SPOILER "Bloodline" by Claudia Gray (Discussion)

Lady Carise is secretly one of the people building the FO and knows Leia is an obstacle. she gives it specifically to Ransolm because he was supporting Leia and Carise wants to destroy their friendship (which she does), and make her own side look like heroes for revealing this info.

it backfires on Lady Carise because Ransolm turns her in for divulging government secrets, which gets her stripped of her power, but then she retaliates by framing Ransolm as a Empire-supporting extremist (and so far as we know he will be put to death as a result even though he's completely innocent and actually heroically fought at Leia's side ~ it's insane).

also, the new nominee for chancellor is assassinated as a direct result of Lady Carise's machinations as well.

it's a huge political collapse.

 

How much do we get on Han's feelings about Ben and that whole situation? What was their decision making process on sending Ben to Luke? Was there an incident that made them stop hesitating?

What sort of awareness do people have about Vader? Was he famous, like an Imperial star athlete or celebrity, or was he more only known to military commanders and Imperial advisors? Like say, if I ran a diner under the Empire on a mid-level important planet like Corellia, would headlines mentioning him be on the screens and newspapers often?

And what is the reaction when he is revealed as also being Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Hero? Do people learn about the Emperor being Sith? Do they make much distinction between Sith and Jedi?

For everybody that has read the book, what would you say is the main takeaway from it?

 

we get zip on Han's relationship with Ben. we know he didn't train Ben in racing or stuff like that but we don't know why. we have no idea when or why they sent Ben to Luke. Han doesn't ever express any particular concern about Ben.

Vader is infamous. everyone knows him and he is the face of the empire next to Palpatine. anecdotes are told of his gross cruelty. he is a total demon in this book. even Leia can't cope with the thought of him and talks about how he tortured her. it's pretty dang awful.

no discussion of this at all. zero. we get that Mon Mothma says she always presumed, but that it made no difference to her. there's some vague thoughts in Leia's head about her mother and that Anakin had been a person before and was again according to Luke. and Leia makes a speech about Padme, but no one talks Sith or the Force or any of it, really.

i'd say the heart of the story is the collapse of this very fragile new government due to senate in-fighting, and how Vader's shadow is still destroying hope for the galaxy since it's this secret that ruins any hope of Leia coming to power as a reasonable and strong governor.

and, of course, that Leia can take a beating and keep going no matter what.
seriously. i'm done with her suffering.
she better get ice cream, flowers, and her son back with his head on straight in the ST. grrrrr.

 

*cough* Well, that Leia is strong...

That the creation of the Resistance was necessary, and that Leia was the leader needed to form it, as the only way to contest the rise of the First Order.

We get zilch on Han's feelings about Ben and why he is with Luke.

People apparently still widely hate and fear Vader (except those who still admire the Empire from the shadows). I doubt there are a lot of headlines anymore about Vader himself (he's been dead twenty years). If Corellia was interested in the doings of the NR, I would think the revelation about Leia would have made headlines, yes. (Of course, this is all speculation on my part.) No one really remembers Anakin Skywalker as a hero--his legacy as Vader seems to eclipse it.

No mention is made of the Sith that I can recall. There may be a reference to Luke as a Jedi, but he has been out of the spotlight for some time, and there is doubt cast by some factions that Luke had anything to do with killing the Emperor, etc.

 

Thanks for the responses.

Ok. From what I'm understanding, it's 300 pages of "Leia is a strong independent woman who suffers and takes risks for what she believes in", which is a real missed opportunity to expand on the story gap between ROTJ and TFA, and not a great service to her character since we've known that about her since the very first moments of the first film.

I'm disappointed that Han is given no time, no perspective on this. I guess a father's part in all this is irrelevant, and that's too bad. Same with Padme, sounds like she barely gets a mention.

I appreciate all the answers from y'all. The more I learn the more this just seems like filler, which sucks. That's not how the revelation of Luke and Leia's heritage should have been treated.

 

Well, to be fair, it is a well-written book whose purpose is to focus on Leia, and Claudia Gray treats Leia with great skill. However, if you were hoping for a pleasant story that includes all the OT characters and is in the triumphant tone of RotJ, this really isn't the book you're looking for.

 

How so? It sounds like Gray was throttled into making her rather one-dimensional by the old WNTTA monster.

 

i'd call it better than filler. it doesn't answer some key questions we hoped it might, but does answer a lot about the political landscape and the rise of the FO.
i'm disappointed with the depiction of Leia as a mother, but i accept (as i said before) that Gray was probably hamstrung in this. i wish she handled evading the subject differently if she had to, but oh well.
and even though Han was peripheral, he was there when it mattered in a big way, and that was very satisfying.

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

this is a better interpretation, i guess. it's just hard seeing Han and Leia hanging out with all these other "kids" doing stuff you'd think they would have raised Ben to do (either fly ships or be a politician). Leia even specifically says Ben would have no interest in Birren. but we get no idea why.

if the kid isn't into ships and isn't into politics, he is perhaps totally wrapped up in the Force, which is 1.) why they can't relate to him and 2.) why he's better off with Luke perhaps.

that's the only conclusion i can draw.

 

My main questions have been answered, and this book is an easy "pass" for me.

 

Leia throws an Imperial guard helmet through glass because she's so angry that Ransolm has forced her hand to 'fess up, specifically citing Ben as her major concern. so i don't think it's unfair to try to understand her as a mother and to feel like we don't get the whole picture. that moment in particular struck me as weirdly ingenuous as a result.

 

I would say Leia doesn't come across as a devoted mother (but then, her kid is a grownup living away from home...). But Leia's relationships and reactions are what you'd expect (IMO) from the Leia of the OT. She loves Han and misses him, but she knows and loves her duty to the galaxy. She's clever and resourceful and bossy and fair (mostly) and gutsy and loyal and insightful (FORCE USE ALERT). She is afraid of dealing who her father was, because her memories of him are so traumatic. But she isn't afraid to do what has to be done when she's face to face with it.

 

I thought C3PO was kind of adorable in this book--his cluelessness was actually refreshing at times. I'm not a big 3PO fan, so that's saying a lot.

 

i thought the same thing! and he got to do lots of heroic stuff in the book!

here's another one of those weird passages:



just the phrasing: "if she could not act as a mother to her own son right now".
this doesn't sound like it has anything to do with the political situation or their current separation.
this seems to be saying that if her son needed a mother, she didn't have the wherewithall, period.
if he's an adult and perceived as such, why would it even be an issue?

both Leia and Han seem to have adopted other children in Ben's absence.
not as some insidious thing, but perhaps out of guilt or grief for not parenting him in the first place.
again, so much depends on when they sent him away and what that parting was like.

i can stop beating this dead horse or post a half dozen more screen caps ~ hahaha
but maybe it's too depressing to pursue.

i'll just post this because even though it's a bit of melodrama on Gray's part (or prescient if she didn't have all the information),
it's still chilling and quite powerful:

 

I'm just going to hold these "revelations" kind of lightly until I see Ep. VIII, I think, or at least until we get some film canon backstory on Ben. These statements can be read as innocently as "I can't be with my husband and son right now because of my duties, so if I can't mother the one I love, I'll mother the ones I'm with." (Please pardon that. )

Or, we can go with the slightly less optimistic "I couldn't teach my son what he needed to know about the Force and so he had to go to Luke for training; since I couldn't mother him in that way, I'll mother these young 'uns in a way I am good at."

Or, further down the gloom scale: "I can't deal with my son's Dark Side tendencies so he had to be sent away to Jedi Juvy, but to make up for failing him, I'll not fail these kids."

As for Han...I rather suspect CG got the low-down on the major event of TFA.

 

Jedi Juvy just makes it all better ~ oh my God that's so funny ~ hahahaha

and yeah, i'm not trying to rag on the family, really.
i'm more frustrated with how ambiguously this ended up being written, is all.

was hoping for just a little more of something ~ at the very least something that wouldn't lend itself so easily to a negative reading.

 

Poor TFA Luke didn't look like he enjoyed it, whatever it was.