Traviss' Clone Wars novel questions

[Coiler]

As I'm both curious about and have no desire to purchase Karen Traviss' Clone Wars novelization, I want to ask some questions about it, for the unlucky ones who have it.

1: Are Mandos and how awesome they are mentioned in the novel? If so, how often?

2: How bad is Traviss' trademark Jedi hate in that novel?

3: From a purely literary perspective, how good or bad is the novel?

[Ender]

As I'm both curious about and have no desire to purchase Karen Traviss' Clone Wars novelization, I want to ask some questions about it, for the unlucky ones who have it.

1: Are Mandos and how awesome they are mentioned in the novel? If so, how often?

On page 38 we learn that Dooku is trying to destroy the Republic because they sent him and the Jedi to go and kill the noble Mandalorians. Dooku is quite upset that Jango was killed before he could see Dooku avenge the Mandalorians against the Republic and the Jedi.

2: How bad is Traviss' trademark Jedi hate in that novel?

We get the same repetitive criticism of the Jedi from the morally superior Sith Lords.

3: From a purely literary perspective, how good or bad is the novel?

You can tell how severely she was limited by the plot and dialogue, so it stutters between her style and the movie style, which makes it read like a crazy bum's rantings.

[Darksider]

*Snip enders synopsis*

WHAT?

Dooku wanting to bring down the republic because he had to kill a bunch of amoral mercenaries? How the fuck does Traviss' shit get past the fucking radar?

This completly clashes with the portrayal of Dooku in Yoda: Dark Rendezvous and oh, I don't know, the fucking movies.

I am getting so sick of traviss' horseshit. Someone needs to fire the bitch, right the fuck now.

[Imperial Overlord]

Sadly, if Ender is joking he's fooled me completely.

[Aratech]

*Snip enders synopsis*

WHAT?

Dooku wanting to bring down the republic because he had to kill a bunch of amoral mercenaries? How the fuck does Traviss' shit get past the fucking radar?

This completly clashes with the portrayal of Dooku in Yoda: Dark Rendezvous and oh, I don't know, the fucking movies.

I am getting so sick of traviss' horseshit. Someone needs to fire the bitch, right the fuck now.

Which book is that from? That said, her first couple of novels (Hard Contact and Triple Zero) aren't terribly bad. Then again, they were written before she went off on her three million clones spiel.

[Darksider]

Which book is that from? That said, her first couple of novels (Hard Contact and Triple Zero) aren't terribly bad. Then again, they were written before she went off on her three million clones spiel.

Unless Ender is bullshitting to be funny (please god let that be the case) this is in the novelization for the new Clone Wars movie.

[Ender]

I've spent years preparing to break the Republic's strangle-hold. Years. A long way to go, still, but it'll come. The galaxy is ready for it. Worlds want to run their own affairs. Make it happen soon, Darth Sidious. The Republic's the worst kind of dictatorship-a pseudo-democracy cloaked in smiles and tolerance, as long as you do as it says.

And I will not do as anyone says. I'll think for myself.

Dooku stared into the mesh of light that showed the plan of a castle-like structure full of passages, chambers, and high walls.
Don't think, Padawan Dooku

"You were wrong then, Jedi," he said aloud. "And you're wrong now."

Destiny was not about feeling; destiny was about thinking, about rationality. Dooku didn't see reacting blindly to feelings as some mystic virtue, but as a weakness.

In a child, he would have punished it as giving in to impulses, a lack of maturity and self-control.

As a child, he had been trained not to think. As a child, he had been trained to be a Jedi.

Don't question so much, Padawan Dooku. Feel. Don't doubt. Believe.

Well, he questioned things now. And he didn't believe. The Republic was corrupt to its core, and the Jedi were its lackeys-sanctimonious mercenaries. Their comfortable little cartel was coming to an end. Darth Sidious would finish it off, and Dooku knew it was his moral duty to help bring about that day,

Then he saw the snow again, not the polished apocia wood desk; a battlefield in winter, finally silent. The schematic's hair-fine lines of red light became spatters and trails of blood that Dooku feared he would never be able to wash from his hands.

He was standing ankle-deep in the muffled, ice-cold whiteness of Galidraan in winter. Jedi and Mandalorian dead lay every-where. And he could still hear his own appalled voice, his own shame.

What have we done?

It was a massacre; and the Jedi had carried it out, pawns of the corrupt Galidraan governor, who had set up the Mandalorian army for his own agenda. Looking back on it, Dooku saw it was the tipping point that had changed his life. It was the moment he had started to think.

I believed my Masters. I didn't think for myself. They didn't question, either; they took the governor at his word. They just believed. And we killed people. We killed them on the say-so of a criminal.

If you were going to take lives, go to war, then there was no benefit of the doubt to be given, no other's word to take. Dooku trusted only proof now.

What have I done?

You came to your senses.

But I'm setting up the Jedi now. That makes me as degenerate as they are.

Think of it as using their own complacency against them. Turning their own weapon on them. Poetic justice. Whatever it takes. They won't say sorry and step down simply because you point out the error of the Republic's ways, will they?

He had these arguments with himself more than ever lately.

The snow had melted; the dead were buried. But he couldn't erase Jango Fett's face, the face of a man back from the living death of a slavery that Dooku had delivered him into, etched with all the bitter lines of surviving only to have his moment of justice. It was always the last image to leave Dooku. It wasn't just the millions of troops cloned from Fett that made forgetting impossible. It was that Fett hadn't lived to see the downfall of the Jedi. Fett's motive for sharing - aiding - Dooku's ambition hadn't been greed, he realized, but the same understanding that the Jedi Order was a destructive, destabilizing cabal.

The Jedi had killed Fett in the end. But most of him seemed to have died at Galidraan anyway, and only his insatiable hunger for justice had kept that formidable body moving.

We'll have our day, Fett.

Dooku opened the comlink again, this time to the monastery on Teth. It was time for the next stage of the operation.

"Ventress," he said. "Ventress, is the Huttlet all right? Bring me up to speed."

[Illuminatus Primus]

Jesus, what a sanctimonious bitch. Well we know now Lucas doesn't give a damn or doesn't actually check his novelizations. You'd think the Jedi were the bad guys from her books.

[Ender]

What a bitch. Well we know now Lucas doesn't give a damn or doesn't actually check his novelisations. You'd think the Jedi were the bad guys from her books.

I strongly suspect she needed a cigarette after that paragraph about Jango's formidable body running only in pursuit of justice.

But hey, Dooku isn['t an evil bastard out to help Palpatine set up an empire, they are going to destroy the republic and sow freedom throughout the stars. And the Republic were destabilizing, and didn't protect the government for 25,000 years.

[Darksider]

Gotta love the moralizing from the Sith apprentice who just kidnapped a fucking ten year old.

nope, no hypocrisy there.

[Illuminatus Primus]

What a bitch. Well we know now Lucas doesn't give a damn or doesn't actually check his novelisations. You'd think the Jedi were the bad guys from her books.

I strongly suspect she needed a cigarette after that paragraph about Jango's formidable body running only in pursuit of justice.

But hey, Dooku isn['t an evil bastard out to help Palpatine set up an empire, they are going to destroy the republic and sow freedom throughout the stars. And the Republic were destabilizing, and didn't protect the government for 25,000 years.

Its not like Dooku is a human supremacist eugenicist aristocratic douchebag, right? A traitor and a liar several times over, and a power hungry totalitarian? If he was being honest to himself in the ROTS novelisation, Palpatine did the galaxy a favor by killing him off in favor of Anakin.

[Ender]

Its not like Dooku is a human supremacist eugenicist aristocratic douchebag, right? A traitor and a liar several times over, and a power hungry totalitarian? If he was being honest to himself in the ROTS novelisation, Palpatine did the galaxy a favor by killing him off in favor of Anakin.

Pretty much. About the only part of the quoted section that is consistent with established character is that both DR and ROTS show Dooku to be conflicted deep down and tell himself that indulging in his desires to manipulate, control, exterminate, etc are the right things to do. He is a ruthless, evil, racist, scumbag bastard (albeit with style), but he still has a tiny bit of him saying that being who he really is is the wrong thing to do. So he tries to convince himself the evil he is doing is good to make it shut up.

[Imperial Overlord]

About the only part of the quoted section that is consistent with established character is that both DR and ROTS

Ender, what is "DR"?

I see Traviss felt the need to give Dooku man-crush on Jango. Anyone care to bet on whether or not Traviss has Sith on Mandalorian fantasies?

[Karmic Knight]

what is "DR"?

Dark Rendezvous, if I am not mistaken.

[Imperial Overlord]

what is "DR"?

Dark Rendezvous, if I am not mistaken.

Thank you.

[Jim Raynor]

Holy shit is this stupid. It's quite clear from the fucking movies that the Sith Lords are manipulative lying assholes. Whatever noble intentions they profess are only to fool people into going along with their schemes. Just watch AOTC, where Dooku tells Obi-Wan that he's fighting the Republic because it's corrupt and secretly under the control of the Sith Lord who betrayed his Separatist allies, despite him actually being that same Sith Lord's apprentice!

There was never ANY indication that Jango Fett was more than a merc and DNA supply for the clone army. Now Dooku the deceptive bastard who secretly built up armies for BOTH sides of a war that would kill countless sentient beings across the galaxy is upset that his friend Jango never got to avenge his noble Mando brothers? Give me a fucking break.

[Guardsman Bass]

Jesus, what a sanctimonious bitch. Well we know now Lucas doesn't give a damn or doesn't actually check his novelizations. You'd think the Jedi were the bad guys from her books.

Wow, that's fucked up. At least on the ROTS novelization, Stover said something along the lines that Lucas went over it "word by word". Perhaps he just doesn't really give a shit about this movie?

[Ender]

The real interesting thing about this is that the Jedi were legitimate in going after the Mandalorians on Galidraan. They had invaded the planet to take out another faction of Mandalorians.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Not to mention he had zilch of loyalty to Jango, and set him up to whack one of his former Padawans to remove him of a headache. Along the way, setting him up in a death competion with another Mandalorian, Montross, who was by all account less honorable than Jango, and whom Dooku had no qualms about using should he survive rather than Jango.

But that's probably some of the established continuity that Traviss just ignores.

[Ender]

Not to mention he had zilch of loyalty to Jango, and set him up to whack one of his former Padawans to remove him of a headache. Along the way, setting him up in a death competion with another Mandalorian, Montross, who was by all account less honorable than Jango, and whom Dooku had no qualms about using should he survive rather than Jango.

But that's probably some of the established continuity that Traviss just ignores.

Hell, Jango gets killed right in front of him, camera cuts to Dooku who... just doesn't give a shit.

[TC Pilot]

Actually, he rather visibly reacts to Jango's decapitation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebnBZIp ... re=related : Check around 3:45. Though in-context, it seems to be more out of Boba's presence than any personal sense of camaraderie between Jango and Dooku, considering even Mace seems a little ashamed of himself.

Granted, this is a minor nitpick. The quoted passage is assinine.

[Darksider]

Actually, he rather visibly reacts to Jango's decapitation.

Check around 3:45. Though in-context, it seems to be more out of Boba's presence than any personal sense of camaraderie between Jango and Dooku, considering even Mace seems a little ashamed of himself.

Granted, this is a minor nitpick. The quoted passage is assinine.

You're probably right about him reacting due to boba's presence.

Given his aristocratic nature, it's pretty much a given that he would find the idea of beheading a man in front of his ten-year old to be distasteful. the look on his face seems to indicate his surprise at a member of the jedi council stooping so low. Almost as if he viewed fighting his hired goon to be beneath a man of windu's status

[Illuminatus Primus]

Dooku does express admiration for and implies degree of at least honorary patrician status to the "Korun Master" in ROTS.

[Sidewinder]

On page 38 we learn that Dooku is trying to destroy the Republic because they sent him and the Jedi to go and kill the noble Mandalorians. Dooku is quite upset that Jango was killed before he could see Dooku avenge the Mandalorians against the Republic and the Jedi.

I'm fairly certain Dooku's motivation was to save the JEDI from the government of a Republic that abuses the Jedi and sends them to die for meaningless causes; ideally, this would be achieved by having a JEDI master (himself) as head of government. The Mandalorians are just a tool with which to achieve that goal. A very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless.

[Sidewinder]

Not to mention he had zilch of loyalty to Jango, and set him up to whack one of his former Padawans to remove him of a headache.

Obi-Wan wasn't Dooku's apprentice, Qui-Gon was.