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Thoughts?
I've never read any of his novels or comics, so why is KJA so hated?--Commander Mike 19:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
- The below comments by other users are good examples. His stories progress in this terrible fashion.
I've explained to my friends that this is what it's like to rad a KJA book: I was in the supermarket, and couldn't find what I was looking for, so I asked for help. When I asked for help the power went out! Then, Zombies attacked! THEN man eating bears showed up, and ate the zombies! But it they weren't full enough, and they came after US! THEN, HUNTERS came, saving the day! But when we thought all was well, ALIENS invaded. When the aliens invaded, we thought we were doomed but GOD came down and saved us! Everyone thinks he's the end all, but then LUCIFER showed up... Just friggin terrible progression, outlandish situations, that sound like a four year old telling a fabulous story about why his homework is not done. He's like the only writer I have ever known to have so much going on at once and yet still have absolutely nothing going on. Danalis Ne'Dolo 14:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)Danalis Ne'Dolo
- Agreed. Can someone write up a speil explaining KJA's unpopularity?--216.166.175.226 23:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Warning: This is highly subjective post which does not pretend to be otherwise. It is provided merely to explain one reader's opinions as to KJA's unpopularity amongst some SW EU fans. It is not meant as an objective assessment, or to represent (beyond speculation) what other SW EU authors think of KJA.
I have read only the first book of his Jedi Search trilogy, but what I did read I did not like. I can post reasons here - but I am less eager to post them in the wiki itself since they are (necessarily) subjective. Common flaws in his writing (from my viewpoint) include:
- Aggrandizing his own characters while not providing, or perhaps being unable to provide, convincing evidence or behavior to show their ability. Admiral Daala is said several times to be a military genius, but repeatedly and exclusively loses every military engagement she enters into, as well as losing the Sun Crusher superweapon. She launches foolhardy and clearly unwinnable attacks, which KJA hails as dangerous and daring, but which even from the outset are clear to the reader as largely hopeless.
- An overreliance on superweapons, ascribing all sorts of implausible traits to them. Fatally for KJA, this is coupled with an overly dismissive authorial attitude towards more mundane technology. Imperial Star Destroyers are shown to be easily and frequently destroyed in his books - while Daala incompetently loses the Sun Crusher. Also, the Sun Crusher is said to be made from an invincible alloy that allows it to fly _through_ the bridge of an ISD and out the other side, unscathed. (It is noteworthy that Timothy Zahn, who is held to be among the best SW authors, purposefully leaned towards the opposite balance: his character Thrawn makes use of mundane items and more modest special technology to succeed.)
- Poor plotting and uninspired writing. The chapters follow a very linear path, with little finesse shown in introducing major plot elements. KJA also relies heavily on massive coincidences saving the day or advancing the plot. The character of Qwi Xux is a good example: As the designer of the Death Star, the Star Destroyer, and numerous other Imperial weapons of mass destruction, Qwi Xux is shown to have a naive and entirely good-girl nature, and who believes her inventions are being used to further good causes. She helps the heroes escape after they successfully persuade her that the "Death Star" is not a science station, as she somehow believes, but a military installation with a planet-destroying superlaser... which she helped to design. A better author might not fail so badly at writing such an unpalatable plot twist. A truly excellent author might not attempt such a weak explanation at all.
- Over-reliance on the Force to pull good guys out of bad situations. Kyp Durron is somehow able to extend his Force awareness across the vast distances of space to identify and guide him through the gravity event horizons of three black holes. To further illustrate how unbalancing the Force is, KJA then has the Empire immediately give chase with a Star Destroyer... which is promptly swallowed by a black hole.
- Poor characterization, which often seems overly simplistic and at jarring odds with what moviegoers and other EU readers have come to expect. Daala's return in a later series featured Captain Gilad Pellaeon, a beloved character written by Timothy Zahn. Fans of Zahn's writing were not happy with this character's portrayal by KJA. Also, it has been noted that the children of Han Solo and Leia Organa are consistently written to be overly impetuous and childish for their supposed age (they are supposed to be teenagers but often display a simplistic mindset more associated with young children in their pre-teens).
- A sense of justice that is strangely skewed, to say the least. Kyp Durron, a Jedi in training under Luke, steals and actually deploys the Sun Crusher, extinguishing an entire solar system of life. Despite this atrocity, which would conceivably cause far greater disturbances in the Force than the Death Star's destruction of Alderaan, Kyp is shown to be fully welcomed back to the Jedi Academy by Luke.
To his credit, some of his ideas _are_ interesting and a welcome departure from usual Star Wars fare, such as the introduction of a high-ranking female in the Empire's military, and the suitably fantastic-sounding Sun Crusher, which accelerates hydrogen decay in the center of stellar masses and therefore "kills" entire solar systems by threatening their suns. However, the treatment of these ideas by the author leave something to be desired.
- Daala is realistically and sympathetically portrayed as a career woman who had to fight male prejudice and glass ceilings all the way to the top. In this respect, she is a positive contribution to the formerly-entirely-masculine Galactic Empire. However, she is also portrayed as hot-headed, incompetent, and sexually promiscuous - all negative stereotypes of female characters, and especially unfortunate given today's workplace prejudices against female superiors. (Very few other characters even mention a sexual side to their personalities - Daala seems to be an unfortunate case where a "realistic" portrayal of human nature also happens to be an overwhelmingly negative one.) Finally, she falls into to the same "can't kill the girl" plot cycle common to sci-fi: where writers (mostly male) are fully willing to show their male villains getting their just deserts, but are unwilling to do the same to their female villains.
- The Maw Installation itself is a brilliant idea: a space station positioned carefully in the central space between three black holes. This also explains the "where have they been" question that plagues many Imperial villains in the EU: namely, if the Empire was committing all its resources to crush the Rebellion in the movie trilogy, then why wasn't this particular villain involved? Daala is very believably explained to have been kept a secret (owing in part to her gender, but mostly because of the importance of the Sun Crusher project) and the physical inaccessibility of the Maw Installation realistically reinforces that. (However, the ease with which Kyp Durron navigates through the black holes' gravity wells is lazily explained away as "using the Force".)
- The Sun Crusher, though not an original idea, is nonetheless a very feasible and interesting idea. However, the handling of the Sun Crusher is clumsy, with the Empire keeping it under seemingly minimal security, and the supposed "good guys" stealing it too easily and then _deploying_ it too easily.
This list is not complete by any means, and it has been some time since I read any KJA book. I have heard, to his credit, that he is a very competent writer of short fiction stories, where his strengths (creative ideas, fast pacing) are emphasized - and his weaknesses (questionable characterization, linear plotting) are less apparent. I am also surprised by how few negative online reviews there are for KJA's SW work - anecdotally speaking, there was a prevalent negative feeling towards his books as they were published in the 1990s, and I actually started reading Jedi Search because I was convinced the rumors couldn't be that true - a conviction I no longer hold.
Perhaps the online negative reviews were edited out, in which case I expect this review to die a quick death. Or perhaps KJA really _is_ a good writer and we're just jaded readers who expect too much from the Star Wars setting. With the appearance of Jar Jar Binks in 1999's Phantom Menace movie, KJA's books did not seem so bad by comparison.
Finally, it is worth noting that Timothy Zahn, in his book "Specter of the Past", has a character reflect on "the incompetent Admiral Daala". Given that SW books are generally considered canon after they are published (including all claims of how powerful their villains are), this reference by Zahn seemed to be an unusual and welcome break from unquestioningly accepting whatever a fellow author has written. HuManBing 14:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
- Ah, just found out that this was the guy who made the Death Star II IG-88. Fantastic. .... 11:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
This is a light defense of KJA, in response to some of the criticisms mentioned above. I thoroughly enjoyed the Jedi Academy Trilogy, but find it hard to deny many of the common criticisms of KJA. Still, I'd like to respond to some of the above opinions.
- Admiral Daala- She is only portrayed as a genius from her point of view. She's close minded and arrogant,and doesn't realize that she really is a tremendous failure. I expected her to be smarter, because I believed what she thought of herself, but upon seeing her horrible failure, I developed the theory that Tarkin only liked her for the sex anyways, and gave her the job of protecting the Maw because she was loyal and disciplined, but not actually useful. Later in the trilogy the leader of the Carida Imperial training facility looks at her records and sees nothing remarkable or notable, despite Daala's personal belief that she was better than most students, and her claim that she altered records to get her positions that wouldn't be assigned to her. Ultimately, Daala wasn't a genius who acted stupid, she was a stupid person who thought she was a genius. There is no denying, however, a certain degree of sexism in the character.
- The over-reliance on superweapons I agree with. When you're reading the story, it doesn't really ruin anything, so I don't weight that complaint very much, but when you look at it, yes, it's a pretty weak crutch to use.
- I am shocked that you would consider Qwi Xux's situation to be a plot twist. Yes, it was a horrible plot twist, in the same sense that a cat is a horrible boat. It wasn't a twist at all. It was totally predictable and not surprising. I can't fathom that KJA intended it to be a twist, because it so incredibly wasn't.
- The force was powerful, very much so in some cases. But that is common throughout the EU, and I don't feel that's a valid criticism of KJA specifically. And the Star Destroyer example was a bad one, because that really had nothing to do with the Force or the black hole. The ship got disabled, then fell into the black hole. It really didn't relate to navigating the cluster.
Overall, while I feel that KJA isn't a the best storyteller, or notably original, he isn't a bad writer, and at the very least his books are entertaining to read.
I've just read the entire Jedi Academy Trilogy, and feel an overwhelming urge to chip in my criticism.
The most deeply painful aspect of the series for me was the way it reduced all of the previously complex and interesting characters to cartoons. Off cartoons. It wasn't just that there was very little depth shown--Leia spends the entire series angsting about how she balances family and state affairs, Kyp switches between "I want to be a Jedi!" and "I will kill everyone who gets in my way", Han... --but furthermore, the portrayals were completely unlike what has been shown elsewhere. I'm sorry, but C3-P0 as a war coordinator??? Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees something off. Wedge Antilles, depicted in other books (most published later, but still) as a multilayered character, generally standoffish because of the war circumstances he lives in, trips over himself trying to woo Qwi, because... she's pretty? She's hurt? Because of course Wedge Antilles has never encountered either of those traits in females before!! Han and Lando gamble the Falcon back and forth--not once, or even twice, but three times! Not because they're out of things to bet, or... heck, not for any reason at all that I could see. It was as if KJA decided "that would be cool!" and implemented it, regardless of the circumstances or characters involved. It said something to me that I most appreciated his writing of Jacen and Jaina--because everyone in the book showed the intelligence of toddlers, and at least it made sense with them.
As for the positive points mentioned,
- Admiral Daala could definitely be viewed as an accurately-written idiot--except the book evidence isn't only her own claims. She was apparently noticed by Tarkin for innovative strategies she proposed under a pseudonym, a claim we have no reason to doubt. If you assume he only liked her for the sex, you have to assume he only noticed her for her sexuality, and she specifically describes how signs of femininity were repressed by the Empire. Sure, you can say "maybe...", but there's no actual data to support something like that. Furthermore, she apparently managed to instill a great deal of loyalty in her crew--her personal aide treats her with near-worship, and we're told the rest of the crew is still loyal after her tactical errors have lost them 3.5/4 Star Destroyers. Considering the Empire's disdain of women, that loyalty presumably had to be earned, and not with the kind of stupidity we're shown. And no, she didn't have sex with him/all of them--she specifically states (in a thought bit) that she's been effectively alone since Tarkin. So while I agree that she showed nothing but idiocy, I don't think that's all that's supposed to be there.
- I also mostly didn't mind the superweapon thing, although the impenetrable armor was a bit much. Honestly, why bother shooting missiles at those star destroyers/death star? Just fly through them all until you hit the command centers. And the Death Star's laser is more destructive than the center of a sun?
- Whether you say Qwi Xux's involvement was a plot twist or a plot "straight-line-of-blatantness", it still seemed incredibly stupid. So she's a brilliant weapons designer whose creations have killed millions. Okay. So she's actually kindhearted and hates the thought of killing people. Oookaaay.... So she's convinced herself, out of necessity, that all that matters is solving the problems, that how her creations are used is unimportant. Okay. So... all it takes is Han Solo talking to her once and saying things she denies on the spot for her to give up research, switch sides, spring two prisoners, and suddenly become enlightened as to how horrible and meaningless her life was? Um, right.
- Agreed that the Force is frequently overpowered. But in this case, it seemed less a matter of "look what you can do if you truly give yourself to the Force" (e.g. Ganner Rhysode's battle in the Well of the World Brain), and more of a convenient Deus Ex Machina. So someone needs to guide them through the Maw. Well, Kyp does have amazing Force potential, and even though he's untrained the first time he pulls the trick, I guess maybe he could pull it off... but wait a second. Kyp has NEVER flown a ship. He's been a Kessel mine-slave for the past 11 years, and unless he recieved special pilot training in YT-1300s at the age of 7, he should have no idea what button does what. So now what is it... he untrainedly pulls the how-to-fly manual from Han's head, while simultaneously navigating black holes through the power of the Force? When later, without training, he can hardly move a tray? And Exar Kun or no, if the Force could be used so easily to pull ships out of the gravity well of gas giants, or locate Star Destroyers by searching the galaxy, it's a mystery to me why the Republic was ever in danger. 'Cept maybe with the Yuuzhan Vong.
My SW reading was in an unusual order. I read Stackpole's/Allston's X-Wing series, then went from there straight to I, Jedi (I'm caught up now). After reading the latter book, my impression was that Stackpole should've stuck to third person. But now, I am deeply, deeply impressed with I, Jedi. Not (just) because it describes many of the same events as the Jedi Academy trilogy, but much, much more skillfully. But because Stackpole was working with this warped plotline and simplified characters, and managed to make a decent story out of it, without even breaking the chain of events.
So no offense to the KJA fans, but I needed to get that out. Rant ended. Hisser1 07:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)