent of not only the Empire, but also the color of bone. There’s a very visible distinction between this horror of technology and nature in the background. That’s before any painter touched this- that’s a stock photo.

In other words, if this novel was written to capitalize on its title, and its subject, it would have cost nothing to use a much superior, much darker and more ominous cover than the one they used. Instead, this is the family friendly Death Star. The commercialized weapon of mass destruction. And that’s the massive problem with this novel.

Death Star is written on the premise of being the untold story of this battle station. Instead, what we get is a sitcom. Rather than focusing on the political maneuvering, the cold scientists such as Lemelisk, Raith Sienar and Poggle the Lesser and the ambitious Palpatine, Tarkin and Motti, we get the story of a bartender, a pair of wrongly imprisoned inmates (and I use that term lightly), a TIE fighter pilot, and the Death Star gunner.

Wait a second, doesn’t this sound like a decent installment in the Tales Of series? This could be a pretty interesting group of stories, no different from Chalmun’s Cantina or Jabba’s Palace.

Well, yes, it could have been. In fact, if these were written as separate stories, which would likely each have its own discernible plot despite some overlaps, and probably each having its own themes and message, it could have turned out all right. But that’s not what happened. Not remotely.

Death Star starts off with Grand Moff Tarkin. It comes across at first like Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, in that it names a lot of people in both the EU and the films that were known to be involved in the Death Star’s creation. Here we come across one of the first flaws in this book: it’s pretty clear that there is no untold story of the Death Star to learn. After the initial appreciation of the mentions of the EU, it became apparent that’s all they were. I felt like I was reading an encyclopedia article on the Death Star, and guess what? I already own the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. I already know that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, though I’m a little unsettled by yet another person- this time, Grand Moff Tarkin- apparently knowing this.

We go on to meet our main characters. Not only do we learn that bars located in Coruscanti slums apparently have enough interaction with the Unknown Regions to serve Killik membrosia, but we also discover that the Death Star plans are apparently riddled with mistakes. We are led to believe that this station is very fragile and both the construction crew and its inhabitants are far from the disciplined naval group originally implied.

Before I get into the new characters, I’m going to touch on the known characters we deal with throughout the novel (as compared to the ones stuck in at the end). Grand Moff Tarkin is written… accurately. Not precisely. Basically, Tarkin is written as a superficial representation of himself: it’s all things that fit his character, but there’s nothing that says “this is Wilhuff Tarkin” as compared to being any generic devious Moff. This is most obvious when we come across sections that are riddled with innuendos about “how hot [Tarkin's] fire burns” when he’s with Natasi Daala. Frankly, I could have gone without those metaphors. The other previously established character that features heavily into Death Star is Darth Vader, who’s written fairly well, except for the time that he notes something as requiring action, and then proceeds to never do anything about it ever.

The new characters are pretty interesting, and they’re by far the most positive thing about the book. They’re fleshed out, and each of the nine main characters is easily distinguishable, at least at first, with varying degrees of backstory. In fact, they’re such well written, compelling characters that it points to the fact that, far from inept writers, what readers were actually faced with was a calculated insult, a kick in the teeth saying, “shell out money for the name Death Star, but don’t expect us to write anything worth reading about it”.

The problem herein lies that we get so much character, so much detail of their day to day life… but not enough action. It becomes one of those sitcoms with no comedy- picture the Jeff Foxworthy Show on a Star Wars backdrop.

On top of that, it seems almost every one of these new characters is possibly Force-Sensitive. Memah, the bartender, hints in one scene at possibly touching the Force, although it’s never referenced again. This is right around the same point in the novel where we discover that the martial arts master has precognitive abilities, and that one of our prisoners, Ratua, has speed that seems impossible- a popular way to describe precognitive reflexes in combat situations.

It doesn’t take long to discover that they’re not all Force-Sensitive- they’re just all perfect. I almost put this down when I discovered that one of our perfect characters, who needed only some flaws to be a believable characters, was also literally a min-maxer.

Let me explain min-maxers, in context, to those who have never been or played with them. This character, who happens to have connections to allow his team to appear completely flawless during all inspections and drills and is remarked as being the best gunnery chief in the fleet, has had his tendon connections surgically altered to allow him to become a good armwrestler.

That’s right, CPO Tenn Graneet is that annoying player at your tabletop RPG section who says “I paid credits to have a procedure done so that I could get a plus four bonus on gambling checks involving arm wrestling. The downside is that, uh… I get some arm pains sometimes. Yeah, they’re really bad” and then proceeds to never suffer from arm pains.

But Tenn is not the only offender. They’re all God mode players; let me count the ways:

The smuggler who’s not really a bad guy and can find and sell anything anywhere to the point of creating his own identity on the Death Star with no difficulty, all while being faster than anatomically possible and belonging to a near human species which happens to be very attractive to females

The hot, possibly Force-Sensitive Twi’lek who takes her shirt off for fan service and has her cantina burned down by the Empire just so she can bartend for the troops

The architect who’s a political prisoner and good enough to be taken under the wing of one of the best planners of all time and is hot and such.

The Teras Kasi master who knows multiple styles and teaches people out of the goodness of his heart, studies philosophy and can also tell what everyone’s going to do. But wait: he’s also responsible for Han Solo’s escape from the Stormtroopers.

The best archivist-anarchist-spy who was so good all of his enemies had him sent to the Death Star where he quickly fooled security, helped Luke find Leia and then became a selfless hero.

The possible best pilot of the fleet who can fool Darth Vader and woo any female (seriously, why have a naval pilot hit on a girl in a bar but not include this?) and also has a conscience, plus is a great leader who stupid people don’t listen to. Like Maverick, but better. And less interesting.

And many more. Eventually, they all meet each other, but that doesn’t make good character development any more than it makes a plot (In fact, the characters lose development as strong, independent women with no interest in getting in a relationship more complex than a brief fling lasting their contractual time aboard the station being reduced to supportive girlfriend roles). All it makes is really bad fan fiction. The worst kind of fan fiction; the kind with names like “Villain Dance” and the even more cringe-worthy “Teh Roxxor”.

Actually, it’s not that. It’s actually a really bad poem in disguise. What does this poem say?

The Empire sucks
The Empire sucks
The Empire sucks

Life sucks
Life sucks
Life sucks

We should do something
We should do something
We should do something

The Death Star is big
The Death Star is big
The Death Star is big

This is horrible
This is horrible
This is horrible

Stop reading this book
Stop reading this book
Stop reading this book

And so on and so forth. Except that each of those lines is a page long, and it doesn’t nearly rhyme as well. In between each two or three stanzas, we get something that almost sort of resembles a plot. The way a zebra with one leg resembles a record-winning racing dog.

As the end of the novel approaches, we get something that resembles a plot. At this point I’d be concerned about spoiling too much, but the earlier scenes in the novel spoil the ending worse than I ever could. At this point, what interest I had in the characters is pretty much gone as more interesting characters come into play, even if completely unnecessary new dimensions have been added to them. Three fourths of the end of the book are ripped directly from A New Hope, and these are by far the most interesting dialogue scenes in the book. They say it’s a bad idea to reference a better movie in your bad movie; apparently, this also holds true to your bad novel.

I had heard that Steve Perry and Michael Reaves are very well liked authors among circles I travel in, despite the fact that I didn’t care for any of their works I had read before. Death Star indicates that not only were my first impressions correct, but also that they’re little more professional in their writing than a group of fans participating in a role-playing writing group- in fact, now-dead role-playing sites I’ve participated in have written more compelling stories that fit better in the Star Wars universe than the majority of Death Star did. The characters were drastically overpowered Mary Sues, despite the fact that they were by far the most compelling part of the novel. It’s thanks to these characters that I couldn’t put the novel down, though I’m hesitant to call that a positive in the way that I wouldn’t call curiosity about what would happen if you stuck a fork repeatedly in your eye to be a very good form of curiosity. Death Star has its upsides, but despite those, I would recommend that anybody who considers reading it put it aside and watch Star Wars: Episode IV instead.

Epilogue:

I thought I was free. I had destroyed the Death Star, and Lord Starthriller.

But I was wrong. The Death Star loomed ahead of me. The Death Star with Tarkin and Motti. And Tarkin’s hot steaminess. And I fired a proton torpedo, right into the prim- secondary exhaust vent, and blew the shavit out of it.

But that wasn’t out. It seemed I’d drifted into a virtual asteroid field of Death Stars- an invasion fleet of some sort. So I targeted the next Death Star, and destroyed Villain Dance and his Girl Scout girlfriend.

I set my sights on the next one and fired, blowing apart the remains of Teh Roxxor and his possibly Force-Sensitive topless Twee. Fired again, at the galaxy’s best arm-wrestling gunnery chief. Fired again. No more ridiculously overqualified stormtroopers and bouncers. Fired one more. No more librarians that are so good at their job they need to be sent into the middle of the book.

I made my way through the rest of the system, flying through trenches and destroying Death Stars. When they were all gone, I felt at peace… for the moment.