SPOILER Battlefront II Inferno Squad Discussion

can't read the tiny print on the VD, sorry. what does it say?

as for the sentinel ~ you have to ask yourself what Rax was doing. Rax was not doing the Emperor's bidding; Rax was doing Rax's bidding. like i said, he killed the Emperor's top loyalists before he was to set out. and Sloane was continuing his mission, not Palatine's. this bit of dialogue should be taken with a grain of salt, i think.
if they are appropriating Palpatine's original plan, it makes sense to maintain a facade of loyalty until they achieve their goal out in the Unknown Regions.

again, you may yet prove to be right (Rax was killed, after all), but for the moment, i still find their objectives as strikingly different from the Empire, even if they are built on the ashes of it.

 

TFA VD: "The Old Empire withered away, becoming a remnant of political hardliners locked in a cold war with the New Republic, before eventually breaking away to reform in the Unknown Regions as the mysterious First Order."

I came away with a very different take - everything was proceeding based on the Emperor's plan. One reveal was Rax was being directed by one of the Emperor's sentinels the entire time. He only started thinking about doing his own thing when he was about to leave for the Unknown Regions - and then was conveniently killed and replaced by Sloane (who doesn't know anything). The First Order itself looks like it will have been part of the Emperor's contingency plan.

 

see, my impression of hardliners locked in cold war then "breaking away" tells me that there are factions of loyalists at a variety of levels.
i also feel like Sloane was already borderline disloyal and that Rax seeded Armitage with this new idea (Brendol was irrelevant; Sloane could control him).
so i guess i'm not convinced that they are simply carrying out Palpatine's long game. i feel like they have an agenda entirely their own.
given Hux's aspirations, though, again, ultimately you may be right just in terms of history merely repeating itself, regardless of the specific ideology.

 

It's the presence and actions of the Sentinel droids that convinces me.

 

I enjoyed this book--I really like Christie Golden's style (not so much her methods of character/relationship development--I'm looking at you, Dark Disciple--but in this one I didn't have too many complaints). I found the IS characters relatable, if not really likeable. Of all of them, I probably liked Del the best.

I agree with all the rest of you who posted that this book would never have worked if IS were infiltrating the Rebel Alliance per se, because we'd all hate them. As it was, it was sometimes a very squicky walk through the book, wondering which group of terrorists you were supposed to be rooting for. Fortunately Golden helped us see most of them as real people, not only hate/murder machines. Also, although I wondered what he was really doing with a group like the Dreamers, I fell like a ton of bricks for Piikow. I kept picturing a large adorable lemur. (I know the Chandra-Fan have bat faces. Let me have my delusions, okay? ) I hope it was Gideon who killed him and not Del, because I think Del has some soul left.

I remember early on, after hearing that the Mentor knew Steela, wondering if he could possibly be Lux. Then I was like, Really--he's so famous it would be fatal to show his face? Naw, can't be Lux. But apparently, yes, he was at least highly recognizable, which was the issue. I'm glad Iden wasn't as cold-blooded toward him as I thought she'd be.

And I enjoyed the final irony about the stone-crystal "robots": they had a higher respect for life and death than any of the sentients on the Shadow Side. I guess they were the ones I was really cheering for.

 

this was a delightful bit of moralizing: i had worried that the guardians would be silly or RAWR monsters and instead they were gentle loving giants.
lookls can always be deceiving! : D