Star Wars 501st: An Imperial Commando Novel Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Fans of a more realistically-portrayed Star Wars universe have learned to depend on solid, character-driven plotlines from Karen Traviss, and IC:501st delivers as expected. This book, like the Republic Commando series, is gritty, bloody and moving. However, the action scenes work to punctuate the raw emotion underlying the bulk of the novel, rather than serving as the main reason for the story as seems to be the case in too many Star Wars novels. It's a very rare reading experience to have a real, almost tangible sense of dread while reading certain chapters, but such is the payoff in stories that revolve more around the hopes and dreams of the men and women in the novel than how many space battles and lightsaber duels the writer can cram into it. Someone once said the best writers create people, not characters, and Traviss has accomplished that.
Traviss also has a refreshing, paradigm-changing view of jedi and clone troops that is not always appreciated by some of the more zealous fanboys.
Four out of five stars. Four and a half stars would be more accurate, as the half star is lost because I'm still a little angry that the series is being cut short due to asinine retcon issues raised by the otherwise excellent Clone Wars TV series. I would also liked to have seen a little bit more Vader in the story, as Traviss has shown a deep insight into Vader's psyche with her previous short stories about him. I am looking forward to seeing Skirata and Altis work together in the second, and hopefully last, Imperial Commando novel, at least with regard to Skirata and this particular group of clones, because the only thing worse than Traviss leaving the SW books would be having someone else finishing the storyline about Skirata and his sons.
All in all, an outstanding job.


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The Clone Wars are over, but for those with reason to run from the new galactic Empire, the battle to survive has only just begun. . . .The Jedi have been decimated in the Great Purge, and the Republic has fallen. Now the former Republic Commandos–the galaxy's finest special forces troops, cloned from Jango Fett–find themselves on opposing sides and in very different armor. Some have deserted and fled to Mandalore with the mercenaries, renegade clone troopers, and rogue Jedi who make up Kal Skirata's ragtag resistance to Imperial occupation. Others–including men from Delta and Omega squads–now serve as Imperial Commandos, a black ops unit within Vader's own 501st Legion, tasked to hunt down fugitive Jedi and clone deserters. For Darman, grieving for his Jedi wife and separated from his son, it's an agonizing test of loyalty. But he's not the only one who'll be forced to test the ties of brotherhood. On Mandalore, clone deserters and the planet's own natives, who have no love for the Jedi, will have their most cherished beliefs challenged. In the savage new galactic order, old feuds may have to be set aside to unite against a far bigger threat, and nobody can take old loyalties for granted.

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