And the first in the 'Kylar Reads the NJO books'.
Vector Prime Thoughts
So, finished my read through, and honestly? Vector Prime is pretty solid as an EU book. It's not going to win any prizes for best of EU, but the characters are well done, the tech is pretty well handled and even the big one, Chewbacca's death, wasn't badly handled for what it is.
Digging in a bit more, Vector Prime is a start of the war story, setting up what the peace before the war feels like, along with the characters before the war. This is juxtaposed against the Vong bringing their schemes into being, providing an undercurrent of menace and a promise that soon, nothing will be the same anymore.
The first half of the book is definitely the stronger part. The characters and their interactions are almost as well handled as I've seen out of EU books: from Anakin, Han and Chewies interactions over breaking the Falcon (again), to everyone dealing with Mara's terminal illness, the characters work in a way I've found all to rare in the EU. Even the philosophical debate on where the Jedi Order should go and what it should be is fascinating, and something I wish had been dug into more- there's enough plot there to power it's own series.
The Vong also get a solid introduction here. Nom Anor's cynical manipulation of a disenfranchised people's grievances for his own benefit hits a little too close to home these days, but it's hard to fault a book published a decade ago for that. The Vong also manage to mostly come off as creepy and disturbing more than trying to hard or plot shielded morons. In particular,
@Ser_Serendipity was pretty on the mark with his description of the scientist base subplot- which is basically an inverted perspective of the 'isolated base, and there is something killing us all', to the point that Mara assumes some experiment had gone horribly wrong/right when they show up to investigate- which if this was a video game is exactly what I would assume
.
The second half of the book is rougher: there are more idiot balls, people that aren't Han and Anakin don't react enough to Chewbacca's death (their reactions were well done though) and there is a little too much emphasis on how dangerous the Vong are. That said, it does what it sets out to do- establish the tone for a darker story, where people will get hurt, characters might die, and even if the heroes win, the cost will be high.
Regarding Chewbacca's death, it's not as well done as Han's in TFA, but that one is probably going down as one of the best done death scenes ever, so stiff competition. I do think it was a fitting send off for the old walking carpet, but. But. It was also a death scene meant to set the tone for what is to come: this is going to be a war story, where characters might just die as collateral with no really character motivation behind it. And that's not really what Star Wars has been about or like. It's a well done death scene for what it is, but I don't think people were to thrilled with the direction it was pointing- this wasn't Yoda's death, which signalled the final death of the old Jedi, leaving the fate of the galaxy solely in Luke's hands. This was a death that signalled a major shift in how the EU did things, for better and for worse. I think people might have been, to some extent, expecting something more along the lines of Han's death: a deeply personal moment for all involved, not heroism in the face of certain, impersonal doom.
Overall, it was a decent book. It wasn't boring, or riddled with basic inconsistencies, and it did an excellent job of setting the tone for the NJO- possibly too good a job, given how different that was from what had come before. Good side of average is pretty good way to describe it.
The Out of Character Corner
This is dedicated to
@RogueIce, and will be looking at how OOC the various characters are from YJK.
Jania feels the most solid- maybe a little more centered then she was during her YJK years, but it's been a year or so (having a hard time pinning dates) and she's been Padawaning under Mara. What she is here isn't that out of line with what might change.
Anakin… OK, I have no idea what his prior characterization was, but he was 11 in the last series that featured him, and is 15 here- that alone is enough to justify most personality shifts.
Jacen is by far and away the most divergent. YJK Jacen was a (bad) joker, boundary pusher, pet collector and explorer. In another time, he probably would have wound up in the Jedi Exploration Corps. In Vector Prime, he is a lot more philosophical, with a heavy duty focus on the spiritual side of the Force. The latter apparently had been part of his characterization for a while: he had always been presented as the most 'in tune' with the Force of the siblings- unless Jania was flying. But he is very different from what he was during the YJK years. You could make the argument that ravelling with Luke and basically helping him run the Jedi could explain the changes, but it's a little much.
Overall, B-, with Jacen dragging it down generally.
