Which new canon book or novel is good enough to read again?

currently: Lost Stars

However I do fully expect Thrawn to surpass it by far. Timothy Zahn is the man

 

I just started Tarkin, somewhere about chapter 4 at the moment. I just have to say for the record that Tarkin's eyes on the hardback cover are way creepier than anything CGI could come up with.

 

i would read both Aftermath books again, especially Life Debt.
and i should reread Bloodline. i was so angry the first time i read it, i'm sure i would have more objectivity now.

i have Catalyst, Tarkin, Asohka, and Battlefront, but i can't seem to get motivated to read them for some reason.

 

I had a harder time reading Bloodline this time. The first time around I thought of her as I always had--a princess/senator/general. This time around I read her more from the angle of wife and mother, and it was different. Leia's choices in those roles are much harder for me personally to understand--sometimes because of lack of information about Ben, but sometimes because I just can't relate.

P.S. I haven't read Battlefront, but Ahsoka is a nice easy read, so you might want to start with that if you try again.

 

that's my problem with Bloodline ~ i just find her blasé attitude about her family to be maddening. it just drove me crazy. ultimately i reconciled it by telling myself that Gray didn't really have anything to work with so she just did the best she could. but Wendig's single moment of Leia thinking about her unborn child had more warmth and love and humanness than the whole of her futzing about in Bloodline, for me.

Spoiler

it makes it all that much harder to sympathize with her when she breaks down over trying to reach Ben when the Vader thing happens.

i practically threw the book: well yeah! maybe you should have told the kid in the first place!
it felt like she was just feeling sorry for herself instead of genuinely concerned about how Ben would take it.

but maybe i'm just still being hard on her ~ hahahaha

 

Yes, that Wendig section is really lovely. <3 (That is the nicest thing you will probably ever see me post about Wendig. )
The thing is, I can really empathize with putting off telling Ben because she hadn't dealt with it herself. But I can't understand never thinking twice about it.

 

you are much more forgiving than i am in this case ~ hahaha
i try to be compassionate, but Leia is our Princess, our General, our Huttslayer. it's hard for me to see this serious weakness in her.
she had a responsibility to her own child and she blew it. and she not only blew it, but she convinced Han and Luke to follow her lead.
Ben didn't deserve that.

 

Well, we don't know for certain that Luke did follow her lead--Leia seems to have wanted him to tell Ben, since he had details that she didn't. But it seems to be strongly implied that Luke didn't--perhaps he was waiting for her say-so. Looks like no one did until the GFFA media blew up.

Yes, it's hard for me to accept that Han ditched his wife and ran off too. I got attached to these characters as a child and looked up to them as wise grown-ups. Turns out they're just people. *sigh*

 

maybe i am recollecting with angry lenses, but i thought she specially forbade Luke to tell him until she was ready--that yes, she knew Luke could explain it in a way that she couldn't, but that she wasn't willing to allow it yet.
and i fault Han a little too, but if you were married to Leia and probably just as equally scared of your son, his behavior actually makes sense ~ hahaha

you are wise in your words as always: i wanted them to stay heroes forever and it rankles me to see them make especially this kind of mistake--when you would think they would know better. and again, when their child's well-being is in the balance.

i'll get over it. i've already forgiven Han; he is redeemed as a hero in my eyes. now let's fix everybody else's wagon ~ hahahaha

 

It's fuzzy what her "orders" were. Here's the quote:

Spoiler

From ch. 13:
Think of your conversation with Casterfo as practice, she told herself. One day she would have to reveal all this to her son. The truth of Vader's identity had shattered her; she could not imagine what it might mean to Ben. At least Luke could tell Ben the most important part--that Vader had, in the end, been redeemed. Anakin Skywalker had returned; the dark side had been defeated by the light.

Han being scared of...well, I'd put it more like scared for and probably baffled by. Yeah, I kind of give him a pass for the same reason as you. I'm just harder on Leia because I'm a woman, I guess, and I expect more of us. We get one living mom in Star Wars movies, and she is working from a position of having made a gargantuan galaxy-altering mistake in that role. (Maybe I should stop complaining about SW mothers being mere plot devices--maybe dead is an improvement. ) I'm rooting just as hard for Leia to get a mini redemption, as Han did, as I am for Ben to get his.

 

Lords of the Sith is probably the best so far I think.

 

-

 

Some details in it clash with things established in The Clone Wars.

 

While we don't know what happened after this book, I got the impression from the novelization of TFA that Leia somehow pushed Han away, and why was Ben sent away in the first place. We don't know. She had kind of a rosy glasses view of him in Bloodline, but he was sent to Luke for some reason. Like you said, maybe it's what the author had to work with, but there were ways the story team could have helped her, without spilling stuff. It makes me wonder what else happened in the 25 years before. That book is exciting though for anyone who hasn't read it (Bloodline), even though a lot of it is political, it's more of a thriller in that regard. Leia does seem to have some issues, and it's not hard to imagine why. And at the end.

Spoiler: SPOILER

She's setting up the new Resistance, wearing Han's jacket. Maybe he was done with that kind of world, maybe whatever happened with Luke and Ben or whatever was too much to bare, like people who had a child die. Which makes me think they couldn't have had another one if this effected them so much.

 

yeah i feel like some people give Han grief for bailing, but my sense of it is that Leia was so upset she gave him little alternative. and they probably needed a little time apart to get some perspective. i'm sure there was a lot of guilt and blame going around, and by TFA they seem to be making their peace with it.

i also agree that whether by accident of the author's ignorance or just a defect of Leia's motherhood, she sure acts like nothing's wrong with Ben whatsoever in Bloodline and we know that was not the case, right?

my sense of Leia in Bloodline is that she's at the nadir of her denial. sharp as always where it comes to the political scene, but completely blinkered in her personal life, her trauma with Vader, and whatever it is that's going on with her son.

 

I just read Aftermath. But from this thread I get some nice insights of which to get next.

 

Life Debt cont. the adventures of Norra, Temmen, Sinjir and Jas, plus some of the minor characters and has a lot of Leia, Han and Chewie in it. Wedge returns. I would just go right into that and Empire's End should be here in just 3 weeks.