Kube-McDowell, Michael

• Series: The Black Fleet Crisis
  • Before the Storm (7)
  • Shield of Lies (7)
  • Tyrant's Test (6)

    • This series, like most Star Wars literature, follows three different simultaneous plots. Unlike most series, however, these three plots truly are completely disparate, so this is really like reading three different Star Wars books written in a way so that the stories overlap just because of the way it was edited. What little crossover exists occurs in an unconvincing way in the final book.

      The first of the three subplots (worth about 1.5 books) involves Leia, Han and the Republic's new enemy, a new species called the Yevetha, a brutally evil race that has learned who to build ships from their former Empire enslavers. This was the strongest thread in the series. The Yevetha make good, if non-subtle, villains, and I found myself actively rooting against them, knowing full well that I would be satisfied at their demise. What can I say? Sometimes mind candy is a good thing. The only weak spots here were the underutilization of Han, and the unconvincing plot twists involving his character and Chewie. Also, a critical imperial desertion subplot is hardly set up at all even though it has a significant impact on the finale.

      The second subplot involves Luke and his search for his mother (now rendered "unofficial" by the storyline in "The Phantom Menace", I suppose). Luke learns about a new variant of the Force ("The Current") and follows a member of this discipline around because she claims to know how he can find his mother. As is common with most of the other Star Wars books, Luke's character is just horribly done and stuck with a bad plot (worth about 3/4 of a book) that ultimately goes nowhere (not counting a forced plot reunification near the end).

      The final subplot involves Lando, who is usually done pretty well in other books. In this one, Lando is stuck in what is basically a variant of a murder mystery. And a very boring one at that. At first, I was intrigued by Lando's subplot, but in retrospect, I could've just skipped this entire section of each book and been much happier with the series as a whole, as the subplot is literally and figuratively a dead end.

      As I've begun to read further and further down the line in this Star Wars historical timeline series, the quality of the books has trended down (with the exception of Stackpole's X-Wing series, which I haven't touched after book four thanks to the fear that the other authors will ruin a good thing). I can only hope that the appearance of the first trilogy on the scene will revitalize this genre. This series is readable, to be sure, but very average science fiction. Much like other Star Wars books, this book doesn't stack up well against other science fiction without the Star Wars universe as a crutch.

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