Dark Tide 2: Ruin

Stars Wars, The New Jedi Order, Dark Tide 2: Ruin, by Michael A. Stackpole is a book that didn't thrill me.  While the action consistently hits all the right notes and there are a few legitimately touching character moments, I felt overall that it was compressed and rendered flat by an over-reliance on what I'm going to call "emotional exposition".  I can't count the number of times I found myself uttering, "Show me Michael, stop telling me!"

Okay, so what do I mean?  Wikipedia tells us that exposition used as a literary technique is the conveyance of information to the reader.  What I am proposing is that in both Onslaught and Ruin, Stackpole goes to a technique of "emotional exposition", in narration but especially in dialogue, wherein we find our beloved EU characters constantly explaining themselves and their motivations for the benefit of the reader.  It feels unnatural, and it makes many characters appear rather stiff.

Jacen Solo is hit hardest.  The young Jedi Knight sees some action in Ruin, which is great, but it was all ruined for me by his incessant introspection.  There are ways of conveying uncertainty and doubt without referencing them directly through dialogue or thought italics.  Show me with his actions!  Show me with observation from other characters' points of view!  Or better yet, let the reader figure it out.  Yeah, you heard me.  I will believe in the doubt of Jacen Solo, the heroism of Corran Horn, the nobility of Gilad Pellaeon, the duplicity of Borsk Fey'lya, the disposition of the galaxy towards the Jedi, and the desperation of the galactic situation without having it referenced to me ad nauseum.

*breath*

Jacen Solo

But maybe we should cut Stackpole some slack.  He originally planned Dark Tide as a trilogy, but before writing the middle book, his allowance was cut.  Siege was brought before Solomon and split down the middle, half going to each of the two remaining volumes.  This could account for a great deal of the criticism I have leveled towards this book and its predecessor, Onslaught.

To Stackpole's credit, there are characters here escaping that criticism.  Anakin Solo is clearly on the hero's path, and I love every scene he's in.  He follows Theodore Roosevelt's famous advice to his and the story's great benefit.  Jaina Solo also comes off better than her twin, with many of her scenes focused on action and the process of adjusting to a military lifestyle.  Tucked into this book is also a little story about Daeshara'cor, a pissed off Jedi on a hot streak for revenge over the death of her Jedi lover.  She's after superweapons, and Luke and Anakin head off in pursuit... and apprehend her.  I thought this storyline had a lot of potential and I wanted it to go further.  I think it could have fit in neatly as a short story to nestle between Dark Tide's two volumes.

Also, I liked Shadao Shai.

On the topic of the sado-masochistic Yuuzhan Vong commander, let's pause a moment to talk about darkness.  Darkness.  When Vector Prime hit the shelves, promising a grittier, more stark vision of Star Wars, I was thrilled.  I had read a lot of stories about Luke, Han, and Leia saving the galaxy with their buddies.  I was pretty confident they would pull it off again, but I liked the idea that they wouldn't come through unscathed.  Fast forward 10 years, the last sci-fi/fantasy series I had read before rediscovering Vector Prime was George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire: packed with incest, violence, and rape, and which killed off its primary protagonist by the end of the first book.  I don't expect this from Star Wars, but then again I don't think every Star Wars saga needs to paraphrase the movie trilogies either.  It's been done.

Corran Horn vs. Shedao Shai

So I don't mind Ruin's darkness.  I don't even mind its depictions of pain, torture, and death.  I do mind when it doesn't serve the story - and fortunately in the case of Shadao Shai, it does.  After Onslaught's respite from Yuuzhan Vong point of view, we're treated to a cunning and compelling alien who gives new insight into Vong culture.  I was sad to see him go.  Indeed, I have a queer sort of hope that he might comically reemerge into the story minus the technophobia with bionic legs as a kind of strange, conflicted anti-hero.  And while I'm being honest, I'll also admit that I wasn't so sad to see that annoyingly irreproachable do-gooder, Elegos, meet his end.  Dark enough for ya?

Some people aren't fans of how this book ends, but I'm not one of them.  Let us not forget that The Empire Strikes Back didn't end on such a high note, either.  The one thing about the end that actually jarred me was Corran's play for time: tactically clever, but I'm not so sure if it made for great storytelling.  It split up the Battle of Ithor, which also rushed up on the reader out of nowhere.  Really, he could have made his heroic stand without pausing the action, right?

I want to reiterate, in the presence of so much criticism, that Michael A. Stackpole is a master of action.  The insurgence on Garqi was fun and the Battle of Ithor was simply awesome.  Whether it be X-Wings or lightsabers, this is what he does.  Finally, and on a decidedly less dark note, I will add that one of my favorite scenes in the book came when Luke and Mara and Corran and Mirax were able to share an intimate moment on the eve of the great battle.  I'm a romantic, maybe even a sap, and that kind of stuff hits me somewhere really real.  Thanks, Mike.

Next, I venture on with James Luceno's Agents of Chaos 1: Hero's Trial.  I'm looking forward to a different author's perspective on Star Wars, the return of Han Solo, and I'm hoping that the Jedi will take a bit of a back seat on this one.  They'll keep.

May the Force be with you... in bed.