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A critique of Kevin J Anderson.


KJA is, without a doubt, the worst Star Wars author out there.

Here is a list of reasons why he sucks:

1. He shamelessly copies scenes from the movies.
KJA cannot even come up with his own ideas. The worst offenders are: an AT AT attack in which a ‘dish shaped ion cannon’ (!) is fired, hitting the knee of a walker. Then he hauls out a Death Star prototype. The Falcon flies in, blows it up and flies ahead of the explosion. For God’s sake. Someone could splice these books together with movie clips.

2. He needs to do proper research.
Apparently Vader says “Luke, I am your father.” This is up there with “Beam me up Scotty.”

3. He is completely fucking stupid.
A‘dish shaped ion cannon’ is fired during the battle of Hoth. Sorry, Dantooine, hitting the knee of a walker and fusing the leg.
Strike one: The dish cannon from Hoth (which is what it must be, see point 1) is a laser
Strike two: The leg was not fused in the Hoth scene.

Also, the Death star prototype can be controlled by 100 stormtroopers and a few scientists. Compared to several hundred thousand for the original.

Hey look! A tumbleweed!



There will be updates, oh yes. So many, many updates.

I liked the VSD swarms myself. Apparently you need a couple hundred of them to do any damage, and the crack apart when hit only a couple times.

I liked his idea to make a Jedi Academy on Yavin, and I liked the fact that he created Kyp Durron. Everything else sucked.

Darksaber, anyone?

1) Silly superweapon plot (build a superlaser: it's like a giant lightsaber, only it's evil!).

2) Rushed anticlimactic ending.

3) Silly way to kill off a movie character (and he died for nothing anyway).

4) Forgetable, in the end.

Alexus wrote:A critique of Kevin J Anderson.


KJA is, without a doubt, the worst Star Wars author out there.

Here is a list of reasons why he sucks:


1. He shamelessly copies scenes from the movies.
KJA cannot even come up with his own ideas. The worst offenders are: an AT AT attack in which a ‘dish shaped ion cannon’ (!) is fired, hitting the knee of a walker. Then he hauls out a Death Star prototype. The Falcon flies in, blows it up and flies ahead of the explosion. For God’s sake. Someone could splice these books together with movie clips.

Sorry, but huh? What are you talking about? The Falcon didn't destroy the Death Star Prototype, the Sun Crusher blew up bits of the superstructure with the torpedoes and lured it too close to a black hole. The DSP got sucked into a black hole.

Also, the Death star prototype can be controlled by 100 stormtroopers and a few scientists. Compared to several hundred thousand for the original.

The Death Star Prototype had none of the hangars, none of the fighters, NONE OF THE WEAPONS, none of the tractor beams, and NOTHING the original Death Star had except the superlaser and engines.


I agree with the rest.

However, I can't say KJA is the worst Star Wars author.
While he gets a bunch of facts wrong, parts of his books are actually somewhat enjoyable to read (the Jedi trilogy wasn't that bad).

Compare him to the guy who wrote the Black Fleet Crisis. That guy is WORSE.



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Let's see:
1) Star Wars use fusion reactors.
2) A SSD is 8 km long.
3) Hyperdrive moves at the speed of light.

4) Shield generators only have a range of 200 meters, and are bubble shields.

5) There are 10 meter interference zones if the boundries of two shield bubbles on two capships overlap.

6) If you put a proton torpedo in that 10 meter interference zone, it is magically 'amplified' so that it can take out an entire capship AND THE ENTIRE SHIPYARD (capable of building ISD's) IT IS IN!

7) He has Chewie's entire family get together, single handedly attack and land on a Super Star Destroyer, cut through the hull, wipe out half the crew, pull Han Solo out of a detention cell, get all the way back to the Falcon, and escape completely unharmed.

8 ) The villans are terribly corny.

9) 200 corvette-class ships are enough to threaten the entire New Republic and BDZ Coruscant.

10) A sector is 2000 star systems. A sector fleet is 100-200 ships.

11) The New Republic's senators make the Old Republic's greedy senators look like charities. They infight politically to the point that they won't attack an enemy that has THREATENED them and the Chief of State's husband captive.

12) The organic technology brainbug. We're not talking Yuuzhan Vong here, we're talking Species 8472. Some magical organic ship that looks metallic, that can outrun ships with hyperdrive and blow up an ISD in a split second, heal itself super fast, etc.

13) A freighter being hit with an avalanche while parked on an ice planet kills everyone on board.

14) A Star Destroyer's sensor range is 4 light years, WHILE CARRYING A GIANT SENSOR ANTENNAE that takes a full HOUR to detach.

15) He makes up an entire class of uberpowerful Jedi-like people that can create holodeck-style images that can actually hurt someone and even withstand a BDZ from orbit, just with their minds, yet are nothing more than people with force powers. Why can't Luke do that?

Those books just SUCKED. They make KJA look like Timothy Zahn.

KJA is second worse compared to this guy.

While KJA makes a lot of factual error, the BFC guy makes WAY worse errors AND has a terrible writing that almost puts you to sleep.

Kurgan wrote:Darksaber, anyone?

1) Silly superweapon plot (build a superlaser: it's like a giant lightsaber, only it's evil!).

2) Rushed anticlimactic ending.

3) Silly way to kill off a movie character (and he died for nothing anyway).

4) Forgetable, in the end.

Yeah, I was pissed when he killed off Madine. Kept holding out and dragging it out and making us think Wedge might get there and save him, but nooooooooooooooooooooooo...

You know, I'm going to go put that in as a change in the post-RotJ EU changes thread.

High point of the BFC- I liked the concept that Luke had to get away from the world and get his head on straight. That was a very realistic idea, as the responsibilities of power ground away on him.

It was all downhill from there. Worst of all, not listed in the atrocities above, was the lameass ending.

Luke- "I'm not going to save you anymore. However, these women I brought with me will save you in my stead. Ta ta."

Honorable mention for the atrocity that was the Boba Fett trilogy, especially the exceedingly wretched first book. 'You're my kind of barve' 'Boba Fett is a tricky barve' Barve barve barve... AGH!

Dude? KJA didn't write the Black Fleet Crisis.

Rogue 9 wrote:Dude? KJA didn't write the Black Fleet Crisis.

read the bottom.
It's says the BFC guy makes KJA look like Zahn. not that KJA wrote the BFC

Michael Kube-McDowell wrote the Black Fleet Crisis, for those of you who want to avoid his other works. (I googled the name.)

Kurgan wrote:Darksaber, anyone?

1) Silly superweapon plot (build a superlaser: it's like a giant lightsaber, only it's evil!).

He has a fetish for them, first the Sunkiller, then another Death Star, then the Darksaber. What really takes this piss about the Darksaber though, is that it's controled by a fucking Hutt!

3) Silly way to kill off a movie character (and he died for nothing anyway).

I'd forgotten he'd killed off Madine, bastard.

Praxis wrote:Let's see:
1) Star Wars use fusion reactors.

Not necessarily nuclear fusion.

2) A SSD is 8 km long.

If you damn every book with that miserable (or the 12.8km) error, you would basically have one left - the OT:ITW.

3) Hyperdrive moves at the speed of light.

No.

4) Shield generators only have a range of 200 meters, and are bubble shields.

IIRC it extends 200m outward of the shipyard.

5) There are 10 meter interference zones if the boundries of two shield bubbles on two capships overlap.

New fact, not in itself a flaw.

6) If you put a proton torpedo in that 10 meter interference zone, it is magically 'amplified' so that it can take out an entire capship AND THE ENTIRE SHIPYARD (capable of building ISD's) IT IS IN!

I thought it just magically took out the shield. Besides, a Fat Man is a little vessel, and while a shipyard is big, it is not necessarily made from high grade warship armor.

7) He has Chewie's entire family get together, single handedly attack and land on a Super Star Destroyer, cut through the hull, wipe out half the crew, pull Han Solo out of a detention cell, get all the way back to the Falcon, and escape completely unharmed.

These massive copouts are endemic in Star Wars.

9) 200 corvette-class ships are enough to threaten the entire New Republic and BDZ Coruscant.

More a statement of the NR.

10) A sector is 2000 star systems. A sector fleet is 100-200 ships.

No, you got that wrong. There were no Sector Forces involved in that story. It was the 5th Fleet of the New Republic (Federal) Defense Fleet, which has to do sector policing work!!!

11) The New Republic's senators make the Old Republic's greedy senators look like charities. They infight politically to the point that they won't attack an enemy that has THREATENED them and the Chief of State's husband captive.

A statement of the NR.

12) The organic technology brainbug. We're not talking Yuuzhan Vong here, we're talking Species 8472. Some magical organic ship that looks metallic, that can outrun ships with hyperdrive and blow up an ISD in a split second, heal itself super fast, etc.

To be fair, IIRC it was supposedly bigger than anything the Calamaris had built (Lando), which means bigger than 3.8km long.

14) A Star Destroyer's sensor range is 4 light years, WHILE CARRYING A GIANT SENSOR ANTENNAE that takes a full HOUR to detach.

That was a Neb with a towed array in passive scanning. When scanning in the EM spectrum, anything more than 4 light hours away is quite useless anyway due to propagation delay.

15) He makes up an entire class of uberpowerful Jedi-like people that can create holodeck-style images that can actually hurt someone and even withstand a BDZ from orbit, just with their minds, yet are nothing more than people with force powers. Why can't Luke do that?

I thought they just hid them? Maybe my memory on this one is faulty (books are in boxes right now, and looks to stay that way rest of month).

I thought they just hid them? Maybe my memory on this one is faulty (books are in boxes right now, and looks to stay that way rest of month).

The planet wasn't BDZed. Praxis, what are you smoking? If the planet had suffered a Base Delta Zero operation, Luke wouldn't have been able to land on it, get out of his ship, and walk around!

Rogue 9 wrote:

I thought they just hid them? Maybe my memory on this one is faulty (books are in boxes right now, and looks to stay that way rest of month).

The planet wasn't BDZed. Praxis, what are you smoking? If the planet had suffered a Base Delta Zero operation, Luke wouldn't have been able to land on it, get out of his ship, and walk around!

I know it wasn't BDZed, but I think it was bombarded.

What about his raping of the entire SW universe as we know it in his IG-88 story?

1) IG-88, a mere bounty hunter as far as the movies are concerned, is now a would-be galactic conqueror.

2) The IG droids have to go bounty hunting all over the galaxy, to distract the Empire from their real plans. Because a mere four assassin droids are such a big deal that a galaxy spanning Empire would take notice, much less give a shit, if they just disappeared.

3) No one in the entire galaxy is able to discover the evil programming that's in practically every new droid.

4) When the Stormtroopers guarding the Death Star's core were discovered to be droids, something Jerjerrod had not be informed about, no investigation is made to find out what the hell is going on.

5) KJA throws in a scene of the Emperor being pwned and embarrassed by the now nearly omnipotent IG-88. Why? Because he can.

6) Forget what you knew about ROTJ. If the Rebels were crushed at Endor, it WOULDN'T have been a grand victory for the Empire and the Dark Side. No, IG-88 would have just pwned the Executor and the rest of the fleet, before starting his campaign to rid the galaxy of biological life.

Kazuaki Shimazaki wrote:

Praxis wrote:Let's see:
1) Star Wars use fusion reactors.

Not necessarily nuclear fusion.

2) A SSD is 8 km long.

If you damn every book with that miserable (or the 12.8km) error, you would basically have one left - the OT:ITW.

3) Hyperdrive moves at the speed of light.

No.

IIRC they set off a bunch of mines and jumped the Falcon to hyperspace and it dropped out of hyperspace just as the light reached the SSD. They supposedly moved at the same speed.

4) Shield generators only have a range of 200 meters, and are bubble shields.

IIRC it extends 200m outward of the shipyard.

And 200m outward of the Thrustship, as well. They said the standard shield generators were 200m bubbles.

5) There are 10 meter interference zones if the boundries of two shield bubbles on two capships overlap.

New fact, not in itself a flaw.

This doesn't fit with anything else, why was it never used at any other time? Why didn't anyone EVER at ANY point (especially a Jedi with their pilotting skills) try to stick a torp in an interference zone? This would have been very useful at Bilbringi for Wedge to try.

6) If you put a proton torpedo in that 10 meter interference zone, it is magically 'amplified' so that it can take out an entire capship AND THE ENTIRE SHIPYARD (capable of building ISD's) IT IS IN!

I thought it just magically took out the shield. Besides, a Fat Man is a little vessel, and while a shipyard is big, it is not necessarily made from high grade warship armor.

No, it took out the whole shipyard IIRC. They explained how it would amplify the torpedo (lol), and the guy ended up putting his whole fighter in the interference zone, and there was a blast and the battle was over, the shipyard a hulk. Been a while since I read that but I remember that portion really clearly.

7) He has Chewie's entire family get together, single handedly attack and land on a Super Star Destroyer, cut through the hull, wipe out half the crew, pull Han Solo out of a detention cell, get all the way back to the Falcon, and escape completely unharmed.

These massive copouts are endemic in Star Wars.

Still, it's worse than anything ever before. It's one thing to have a pair of Jedi rip through an SSD's crew and steal a shuttle (see Darksaber), quite another to have a pair of WOOKIEES LAND on an SSD, cut through the ARMORED HULL, and without force powers rip through the crew.

9) 200 corvette-class ships are enough to threaten the entire New Republic and BDZ Coruscant.

More a statement of the NR.

But it's absolutely nonsensical. 200 corvette class ships wouldn't have TOUCHED the Empire. Yet the NR defeated the Empire and would get wiped out?

10) A sector is 2000 star systems. A sector fleet is 100-200 ships.

No, you got that wrong. There were no Sector Forces involved in that story. It was the 5th Fleet of the New Republic (Federal) Defense Fleet, which has to do sector policing work!!!

Yeah, you're right, it wasn't sector fleet, but it was implied that the 100 ship 5th fleet did the sector policing work for a whole sector of 2000 systems.

11) The New Republic's senators make the Old Republic's greedy senators look like charities. They infight politically to the point that they won't attack an enemy that has THREATENED them and the Chief of State's husband captive.

A statement of the NR.

I realize that, but they were even dumber than in the YV crisis. To the point of just being stupid, not greedy.

12) The organic technology brainbug. We're not talking Yuuzhan Vong here, we're talking Species 8472. Some magical organic ship that looks metallic, that can outrun ships with hyperdrive and blow up an ISD in a split second, heal itself super fast, etc.

To be fair, IIRC it was supposedly bigger than anything the Calamaris had built (Lando), which means bigger than 3.8km long.

I seem to recall at one point they stated what the size was and it was smaller than an ISD? Maybe I'm wrong. These are some of the few books I never re-read.

14) A Star Destroyer's sensor range is 4 light years, WHILE CARRYING A GIANT SENSOR ANTENNAE that takes a full HOUR to detach.

That was a Neb with a towed array in passive scanning. When scanning in the EM spectrum, anything more than 4 light hours away is quite useless anyway due to propagation delay.

Of course, but shouldn't it's sensors (REAL sensors, who cares about EM) have had longer range by SW canon?

15) He makes up an entire class of uberpowerful Jedi-like people that can create holodeck-style images that can actually hurt someone and even withstand a BDZ from orbit, just with their minds, yet are nothing more than people with force powers. Why can't Luke do that?

I thought they just hid them? Maybe my memory on this one is faulty (books are in boxes right now, and looks to stay that way rest of month).

If I remember right, the Yevetha actually razed the planet, but all the structures were protected under the illusions. Therefore the illusions must have withstood the orbital razing, or the planet would have been wiped out.

Rogue 9 wrote:

I thought they just hid them? Maybe my memory on this one is faulty (books are in boxes right now, and looks to stay that way rest of month).

The planet wasn't BDZed. Praxis, what are you smoking? If the planet had suffered a Base Delta Zero operation, Luke wouldn't have been able to land on it, get out of his ship, and walk around!

You're right, it wasn't a BDZ. They RAZED it, not BDZed it. They just smoked the surface.

I know the falcon does not destroy the death star in KJA but it would LOOK that way.

Anyway, anyone have good ideas for more reasons why he sucks?

Having a bunch of Academy Students destroying the spirit of Exar Kun, even though Luke himself couldn't.

Oh, god, I forgot about the atrocity that was the IG-88 story. THAT was truly horrific.

The more i think about it, the worst KJA did was reducing the empire to a few dozen systems inside the deep core. Only a year prior they controlled almost the entire galaxy (see DarkEmpire) and then such a decline. By doing that he left the authors following him nothing with credible threat-potential (aside from Zahn).

And as far as the BFC is concerned in my opinion it belongs to the better trilogies of the Bantam-era, aside from the whole Luke-plot of course. The small scope can be easily explained by the balcanisation and decline of the galaxy after Endor and the destructions caused by Operation Shadowhand.

Praxis wrote:IIRC they set off a bunch of mines and jumped the Falcon to hyperspace and it dropped out of hyperspace just as the light reached the SSD. They supposedly moved at the same speed.

IIRC, those mines were set off as they left hyperspace, the idea being to blind the guys.

This doesn't fit with anything else, why was it never used at any other time? Why didn't anyone EVER at ANY point (especially a Jedi with their pilotting skills) try to stick a torp in an interference zone? This would have been very useful at Bilbringi for Wedge to try.

Maybe because there were no overlapping bubbles. It makes perfect sense, actually, for fields overlapping to interact with each other (interference), at least if they weren't set right.

Still, it's worse than anything ever before. It's one thing to have a pair of Jedi rip through an SSD's crew and steal a shuttle (see Darksaber), quite another to have a pair of WOOKIEES LAND on an SSD, cut through the ARMORED HULL, and without force powers rip through the crew.

They did have some Force support. From a person who apparently cloaked the Falcon so the Yevethan fighters scanning the hull can't see it.

Yeah, you're right, it wasn't sector fleet, but it was implied that the 100 ship 5th fleet did the sector policing work for a whole sector of 2000 systems.

Something like that. Basically, it means there was no real sector fleets, so the federal fleets have to do all this.

I realize that, but they were even dumber than in the YV crisis. To the point of just being stupid, not greedy.

Personally, I thought they were worse in the YV. At least this time, they pulled together in the end.

Of course, but shouldn't it's sensors (REAL sensors, who cares about EM) have had longer range by SW canon?

Who cares about EM?! What do you think SW ships are? Federation plastic toys that spit out subspace emissions and warp distortions enough to ruin the environment all the time? SW ships don't just randomly emit subspace and hyperwave emissions just for the hell of it! That means none of those to passively sense. So unless you go active, you are limited to EM.

If I remember right, the Yevetha actually razed the planet, but all the structures were protected under the illusions. Therefore the illusions must have withstood the orbital razing, or the planet would have been wiped out.

Generally, they tend to raze only part of the planet. Maybe they just hid them in a sheath, and the Yevethans didn't bombard that spot.

Who cares about EM?! What do you think SW ships are? Federation plastic toys that spit out subspace emissions and warp distortions enough to ruin the environment all the time? SW ships don't just randomly emit subspace and hyperwave emissions just for the hell of it! That means none of those to passively sense. So unless you go active, you are limited to EM.

I seem to recall that they were ACTIVELY scanning, not passively scanning. I'll have to look it up, but they were trying to scan all of the surrounding space, and just charting it or something

Generally, they tend to raze only part of the planet. Maybe they just hid them in a sheath, and the Yevethans didn't bombard that spot.

Didn't Luke land where it had been razed, and it was revealed that the razed surface was an illusion after he landed, and he was parked in the middle of a city or something?

Praxis wrote:Didn't Luke land where it had been razed, and it was revealed that the razed surface was an illusion after he landed, and he was parked in the middle of a city or something?

Don't really remember, but if it was razed at full intensity, Luke would probably be standing in the middle of craters, and the illusion would have been above him (to preserve the city somehow, they would have to keep it level).

Maybe they just added a few scorch marks on the illusion of empty dirt, and the Yevethans saw that it had been scorched, that nothing was left, presumed someone else had done it, and left it alone.

Jim Raynor wrote:4) When the Stormtroopers guarding the Death Star's core were discovered to be droids, something Jerjerrod had not be informed about, no investigation is made to find out what the hell is going on.

If I recall correctly, they never found out they were droids, because the one that broke exploded.

I reread my SW books from time to time for fun, but I've never reread the BFC, Planet of Twilight, or The New Rebellion.