Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Well, after reading the negative feedback on this novel from other online reviewers, I suppose that I shouldn't have been surprised. Small, hard-to-read text set aside even, The Cestus Deception generally fails to impress and does not deliver upon what it promises.
Warning that this review might contain some spoilers.
First off, despite the fact that Count Dooku takes up an inordinately large portion of the cover, and indeed more than he takes up on the cover of Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, and despite the fact that he is listed in the Dramatis Personae, he's never seen throughout the whole book. It's like the author was going to put him in somewhere and had the cover art designed and stuff, but then decided to increase Asajj Ventress's role and wax over Dooku's part completely, then forgot to change the Dramatis Personae and didn't bother ordering new cover art for whatever reason, a time crunch most likely. And Dooku would have fit brilliantly in a political intrigue novel. We keep hearing about what a masterful political strategist he is, but aside from mentions of Separatist-Republic secessionist worlds and governments in other places, we haven't really got to see that. A few underacted lines in Attack of the Clones discussing Nute Gunray's obsession with having Padmé's head on his desk and then all of the other corporate leaders suddenly agreeing to form this confederacy for no apparent reason doesn't cut it.
Secondly, Asajj Ventress is pretty much out of character throughout the whole book. For one thing, her description as being "androgyneously muscular" with only her, ahem, female features distinguishing her as female was rather confusing, because everywhere else she is portrayed as a lithe, supplely-muscled, attractive woman who is clearly and distinctly female, and her strength is portrayed through her athletically muscled profile rather than conjuring the image of some 180-pound female body-builder. Her personality also seems to be mostly in the vein of the gemcutter ambush at Ithor in Dark Rendezvous, which was probably my least favorite chapter of that entire novel (though I do love that book as a whole) simply because of her dialogue. Her little thing with Obi-wan is really never explained, and I don't keep up on the comics and it certainly never featured in the cartoon miniseries. It just threw me. I suppose it was intended to somehow explain her behavior when she captures and tortures Obi-wan on New Holstice and why Obi-wan is so intent on killing her in the Obsession comics, but it just made it more confusing for me.
Another thing is the bio-droids. The dashta eels were more confusing than a lot of the Yuuzhan Vong bio-crap from the New Jedi Order, which is saying something. Tell me again how they can almost defeat a Jedi Master who is probably second only to Mace Windu, Yoda, and possibly Anakin Skywalker, if only because of the latter's raw Force power, in strength and lightsaber ability (if his status as being Mace's closest companion within his posse from the Republic comics and their being mentioned as the most powerful Jedi swordsmen in the Order is telling anything) when they are "sleeping" and being used as organic circuitry on a fancy-pants droid, just because they're Force-sensitive? And they go insane when they kill somebody? It's like nonsentient super-pacifism, and it comes across as a really cheap plot device. Asajj Ventress's declaration that the droids are part of a ruse concocted by Dooku (and why such a complex strategy for such comparatively little short-term gain when the dashta cloning deal, which is the big long-term gain, seems so dependent on good fortune?) seems very contrived as well.
I was hoping to actually see a competant and non-technobabbly threat to the Jedi, which was what was initially set up, until Mr. Barnes decided to watch a few Star Trek reruns and invented these dashta eel things, but instead I got another political play supposedly masterminded by far-off Count Dooku, who is crazy if he thinks that one incident with Cestus will turn the entire galaxy against the Republic. The Separatists have committed atrocities like the poisoning of Honoghr and the enslavement of the Xampsters of Xagobah and yet the whole galaxy isn't turned against them, and they don't even control the primary HoloNet News media outlet! The Republic could probably get away with covering up the whole incident and turning it into anti-Confederacy propaganda, and the whole thing would backfire. Dooku and Ventress are hardly known for a good track record of honesty and moral fiber, I would imagine.
Kit Fisto was also a letdown. Aside from Aayla Secura, he is probably the most popular "Jedi extra" in the prequels, with an inordinately large fanbase that happens to include yours truly. The humor elements seen in Star Wars: Tales, the Republic comics, and even Attack of the Clones where he just smiles and doesn't utter a word are completely missing, and he basically just sits around and scowls and comes up with terrorism innovations all throughout the book, and then when he duels Asajj Ventress, this Jedi who might well be the third most skilled warrior in the whole Jedi Order is soundly trumped and has to be saved by Obi-wan distracting Ventress from finishing the job. His human-like traits that seem obviously reflected by his merciless good humor in other source material obviously not referenced by Mr. Barnes is almost non-existent, and he seems a little more alien than he should. He seems more like an alien than Doolb Snoil, in fact, which doesn't seem quite right.
Doolb Snoil. The giant snail with a squeaky falsetto voice. Groan. My theory is that Barnes wanted to use the title of his book, Lion's Blood, somewhere in The Cestus Deception, so he decided that, when reversed, it would make a good character name. Hey, Snoil is kind of like snail! Let's make the character a talking snail! x.X
So was there anything about the book that I liked? Why am I doling out 3 stars for it (which is, admittedly, on the generous side) anyway? Well, the Kit Fisto-as-Nemonus scene was somewhat amusing, because it recalled the parts from Champions of the Force by Kevin J. Anderson (the book that is all climax, as I like to call it, because the entire book is the various endings of the different plotlines) with the idiots from Maw Installation testing out their superweapon prototypes and excitedly recording its effects, then eagerly deciding to call a staff meeting about it during the middle of an intense firefight. That's what the Five Families' dialogue in this scene reminded me of, anyway, and the Nemonus thing was pretty amusing, recalling The Mask of Zorro a little bit.
On a related note, it was great to see the enigmatic lightwhip finally truly explored in this book. We've had lightwhip action within the Jedi Apprentice books, and the old Marvel comics with Dark Lady Lumiya, but it was nice to see it finally referenced in mainstream, popular continuity. I doubt the old Star Wars Marvels are fresh on the average reader's mind.
I liked the militia fighters. The farm kid whose name I forget and the X'Ting female. In fact, I liked the X'Ting in general. It was a very cool species and it is unfortunate that they seem too centralized on Cestus to really appear with a major part anywhere else. Mr. Barnes did a good job explaining the culture of the X'Ting without thrusting the reader into a long, boring history lesson about a fictional extraterrestrial species.
It was nice to see the clones explored, but I have to say that I preferred the way it was handled in Karen Traviss's Republic Commando: Hard Contact over the way it was handled in this book. The training sequences were pretty cool, though I don't recall a planet by that name being in the Coruscant system. The Vandor names seem to be the names of Coruscant's moons at least prior to the rise of the Empire and the instatement of the New Order, but with it being described as a temperate planet, it is a tricky retcon. On the other hand, so is Rori (from Star Wars Galaxies and Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine), but as a Star Wars junkie knows, the denizens of the galaxy far, far away do have such things as artificial gravity generators, atmosphere factories, habitation domes, terraforming, and orbital heat-reflecting mirrors. I kind of wish that the makeup of the Coruscant system would be firmly set in stone. I had thought that The Unifying Force would finally accomplish that, but apparently it did not.
Obi-wan's characterization is decent, nothing special. Definitely a 3-star performance there. There are a few parts where I can't picture Ewan McGregor as Obi-wan Kenobi saying his dialogue or performing his actions, but generally it isn't too bad. His interactions with Anakin Skywalker seen in Dark Rendezvous and Labyrinth of Evil are sorely missed, though. His friendship with Kit, which we haven't seen anywhere but here (his relationship with Kit, the Jedi Master having taken on Obi-wan's childhood friend Bant Eerin as his Padawan after her Master, whom Obi-wan and Qui-gon had both had close friendships established with, died, should have been an interesting one to explore, almost a sort of uncle-to-grown-nephew relationship, but Mr. Barnes seems to have forgotten that particular historical footnote) seems contrived and very wooden. It would have been great to see some more tension between the two Jedi, with Obi-wan being torn between following the superior Jedi Master's lead and tackling the problem with his own style that he finds to be more becoming of a Jedi like him, based on their different approaches to the conflict, and some more references to outside EU (though I suppose Sean Stewart and James Luceno have spoiled me on this matter) like the issue with Bant, who hasn't been mentioned...Read more›
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