January 24th – Darth Bane: Rule of Two

I’ll cheat tonight, as I finally remembered the Drew Karpyshyn story.  The following is an email I sent to Drew, and then his response.  It’s pretty cool he took the time to get back to me :).

 

 

Dear Mr. Karpyshyn,

A group of my friends holds an a book club monthly and luck would have it that this month was my pick.  As an avid Star Wars reader, I chose Darth Bane Path of Destruction.  The qualification we set for picking our book only requires the book chooser to have read the book prior to sharing the choice.  I picked Path of Destruction for a few reasons – it is a Star Wars novel that dealt with characters outside the 6 movies, the perspective is from one of “the bad guys”, and lastly that I just hands down really enjoyed reading it every time I’ve gone through it.

Most of our meetings involve us drinking some wine, eating food, and obviously talking about the book and author.  For my turn, I wanted to see if I could go a bit above and beyond and try and contact the author, to see if they had anything they wished to say, or point out, or what they feel would be interesting things to discuss etc.  I’m not looking for anything all crazy and in depth that takes you hours and hours to come up with to blow our minds, or try to prepare some type of defense in advance if for some reason everyone hates it (the only book we did not collectively like was J.R. Moehrings “The Tender Bar”).  I understand you’re a very busy person, but anything you could quickly offer would definitely be very cool and welcomed.

Thank you for your time, and even greater thanks for the additions you have made and will to continue to for the Star Wars Universe.

Hi, Tom. (Call me Drew, by the way.)

Sorry it took so long to reply; I’ve been on vacation and I got way behind
on my e-mails.

Your bookclub might already have come and gone; if so then I guess I
missed the boat. Not sure what I could say, in any case.

As a writer, my primary goal is to entertain readers, so I’m glad you
enjoy the book. I’m not trying to spread some message and I don’t have any
kind of agenda; I think it’s important to have books that people read
purely for enjoyment and escapism.

That’s not meant to demean the book in any way, of course. Just because a
book is entertaining doesn’t mean it can’t have some interesting ideas and
compelling characters. But I like to make sure I keep the pace up, too –
I’ve read many good books that could have been great if they had focused
more on telling a story and less on trying to “make a point”.

That’s all I’ve got.

Thanks for the e-mail.

Drew

 

So that’s that.  And that’s why I read all these Star Wars books, it’s for the story.  I can’t tell if something is written well or poorly, I’m not looking to critique grammar and things like that.  If it tells a good story, I like it.  Sure, I’ll point out things I don’t like or find things an author said wrong here and there, but that’s it.

 

Pages Read Today (and yesterday): 230

Pages Read to Date: 2800

Books Read to Date: 8

Days: 24

January 21st – Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

With all of the books that have talked about Sabacc and all the variants/rules, you’d think it’d be difficult to get it wrong.   Sorry Drew Karpyshyn, you got it wrong! (I know, I’m sorry, but I still like you!).  You can win the Sabacc pot on a +23, a -23, or an Idiot’s Array.  However, on page 35 “He was sitting at negative twenty-three exactly a bomb-out.” Um, no, he would have won the Sabacc pot!  Come on Drew, know your Sabacc!

That said, off I go to enjoy the rest of the book!  It’s nice to see a “bad guy” come from a harsh upbringing, making something of himself as a soldier, and then becoming one of the more awesome of the Sith Lords the Star Wars Universe has come to see.

Pages Read Today (and Yesterday) : 80

Pages Read to Date: 2326

Books Read to Date: 7

Days: 21

January 20th – Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

7 books down.  Well, again my hopes for what to read and assuming I’ll able to make good ground on weekends are wrong.  I haven’t started Path of Destruction yet, but I know I’ll get a good chunk in tonight and tomorrow before I update again.

Narsk reminds me a lot of Jet Nebula, but is also different.  Jet Nebula knows what he wants to do and can see through people and has a great head on his shoulders.  Narsk is similar, but it’s due to the information provided to him by Vilia.  Jet and Narsk both have that sort of rough, for hire, smuggler/mercenary type attitude.  I bet they could have formed a pretty neat team.

Asides from this novel, there’s not a whole that I’m aware of going on in the SW EU from almost 4000 BBY to 1000 BBY.  It seems sort of weird that there’s an area in space where no one knows really what’s happening on the inside – even the people living in it have no idea who controls what planets and have a good idea of what’s going on.  Being a stand alone, I guess you just have to take it that every now and then there are sectors like this that happen.   I pulled out my Essential Atlas (which is fantastic) and placed this whole area right around where Sullust is.  It’s also right where 2 major trade routes are (Rimma and Hydian Way), so it’s odd that having these 2 established routes already and everyone gets confused.  It’s an era I’m sure that will be expanded upon in the future when the time seems right, but that could probably be said about most era’s.

Pages Read Today (and Yesterday) : 226

Pages Read to Date: 2246

Books Read to Date: 7

Days: 20