Fatal Alliance

‘Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance’ is based on a video game ‘Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic’ which lets its players create their own adventures. I suppose familiarity with the game will enhance your reading pleasure but lack of it didn’t hurt me.

The setting is 3,500 years before the rise of Darth Vader, so it all happens in a galaxy far, far away, a long, long time ago. It comes early in the ‘Star Wars Novel Timeline’ which usefully decorates a couple of the first pages. There is also a list of the Dramatis Personae for us old people with bad memories for unusual names. If someone wrote a Science Fiction novel in which people were called Bert, Larry, Edith and Jane it would make life a lot easier for show more both my grey matter and my spellchecker. To be fair, the characters are memorable enough that you don’t need the cast list after the first fifty pages.

The adventure opens with a prologue in which pirate Jet Nebula hijacks a light cruiser named Cinzia in wild space. The Cinzia self-destructs rather than surrender. Highly unusual. What cargo was valuable enough to justify such extreme action? I thought that might be it for Jet but happily, he reappears later and plays a key part in the story.

We then have the usual routine of a chapter introducing each of the main characters. Shigar Konshi, Padawan is on Coruscant and has been found unready for Jedi trials by the High Council because he lacks self-control. He must improve they tell him and cut communication. On investigating gunfire nearby. he meets Larin Moxla, a Kiffar like himself by her tattoos and a former republic trooper. Together they engage and are defeated by Dao Stryver, a large Mandalorian warrior. Before escaping, he wanted information about Cinzia and a woman called Lema Xandret. Cut to the Empire world of Dromund Kaas where Eldon Ax, Sith Padawan, has to report to her master that she was defeated by Dao Stryver. She tells Darth Chratis what information the Mandalorian sought and he goes off to check the files. Connections emerge.

I give nothing away, because it’s on the jacket of the book, by informing you that a naughty Hutt Matriarch named Tasaa Bareesh is holding an auction for something mighty valuable and is drawing attention from across the galaxy, including our characters. Since those pirates in the prologue dealt with the Hutts, we can assume the auction has some connection with the cargo of the Cinzia. Everyone ends up on Hutta and then the action really starts.

It took me a while to get into the story but, after a hundred pages or so, it was hard to put down for wanting to know what happened next. There are some neat plots twists and surprises along the way. The difficulty at the start was possibly due to an in-built expectation of a familiar cast – it is ‘Star Wars’, after all – which wasn’t met. These are all new characters based on the game. Once you get to know them, they are an enjoyable bunch. The sincere young Jedi Padawan, his mentor, their Sith equivalents and, most important of all, the loveable rogue with a battered old ship of surprising capabilities. Jet Nebula also has a battered old droid named Clunker as his indispensable buddy.

Author Sean Williams is from Australia, a continent far, far away and has won awards for his fiction. I’m not surprised. He’s a competent writer of action adventure with a good vocabulary and that most underestimated of virtues, absolute clarity. You always know exactly what’s going on. The prose is smooth and virtually unnoticeable – a good thing – apart from a sudden and pleasing outbreak of alliteration on page 267. Here he refers to a ‘solitary satellite’ with a ‘cornucopia of craters and fathomless fissures marring its ugly face’. Very nice.

Some may disdain franchise fiction as hackwork but that’s just snobbery. If you want a window made you hire an able carpenter. If you want an entertaining novel made, you hire an able writer. Somewhere between hackwork and artwork, there is craftwork, of which this is a model and it’s looking good.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/ show less

I have been trying to get into this book for a couple of weeks now. The premise of the book, various characters of different sides coming to the auction to steal an artifact, seems interesting. However, the book starts out fairly slow, and there is a lot of setting up. The book is based on a video game, and it seems like the author is just going through each character class. This makes the action take forever to move along. I may give it another try later, but this seems unlikely. It has been sitting on my shelf for a few days now, which means I lost interest. The slow narrative is simply not drawing me in. So for now, I am letting it go and moving to something else.

I am not a big reader of SW books. I am an SW fan. I have found that show more books in the SW series (like other series such as ST) tend to be hit or miss. I have enjoyed other SW books in their expanded universe, but this one was a miss for me. show less

Very engaging writing and a plot that moves at a great, rapid pace from character to character and from setting to setting. The writing offers an ongoing switch-off between characters, forwarding the story by the individual experiences of each. I really enjoyed the progression of the story and the struggles that each character faced without acknowledgment form any of the others. Unlike other Star Wars novels, Fatal Alliance is less predictable and actually keeps the reader teased with certain mysteries throughout the story. The story does drag in parts that segway between action-packed moments.

While a much better novel than The Force Unleashed [more engaging characters, livelier action, tighter plot and higher caliber writing:], this still suffers from Game-itis.

I really felt like I was just reading the script for the game. I liked the overall storyline and really like the Old Republic Era coming to novels [never played games or read comics, so this is all completely virgin territory for me:], but if LucasArts is going to keep trending with Books based on Games, they've definitely lost me as a fan...

Unless a book really hooks me, I know I can take much too long to read. So maybe I didn’t devour Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Allliance in no time like I had expected, but at the same time I delighted in taking my sweet time to read it. I’ll cut to the chase here — if you can look beyond the faults that are so typical of novels based on video games, you will probably enjoy it.

I’d like to mention that I am a big reader and fan of Star Wars expanded universe books, and I can honestly say that Fatal Alliance can stand next to any of them. I’d even go as far as to say it was better written than most of the Star Wars books I’ve read. Sean Williams’ writing style is easy to follow, without feeling like you’re being show more talked down to. Dialogue can get cheesy and positively cringe-worthy at times, but it’s made up for by the author’s excellent handling of the characters’ relationships with each other.

The story, on the other hand, was a bit disappointing. I realize, however, that storylines that work for a game don’t necessarily translate as well into book form, and I’m sure much of characters and plots from Fatal Alliance were developed under such game-to-novel constraints. At times you may find the story predictable, and inevitably, you will come across parts in the book which will make you stop and think, “Wait, that doesn’t make much sense!” Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to look past these flaws if you can maintain appropriate expectations for an MMO tie-in of this nature.

Fatal Alliance is also blessed/plagued with a large ensemble of characters, depending on the way you look at it. The novel follows the activities of no less than eight characters, no doubt for the sole purpose of showcasing all the classes of the SWTOR game. Consequently, you can expect to find the points-of-view constantly switching around between and even within chapters, sometimes rehashing certain events over and over again. This may annoy some readers, but I think most will end up appreciating the author’s attempt to give equal attention to both the Republic and the Sith.

I also found the character development sufficient, but perhaps die-hards will still find it unsatisfying. In some ways, I believe the book was written with the expectation that the reader is already familiar the Star Wars universe, as well has decent background knowledge of the SWTOR MMO. Indeed, the class archetypes (Smuggler, Jedi Knight, Trooper, etc.) and their traits are well reflected in the novel, and readers will greatly benefit from having existing knowledge of them. Otherwise, you may find the story background and characters’ histories severely lacking and even confusing, and admittedly character development will not go that much further beyond what has already been established and/or understood about the archetypes.

Nonetheless, I am impressed with the way Williams handled the characters and the classes they represent, especially considering how much of it is obviously required to correspond to the game. It’s a challenge to create characters that are based on such prominent archetypes and still make them unique and interesting, but he manages well. Particularly, if you are interested in the Smuggler or Imperial Agent and are disappointed by the limited information Bioware has revealed on them so far, Fatal Alliance will be a treat. While reading, I also picked up on many hints regarding class abilities and other game mechanics, so SWTOR addicts might also have that to look forward to.

While some of my criticisms of Fatal Alliance might seem a little harsh, I do want to make it clear that I enjoyed the book. I think most people who are looking for a fun, casual read will enjoy it too; just don’t expect an epic tale. If you are a fan of Star Wars or the expanded universe, this book is worth checking out. And if you’re a fan of SWTOR, this is a must-read. show less

That this is the best of the three Old Republic tie-in novels doesn't say much. Here at least I liked the characters somewhat (and they had personalities) and I was a little invested in the mystery and plot that takes them to Hutta and beyond, but like most tie-in novels, it's clear that its real purpose was to highlight a new franchise. You could almost see the checklist in their heads. Imperial Agent? Check. Jedi Knight? Check. Trooper, smuggler, appearances by major NPCs, check, check, check.

I read it to get a better sense of the world, and I guess it worked for that. But books written to fulfill a list of criteria just-- aren't usually that interesting. It all falls flat.

I reviewed this book on my blog:
The Real World According To Sam

I'm going to start off by saying that I have never played KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic) or any other major Star Wars game that was loved in the past 10 years (i.e., Force Unleashed) (I have only played the Lego Star Wars Saga and Clone Wars for the DS and Star Wars: Bounty Hunter for PS2).

That being said, I'm making my way through the Star Wars EU because I really like Star Wars, and I've already seen all the movies and need some good reading to give me some more of the universe. This was the next stop in the timeline. I tend to read pretty quickly, but this one took me literal months to get through. I started it in June, read it simultaneously with some other books, show more but just couldn't get into it. I read a little over half, then had to send it back to the library since I had some out of town trips to make. Then grad school had me slammed for the next two months...so I picked it up about 2 weeks ago so I could finish it and finally get it out of my Currently Reading shelf.

The last several Star Wars books I've read haven't taken me long to get through and have been pretty good (Clone Commando #1, Revan, Deceived). The ones I wasn't a huge fan of so far were Chuck Wendig's Aftermath (#1 in the Aftermath series), but since the series is in the EU, I'm going to eventually finish it up; and Red Harvest, for basic issues I noticed with the writing style. This one however, has been one of the slowest books in the EU I've read. Aftermath and Red Harvest both moved rather quickly to events and passed through or between them at a solid pace, while this one just seemed to drag on forever. The action kicks up pretty quick, but then slows almost immediately. Then it kicks up in spurts, before slowing some more. The pacing of the book was just ALL over the place.

The characters weren't anything special, which really disappointed me. I've only seen bits of Satele Shan here and there and I have a feeling that she COULD potentially be a favorite of mine, but there is so little of her here, and not much of her anywhere else but the video games, that I'm just highly disappointed with how little involvement she had in one of the very few books she makes an appearance in. Such a disappointment to have what appears to be an amazing Jedi, end up doing very little and being no more than a cookie cutter, semi-present Padawan's master.

While I can't say I absolutely hated this book, I can't say that I loved it either. It wasn't the worst book I've read, but the pacing and the lack of any single amazing character to gravitate towards and latch onto really took its toll on my ability to even get through the book. I often felt like I was so close to finishing, only to have things drag on and on. I think this easily could have been shorter if a little more editing time was spent on it, just to keep the pace at a nice steady rate. Also, the romance was totally unnecessary. I would have cut that entire triangle that was barely present, to completely non-existant. It did not do much for the overall plot, it wasted pages, and I just don't see why it was necessary to have included. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE me some romance, especially subplots that gradually develop while not interfering with main storylines, but this one just wasn't done well.

The plot twists coming at the end of the novel didn't do much for me. They seemed like they weren't entirely Star Wars-esque twists, but other kinds of sci-fi novel themes creeping up with a Star Wars coating over top of them to make them relevant. Darth Chratis isn't a great Sith, Ax was one of the only semi-interesting characters and even then, she wasn't all that enthralling to read about. Jet Nebula had a lot of interesting things going for him, but I can't say any of the characters present in this novel will have left a lasting impression on me in the long run. This felt like it should have been a generic add-on to the universe, as there aren't many indicators that it is Old Republic beyond the final ending tensions with slight mention of some previous conflicts, and the characters that are present to make it so (Satele Shan). Deceived was a much better Old Republic title that felt like it was happening in a time before the Phantom Menace, A New Hope, and Force Awakens. Each era of Star Wars is very distinct, but this novel fails to create an environment reflecting its designated era.

I'm super glad to be done with this one and moving on to the next entry in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I hope the next one is better. This one was enjoyable at times, but overall I don't think that it is a Star Wars story that I will remember for very long beyond referring to it as "the weird one with the non-standard droid robots and Teen Angst Apprentices" (Ax and Shigar read very heavily of Star Wars coated teen angst characters instead of the next generation of Jedi and Sith Masters). The lack of focus on any particular character and a twisty plot that dragged, just made for a very drawn out, boring story that didn't feel very much like Star Wars to me. show less