SPOILER Chuck Wendig - Aftermath (Journey to The Force Awakens)

LoL, I associate the term "bestseller" with a toilet paper brand. To me personally it means absolutely nothing! I don't care much for how successful a movie or a book is. The important question is, does it have anything I can connect with on a personal level?

 

@LadyMusashi First off, loved your review!


Now that I've had time to digest and reread certain chapters of interest, I am beginning to get the Impression that the Fleet Admiral is in fact, SC Snoke.

1. His name wasn't revealed, which is interesting because he is imo the most pivotal character in the book. He did in fact orchestrate the entire thing (kinda like Palpatine when I think about it). He is only seen in the Epilogue and only mentioned in chapter 9. Why keep his name a secrete if he's barely in the book? Unless his significance is being deliberately downplayed...

2. As you pointed out in your excerpt, The Empire is dead to him and he is ready to move on to start "A new empire worth of ruling the galaxy". The First Order??? He's looking for the strongest Imperials to help him build this "Empire", what is he planning?

3. The Imperials seem to hold him in such high regard, they say he was/is there best and brightest among them and were disappointed when they were told he was killed. I think even Moff Pandion thought he was a fit leader.

As for this book, Disney and Lucasfilm hyped it up because they know what happens in TFA and we don't. They know the significance of each development in the story were we are kinda left hanging because we don't see the connections to the movie yet. All we can do is speculate until December. The lack of the big 3 in this book is because they are keeping their rolls a secret until TFA. The Fleet Admiral's name not being revealed isn't to keep you anticipating the next book, but to keep a certain character in TFA a mystery as long as possible. Everything in the NC is significant going forward, they just aren't ready to show us how yet.

The series has to have some major TFA spoilers. I see the NC as just teasers for the ST. Which is why right now they are so underwhelming. I think I understand why Lucasfilm and Disney have been real secretive, they are trying to recreate that nostalgic feeling of seeing Star Wars for the first time in theaters back in '77 (not sure what you we're getting into but you we're excited none the less). All the new mysteries in this book and the new cannon I think we'll see resolved in the ST, which sucks but I think once the we see the movie we'll remember certain things and go "oooohhhhh! so that's what happened!" and then everything thing will start to come together.

 

Spoiler: Aftermath Spoiler

In the interlude chapter that takes place on Uyter, we are introduced to a young man, Pade, who is being sent to train at the Imperial Academy. However, New Republic forces have destroyed the Academy and a soldier tells Pade to go to the New Republic Academy on Chandrila, the new capital of the New Republic. Could Pade be the given name of a future Resistance Pilot who goes by the nickname of "Poe"?
Pade very well could be a character who simply gets a story arch in the "Aftermath" trilogy, but I couldn't shake the suspicion that I had just been introduced to Poe.

 

Spoiler

It looks like Poe's parents have been introduced in Shattered Empire. I doubt Kes and Shara would abandon their child as Pade says they did. But he could be mistaken about why they left. I doubt it though. I don't know that the timeline fits either if Aftermath is close to Shattered Empire. Poe isn't born yet and is possibly conceived in the first issue. I think some believe the rebel who helps Pade is actually Luke, but I don't see any evidence for that.

 

Ah, see I haven't read shattered empire but I do remember reading somewhere that it involves Poe's parents.

 

Poe's parents were already introduced and if he was in aftermath wouldn't he be 50 by the time of TFA? You have a cool avatar though!

 

Hey hows it going,

Haven't read the book. I've seen a lot of negative attention regarding it and have done some snooping and I'd like to share (hopefully without causing a shitstorm) One interesting...I say interesting... what I really mean is childish, bewildering, saddening and reactionary... thing I found, was a quote from the author regarding detractors of Aftermath. He basically dismisses any criticism of the novel as being due to homophobic bigots.

Since there's a mixed pot of opinion on this forum, and I have no intentions of changing that and making this place some sort of echo chamber, I'll have to state a few things. I personally am not against progressive subject matter in Star Wars. What I am against is an author using progressive subject matter to effectively shield himself from criticism. I don't mean to derail the thread either. I just thought there have been plenty of reviews already and this is an interesting development that deserves discussion.

Carry on

NINJA EDIT: Link to article

 

A little bit off topic but... the brazilian cover is amazing!

 

I bet the translator's head starts spinning into the second chapter, he completely rewrites the book from scratch in Portuguese and it's actually good, lol.

 

Shaming detractors by calling them homophobes = Deflecting Criticism

Taking down Amazon reviews = Censorship.

The two are not even close to the same thing but are equally distasteful and unprofessional for writers, let alone writers contracted by a corporation as large as Disney. Sure, your opinion is a little dated and doesn't hold much water if you say you hate a book because it has gay people in it. If they said that the book's representation or portrayal of homosexual folks was poorly executed, that would be an opinion I would respect. I honestly don't care very much about the negative reviews themselves as much as the author's unprofessional and defensive response.

A lot of what I have heard of the book is that it is written like a fifteen year old fed a rough draft through a thesaurus and turned it in two days late. That the elements and themes that worked were the ones that tied into the films, not original ideas created by the author himself. That the composition comes off like a bad doctor Seuss imitation more than an escapist sci-fi fantasy novel. That it's subject matter is more miss than hit a lot of the time, with vague loose ends that will only be answered with a vastly better piece of art a few months down the line.

So yeah, without even reading the thing, I can make the assumption that this gay character could have been written better by someone else.

Moral of the story: Hire skilled writers than take criticism better, Disney. This is a sad state of affairs, indeed.

...also I'm pretty sure he compared Luke Skywalker to Jesus kicking people...

 

That quote from Wendig looks to only be responding to those who had issues with the inclusion of homosexuality. He's not lumping all negative reviews into that category.

 

From his twitter account I gathered he is still very defensive and bitter over the Amazon reviews he calls "one star army"... I honestly try to form my own opinion on things I read as much as possible, but the more I read on this book and its writer the more I get a bitter taste from it. And I become less and less inclined to give this book another chance. I feel it's going to collect dust in my collection.

 

I did and still do invite you all to discuss my points. I guess I never said what should have been said before my heavily opinionated points. I respect your point of view and your opinion on the novel itself, but I wholeheartedly disagree with them in many ways, which is now abundantly clear. But that's okay! We can disagree!

For instance, I disagree that repeating other peoples' words isn't discussion. It certainly is!

The only reason I came here was to see what people were saying about the novel and to relay the author's attitude towards his dissenters. Yes, I am making huge base assumptions about the book without even reading it. But that is something everyone does with every form of media before deciding if they wish to consume it, no?

Back on point. The reason I bring up homophobia/homosexuality in my posts is precisely and solely because Wendig does. Not because I have any stake in the fight. Like someone else stated, check out how he presents himself in other forms of media. That article I posted. His twitter. The guy does not scream esteemed writer to me. He sounds like a fan fiction writer that won a raffle ticket and complained when fans disliked his work. It's absolutely fine that you enjoyed his book. In fact I'm happy that out of all of this, a group of people found the thing an entertaining read.

I'm only here to discuss the author himself and this controversy he himself has started. Understand?

At this point, it's not actually common knowledge if Del Rey and Disney weren't happy with his work. I'm sure they weren't too happy with the guy swearing in a Guardian article and quite literally comparing his detractors to a fictional totalitarian oppressive order. That's pretty childish c'mon. You won't win over hearts with those words.

No one likes to hear that something they like is disliked. I can understand that. Especially when I worded my opinion as fact. Apologies for that. Let's try not to get up-in-arms over differing opinions though. Variety is the spice of life after all

 

I quite enjoyed it. Really liked the interludes. Hope there's a sequel.

 

There will indeed be a sequel, two actually, its the first in a trilogy of novels.