Lots of action and suspense! ( )

I have been trying to get into this book for a couple of weeks now. The premise of the book, various characters of different sides coming to the auction to steal an artifact, seems interesting. However, the book starts out fairly slow, and there is a lot of setting up. The book is based on a video game, and it seems like the author is just going through each character class. This makes the action take forever to move along. I may give it another try later, but this seems unlikely. It has been sitting on my shelf for a few days now, which means I lost interest. The slow narrative is simply not drawing me in. So for now, I am letting it go and moving to something else.

I am not a big reader of SW books. I am an SW fan. I have found that books in the SW series (like other series such as ST) tend to be hit or miss. I have enjoyed other SW books in their expanded universe, but this one was a miss for me. ( )

‘Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance’ is based on a video game ‘Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic’ which lets its players create their own adventures. I suppose familiarity with the game will enhance your reading pleasure but lack of it didn’t hurt me.

The setting is 3,500 years before the rise of Darth Vader, so it all happens in a galaxy far, far away, a long, long time ago. It comes early in the ‘Star Wars Novel Timeline’ which usefully decorates a couple of the first pages. There is also a list of the Dramatis Personae for us old people with bad memories for unusual names. If someone wrote a Science Fiction novel in which people were called Bert, Larry, Edith and Jane it would make life a lot easier for both my grey matter and my spellchecker. To be fair, the characters are memorable enough that you don’t need the cast list after the first fifty pages.

The adventure opens with a prologue in which pirate Jet Nebula hijacks a light cruiser named Cinzia in wild space. The Cinzia self-destructs rather than surrender. Highly unusual. What cargo was valuable enough to justify such extreme action? I thought that might be it for Jet but happily, he reappears later and plays a key part in the story.

We then have the usual routine of a chapter introducing each of the main characters. Shigar Konshi, Padawan is on Coruscant and has been found unready for Jedi trials by the High Council because he lacks self-control. He must improve they tell him and cut communication. On investigating gunfire nearby. he meets Larin Moxla, a Kiffar like himself by her tattoos and a former republic trooper. Together they engage and are defeated by Dao Stryver, a large Mandalorian warrior. Before escaping, he wanted information about Cinzia and a woman called Lema Xandret. Cut to the Empire world of Dromund Kaas where Eldon Ax, Sith Padawan, has to report to her master that she was defeated by Dao Stryver. She tells Darth Chratis what information the Mandalorian sought and he goes off to check the files. Connections emerge.

I give nothing away, because it’s on the jacket of the book, by informing you that a naughty Hutt Matriarch named Tasaa Bareesh is holding an auction for something mighty valuable and is drawing attention from across the galaxy, including our characters. Since those pirates in the prologue dealt with the Hutts, we can assume the auction has some connection with the cargo of the Cinzia. Everyone ends up on Hutta and then the action really starts.

It took me a while to get into the story but, after a hundred pages or so, it was hard to put down for wanting to know what happened next. There are some neat plots twists and surprises along the way. The difficulty at the start was possibly due to an in-built expectation of a familiar cast – it is ‘Star Wars’, after all – which wasn’t met. These are all new characters based on the game. Once you get to know them, they are an enjoyable bunch. The sincere young Jedi Padawan, his mentor, their Sith equivalents and, most important of all, the loveable rogue with a battered old ship of surprising capabilities. Jet Nebula also has a battered old droid named Clunker as his indispensable buddy.

Author Sean Williams is from Australia, a continent far, far away and has won awards for his fiction. I’m not surprised. He’s a competent writer of action adventure with a good vocabulary and that most underestimated of virtues, absolute clarity. You always know exactly what’s going on. The prose is smooth and virtually unnoticeable – a good thing – apart from a sudden and pleasing outbreak of alliteration on page 267. Here he refers to a ‘solitary satellite’ with a ‘cornucopia of craters and fathomless fissures marring its ugly face’. Very nice.

Some may disdain franchise fiction as hackwork but that’s just snobbery. If you want a window made you hire an able carpenter. If you want an entertaining novel made, you hire an able writer. Somewhere between hackwork and artwork, there is craftwork, of which this is a model and it’s looking good.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/ ( )

While a much better novel than The Force Unleashed [more engaging characters, livelier action, tighter plot and higher caliber writing:], this still suffers from Game-itis.

I really felt like I was just reading the script for the game. I liked the overall storyline and really like the Old Republic Era coming to novels [never played games or read comics, so this is all completely virgin territory for me:], but if LucasArts is going to keep trending with Books based on Games, they've definitely lost me as a fan... ( )

Interesting take on a short-lived Partnership of Convenience between Sith and Jedi against a greater enemy. (Kind of an inverted Mexican Standoff! TVTropes calls this the "Rivals Team Up" or the "Enemy Mine" trope.)
Dialogue was very well done- you certainly could tell the difference between the tones of Jedi, Sith, smugglers, military and civillians.
This is a book that I could definitely read again and probably find more items to explore at leisure. ( )