Sacks, Ethan
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
2.9 out of 5
(7 books)
TOP PICK:
Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser - Halcyon Legacy
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters - Bedlam On Bestine
(Art by Paolo Villanelli and Alessandro Miracolo)
Book 6. On the watery world of Bestine T'onga's bounty hunting crew, in the employ of Crimson Dawn, runs headlong into an Imperial team led by Valance. When he rejoins his former comrades, he becomes the target of a hunt led by the Empire's elite Inferno Squad.
There are two aspects of this book that I liked in concept. The idea of the two teams mentioned clashing despite both having no genuine allegiance to their nominal employers makes for an interesting dynamic. Also, the inclusion of Inferno Squad is such a good idea in this time period (between Episodes V and VI), that I'm astonished that no-one has thought of it before now.
Unfortunately, the delivery of both of those positive elements is inherently flawed. For example it's impossible to credit how dense Valance is for believing that the Empire will protect the Rebels that he cares about in exchange for his help. Then, the actual clash between the hunters and Inferno Squad is absolutely toothless. Conveniently, Inferno are under orders not to kill anyone, so everyone gets to walk away happily from what should've been a real high-stakes confrontation.
This book is just a string of missed opportunities. I will give credit to how awesome the scenes of IG-88 travelling around kicking ass are, but they're also completely disassociated from the rest of the narrative.
2 out of 5
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters - Crimson Reign
(Art by Ramon F. Bachs and Paolo Villanelli)
Book 4. As Valance is forced to become Darth Vader's agent, his bounty hunter comrades, including Bossk, Zuckuss and Tassu Leech, put together a plan to rescue Cadelilah from Crimson Dawn.
Valance's story here feels very familiar, with him being forced to work for the Empire when Vader threatens those he cares about. It's kind of a deal-with-the-devil cliche and whilst the TIE Fighter combat scenes of his story were great, overall his part of this book isn't terribly interesting.
Thankfully, the story focusing on T'onga's team of bounty hunters was interesting. Here Sacks finally goes all-out in exploring the story potential of having a team of ruthless underworld killers as protagonists taking on even more ruthless underworld killers. What also surprised me was how compelling the author makes the bounty hunter characters and how their relationships with each other were actually engaging. Sure there's the cliched 'killers threatening to kill each other even though they're on the same side' trope, but there's also some genuine heart too. There's the connection between T'onga and her wife Losha, the rivalry between Bossk and Tassu Leech and, my favourite, the honest friendship between Zuckuss and 4-LOM. Those latter two have been favourites of mine since the old EU anthology 'Tales of the Bounty Hunters' (reviewed here), so it was nice to see them done justice again.
This is an impressive upswing in quality for this series and genuinely left me hungry for more, something which the previous books had failed to do.
4 out of 5
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters - Galaxy's Deadliest
(Art by Paolo Villanelli)
Book 1, set between 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi'. Cyborg bounty hunter Beilert Valance goes head to head with Boba Fett and Bossk in a race to claim the bounty on Nakano Lash, who betrayed them all on a mission years earlier.
There's not a lot of subtlety to this book, so if you like your Star Wars to be all-action, then you should find plenty to enjoy here. For me, whilst not in any way objectionable, I did find this lack of depth and complexity to be a little disappointing. I just couldn't help but feel that there's more that could've been done with Valance, Bossk and Boba Fett than what we get here. All of these characters have interesting backstories both in canon (evil Disney) and in 'Legends' (Expanded Universe) but none of that gets drawn on or expanded here really.
I'm a long-time fan of Boba Fett in particular (because of course I am) and I was disappointed that the characterisation here just didn't feel right. There's none of the coldly efficient hunter that the EU explored but similarly none of the more sympathetic elements introduced in 'The Clone Wars' and, more recently, in 'The Book of Boba Fett'. Instead the Fett we get here is nasty, vengeful and, most bizarrely, just detours off on this sidequest whilst he's still got Han frozen in carbonite instead of delivering Solo to Jabba. I know that's a conceit that has to happen for Fett to be involved in this time period, but it feels really out of place.
Basically, if you like your bounty hunters all-guns-blazing, then you'll enjoy this but if you're hoping for a bit more character work, as I was, then you'll be disappointed.
2 out of 5
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters - Target Valance
(Art by Paolo Villanelli)
Book 2, 3 ABY. Tasked with protecting the heir to two crime syndicates, Valance finds himself the subject of a bounty which puts various hunters on his tail, including Zuckuss and 4-LOM.
Much like the first book of the series, this is an all-guns-blazing story with little time for subtlety or nuance. It's not entirely absent, however, and I was pleased to see some of Valance's history and the effects of being a cyborg on his self-image start to get explored.
The biggest problem with this book, however, is that it doesn't have a consistent overarching plot, with the story of his protection of Cadeliah getting dropped pretty early on in favour of a confrontation with pirates, which then turns into a set-up for the 'War of the Bounty Hunters' crossover. It's just not satisfying to have such a fractured narrative, really.
That said, where this book is better than the previous one is in how it handles the established bounty hunters. Fan-favourites Dengar and Bossk are presented fairly well here but, for me, the real treat was seeing Zuckuss and 4-LOM at the top of their game which re-awoke fond memories of their tale in the brilliant Expanded Universe anthology 'Tales of the Bounty Hunters' (reviewed here). The way Sacks presents these iconic bounty hunters actually gives you a good sense of why they're some of the elite gathered by Vader in 'The Empire Strikes Back'.
3 out of 5
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters - The Raid On The Vermillion
(Art by Natacha Bustos and Paolo Villanelli)
Book 5. Dengar attempts to play both sides against each other as he takes payment from T'onga's bounty crew and also from Crimson Dawn. T'onga's crew then try to recover the child Cadelilah from the Dawn's flagship the Vermillion. Meanwhile Valance finds himself drawn deeper into his role as Vader's pawn.
This was a real mixed bag for me. I will say straight off that all of the stuff involving the classic movie hunters was great. This is one of the more engaging appearances of Bossk, 4-LOM and Zuckuss' friendship continues to be genuinely heart-warming and Dengar gets to really shine, particularly in the brilliantly-named first chapter 'Clear and Present Dengar'. These are character I've been invested in since I read 'Tales of the Bounty Hunters' (reviewed here) way back in the 90s and I'm glad to see them done justice. We even get a callback to that 90s anthology by seeing Dengar as a swoop racer running afoul of young Han Solo.
Much less engaging for me were the elements which are original to this series. I found myself really struggling to connect with the stories of characters like T'onga, Losha, Vukorah and Cadelilah, all of whom are central to the overall plot of the book. In fact, some of the efforts to make these characters complex and engaging backfire terribly; such as where Vukorah goes from 'I'm looking forward to slowly torturing you to death' to 'I'm regretful because I actually love animals' in a split second. It's a laughably bad attempt at depicting dichotomy.
Valance's storyline was another misfire, with him being totally duped by the Empire to a degree that's hard to believe for such a worldly character. On the flip side, however, the scene in which T'onga's crew fight the Knights of Ren was brilliant (particularly Tasu Leech versus Ren himself), so as I say; a mixed bag.
3 out of 5
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters - War Of The Bounty Hunters
(Art by Paolo Villanelli)
Book 3, tying-in to the War of the Bounty Hunters crossover event. Valance and Dengar reluctantly partner to track down Boba Fett but soon find themselves targeted by other bounty hunters and by the agents of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate.
This book highlights all of the worst aspects of how Marvel do crossover events, as well as what went wrong with the War of the Bounty Hunters in particular. The biggest problem here are the massive gaps in the narrative where significant characters have been up to stuff in other books of the event and then are just dropped back into this book with little or no explanation. 4-LOM and Zuckuss are a good example, appearing in the first half of this book as the bounty hunting duo we know (and, in my case, love) but the next time we see Zuckuss he's emotionally broken and 4-LOM is nowhere to be seen. Now, I've read the story which explores the events between those two things, but if you came into this book fresh it would be absolutely baffling. Perhaps worse is that a similar thing happens with Valance later in the book. Since he's supposed to be the main character in this series you'd think this series would be where his story gets told, but that's just not how Marvel does crossovers these days. Instead it's an irritating and transparent marketing plot to get you to buy the other books and is absolutely to the detriment of the narrative of this series and this book in particular.
In short, this is an absolute mess of a book and the only reason I've not rated it lower is because this is the only book of the crossover to actually spend any time exploring the background of Crimson Dawn.
2 out of 5
Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser - Halcyon Legacy
(Art by Will Sliney)
33 ABY. Shorr Komrrin and his granddaughter Cimina board the famed starcruiser Halycon but it soon comes under attack from pirates. To calm the young Cimina, the host droid D3-O9 tells stories of the ship's history from the High Republic, through the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War and on into the era of the New Republic. Among the famous figures who appear in the stories are Jedi Master Nib Assek and Padawan Burryaga, Aurra Sing, Anakin Skywalker, Padme Amidala, Asajj Ventress, Maz Kanata, Hondo Ohnaka, Lando Calrissian, Bossk, 4-LOM and Zuckuss.
The framing story here is set amid the Sequel Trilogy and as a result, due to my hatred of the Sequel Trilogy, I was reluctant to read this book at all. Not to mention the fact that it's a cynical marketing plot to advertise a hotel at a Disney resort (which turned out to be an over-priced disaster). It also uses the framing story to feature a variety of flashback stories which reminded me of the tedious way IDW's Star Wars Adventures anthologies are structured. And the book's by an author whose other Star Wars work (the Bounty Hunters series) I have not enjoyed much at all.
With all that stacked against it, this book has no right being as enjoyable as it is. The framing story isn't obnoxious in the way it could easily have been and even features a deep-cut reference to the the first Star Wars comics of the 1970s. On top of that, the vignette stories told throughout the book are all actually pretty good. To short for their own good, of course, but pretty enjoyable nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed the one focusing on the Maz, Lando and Hondo taking part in a heist amid the Rebellion Era and the one in which the bounty hunters from Sacks' Rebellion Era series turn up in the New Republic Era.
When Disney threw out the old Expanded Universe, I decided not to bother with any of the new post-Return of the Jedi tie-in media. I'm glad I made an exception in this case.
4 out of 5
Read more...
Star Wars (here)