Archive for the ‘X-Wing Rogue Squadron’ Category

Here is our episode 51 that we recorded live.  We finish our Fan Fic contest with our novel entries.  You answer our question of the show where we asked, “How would you like to see Maul used in Season 5 of the Clone Wars?”  Then, we dive into X-Wing: Rogue Squadron by Michael Stackpole.  There is contest to win a copy of Scourge by Jeff Grubb, which if you listened live you have a much better chance of winning, and there is our usual amount of fun and shenanigans.

To all that listened live and sent in comments and tweets, we thank you.  Wayne and I had a blast reading your comments and trying to work them into the show.  You made the show better with your interaction with us.  If you did not listen live, we hope you will be able to do in the future.  We want our live shows to be as interactive and fun as possible.

Also, if you listened live or did not listen live, we would love to hear your feedback.  You can e-mail me at jesse@starwarsbookreport.com.

Thanks for exploring the galaxy with us one page at a time, Jesse

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I am not much of a car guy or truck guy.  I don’t know anything about vehicles.  When people talk bead lock tires, turbo injection, liters, gear ratio, skid plates and such, I usually stare dumbfounded at them not having a clue as to what they are talking about.  When people ask me how much horse power my truck has, I say, “It runs on gas…there are no horses.”  Then they snicker at me for some reason and walk away.  I just know my truck gets me from here to there and it has hauled everything I have ever thrown into its bed.  Well my third favorite scene makes me wish I was more of a car guy.  It comes from X-Wing: Rogue Squadron by Michael Stackpole.

This scene is very simple.  There is no action.  There is no great story advancement.  It is just so cool it made me wish I was a starship snub fighter pilot.  It is the scene where Wedge Antilles makes his preflight X-Wing check in front of the squadron.  Wedge simply walks around his X-Wing checking every angle, every fastener, every hose, every wire…he slowly gazes over every inch of his fighter.  This slow walk and slow examination brought such a powerful response in me as a read it.  I could not help but imagine the conflicting emotions going through Wedge during this scene.  Stackpole does a great job of portraying Wedge’s joy and sadness of flying an X-Wing in Rogue Squadron.  I couldn’t help, but imagine Wedge remembering fondly all the times his X-Wing’s shielding or extra power has saved his life against an enemy Tie.  I also couldn’t help, but imagine Wedge remembering all of his friends that were lost in this same craft.  As I was reading, I was seeing the faces of Wedge’s friends killed in Episode IV.  All of these emotions boiling through me as Wedge ran his hand over this plating or that connection caused this scene to be powerful to me.

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This is a spoiler conscious review of Karen Miller’s Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth, but with any review their will be a little spoilage, but I try to keep it a minimum. 

Novels or Series Mentioned

Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth

Clone Wars: Wild Space

X-Wing: Rogue Squadron

            Have you ever said something that just totally missed your audience?  I will never forget…picture this…Nashville…1998…that’s right, I can do Golden Girl references.  Sophia was a comedic genius, but I digress.  I was in college at baseball practice one beautiful fall day, and over head of Shelby Park flew a group of three F-117 Nighthawks, which are Stealth fighter jets.  Everyone at practice looked up to watch this rare plane fly over.  I see this a great time to tell a wonderful joke, so I say, “I thought you could not see those planes?”  To which with an absolute straight face, I had a teammate explain to me that stealth technology has to do with radar and not plain sight.  To which I responded, “I know…that’s what made my joke funny,” but it was too late.  They missed my joke completely, and I felt like an idiot.   I hope you do not miss the subtle dialogue between Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme, and Bail that make this a wonderful book.  

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Spoiler Conscious Review of X-Wing Wedge’s Gamble by Michael A. Stackpole

Novels or Series Mentioned

X-Wing Wedge’s Gamble

X-Wing Rogue Squadron

X-Wing Series

            This review will be spoiler conscious.  Although you can’t do a review without mentioning some aspects of the story, I will be thoughtful as to not ruin this book for you.

In X-Wing Wedge’s Gamble, you have a story of a team that does one thing so well, but in this book, the same team does something completely different.  In X-Wing Rogue Squadron, Rogue Squadron does one thing great fly missions.  The wall to wall action in the space battles is what made X-Wing Rogue Squadron such a great read.  Well, in X-Wing Wedge’s Gamble, Stackpole definitely gambles by taking Rogue Squadron out of their element where they excelled and placed them in a completely different one.  It reminds me of Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan where both athletes left the sport in which they highly succeeded and took a chance in another arena.    

If you are my age, you will remember Bo Jackson in all of his glory.  He signed to play baseball for the Kansas City Royals in 1986 and became a starting outfielder for them in 1987, and wowed us all with his sheer athleticism.  I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to run a semi-circle up and down and wall like he did when making a catch in the outfield…just to let you know I couldn’t do it.  Bo was amazing.  Then in 1987, Bo does the unthinkable.  He signed with the L.A. Raiders to play football, and he was unbelievable in that sport too.  He flat out embarrassed bold talker Brian Boworth by running around, away, and just plain over him on a Monday Night Football game in 1987.  Watching Bo Jackson do two sports so well is still an achievement I am glad I got to witness. 

            If you are my age, you will also remember Michael Jordan quitting basketball because he had nothing left to accomplish and put his effort in becoming a Major League Baseball player.  Unlike Bo, this switch was painful to watch.  Jordan just looked awkward and strange in a baseball uniform, and although Jordan was a better baseball player than I ever was, you just wanted him to go back to baseball because watching someone who is so great at one thing flounder in another was painful. 

The question becomes will X-Wing Wedge’s Gamble be a Bo Jackson and succeed in their second element and be great, or will they be a Michael Jordan and need to return to where they are comfortable?  

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Spoiler Conscious Book Review of X-Wing Rogue Squadron by Michael A. Stackpole

Books or Series Mentioned

X-Wing Rogue Squadron

X-Wing Series

New Jedi Order

This review will be spoiler conscious.  Although you can’t do a review without mentioning some aspects of the story, I will be thoughtful as to not ruin this book for you. 

It has taken me a while to begin the X-Wing series.  Even though I know the significance of this series because it introduces several key characters and back story, when standing in the book store, I still chose other books over this series.  Even though I know Michael A. Stackpole is one of the best Star Wars authors out there, I still chose other books over this series for one reason…the hardest thing for a writer to write is a space battle.  How many times have you read a maneuver described in a space battle and thought, “what did the pilot just do?”  Space battles are tough to write because I, and most readers, have never experience space flight to connect these maneuvers to pictures in our mind.  I end up reading space battles for the facts of: who shot who down, who won the battle, and who survived, but rarely do I get caught up in reading a space battle and the description is so clear that I can see the battle in my mind.  Again, I do not fault writers for this, but my lack of knowledge of space maneuvering in a space craft.  This difficulty has always caused me to pause in buying the X-Wing series because it focuses on space battles, but thankfully, my wife for my birthday bought me X-Wing Rogue Squadron, which then sat on my shelf until I finished about a dozen other books, but I finally read it, and I was glad that I did.

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