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aberration) wrote2020-04-17 06:23 pm
aberration) wrote2020-04-17 06:23 pm
how does it feel when your heart grows cold
I said I would come back to complain about Space Fascists, and look. This also barely breaks 1300 words, because honestly not that much happens and I couldn't be bothered to check back on things like people's names no of course I did, so, most recent Thrawn book -
So with this book I've really given up hope of Zahn treating his Gary Stu with a critical eye. I really don't have a problem with Thrawn being this amazing competent genius mastermind, really I don't. (Though I would note that amazingly competent genius characters are much more interesting to read about/watch when things go wrong for them, rather than when things go according to their genius mastermind plans. I would think this is obvious – struggle is more interesting than ease, seeing someone solve a puzzle is more interesting than someone just knowing all the pieces in advance Because Genius.) But – and this is not complicated – Thrawn is working for fascists and I think Zahn needs to grapple with that and Zahn either disagrees or doesn't want to and that's just going to be a line-in-the-sand ideological difference for me. And like I've said, I think it's possible to do this with villain-protagonist stories in Star Wars - James Luceno's Tarkin accomplished this to me, and I now look back maybe too fondly at Paul S. Kemp's Lords of the Sith, which had a number of Imperial characters who were each shitty fascists in their own shitty fascist ways.
In any case, the plot of this book is that shortly before the finale of Star Wars Rebels, Thrawn is recalled from Lothal at the request of Tarkin/the Emperor (this is depicted in the show). This ends up being for a meeting with Tarkin, maybetheEmperorIcan'tremember, another Imperial admiral, and Orson Krennic and his assistant Rohan. Krennic is having issues with "Project Stardust" because supply shipments are being attacked by something-like-mynocks-but-not and then disappear into hyperspace. Somehow this turns into a weird gamble where Thrawn agrees to find a solution for this problem in a set time frame, and if he fails – as was my initial understanding of this – funding from his own pet project, the TIE Defenders, would be redirected toward Stardust. But actually this wasn't the case, it was just like, Thrawn could have gotten some additional funding for the TIE Defenders? Which pretty much took away any stakes this whole gamble thing could have had and left me on a note of 'why did we even bother with this.'
In any case, the whole mynocks-but-not thing ends up being a wider conspiracy involving pirates and a corrupt Imperial officer, and... I'm not going to go further into this because really it doesn't matter beyond being a mystery for Thrawn to figure out very easily. Pretty much any obstacles that could trip him up in some way just turn out to not actually be obstacles – a particularly egregious example of this is that the characters bring up a few times how Thrawn is a genius at studying his opponents through visual art, but not performance art like music, which had the potential to give one opponent a kind of... edge? Advantage? But no actually Thrawn can totally also understand performance art too so like. Nevermind, actually! God forbid Thrawn not immediately figure out everything.
This book also follows up on some plot threads from the two previous Thrawn books, most notably:
- Eli Vanto returns, having initially served as Thrawn's interpreter and assistant in the first book but then disappearing for a while after Thrawn sent him to work with the Chiss Ascendency. We learn that he's been doing some kind of data analysis work for the Chiss that relates to –
- The Chiss Force users, mostly young girls (though this book includes a young woman) who are used by the Chiss navies to navigate their starships in lieu of navigating computers, a technology they don't have. And I'm just going to reiterate my 'little girls have a magic power that they lose when they get older' issues here but, okay.
- The Grysk, a vague conquering species that conquers things.
So I can't say this book doesn't have a plot – it does, even if I don't really like it that much. And the prose is perfectly fine and I did enjoy some parts of it. But Zahn's unwillingness to confront writing Space Fascists just gets too distracting, and it's hard not to feel like Zahn fell back on the old "well okay my protagonist is bad but I'll create something worse so it doesn't matter." Now we have the Grysk, who have no personality or really much that can be described about them beyond 'scary conquering species.' In this book they come off as some kind of cross between TOS-era Klingons and the Borg – warlike and with some kind of magical power to force subservience from whomever they capture. Eli even at one point makes a rather cringe-worthy argument that the Grysk are worse than the Empire because there's still some dissent within the Empire, like, really? The Empire's not as bad because it's not as successful at repression yet? Come. on.
In any case, there are a few other characters of note, like the older Chiss navigator Vah'nya who I think mainly serves to speak to the experience of the navigators rather than having the young girls do that but is also a weird crush interest for Eli that doesn't go anywhere; the Chiss admiral Ar'alani who is Professional and Competent; Krennic's Assistant Rohan who is kind of sycophantic but also kind of not, I don't know, he mainly seems to be here to make some kind of odd couple with Eli that doesn't really succeed; and Karyn Faro, an Imperial who has been among Thrawn's crew since the first book, and whom I feel like I'm supposed to like while not confronting that she's also a Space Fascist. Zahn kind of tries to throw in these little things that seem to be saying 'look, Thrawn's not totally omniscient because he says right here that Faro made a marginally better decision about something in the moment than he made absurdly in advance" but you know that's… not a thing.
And yes, look, there are things I would have liked to have seen. I think the idea of the Death Star vs. TIE Defenders projects as in rivalry with one another could be great, it could work in some really interesting thematic elements about how Thrawn vs. others in the Empire view power and understand war. But this doesn't matter at all here, Thrawn and Krennic don't even argue over the value of their respective projects, it's just this ultimately pointless gamble. But yes, just because the thing I wanted to happen didn't doesn't mean it's bad, but - while this isn't completely devoid of moments of character exploration or using plot to explore character, it also just leans so much on things that don't end up mattering very much to the characters or overall thematically. Eli and Rohan's little adventure doesn't amount to much beyond getting the pieces in the right place. The confrontation between two sets of Imperial forces is a cool idea, but Thrawn's opponent is someone we don't care about and whom we know will lose. Thrawn is never faced with any meaningful challenge, he solves every mystery with silky ease and never has to make any kind of difficult choice. Any hints about where Thrawn's loyalties lie between the Chiss and the Empire don't matter because he's never put in a position that would make it matter. Some Imperials are mad that he talks to the Chiss forces at all when they literally run into each other in space. That's it.
And, while I'm not saying what I want to happen has to happen… I do think if you're going to write the Space Fascist characters, you have to do it with an awareness of that. And it means something if you don't. And yes, I also think that a reading of Thrawn's character that really deals with what he's doing and what he's complicit in would be much more interesting than Super Magic Art Genius, but. The Space Fascist thing is the important part there.
So with this book I've really given up hope of Zahn treating his Gary Stu with a critical eye. I really don't have a problem with Thrawn being this amazing competent genius mastermind, really I don't. (Though I would note that amazingly competent genius characters are much more interesting to read about/watch when things go wrong for them, rather than when things go according to their genius mastermind plans. I would think this is obvious – struggle is more interesting than ease, seeing someone solve a puzzle is more interesting than someone just knowing all the pieces in advance Because Genius.) But – and this is not complicated – Thrawn is working for fascists and I think Zahn needs to grapple with that and Zahn either disagrees or doesn't want to and that's just going to be a line-in-the-sand ideological difference for me. And like I've said, I think it's possible to do this with villain-protagonist stories in Star Wars - James Luceno's Tarkin accomplished this to me, and I now look back maybe too fondly at Paul S. Kemp's Lords of the Sith, which had a number of Imperial characters who were each shitty fascists in their own shitty fascist ways.
In any case, the plot of this book is that shortly before the finale of Star Wars Rebels, Thrawn is recalled from Lothal at the request of Tarkin/the Emperor (this is depicted in the show). This ends up being for a meeting with Tarkin, maybetheEmperorIcan'tremember, another Imperial admiral, and Orson Krennic and his assistant Rohan. Krennic is having issues with "Project Stardust" because supply shipments are being attacked by something-like-mynocks-but-not and then disappear into hyperspace. Somehow this turns into a weird gamble where Thrawn agrees to find a solution for this problem in a set time frame, and if he fails – as was my initial understanding of this – funding from his own pet project, the TIE Defenders, would be redirected toward Stardust. But actually this wasn't the case, it was just like, Thrawn could have gotten some additional funding for the TIE Defenders? Which pretty much took away any stakes this whole gamble thing could have had and left me on a note of 'why did we even bother with this.'
In any case, the whole mynocks-but-not thing ends up being a wider conspiracy involving pirates and a corrupt Imperial officer, and... I'm not going to go further into this because really it doesn't matter beyond being a mystery for Thrawn to figure out very easily. Pretty much any obstacles that could trip him up in some way just turn out to not actually be obstacles – a particularly egregious example of this is that the characters bring up a few times how Thrawn is a genius at studying his opponents through visual art, but not performance art like music, which had the potential to give one opponent a kind of... edge? Advantage? But no actually Thrawn can totally also understand performance art too so like. Nevermind, actually! God forbid Thrawn not immediately figure out everything.
This book also follows up on some plot threads from the two previous Thrawn books, most notably:
- Eli Vanto returns, having initially served as Thrawn's interpreter and assistant in the first book but then disappearing for a while after Thrawn sent him to work with the Chiss Ascendency. We learn that he's been doing some kind of data analysis work for the Chiss that relates to –
- The Chiss Force users, mostly young girls (though this book includes a young woman) who are used by the Chiss navies to navigate their starships in lieu of navigating computers, a technology they don't have. And I'm just going to reiterate my 'little girls have a magic power that they lose when they get older' issues here but, okay.
- The Grysk, a vague conquering species that conquers things.
So I can't say this book doesn't have a plot – it does, even if I don't really like it that much. And the prose is perfectly fine and I did enjoy some parts of it. But Zahn's unwillingness to confront writing Space Fascists just gets too distracting, and it's hard not to feel like Zahn fell back on the old "well okay my protagonist is bad but I'll create something worse so it doesn't matter." Now we have the Grysk, who have no personality or really much that can be described about them beyond 'scary conquering species.' In this book they come off as some kind of cross between TOS-era Klingons and the Borg – warlike and with some kind of magical power to force subservience from whomever they capture. Eli even at one point makes a rather cringe-worthy argument that the Grysk are worse than the Empire because there's still some dissent within the Empire, like, really? The Empire's not as bad because it's not as successful at repression yet? Come. on.
In any case, there are a few other characters of note, like the older Chiss navigator Vah'nya who I think mainly serves to speak to the experience of the navigators rather than having the young girls do that but is also a weird crush interest for Eli that doesn't go anywhere; the Chiss admiral Ar'alani who is Professional and Competent; Krennic's Assistant Rohan who is kind of sycophantic but also kind of not, I don't know, he mainly seems to be here to make some kind of odd couple with Eli that doesn't really succeed; and Karyn Faro, an Imperial who has been among Thrawn's crew since the first book, and whom I feel like I'm supposed to like while not confronting that she's also a Space Fascist. Zahn kind of tries to throw in these little things that seem to be saying 'look, Thrawn's not totally omniscient because he says right here that Faro made a marginally better decision about something in the moment than he made absurdly in advance" but you know that's… not a thing.
And yes, look, there are things I would have liked to have seen. I think the idea of the Death Star vs. TIE Defenders projects as in rivalry with one another could be great, it could work in some really interesting thematic elements about how Thrawn vs. others in the Empire view power and understand war. But this doesn't matter at all here, Thrawn and Krennic don't even argue over the value of their respective projects, it's just this ultimately pointless gamble. But yes, just because the thing I wanted to happen didn't doesn't mean it's bad, but - while this isn't completely devoid of moments of character exploration or using plot to explore character, it also just leans so much on things that don't end up mattering very much to the characters or overall thematically. Eli and Rohan's little adventure doesn't amount to much beyond getting the pieces in the right place. The confrontation between two sets of Imperial forces is a cool idea, but Thrawn's opponent is someone we don't care about and whom we know will lose. Thrawn is never faced with any meaningful challenge, he solves every mystery with silky ease and never has to make any kind of difficult choice. Any hints about where Thrawn's loyalties lie between the Chiss and the Empire don't matter because he's never put in a position that would make it matter. Some Imperials are mad that he talks to the Chiss forces at all when they literally run into each other in space. That's it.
And, while I'm not saying what I want to happen has to happen… I do think if you're going to write the Space Fascist characters, you have to do it with an awareness of that. And it means something if you don't. And yes, I also think that a reading of Thrawn's character that really deals with what he's doing and what he's complicit in would be much more interesting than Super Magic Art Genius, but. The Space Fascist thing is the important part there.