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The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance by Sean Williams

Sean Williams is a very good writer.  Do not let my negative comments on The Force Unleashed be reflected at all on your opinion of Sean Williams’ writing.  He is an excellent writer.  The Force Heretic trilogy in the New Jedi Order were some of the best of that series, and I really like Sean Williams a great deal, and The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance shows me why.  The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance is a tie-in novel to the upcoming online video game that cost more that most third world countries, and if the game, lives up to this novel, it will be as successful a game as the The Force Unleashed duology, that I am sure will become a trilogy. 

I am getting close to the middle of the novel, and I have enjoyed it thoroughly.  This novel is a multi-perspectival novel.  How do you like that big word?  What I mean is that Williams tells this story through the eyes of multiple people.  You see this story from the perspective of a Sith apprentice, a Jedi apprentice, a black opp soldier, a pirate, among others.  This bouncing around from the mind of character to another character adds a richness to this story that I love.  I reminds me of Robart Jordan’s Wheel of Time series that follows dozens of characters and brings them all together, but The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance does this on a smaller scale which adds a pace to the story that The Wheel of Time series does not have. 

A couple of things has surprised me to this point about this novel.  Writing from the perspective of so many characters, I get excited knowing that these characters are going to meet at some point in the story.  I love watching these stories collide.  The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance reminds me of the story style of Crosscurrent by Paul Kemp, which is a novel I enjoyed, but there is one significant and surprising, in a good way, difference in the two novels.  In Crosscurrent, Paul Kemp waited until the end to bring all of his characters and storylines together…not Sean Williams.  Sean Williams brings his characters together much sooner with a rather lengthy battle between Jedi and Sith…then Jedi, Sith and Mando…then Jedi, Sith, Mando, and Mysterious Droids…then Jedi, Sith, Mando, Mysterious Droids, Palace Security, and Former Black Opps Agent.  As you can see this fight becomes a free for all that was very fun to read, but Williams does one really nice writing technique that made this battle from good to great. 

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