SPOILER "Bloodline" by Claudia Gray (Discussion)

there's so many paragraphs like this. hints that they couldn't just be regular parents to Ben with the implication being that there was something wrong with Ben that prevented it. this was what i was trying to articulate earlier when i said they treat him like he's got a third eye.

i'm afraid it does come off (to me, at least), that Leia might have felt a (perfectly understandable) revulsion for her own bloodline and so (tragically) distanced herself from her own son.

--- Double Post Merged, May 4, 2016, Original Post Date: May 4, 2016 ---

here's another example that feels very telling:



Han calmed her down ~ "more or less". no clue at all what this might be referring to.
something Ben did? something he just was through no fault of his own?
and Han wasn't entirely successful at allaying her fears (?) concerns (?) anger (?) frustration (?).
i'm sure the kid didn't pick up on that at all.

edit: and if it's referring to Han calming her down about Ben finding about Vader, it's maddening that Gray didn't/couldn't give us that conversation. again, we get no sense of their relationship out of this. or what Leia's actual fears are.

 

Haha--I sincerely doubt Ben knows about Vader, not from the way she went ballistic about not having time to tell him. I was thinking it might have come across to Ben that Leia was repulsed by him, but he didn't understand why...

Hmm, what did Leia need to be calmed down about with regard to Ben... We can speculate:

• when she discovered she was pregnant with him (way back when)
• that he was ripping holes in the knees of his pants every single time he went out to play and did he think this family was made of money and we can't be buying you new clothes every time you walk out the door and why don't you pay attention to what you're doing and what do you mean it was an accident you always say that. (*ahem* Been there, done that )
• when she discovered he was FS
• when he left the seat up for the gazillionth time
• when she noticed he had a penchant for the Dark Side (?)
• when he decided he wasn't making his bed every morning anymore
• when she realized he had a relationship with a child predator (?)
• when he ate dessert first without drinking all his blue milk

Even a loving and rational parent can have it up to here with everyday things and need to be calmed down to focus on the really important things. So it's possible he was just a garden-variety ornery kid.

But then again, we know how the story goes on...

 

well seeing as Han was never alerted to the child predator's existence, we know it wasn't that (ahem).
maybe she was just upset because he made macaroni art for Luke and not for her. hahaha

i honestly feel like the point at which they decided to cast Adam Driver and make Ben 30 instead of 20 might have thrown a huge wrench into things.
if Ben were still a teenager in this book, some of the weirdness here might be a little less disconcerting.

and again, it would really help a lot to know when Han & Leia shuffled him off to Uncle Luke.
if it was 5 years ago, that might make sense. better sense if it was 10 years ago.
if it was just last year, we really do have some serious problems.

and no matter how you look at it, Han & Leia still come off as parents who aren't behaving like steady capable parents (though Leia takes the brunt of it since we see so little of Han here).

 

I appreciate you guys and gals discussing this book; I don't have time this time of the year to read much.

I don't think I will be picking it up however. It seems like they realized for the show to go on, that Happily Ever After at the end of ROTJ had to be crushed and mangled. It seems like while they are painting Han and Leia very accurately as human beings with flaws, they don't seem like they were fit for parenthood.

I'm not that impressed with how it sounds like they handled this revelation though. It has major implications, and they seem to be dancing around it, like maybe they have another book in the wings telling the same story but from a different POV, one that isn't so deeply personal and inside Leia's head. This revelation is THE BIGGEST deal post-ROTJ for the GFFA and the characters central to the OT. And they seemed to have basically done this with it:



Does it give any indication of whether or not Ben was planned or a surprise pregnancy? They way everyone treats him sounds more like the latter. A fragile special needs child in an adult's body. Very strange and a little off the mark from what we saw in TFA it sounds like.

I still think they meant 16 years instead of 6. Everything would make a little more sense that way. These novels, as I was to understand it, were touted as enriching the films, adding details and nuances of the elements of the films without distorting what we saw or will see onscreen, but each review of the new books in the post-ROTJ canon seem to leave me with the impression that they are just tying knots in a string we'd already thought we'd unraveled well enough.

 

Lol oops . I know what I was trying to say so maybe I typed too fast .

 

to be fair, we're focusing on teeny tiny details about the Solo family in a lot of these posts. the book itself and the story it tells about Leia and the revelation of her parentage is quite good and doesn't sputter out that way at all ~ the ramifications are huge and we see how they basically propel us into the events of TFA.

also, i feel like some of the attempt here was to show that there was peace after ROTJ and that it wasn't all straight to hell in the Aftermath. not sure it works, but that seems to have been the intent.

Ben's portrayal in the film seems to hint at a strange developmental delay in his behavior. but again, it could be that the role was literally written for a kid. and we still have no idea whether Ben had all his wits growing up at this point.

and in answer to your other question, doesn't look like Ben was planned, though Han and Leia were married already.
it's not surprising, though, that they didn't have other kids afterwards.

 

No worries. I just thought you had some secret information you could share.

 

I have many dark secrets to share .

--- Double Post Merged, May 4, 2016, Original Post Date: May 4, 2016 ---

Well with them being so physically separated and Leia's fledging political career is say it would have been hard regardless ...

 

.

 

Right, gotcha.

Can a busy, frugal dork like me get some info on those ramifications and the big reveal? So far it seems the discussion is almost entirely about Leia and what a strong woman she is to go through all this.

 

The latter is a shame, because Leia is just so amazing in all her other capacities in this novel, and she is so strong...

But you know, I suppose if you hadn't seen TFA and didn't know about Kylo Ren, you wouldn't take these offhand references to him too seriously, especially if you assumed he was older. I REALLY wish I knew which places reflect input Claudia Gray had received in regard to Ep. VIII!

--- Double Post Merged, May 4, 2016, Original Post Date: May 4, 2016 ---

haha--that pretty much is what the book's about! When you say big reveal, do you mean how Leia's heritage is outed, or something else?

 

I just realized one thing by seeing the cover art again which is that does spray paint in the SW Galaxy...hmm

 

Yes, I'm more interested in the bigger picture rather than how strong Leia is as a woman; I've known that about her since 1977.

 

the whole book is a political intrigue with lots of spying and fire-fights and hellacious backstabbing in the senate. it's quite gripping ~ hahaha
ask away ~ we can tell you all the gory details!

you make an excellent point about knowing what we know. in all honesty, i think i would still find the treatment of Leia as a mother to be disconcerting in this story, but yet, it would be fairly easy to dust off. it's only because the impact her actions will have on Ben and the road he's already on that it becomes so glaring ~ but unfortunately that's unavoidable. i feel like anyone who reads this comes to the book with the same knowledge already established.

 

I know some fans were getting worked up because Claudia Gray said she'd never read the script for TFA when she was writing, but I'm sure the story group supplied her with a summary of it and a list of What Not to Talk About.

 

I'm not sure where to start!

Who reveals the secret? In what way and where? Why target Leia? Did Leia go into politics like this thinking it wouldn't be a big deal? Or that no one would find out?

Sorry for being so thirsty.

 

You get the story of how her disillusionment with the NR's backstabbing political climate is becoming increasingly impotent, which leads her to personally take on a complaint that the Senate tries to table. In doing so, she finds criminal activity that eventually leads her to one of the roots of the FO (which she takes out FTW). She doesn't realize yet that it is the FO, but she is aware that there is more to this than meets the eye. When rivals discover that she is the daughter of Darth Vader, they reveal this publicly to discredit her run for First Senator (leader of the Senate). Apparently, yes, she did think this would remain a secret. She endures this with dignity of course, but realizing her political career is pretty much over and that there is still a threat to freedom that the NR will never get around to addressing, the baby Resistance is born. (Oh, and there are a number of action scenes mixed in there too. )

 

Lady Carise, a proponent of a rival faction in the senate discovers the truth in a holocron that Bail Organa left for Leia (meant, obviously) for her eyes only. she gives it to a colleague (Ransolm) who is friends with Leia until he thinks she's lied, then he denounces her publicly by playing the record before the senate just as it's announced that she will run for the new "chancellor" position.

Leia's always been in politics (since she was 14). she's spent the last thirty years in serious denial/conflict about Vader though, and didn't expect anyone to find out since only Han, Luke, and her knew.

 

Why would she do that?