Book Review: Star Wars: Ahsoka

Disclaimer:  I did not actually read Star Wars: Ahsoka, I had acquired the audio book version a while back and over the course of a couple of months listened to it a few chapters at a time.  

As is the case with most things Star Wars related, I am out of touch with both the Expanded Universe (aka Legends) and the official Star Wars / Disney canon, so do not go expecting an in depth analysis of E.K. Johnston's treatment of the Star Wars universe in relation to timelines, canon character motivations, and the like.  

My only critique on timelines and whatnot, is that Jason P. Wojtowicz's depiction of Ahsoka Tano for the cover seems to have used her likeness and age from her character in Star Wars: Rebels rather than from Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series.  This bit of a visual disconnect bothered me only a little bit since the novel is supposed to take place only a year after Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which in turn .  I guess I kind of understand the possible reasoning behind having a more adult Ahsoka on the cover, but it still did not really jive with me.

Non-Star Wars universe related, it became noticeable early on in the book that this was a young adult novel, something I suspected, but did not bother to look up, or particularly care about.  I do not know if it is a style that E.K. Johnston writes in, not having read anything by them, but there were a few times when I cringed at how often the dialogue would end with "Ahoska said," or "Miara said," or "Kaeden said," all within the same conversation.  Sure it is good to know, especially when a book is being read by a single person who is talking, but the frequency with which "said" was thrown around during conversations seemed like it could have been written better.  This is of course coming from someone who isn't a particularly great writer and falls into a lot more writing errors than I would possibly care to admit.

As was the case with the other canon book that I have read, Ahsoka felt like the reader/listener was at least somewhat versed in the Star Wars universe, with few descriptions of specifics such as types of droids (maybe simply mentioning that it was an R2 unit is not enough if you have not seen a Star Wars film)

I think that wraps it up for issues I had with Star Wars: Ahsoka.

Now on to what I really enjoyed about the story.

I admit that the two main reasons why I even started this book was because it focused on Ahsoka Tano's time shortly after (a year apparently) she left the Jedi Order.  And because the voice of Ahsoka Tano from The Clone Wars animated series, Ashley Eckstein, was reading the book.  I probably would have eventually bought the book for the first reason, but because of the second, I opted for the audio book version that was available through Amazon's Audible book service.

Something else that I was not initially expecting was the level of production put into this audio book.  Throughout the entire book, there was background ambient music and sound effects, but never so loud that it was either distracting or drowned out Ashley Eckstein's narration.  The music seemed to be pulled from both the prequels and the original trilogy, which offered a nice aural bridge between the two franchises; I cannot tell if any of the music was either from Star Wars: Rebels or Star Wars: The Clone Wars though.  I do not think this level of production was because Ahsoka is a young adult novel, but more because it was a Star Wars book as licensed by Disney.  

The story itself, I felt, fit very well within the established universe, and the characterization of Ahsoka was well handled by Johnston; additionally being narrated by Ashley Eckstein probably helped with the believability of the character as well.  And like all good Star Wars stories, this one too had a few storylines going that followed both our protagonist, a shadowy antagonist, and the oppressing Empire.  Planets and moons once again are treated as if there was only one settlement and traveling via hyperdrive only takes a few hours.

There were a few characters, the Fardi's in particular that I felt I was supposed to know who they were upon being mentioned, which might mean that I need to rewatch The Clone Wars animated series (oh poor me).  For the most part though, it was a well told story in the Star Wars universe.

Would I recommend Star Wars: Ahsoka?  Sure, especially if you happen to be a fan of The Clone Wars animated series, otherwise you might be wondering why the audience should care about this Ahsoka Tano person.  E.K. Johnston told this story well enough that I would be very interested to see how they could write another story in the Star Wars universe that was not specifically written as a young adult novel, even if it did not focus on Ahsoka; but it would be pretty awesome if it did.

And that concludes my book report on Star Wars: Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston.  Published by Disney / Lucasfilm Press in 2016.  Thank you.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

Book Review: Blood Merdian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

This week, yesterday in fact, I finished listening to Richard Poe reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West.  This was my second time starting this book, with the first time being a few years back, but I stopped because I was feeling that I was lost in the story and that I wasn't able to focus as much attention as I felt the book deserved.  So the middle-end of last month, while at work, I decided to get back into Blood Meridian.

I first acquired the audio book through, surprisingly enough, or perhaps not, the "Humble Audio Book Bundle featuring Recorded Books" back in February 2014.  I picked it up mainly for The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, True Grit by Charles Portis, Junky by William S. Burroughs, and of course, Blood Meridian.  At the time I had never listened to an audio book, but I had listened to both the Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings radio dramas a number of years back when I was helping Delaños in the archaeology lab sifting through bins of mid 19th century garbage; this was seriously a lot of fun.  So with that in mind, I thought dipping my toe into the realm of audio books would be a good idea.

Just a word of warning before I go much further, I should say that there might be spoilers, although I genuinely feel that there is not a whole lot to spoil in this book.  I also want to say that I only looked up information about the plot after I was finished with the story because I was worrying that there was something very significant that I was missing.  At this point I would like to say that for the most part, I was apparently able to follow along with the story a lot more than I had thought.

One of the reasons why I felt that I had a hard time tracking the events, were because there seemed to be no central plot.  The story follows an unnamed main character simply called The Kid, and events that happen and around him during his life in 1850s, primarily in the southwestern United States.  There is no, "The Kid sets out trying to discover why his Mother never named him," or "The unnamed kid sets out to make a name for himself," or "The Kid, wronged by one Ernest Griswald, sets out on a path of revenge."  There is The Kid, and things happen to and around him.  It is almost like he is a passive observer in his own story.  It is definitely not a way of storytelling that I am used to, and while it did give me the feeling that I was missing something important, by the end of the book, I did not really mind.

All of that being said, Blood Meridian was far from boring or uninteresting.  During the first handful of chapters, I could only digest a chapter or two at a time before I had to step away and listen to something else.  The writing and the delivery were so powerful and equally disturbing in parts that I felt a sense of sensory overload, which, at least for me, is a good thing.

Now, I could probably come up with something that sounded like drivel compared to, what I would assume, are hundreds of analyses of Blood Meridian that were the basis of literary dissertations.  Also, not having actually read the book, I feel like I have only experienced a few facets of the book.  As pointed out in the Wikipedia article, as well as Conklederp reminding me about how Cormac McCarthy wrote The Road, in Blood Meridian, there was no quotation marks to designate when people were speaking, and there were no apostrophes for contractions.  As this was a conscious decision, there is no way I could have known this listening to the book being read to me.

And let me tell you, Richard Poe did a fantastic job narrating the book and slightly changing his voice to suite the various characters.  Granted there were times when the voice he used for The Kid and Toadvine sounded pretty similar, but only if they were not talking to each other or in the same scene.  I do not know if there are other professional recordings available of other people reading Blood Meridian, but if you have the chance, I highly recommend listening to Richard Poe read this.  Just a word of warning though, this is a pretty violent book in many definitions of the word.  There are also more than a few utterances of racial slurs which I do not feel the need to put into words here.

I definitely want to actually read this book after having listened to it one and-a-half times.  Presently I have only read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, but from this audio book alone, I can feel the power of how he writes.  I had considered starting another audio book at work after finishing Blood Meridian, but I am sure that most will pale in comparison.  Either way, I am now a fan of Richard Poe and eagerly look forward to hearing another book read by him, preferably a western, or anything else written by Cormac McCarthy.  Or Joyce Carol Oates now that I think about it.  Hell, Stephen King's The Stand: Complete & Uncut!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Should Have Known That It Was Coming To This

P.S. Nacogdoches