What I’m Reading

Thanks to the wonders of Amazon, a pristine copy of Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

Now, despite my love of the original Star Wars film trilogy, I haven’t read a lot of their ‘Expanded Universe’ books.  Okay, I read a couple of books about Boba Fett as a youngster, but that’s it.  For the most part, I’m not that interested in tie-in fiction that uses movie characters. I really just don’t need to know everything that Han Solo was doing before, after, and even during all of the movies.

That said, I love military/adventure science fiction novels. If I find some good ones, such as Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet, I gobble them up. I’m always on the lookout for new series, or one-offs to give me a few hours of laser battles and space-ship actions.

Hard Contact, written by Karen Traviss, is apparently based on a video game (making it a book based on a video game based on a movie). Usually this isn’t the sign of a great book, but us sci-fi-battle geeks can’t afford to be too picky.

Two things attracted me to this book. First it doesn’t deal with any of the main characters from any of the movies, instead it is about a squad of ‘grunts’. Well, clone commandos. The book isn’t about galaxy changing battles, but just about a bunch of grunts on a behind-the-lines mission. This was enough to peak my interest, so I checked out the book on Amazon, where it has gotten a whole host of good reviews. 

Now, as I work in publishing, I know to take Amazon reviews with a pinch of salt. However, if a book has loads of reviews, including a few really good and a few really bad, you can often trust the average.

We shall see. Hey, it’s got a bunch of guys in combat armor on the cover; it ought to be good for some entertainment.

I’ll let you know.