SPOILER PHASMA NOVEL

i won't get my copy until the weekend (boo), but i will be back to share.
looks like initial reactions have generally been pretty positive, so i am super-excited for it! : D

 

I just finished it about 30 minutes ago. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would! It was a different ride, but a really fun one. Reading Claudia Gray's new book now!

 

Half way through and I'm hooked to the story. Get a Mad Max post apocalyptic feel to the story being told. Would have never guess her to have this kind of backstory.

 

Quite a few chapter back now but... the AotC Anikin quote Phasma uses Rilly make me giggle... anyone else ?

 

This book is awesome. My new favorite canon novel. I'm going to say it, so far it's better than Thrawn. Thrawn was cool, but I somewhat expected all of the beats to flesh out like they did. This is just one crazy ride that has kept me guessing every step of the way. I love it. It pulls all of Star Wars primary genres together perfectly, and add post-apocalyptic survival story into the mix. There are sections that really remind me of Fallout, and there are sections that really remind me of Mad Max, but they still feel totally in keeping with Star Wars. Parnassos just might be one of my favorite planets now, and I'd give anything to see it visually realized at some point.

I'm about half-way through at pg 172. Here are my bulletin points so far:

Spoiler

Jesus RIP Carr.

Tepishore Station feels very much like a Vault experiment gone wrong.

Brendol Hux is a great Imperial(?) or would he be a First Orderer?. #MaketheGalaxyGreatAgain

Brendol's take on the First Order seems very Communistic.

Edit: So I just finished. This has been one of my fastest reads in years, I just couldn't put this thing down. What a story!

Spoiler

Damn, that nearly pitch black ending. I'm really curious what happens to Vi, Cardinal, and Siv, and Torbi. Wouldn't Phasma rush to wrap things up? I mean there's really only one possibility isn't there, and it shouldn't be hard for her to piece together. This line of thought has lead to my only complaint, the ending seemed a bit too neat. How did Vi smuggle a wounded Cardinal off his own ship? Wouldn't anyone stop and ask, "Hey, isn't that the Captain?" Why leave Cardinal alive? Sure, he was a cool character, but his arc seems kind of complete. I mean, what's he going to do for the Resistance? Train their child soldiers?

My bulletins on the later half:

That Thunderdome was pretty cool.

What was up with the Gand? Seems kind of odd he was just standing there. Doesn't he ever have to eat, or sleep? What's a Gand's lifespan? Seems like he's been there a long time.

No post-apocalyptic journey is complete without nukes. Glad to see the theme carried over into the nu-canon, that even the bad guys are disgusted by the use of the big one. Blowing up a whole city with turbo lasers is a-okay though.

Freaking Armitage Hux. Ya know, for a sec your old man had ya beat for my favorite Imperial/First Order character, but then yo beautifully evil ass just had to come in with the, "I let it happen." Absolutely best villain material.

Sloane is still kicking around. That's cool. Maybe we'll actually see her on film?

That's pretty cool that her armor is made from Papa Sheev's ship.

 

Spoiler: Future of Cardinal

Pure speculation, but Cardinal might be DJ (Benecio del Toro) ... Which would give DJ a connection to Finn ...

 

I think that's a stretch based on TLJ promo photos.

 

Just finished the story (audio book version Superbly read by January LaVoy) ...
Gotta Say ... That Was DAMN GOOD !
My vote up there is one of the 9 outta 10.

Tell Me More Stories ...

 

finished Phasma last night (would have been done sooner but i had a hellish week).
this book, for me, demonstrates the problem of anticipation and expectation:

the story i think we should have gotten:

Armitage Hux crash lands on Parnassos. He forges a relationship with violent-minded Phasma over their insanely crap childhoods and collude to kill Brendol and take over the Absolution on their way to eventually earning the Finalizer. Cardinal is also on the slate to be killed as Armitty wipes out all these obvious weak links created by his father.​

the story we got instead:

generic conflicted Stormtrooper Cardinal (who maybe never should have had any business in his position to begin with) tortures random rebel spy for information on Phasma and dull-as-raw-dough Brendol's death to which Armitty says: yeah, so what? (was anybody really expecting him to say otherwise? was Cardinal? really?)​

the assassination is telegraphed practically from the start, making the whole novel a picaresque of (as @Boushhdisguise says) Mad Max moments toward an ending we already know. worse yet, it's just sold to us as Phasma wanting to hide her face rather than a more deliberate kill based on anything interesting.

and the conceit of the storytelling is executed terribly. no one talks like this--nor tells stories in this fashion. it made me dislike Vi, think Cardinal was stupid, and, distrust the whole tale practically from word one. also, just in terms of the writing, Dawson's world-building was interesting, but inconsistent. it's like she'd never read a Star Wars novel in terms of her language usage (let alone Aftermath), and there are so many strange references: butterflies, dogs, and cardinals (the actual bird). the nuke was sort of the end of the line for me. it's like she'd written a post-apocalyptic novel and then slapped Star Wars characters into it.
read like total fanfiction to me. : o p

this is a quick read; the action moves and i was propelled toward the end. but the characters feel all wrong to me.

• Brendol is just flat-out boring. he's got zero personality but a sneer and seems inconsistent with the man we met in Aftermath.
  
• i guess Brendol was made a General in the First Order? he was a Commandant before. and why is he doing the recruiting anyway?
  
• Armitty was snotty and spoiled as a kid? really? when did that happen?
  
• and when did the Hux family return to the academy Arkanis???
  
• what happened in the Outer Rim?
  
• what's the current status of the relationship between Sloane and Hux? the reference to Sloane is cryptic at best.

the timeline is a mess as well. all this stuff happened on Parnassos 10 years ago and it only took Phasma one year to rise to her position. but Cardinal acts like Brendol was only recently killed. or did it take 9 years for Cardinal to find someone who could piece this together? and has Armitty been a General for all those years?

so we learned that Phasma is not to be trusted and will do anything to survive/has no fealty/is basically a Star Wars cockroach. this does not make her more interesting to me. i'm not bothered by her cold-heartedness, but i am bothered by the house of cards that is the First Order. if these people don't actually believe in anything, they may prove to be a lame organization and consequently a lame antagonist. their only power lies in their conviction.

i know others are happy with the story Dawson told, but i think we deserved a better book that this.

on the positive side, she left enough room open for me to dismiss much of it as the work of an unreliable narrator (that's Vi's/Siv's point of view), and stick with my own headcanon about the whole mess ~ hahaha

i admit, this did make me laugh. : D

 

a good editor could have helped this a lot. there are some obvious glaring writing problems with the book overall.
just seems like such a huge missed opportunity here. and to see the takeaways people are getting from this ~ ugh.

again, which would have made this so much more compelling! how has Cardinal managed to be this naive all these years? Brendol's disdain is not subtle. Dawson tries to blame it on the "programming" but it never really comes off as very convincing.

Rax considered Brendol stupid enough to be led and effective enough at what he did to be worth saving. it makes all the sense in the world that he'd eventually outlive his usefulness. and the way the dynamic was set up in Aftermath, it was clear that Armitty would grow up with real hatred for the man. but the way Dawson wrote the character of Phasma, it would seem she has no actual interest in the politics of the FO, which feels like such a waste of a great opportunity. even if she's ultimately disloyal to everyone she meets, a book about her playing that game with Armitty would have been much more interesting than a book about some random jealous trainer who is so obviously out of place in this world. eh.

like i said, i feel like there's lots of room to maintain other headcannon about what's really going on here. i was actually glad Armitty closed Cardinal out of the meeting because then we simply don't know what's going on as opposed to having any real confirmation of anything.

 

So...what did you think then?

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 11, 2017, Original Post Date: Sep 11, 2017 ---

I really enjoyed this novel, it provided a backstory I wasn’t expecting for the character and the planet Parnassos seems awesome, shame

Spoiler

it’s all underwater now…

Agreed on the timeline issues, though, thought it was just me who was slightly confused. I’m guessing Phasma wasn’t the tall girl at the end of Aftermath: Empire’s End?

Also, good to see Snoke namedropped, Kylo Ren too

 

all that and more! : D

it's okay, this is the spoiler thread. but yeah: this new Star Wars galaxy seems to have a problem with destroying its worlds as quick as we can meet them: Jeddha, Scariff, Hosnian Prime, Starkiller, Parnassos (or at least the Scyre and the fancy cloth city).

if Armitty was going to met Kylo Ren, then we at least know the "present" timeline is less than 6 years before TFA since it's obviously post-Bloodline.but yeah, it's very muddy.

apparently not, though you get the feeling it was absolutely implied by Wendig.

given some of the peculiarities of the narrative, i begin to think Dawson was given a challenge to write Phasma's story without actually using the other known FO characters or developing them in any interesting way. we never actually see Kylo Ren, and only very briefly see Hux and his behavior is pretty static/unremarkable.

even though Brendol is one of the main characters in Vi's story, we don't actually learn anything new about him, and again, the reference to Sloane doesn't even make sense: what is Cardinal implying? that Sloane wouldn't approve? in which case he just threatened his superior officer and Hux didn't waste him immediately? it's kinda baffling. and anyway Sloane hated Brendol too. Cardinal is the only one who thought he had any value, which really makes me think Cardinal is a dunce. : o p

 

Finished the book yesterday, with mixed feelings.

The plot with Vi and Cardinal ik liked the most in the book. The "games" they played with each other I found interesting. At the end of the book I even felt sorry for Cardinal, his whole life/world fell apart and I couldn't help but see him as a victim of the First Order who indoctrinated him almost his entire life. But I have to agree that he wasn't one of the smartest in the FO

Spoiler: Cardinal

The biggest (and only real) surprise for me was that Cardinal wasn't killed off, but saved by Vi. But I'm still curious how do you sneak out a bright red stormtrooper without being seen?

On the other hand I found the plot on Parnassos was dragged out to long, the whole plot in the city or in the mining complex could have been scrapped. We didn't learn much about Phasma, I guess she's just cold hearted? And that should explain all her actions? It didn't help that the story was told from the perspective of Siv instead of Phasma, so you never knew what see was thinking. Further there weren't many twists that I didn't see coming from miles away, so that was disappointing.

Spoiler: Sloane

My only question after this book I really want to know is, is Rae Sloane dead? I my mind they certainly hinted toward it.

The sand remark made me laugh and the "taste like chicken" remark took me out of the book. Don't want no chicken in my Star Wars!

 

no, according to Cardinal and Armitage Hux, she's still very much alive (at least in the time of this story). if you try to do the math, we're less than six years away from TFA (Kylo Ren is there).
unfortunately the math in this book doesn't quite make sense if Phasma is a teenager at the start (nineteen at most), and it's 10 years later. Hux is at bare minimum 28, which would make him 18 when he collects Brendol on Parnassos. there's just no way to figure out the timeline in this because all references to age are incredibly vague or absent.

yeah, there were a bunch of these moments where it was clearly not even an attempt at a Star Wars substitute. : o p

 

it's hard to get a handle on the FO's presence in the galaxy, but i absolutely agree. i was stunned to see Brendol, let alone talking about the FO this early in the game. this means they rose to at least some considerable power within 15 years of the fall of the Empire--and have been gaining momentum for more than 10 years before TFA. which is entirely possible, but seems a bit odd given they're referred to in Bloodline as a sort of "nothing" organization.

someone like Cardinal would have been "liberated" from Jakku almost immediately after Empire's End, so what did they do? vanish into the Unknown Regions and then pop right back out with new uniforms and a new identity? i feel like this is not the FO as it has been sold to us up to this point.