A review by squidly
Hard Merchandise, by Timothy Zahn, K.W. Jeter
2.0
Three novels, over a thousand pages, and I still can't figure out what motivates Jeter's interpretation of Boba Fett. Over and over again, he states that he wants money and that he wants to be the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, but... is that all there is to it? His motivations -- the structure around which much of this story is built -- come off one-dimensional and childish. He wants to be the best because he already is and wants to keep it that way; he wants to make more money because he's already the best and needs more money to keep himself equipped. Everything he says and does is so obnoxious and self-aggrandizing, I can't help but roll my eyes every time he speaks. His dialogue tends to boil down to "I'm the smartest man in the room, and here's why, and here's how I'm ten steps ahead of everybody else."
There is one particularly excellent moment in "Hard Merchandise" where this very concept turns on its head for the first and only time in the trilogy. It's a moment that gives poor Bossk (who's been written as little more than an idiot throughout) time to shine, and could have finally given Fett some much-needed characterization, but he returns to his usual self right after.
This book (well, the whole trilogy) also has a serious problem with exposition. It explains the same simple concepts ad nauseam throughout, sometimes re-explaining concepts or events immediately after they happen. It even manages to exposit what little more it can on Boba's motivations within the last ten pages of the book, where all of the story's plot threads and themes should be able to speak for themselves. Pointless explanations are added to almost everything and everyone, down to hand gestures and facial expressions that are fine every once and a while, but are painted so clearly, so often, it's like slamming again and again into the same brick wall.
I do need to mention my new favorite Star Wars character, though: Kud'ar Mub'at the Assembler, a spider-like, siphonophore-esque creature operating as a go-between for shady underworld dealings. Throughout this trilogy, Kud'ar Mub'at's eerie web-ship-slash-brain, pleasant manner of speaking, and complicated games of deceit have been a highlight. It's a shame it, nor its species, ever appear again in the Star Wars expanded universe, it felt like the perfect combination of familiar and alien. I love when Star Wars isn't afraid to get weird.
Overall this trilogy, and this book, was forgettable. I can't see myself ever re-reading it, but it adds a lot of little interesting bits of world-building, like the Assemblers. Unfortunately its mysteries are uninteresting, its resolutions are forgettable, and its major players either feel shallow, stupid, or obnoxious. The mysteries its characters try to solve are somehow simultaneously overly complicated and overly simple, and it results in a game of four-dimensional chess on a tiny game board where half the players are thinking in two dimensions and the other half have inexplicable meta knowledge of exactly what's going to happen next for no stated reason.
... Also, this is the only book in the trilogy that features Palpatine on the cover, but it's also the only one in which he doesn't appear. What's up with that?
There is one particularly excellent moment in "Hard Merchandise" where this very concept turns on its head for the first and only time in the trilogy. It's a moment that gives poor Bossk (who's been written as little more than an idiot throughout) time to shine, and could have finally given Fett some much-needed characterization, but he returns to his usual self right after.
This book (well, the whole trilogy) also has a serious problem with exposition. It explains the same simple concepts ad nauseam throughout, sometimes re-explaining concepts or events immediately after they happen. It even manages to exposit what little more it can on Boba's motivations within the last ten pages of the book, where all of the story's plot threads and themes should be able to speak for themselves. Pointless explanations are added to almost everything and everyone, down to hand gestures and facial expressions that are fine every once and a while, but are painted so clearly, so often, it's like slamming again and again into the same brick wall.
I do need to mention my new favorite Star Wars character, though: Kud'ar Mub'at the Assembler, a spider-like, siphonophore-esque creature operating as a go-between for shady underworld dealings. Throughout this trilogy, Kud'ar Mub'at's eerie web-ship-slash-brain, pleasant manner of speaking, and complicated games of deceit have been a highlight. It's a shame it, nor its species, ever appear again in the Star Wars expanded universe, it felt like the perfect combination of familiar and alien. I love when Star Wars isn't afraid to get weird.
Overall this trilogy, and this book, was forgettable. I can't see myself ever re-reading it, but it adds a lot of little interesting bits of world-building, like the Assemblers. Unfortunately its mysteries are uninteresting, its resolutions are forgettable, and its major players either feel shallow, stupid, or obnoxious. The mysteries its characters try to solve are somehow simultaneously overly complicated and overly simple, and it results in a game of four-dimensional chess on a tiny game board where half the players are thinking in two dimensions and the other half have inexplicable meta knowledge of exactly what's going to happen next for no stated reason.
... Also, this is the only book in the trilogy that features Palpatine on the cover, but it's also the only one in which he doesn't appear. What's up with that?