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What I'm Reading: THE NEW REBELLION --
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
What I'd like to know is the identity of
the editor at Bantam who sent out the memo to all the Star Wars
novelists: "Princess Leia is to be portrayed as a complete
retard from this point forward."
In the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy I was
willing to accept it as merely a character arc which had gone
wrong in the execution. But now I find the exact same misfire as
I read THE NEW REBELLION. Leia isn't quite as stupid as she was
at the beginning of the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy (thank god!),
but she's still wandering around with only half her braincells
firing.
...
Okay, I needed to get that off my chest.
Now, on to the good news: THE NEW REBELLION is a lot of fun
wrapped up in a clever little plot. The result is a quick,
compelling dollop of entertainment.
We'll come back to that in a second, but
first I need to do some anal retentive bitching about
continuity:
In reading THE NEW REBELLION immediately
after the Black Fleet Crisis, I'm struck by the fact that the
books almost seem as if they take place in alternate timelines.
Continuity simply doesn't track from one to the other:
-
In the Black Fleet Crisis, Luke has
long-since abandoned his X-Wing for the newest model of
fighter and Artoo is with Leia on Coruscant. In THE NEW
REBELLION, supposedly set only a year after the Black Fleet
Crisis, Luke is still flying his X-Wing and Artoo is with
him at the Jedi
Academy
.
-
In the Black Fleet Crisis, Leia faces a
vote of no confidence and numerous, fractious political
debates. In THE NEW REBELLION, Leia is concerned that a
recent constitutional change allowing members of former
Imperial governments to run for the Senate will lead to
factious political debates previously unknown to the New
Republic. Later, she's shocked when she faces a vote of no
confidence.
Nothing seems to track quite right. And I
rather suspect it's because Rusch originally intended for THE
NEW REBELLION to take place at a much earlier time in the post-ROTJ
timeline. I could be wrong, but there just seem to be a lot
things in this novel which feel as if it were originally meant
to take place only 6 or 7 years after ROTJ, not a decade and a
half. It also seems that a lot of the references to recent
events (such as the Black Fleet Crisis) are tagged onto the
novel in a somewhat haphazard way.
In any case, if you're someone who's going
to get bent out of shape due to continuity lapses, you're
probably going to have some serious issues trying to get the
Black Fleet Crisis and THE NEW REBELLION to co-exist in your
mental landscape of the Star Wars universe.
For my own mileage, though, I was able to
consider such inconsistencies as little more than intellectual
curiosities and enjoy THE NEW REBELLION for what it was: A
unique vision of Star Wars future history.
I think what I like best about THE NEW
REBELLION is the fact that the villain has more up his sleeves
than a simplistic "get a really big fleet, sow discord
among the leaders of the New Republic, and get the crap beaten
out of me in a big space battle at the end of the story".
There's nothing wrong with such a plot, per se, but between the
Thrawn Trilogy and the Black Fleet Crisis it had already worn
thin. (And I understand that in several of the tie-in novels
I've skipped that it gets run through the wash a half-dozen
times more.) By contrast, the villain in THE NEW REBELLION is
subtle, complex, and indirect.
Other highlights for me include the Rusch's
handling of the Solo family: As the crisis grows and the
perosnal threat to the Solos increases, you can really empathize
with Han and Leia as the emotional and physical pressures being
to weigh upon them.
Actually, with the exception of Leia's
stupidity in the earlier parts of the novel, Rusch is really
spot-on in her handling of characters throughout. Evil plots
from dastardly villains aside, the real strength of THE NEW
REBELLION, for me, were the character dramas which played out
upon the stage set by the emerging crisis. I was impressed by
Rusch's ability to put an emotional truthfulness down on the
page, revealing all of her characters (both new and old) as
fully-rounded human beings. (Or aliens, as the case might be.)
GRADE: B-
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