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A review by back_away_from_the_donkey
Catalyst: A Rogue One Story by James Luceno
3.0
Star Wars Catalyst (2016) My Copy 2016 Hard Back
James Luceno is a prolific author, as well as numerous Star Wars novels (both Expanded Universe and Canon) he has written stand alone novels as well as two Trilogies of books with the late Brian Daley.
Catalyst is a Star Wars book set before the event’s of the film Rogue One. I will say I’m not the biggest fan of the film but was interested to read about the events before it. The book follows Galen Erso and his wife Lyn. We also follow his burgeoning association with Orson Krennic whilst he researches the properties of Kyber Crystals.
The expansion of the story around Rogue One and the introduction of characters seen in that film was interesting and narratively made sense even when it did seem rather complicated. It was also good to hear more specifics about Galen Erso’s involvement with the Death Star. We also get to see how Orson Krennic manipulates his way into the Death Star project and the wheeling and dealings around that from various Imperial characters.
Even though the book took a while to get going it did manage to successfully feel tense at points. This is a great achievement especially when an author is writing something that prequels an event already known by the reader. We know the conditions of the Characters at the beginning of Rogue One, therefore getting them to that point and to have any feelings of jeopardy can be difficult but James Lucano manages to do that.
Where the book struggled was with the baggage of trying to link it to the Star Wars Prequels and then also linking it to Rogue one. I think this took away from the characterisation of some of the characters. I never felt the book was giving me enough of the character to always care about. I was getting this from a film I had already seen not from the novel, which is a problem.
There was also a couple of points when the technobabble got away from itself. ’While they were occasionally used in construction projects, exfoliating doonium and dolvite were primarily employed to insulate the cores of immense hypermatter reactors and to dissipate heat in the collimator shafts of superlaser weapons.’
Overall I would have liked better exploration of the characters, for those that just want to know what goes on before Rogue One it’s a fun read. It though hasn’t got the flare or sense of fun that other Star Wars books have especially the Expanded Universe ones where it always feels like the authors had a bit more latitude within the Star Wars Universe. I still think it’s worth a read for Star Wars fans but it wouldn’t be a good place to start your Star Wars reading. My Goodreads Rating is 3 stars but it is for me nearer the 2 1/2 mark.
Goodreads ratings are pretty limiting, my benchmark using those ratings are anything 3 or above is a good strong recommendation that I would happily reread at some point. I rarely give 5 star reviews, a book would need to be almost perfect.
My Bloghttp://www.backawayfromthedonkey.co.uk/
James Luceno is a prolific author, as well as numerous Star Wars novels (both Expanded Universe and Canon) he has written stand alone novels as well as two Trilogies of books with the late Brian Daley.
Catalyst is a Star Wars book set before the event’s of the film Rogue One. I will say I’m not the biggest fan of the film but was interested to read about the events before it. The book follows Galen Erso and his wife Lyn. We also follow his burgeoning association with Orson Krennic whilst he researches the properties of Kyber Crystals.
The expansion of the story around Rogue One and the introduction of characters seen in that film was interesting and narratively made sense even when it did seem rather complicated. It was also good to hear more specifics about Galen Erso’s involvement with the Death Star. We also get to see how Orson Krennic manipulates his way into the Death Star project and the wheeling and dealings around that from various Imperial characters.
Even though the book took a while to get going it did manage to successfully feel tense at points. This is a great achievement especially when an author is writing something that prequels an event already known by the reader. We know the conditions of the Characters at the beginning of Rogue One, therefore getting them to that point and to have any feelings of jeopardy can be difficult but James Lucano manages to do that.
Where the book struggled was with the baggage of trying to link it to the Star Wars Prequels and then also linking it to Rogue one. I think this took away from the characterisation of some of the characters. I never felt the book was giving me enough of the character to always care about. I was getting this from a film I had already seen not from the novel, which is a problem.
There was also a couple of points when the technobabble got away from itself. ’While they were occasionally used in construction projects, exfoliating doonium and dolvite were primarily employed to insulate the cores of immense hypermatter reactors and to dissipate heat in the collimator shafts of superlaser weapons.’
Overall I would have liked better exploration of the characters, for those that just want to know what goes on before Rogue One it’s a fun read. It though hasn’t got the flare or sense of fun that other Star Wars books have especially the Expanded Universe ones where it always feels like the authors had a bit more latitude within the Star Wars Universe. I still think it’s worth a read for Star Wars fans but it wouldn’t be a good place to start your Star Wars reading. My Goodreads Rating is 3 stars but it is for me nearer the 2 1/2 mark.
Goodreads ratings are pretty limiting, my benchmark using those ratings are anything 3 or above is a good strong recommendation that I would happily reread at some point. I rarely give 5 star reviews, a book would need to be almost perfect.
My Bloghttp://www.backawayfromthedonkey.co.uk/