Steve Barnes, The Cestus Deception
Jan. 5th, 2018 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSteve Barnes was once a wunderkind of the cyberpunk set, a man who brought a sensibility to the genre that came from somewhere other than the dystopic dreams of white suburbanites. Like a lot of writers from that time who still get paid, he's branched out and moved on, and The Cestus Deception is a fine example.
Yes, it's Star Wars, and yes, it's Clone Wars, part of the now-disavowed Star Wars Expanded Universe, but it's a fun book. It's about Obi-Wan and Kit Fisto (I still can't believe that's a real name of a real character in the Star Wars universe) on a mission to a distant world that sells 'droids that fast enough to actually defeat a Jedi, in the hopes of convincing them not to sell their technology to the Separatists and their 'droid army.
The world Barnes imagines, Cestus, is surprisingly diverse: not a "desert world," not an "ice world," it's a full-on world with forests and deserts and ice caps and all you'd expect. Barnes makes the case that a single world, with all its hidey-holes, is actually way more exciting than space with its clear lines of sight and easily-detected energy signatures. Barnes introduces us to A-9-8 and his team of clones who accompany Kenobi and Fisto to Cestus, and gives us a really interesting story about the clones, and about how they think, learn, grow, and act as human beings, and how their status in the Republic is on shaky and ethically questionable ground.
There are one or two chapters that are barely a page long, as if Barnes needs to tell you one thing quickly or the next few chapters won't make sense. These moments have a cinematic feel to them— appropriate for a Star Wars novel.
It is a Steve Barnes book, so the other thing you'll get is a lot of discussion of martial arts. I can see why Barnes wanted to write a Clone Wars book, though: the Jedi have several different fighting traditions, given their age and diversity of members; the Grand Army of the Republic teaches the clone warriors a distinct fighting style of their own. This gives Barnes lots of opportunities to discuss one topic on which he loves to expound, but it's done well and I enjoyed what he did with it.
The ending is highly satisfying, even if we do know the ultimate truth: that behind the covers Palpitane is maneuvering to make the galaxy an awful place. And Barnes, much to my surprise given how long ago this book was written (2004), actually makes points about the conflict of the Jedi and the Sith that have now become extremely relevant in The Last Jedi. (That's not a spoiler; you'll really have to have read the book and seen the movie to understand.)
Yes, it's Star Wars, and yes, it's Clone Wars, part of the now-disavowed Star Wars Expanded Universe, but it's a fun book. It's about Obi-Wan and Kit Fisto (I still can't believe that's a real name of a real character in the Star Wars universe) on a mission to a distant world that sells 'droids that fast enough to actually defeat a Jedi, in the hopes of convincing them not to sell their technology to the Separatists and their 'droid army.
The world Barnes imagines, Cestus, is surprisingly diverse: not a "desert world," not an "ice world," it's a full-on world with forests and deserts and ice caps and all you'd expect. Barnes makes the case that a single world, with all its hidey-holes, is actually way more exciting than space with its clear lines of sight and easily-detected energy signatures. Barnes introduces us to A-9-8 and his team of clones who accompany Kenobi and Fisto to Cestus, and gives us a really interesting story about the clones, and about how they think, learn, grow, and act as human beings, and how their status in the Republic is on shaky and ethically questionable ground.
There are one or two chapters that are barely a page long, as if Barnes needs to tell you one thing quickly or the next few chapters won't make sense. These moments have a cinematic feel to them— appropriate for a Star Wars novel.
It is a Steve Barnes book, so the other thing you'll get is a lot of discussion of martial arts. I can see why Barnes wanted to write a Clone Wars book, though: the Jedi have several different fighting traditions, given their age and diversity of members; the Grand Army of the Republic teaches the clone warriors a distinct fighting style of their own. This gives Barnes lots of opportunities to discuss one topic on which he loves to expound, but it's done well and I enjoyed what he did with it.
The ending is highly satisfying, even if we do know the ultimate truth: that behind the covers Palpitane is maneuvering to make the galaxy an awful place. And Barnes, much to my surprise given how long ago this book was written (2004), actually makes points about the conflict of the Jedi and the Sith that have now become extremely relevant in The Last Jedi. (That's not a spoiler; you'll really have to have read the book and seen the movie to understand.)
