City of the Dead

Note: While the below text represents a brief review of this specific Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear entry, a greater retrospective on the entire series, complete with images and footnotes, can be found here on my site, dendrobibliography.

A step above the first Galaxy of Fear novel, which spent more time introducing the interesting cast than telling an interesting story, City of the Dead is an exciting, if flawed tale of zombies and Boba Fett in the Star Wars 'verse.

After a narrow escape from Eaten Alive's living planet, the Millennium Falcon drops our gang -- siblings Tash and Zak, their shape-shifting uncle Hoole, and the salty droid DV-9 -- off on the planet of Necropolis. As the name implies, this is a planet obsessed with death, and show more despite the amount of technology they use, the planet holds on to some very ancient superstitions about honoring the dead. If the dead's rights or violated, legend has it that the great dead witch Sycorax will raise all the dead of Necropolis to seek revenge on the living.

12-year-old Zak takes a specific interest in the legends, as he's only just coming to terms with his parents' deaths six months earlier. He and some local boys sneak into the city's great graveyard to investigate the legends -- and perhaps find a way to bring back Tash and Zak's parents. At the graveyard's center, he finds what he's looking for: Zombies rising from their graves, a malicious and very-dead scientist up and about, and Boba Fett.

Boba. Fett.

One of the local boys ends up dead -- murdered -- and Necropolis' customs and prejudices spiral out of control (as, of course, do the zombies).

There are issues mixed in with the good qualities of this series, however: John Whitman's writing style bounces between exquisite and lazy. There's a wealth of clever foreshadowing in every chapter, but also a number of tiny plotholes or unexplained peculiarities bored into the story's foundation (like...is Necropolis a city or a planet? if everyone knows that boy was murdered, why is his death still being dismissed as a dumb accident? how are the zombies controlled again? what exactly do cryptberries do -- kill, induce comas, or specifically deathlike comas? if this fruit is this common in an urban environment, how come the locals don't bring up that a character who ingested the cryptberries might be alive...and how come that 'death' wasn't investigated at all despite the mysterious circumstances and preceding pattern of murders...and how come no one noticed the airholes bored into the casket...seriously, how did someone in a coma get buried six feet under without anyone noticing?!).

Zombies are a bit out of place for Star Wars, sure, but boy does it still make a great entry to the series. Tash and Zak develop a lot here as they mourn the loss of their parents -- it's handled quite well for a plot that's intentionally mimicking Goosebumps! Boba Fett's extended cameo is also awesome, and befitting the character's limited personality. Even with the number of goofy conveniences in the story, I still find City of the Dead an improvement in the direction of the series and can't wait to revisit more sequels.

John Whitman's Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear (1997–1998):
#1 Eaten Alive | #3 Planet Plague show less

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