Maggs, Sam
About the Author:
Sam Maggs is a bestselling writer of books, comics and videogames. She's Canadian but lives in Los Angeles, USA.
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3 out of 5
(1 book)
Star Wars: Jedi - Battle Scars
12 BBY, between the events of the 'Jedi: Fallen Order' and 'Jedi: Survivor' computer games. The crew of the Stinger Mantis, hotshot pilot Greez, Nightsister of Dathomir Merrin and the two fugitive Jedi Cal Kestis and Cere Junda, work to bring down the Haxion Brood bounty hunter syndicate. During their mission, however, they're approached by an Imperial deserter who tells them of an experimental device which could be a great boon to the resistance or could be a terrible weapon in the hands of the Empire. Emotional entanglements complicate the mission but not as much as the knowledge that they're in a race against an Imperial Inquisitor, the Fifth Brother, to acquire the device.
I absolutely adore the two (so far) games starring Cal Kestis and his crew of misfits, so I really wanted to love this book further exploring their war against the Empire. Ultimately, however, I never even came close to loving this book. That's not to say I hated it either, but it certainly wasn't what I was hoping for.
The plots of the two games have some really important driving concepts, be it the hunt for a Jedi holocron holding a list of Force-sensitives in the first game or the rediscovery of a secret sanctuary world from the High Republic in the second. The Shroud featured here, however, is only ever a fairly vague concept that ultimately doesn't come to much anyway. The stakes just felt so much lower and whilst I recognise that these characters can't be saving the galaxy every week in the 'Dark Times' of the Empire, I still would've liked something a bit more meaty. On top of that, the actual links to the two games are few and far between, meaning that this doesn't feel like much of a sequel to 'Fallen Order' or a lead-in to 'Survivor'.
Probably my least favourite element of the book was the shoe-horned-in whirlwind romance of Merrin and Fret. The latter character is given a handful of pages of introduction and, in a slightly Mary Sue way, suddenly wins over everyone with her skill, intelligence, charm and good looks, before immediately jumping into bed with Merrin. Whilst I get that one of the themes this book is trying to develop is how Merrin begins to open up emotionally, rather than it taking place across the course of the novel, it instead happens in the space of two pages with a complete stranger. Now, the people who I've seen talk negatively about this purely on the basis that it's a queer relationship are, of course, bigoted morons, but I nevertheless felt the romantic plotline was totally unnecessary and ill-fitting for the familiar character involved.
But, I do want to reiterated that I didn't hate this book. It's a perfectly serviceable Star Wars novel but, as a fan of the games and this particular group of characters, it was disappointing for me.
3 out of 5
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