Books: Star Wars: The Shadow of the Sith By Adam Christopher (2022)

 

"The Empire is dead. Nearly two decades on from the Battle of Endor, the tattered remnants of Palpatine’s forces have fled to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But for the heroes of the New Republic, danger and loss are ever-present companions, even in this newly forged era of peace. Jedi Master Luke Skywalker is haunted by visions of the dark side, foretelling an ominous secret growing somewhere in the depths of space, on a dead world called Exegol. The disturbance in the Force is undeniable . . . and Luke's worst fears are confirmed when his old friend, Lando Calrissian, comes to him with reports of a new Sith menace.

"After his daughter was stolen from his arms, Lando searched the stars for any trace of his lost child. But every new rumor only led to dead ends and fading hopes—until he crossed paths with Ochi of Bestoon, a Sith assassin tasked with kidnapping a young girl.  Ochi's true motives remain shrouded to Luke and Lando. For on a junkyard moon, a mysterious envoy of the Sith Eternal has bequeathed a sacred blade to the assassin, promising that it will give him answers to the questions that have haunted him since the Empire fell. In exchange, he must complete a final mission: return to Exegol with the key to the Sith's glorious rebirth—the granddaughter of Darth Sidious himself, Rey.  As Ochi hunts Rey and her parents to the edge of the galaxy, Luke and Lando race into the mystery of the Sith's lingering shadow and aid a young family running for their lives"

I’m generally not in favor of using these extended universe titles to fill in plot holes the writers of the Star Wars sequels failed to add to their scripts. I mean some of the backstory needed for The Force Awakens is included here and would’ve been nice to see some of it in the movie, but forcing people to read the books to learn these bits seems arrogant and little reductive. Still, this Star Wars tale is well written, dark and filled with danger, as well as being a bit overlong.

Most of Shadow of the Sith (set about 13 years before The Force Awakens) is really about the son of Palpatine –Dathan. We get no real background on the women who birthed the man, who she was and how she became involved with the future Darth Sidious (another novel will probably cover this) as well as background information on Lando’s daughter, Kadara, who has been missing for six years. And Dathan is a bit of weak man, with his wife, Miramir being smarter and tougher, which is an interesting character trait, the idea that Dad was so strong and smart, and son is just average and not Force sensitive. Still, I became invested in their escape –even though I knew the inevitability of their fate.

So the novel offers answers about Rey’s parents –something only hinted at in The Rise Skywalker (and Ochi is also briefly seen in that last film) and offers Luke at the peak of his powers –again, something that many of us wanted from the sequel trilogy, and only to be disappointed. Yet this book also lays the ground work for Luke’s emotional state in The Last Jedi. We get brief scenes with Luke and Ben Solo, and we see that despite Luke understanding the need for familial connections learned at the end of Return of the Jedi, his training methodology continues to be in the old Jedi way of keeping those bonds cold. The best example of this comes in the form of Luke forcing Ben to call him Master Skywalker and not Uncle Luke. So the catastrophic psychological damage the Jedi inflict on the padawan’s –the separating the child from their family- continues. 

But at 465 pages, Shadow of the Sith does lose steam. An extended sequence on a mining space station comes to an great conclusion, but there's a little too much jumping between characters and wandering around before getting to it. There are also a few cameos from other characters seen in the sequel trilogy and bit more explanation of older Rey’s relationship with Unkar Plutt, but I’m reminded again on how casual fans of the Star Wars movies should not have to read the Extended Universe novels to get all the plot holes filled in. A lot of bits and bites in this tale, it seems to me, while a great set-up for The Force Awakens, could’ve actually been included in that film (and the two others) had Disney/Lucasfilm actually planned it better. This novel sort of reinforces the notion they had no real idea what they were doing, just having an IP The House of Mouse needed to monetize after spending billions on it. Still, I guess, getting the mystery of Rey’s parentage explained should satisfy many long-time Star Wars fans. 

Books: Gwendy's Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (2022)

"When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a mysterious stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven colored buttons promised death and destruction. Years later, the button box entered Gwendy’s life again. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once again forced to deal with the temptation that box represented. Now, evil forces seek to possess the button box and it is up to Senator Gwendy Peterson to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities"

Towards the end of this novel, I got the sense that the original tale, Gwendy’s Button Box, started out as a simple novella, a Twilight Zone style story with it’s morality tale and twist ending, with no need for a real explanation, that ballooned into something more with Gwendy’s Magic Feather and now Gwendy’s Final Task. That the only way it can, could, end is with a deus ex machina style explanation. The fact that King and Chizmar make note of this, is telling. Also, by tying a lot of the story to King’s Dark Tower universe will either make nerdy fans happy or piss them off for doing this.

Gwendy’s Button Box was tight little novella that left you wondering, but not really demanding an explanation. Was Richard Farris the legendary Man in Black? What was the button box to begin with, who made it, where did come from and why did Farris trust Gwendy the most to keep it safe? These were elements of the first tale, but again, did we really need these answered?

With Gwendy’s Magic Feather, the tale leaped into the future and started to take leaps and bounds with logic, and while the idea Gwendy is a politician, it took the simple premise that lead us away from Castle Rock into space (which often reminded me of Moonraker, the James Bond film that took 007 to space, if only because a little film named Star Wars demanded it). And since 90 year-old William Shatner went into orbit via Blue Origin, the idea of a 64 year-old sitting Senator traveling to an orbiting space station is not that farfetched, but…the ending of the button box is set in space?

There are many worlds than these, as Dark Tower fans know, and I’m also curious which one of the twelve this one is set in. The second book, set in 1999, featured a fictitious president, but in the last book Trump gets several mentions as well as COVID-19 (the book is set in 2026, and the coronavirus is still present). As anyone would know, King is not a fan of Trump, but it’s still startling to see him part of this tale, when the rest seemed to be set in different world than ours.

Of course, we are left with a few mysteries, such as who is Bobby and why he called Richard Farris a “meddler.” Perhaps this Bobby is just another of the Low Men in Yellow Coats working with someone else, something else, to bring down the beams and the Tower still, as the button box is the “only one thing can destroy it, now that the Crimson King is dead.”

In the end, I enjoyed these two novellas and novel about Gwendy Peterson. As with many King characters, she’s three dimensional, smart, intelligent, but flawed. She represents the best of humanity when confronted with the ability to save or destroy a world.

Books: Gwendy's Magic Feather by Richard Chizmar (2019)

"Something evil has swept into the small western Maine town of Castle Rock on the heels of the latest winter storm. Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and his team are desperately searching for two missing girls, but time is running out to bring them home alive. In Washington D.C., thirty-seven-year-old Gwendy Peterson couldn't be more different from the self-conscious teenaged girl who once spent a summer running up Castle Rock's Suicide Stairs. That same summer, she was entrusted or some might say cursed with the extraordinary button box by Richard Farris, the mysterious stranger in the black suit. The seductive and powerful box offered Gwendy small gifts in exchange for its care and feeding until Farris eventually returned, promising Gwendy she'd never see the box again. One day, though, the button box shows up without warning and without Richard Farris to explain why, or what she's supposed to do with it. The mysterious reappearance of the box, along with the troubling disappearances in Castle Rock, leads Gwendy home again...where she just might be able to help rescue the missing girls and stop a madman before he does something ghastly."

As Stephen King notes is his forward to this short novel, when he was contacted by friend, writer, publisher Richard Chizmar, if there was a chance of them collaborating on something, the tale of Gwendy Peterson was already on King’s computer, an idea that dried up after a promising start. But they worked together to finish the story, and Gwendy’s Button Box was released in 2017. Chizmar thought that Gwendy’s story could continue, but as King noted. “I was interested, but not entirely convinced.” It’s when Chizmar suggested moving the story forward, having Gwendy an adult and a Congresswoman from Maine, did King see the potential. “Gwendy’s position of power,” he writes, "in the political machinery echoed the button box. I told him that it sounded fine, and he should go ahead.”

Gwendy’s Magic Feather is just as good as the first book, spotlighting a lot what makes King’s books work, the comings and goings of small towns. The book again returns to Castle Rock, which like Derry, is a legendary town with dark secrets. Still, a lot of short novel plays out like a morality play about choices we make and the price that comes with those choices –especially when Gwendy is confronted by her desire to see her husband (a photo-journalist on assignment in war torn Timor) and her cancer stricken mother. But in the background, as always with Castle Rock, something is stalking young girls and Gwendy may hold the key –or button box- to solve it.

I think Chizmar prose works well here, keeping the pages turning with short chapters and well established characters. The clues are there to discover who the Tooth Fairy is, but that’s really on secondary to Gwendy’s dilemma the button box proposes. The magic feather, when it pops up late in the book, seems a bit random, but you then realize that box, the feather and the mysterious Richard Farris are all connected.

Books: The Brentford Triangle By Robert Rankin (1982)

 

“Omally groaned. "It is the end of mankind as we know it. I should never have got up so early today" and all over Brentford electrical appliances were beginning to fail...' Could it be that Pooley and Omally, whilst engaged on a round of allotment golf, mistook laser-operated gravitational landing beams for the malignant work of Brentford Council? Does the Captain Laser Alien Attack machine in the bar of the Swan possess more sinister force than its magnetic appeal for youths with green hair? Is Brentford the first base in an alien onslaught on planet Earth?”

The second book in the series –and seemly not connected to the first book, which gives me the impression each book is a sort-of-reset or stand-alone (we’ll see) escapade – The Brentford Triangle continues the misadventures of Pooley and OMally, the town of Brentford and eccentric characters that inhabit this universe. These two are not real heroes in any sense of the word, but it seems adventure is drawn to them instead of stumbling upon it. Much like the first book, the plot is a bit incredulous –an alien invasion is about to happen when the natives of Ceres, which was once the fifth planet in our solar system before it exploded and became a dwarf planet inside our asteroid belt, return thousands of years later to reclaim it. But that becomes less important than goings on at the vegetable allotment and goings on with a video game console at the Flying Swan. 

The book is wry, with dry British humor, and is faster paced than the first book. Both Pooley and OMally (and the eccentric Time Lord-ish Professor Slocombe) are likeable. Still, while I understand this book was released forty years ago, it features some unnecessary moments of casual racism and homophobia. And while it’s possible for people to be this way, in such a humorous fantasy that is not that complex to begin with, it seems out of place then and more even now. And none of these things actually effected the plot, so there seemed to be no need for them to be there in the first place.

So Robert Rankin lost a bit luster here for me. I hope as I read other books by him, this aspect does not resurface, but we’ll see. Otherwise, it’s an enjoyable read, with some cleverness added to the less-than-original idea.