Customer Reviews

Star Wars: Tales from the Empire

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First of all, this was a good, entertaining book. Not great, but good. Most of the stories tie in some way into the "mainstream" Star Wars universe, and even those that don't still make sense. I would not however, recommend this to someone who is not well versed in the "Expanded Universe" of Star Wars, but if you have read most of the books than this one is certainly a jewel. Though I think the title is somewhat misplaced, (most of the stories take place long after the the Empire has fallen.) besides that I have no real complaints. The stories are:

First Contact: My favorite, tells how Mara Jade hooked up with Talon Karrde.

Tinnian on Trial: A spoiled rich girl quickly becomes a hardened fighter when her family is murdered by the Empire.

The Final Exit: Yet another smuggler's confused encounter with a Jedi Knight of old.

Missed Chance: A Corran Horn story taking place before he was in Rogue Squadron.

Retreat from Coruscant: During Dark Empire a mail cargo captain is trapped on Coruscant during the Emperial invasion.

A Certain Point of View: A young woman with Imperial upbringing meets up with an old love, but has a change of heart when she finds out his true loyalties.

Blaze if Glory: A somewhat confusing story about a group of smugglers.

Slaying Dragons: An interesting depiction of what it might have been like for an ordinary imperial family, and the effect the war had on them.

Do No Harm: A Rebel doctor is forced to break his oath to do no harm in order to save one of his patients.

Side Trip:(four parts) This long but fascinating story is a collaboration between the two best Star Wars authors, Timothy Zahn, and Michael Stackpole.

Anyway, this book is highly recommendable if you know your Star Wars. Good for fans of any age.

To the reader who said that the title Tales From the Empire was incorrect let me debate that by outlining all the stories and their tone.

First Contact-not really uplifting or depressing, just a nice piece of history, but the death at the end lends a tragic tone.

Do No Harm-Sure the good guys com out on top, but only by warping the mind of a nice innocent doctor. A festering wound of a story but still nice.

Retreat from Coruscant-this would seem to have an uplifting ending until you remember that the New Repubilic just abandoned Coruscant to the destruction and chaos we saw in Dark Empire. Not exactly the stuff of children's slumber.

Missed Chance-this is one of the two stories that has the good guys win with no cost. It serves as a very nice change of pace.

Slaying Dragons-this has a supposed uplifting ending as we fly into the sunset to go slay some dragons. It is so uplifting that it is also the worst story in the bunch.

A Certain Point of View-this is the third-best story because of the severely melancholy tone. Read it in a house with all the lights off on a rainy Saturday afternoon for the best effect. Stalemate. Excellent.

The Final Exit-sort of happy ending. The guy was a Dark Jedi after all. I'm not going to break down in tears but not going to break into majestic song either.

Blaze of Glory-the second best story. The good guys winn but at what cost.

Side Trip-the best story. Not really depressing but Rebels, smugglers and Corsec agents are put through the hoops by our Mandalorian armored friend. (Not who you think) It ends with the Imperials building up to a smash to the Rebels on Derra IV, I think.

From this we can see that all the stories are basically depressing. These are not tales from the physical Empire but tales from the spirit and the attitude fostered by the Empire. The feelings of gloom, despair and grief. These capture the dark downheartening feel of TESB better than just about anything. That is why they are tales from the Empire.

If I missed any, forgive me.

Unlike the short story collections centered around the Mos Eisley Cantina, Episode V's bounty hunters, and Jabba's Palace, Tales from the Empire does not present content written specifically for a book. Rather, these stories are compiled from the Star Wars Adventure Journal, a periodical published in the 1990's by RPG licensee West End Games. For the most part, the authors are not from the usual gang of Bantam Spectra suspects, with the exceptions of Timothy Zahn, Kathy Tyers, and Michael Stackpole. When the Star Wars Adventure Journal began publication, they wanted a New York Times-bestselling author for the launch issue. Zahn had already completed the outstandingly successful Thrawn Trilogy and had no plans to write more in the Expanded Universe. Happily, the magazine's editor persuaded him to offer up some fresh content exclusive to the journal. Conversely, Stackpole's X-wing: Rogue Squadron had yet to be published, so his short story contribution acted as a preview for the novel to come.

Zahn's solo contribution "First Contact" tells us of how the former Emperor's Hand Mara Jade came to be in the service of rogue Talon Karrde. Talon is a well-written character and it's enjoyable to see him on one of his earlier adventures. Mara doesn't come into the story much but as always, Zahn provides an intriguing plotline, even in the brief length of this tale.

Stackpole's tale "Missed Chance" introduces former CorSec officer Corran Horn and his faithful astromech Whistler. Corran is stranded on the planet Garqi and is spearheading a scheme to simultaneously get away and damage the local representatives of the Empire. Tyers continues the saga of her character Tynian, introduced in Tales of the Bounty Hunters, with an origin story detailing the circumstances that led her to her life as a gun-for-hire and rogue.

The final story of the novel is an interesting collaboration between Stackpole and Zahn. Titled "Side Trip," the story is split into four parts (two for each author) and it more of a novella than a short story. Fan favorite Grand Admiral Thrawn is featured, along with Corran Horn once again. The labyrinthine plot has Zahn's stamp all over, and the twists and turns are good fun.

The other authors have a wide range of backgrounds and the quality of the stories is equally varied. Two that stood out are Laurie Burns' "Retreat from Coruscant" and "Do No Harm" by Erin Endom. Burns places her story right before the Empire's re-taking of Coruscant (the starting point of the famous Dark Horse comic saga Dark Empire). It involves two mail couriers swept up in the action as the New Republic attempts to evacuate the planet and move their operations to a new base. This time period would be fertile ground for a future novel. Endom's story is a first-person perspective of a medic sent along on a Rebel strike mission and learning of the horrors of warfare first-hand.

The other tales are largely solid and well-written. One which didn't hold up so well is Patricia Jackson's "The Final Exit," a story of a Dark Jedi's past which suffers from being severely over-written and a bit pretentious. It's OK to use the word "said" once in a while when a character speaks! In this story, everyone whispers, chuckles, grins, replies, demands, spits, blurts - there are so many descriptions it became a distraction to me. Using more neutral language allows the reader to interject some of their own interpretation of mood and tone, which makes for a more compelling reading experience.

Tales from the Empire is a solid if not particularly vital piece of the Expanded Universe; recommended for someone looking for a change of pace from the usual characters or someone wanting to learn more about Zahn and Stackpole's key characters.

Even though George Lucas' six-film Star Wars saga focuses intensely on a relatively small group of characters (the Skywalker family and the various Jedi and Sith Lords that tied their personal destiny to that of the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire), its setting ("a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....") was, and still is, a very huge canvas onto which many other stories can be easily included. Many fans, either by playing with their action figures as children or by writing fan fiction, created their own personal additions to the Star Wars universe and, at least in their own imagination, took part in the noble struggle between good and evil that's one of the building blocks of this modern day mythology.

Eventually, as Peter Schweighofer, editor of Tales From the Empire, writes in his introduction to this 1997 anthology of short stories, the action figures were put away and the fan fiction stories stashed away in drawers or file cabinets, but the fans' appetite for new Star Wars stories -- on film and on the printed page -- never really went away. And with the 1991 publication of Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, the fans received a cornucopia of "further adventures" featuring not only the beloved heroes from the movies but a whole new cast of allies and adversaries.

Tales From the Empire is a collection of nine short stories that first appeared in West End Games' Star Wars Adventure Journal, plus a short novel (Side Trip) co-written by two of the best writers of Star Wars fiction, Timothy Zahn and Michael A. Stackpole. Most of these brief excursions into Lucas' galaxy are set during the time of the Galactic Civil War and/or the first few years of the post-Endor New Republic era, with entirely original characters -- Darth Vader makes a cameo in the Zahn/Stackpole novel and events that took place in the films (the Death Star's destruction at Yavin) are mentioned in passing -- that inhabit the millions of star systems in the strife-torn vastness of space.

Although the stories by Kathy Tyers (The Truce at Bakura), Stackpole (the X-Wing series creator), and Zahn are as well-written as their published Star Wars novels, credit must also be given to lesser known writers as Tony Russo, Laurie Burns, and Angela Phillips, whose tale of a young hacker ("slicer" in Star Wars terminology) who joins the Rebellion in the face of her parents' opposition ("Slaying Dragons") is among the best pieces of short fiction I have read in a while.

Tales From the Empire is a collection of stories from the Star Wars adventure journal, a magazine that went out of print a few years back. Besides featuring games and rpg strategies, it let new authors write for the Star Wars expanded universe. Right off the bat, I'm going to list my ONLY real complaint: the title is misleading. The stories are not about the Empire, nor do all of them take place within the time of the Empire. However, that is my ONLY complaint.

To explain why I love this novel, I have to explain what made me like the Star Wars universe. It wasn't the movies themselves; the movies are great, and they get better with each viewing, but it was after playing Rebel Assault and reading this book that I was taken in. That game and this novel bring Star Wars down to a human scale. Rebel Assault let players on an alternate version of the first movie. Tales From the Empire lets the reader experience the pain and suffering of characters throughout the universe. A lot of these characters aren't war heroes or Jedi Knights. Most of them are simple folk, pulled into a war they tried to stay out of. One story has a medical doctor who is faced with a task of killing others to save one. There is a civilian mail carrier who's freighter is commandered to help retreat from Courscant. A loyal Imperial who must watch her best friend get taken away as a rebel traitor. The stories make up the heart of the Star Wars universe, and while they're not tearjerkers (well maybe), they'll definitely touch you emotionally.

What's also nice in these stories is seeing how the Star Wars universe has expanded. All the detail Lucas put into his classic trilogy has paid off. The book begins with a wonderful introduction which all Star Wars fans can relate to. All the stories feature little details that make them come alive; the Star Wars universe has its own name for paper, for the bathroom, for a switchblade, and almost anything else you can imagine. Heir to the Empire might be the classic Star Wars novel, but this book filled my imagination and put me right into the middle of the SW Universe. It allowed me to continue with new adventures in my mind long after I'd finished the book.

With regards to the writing styles, while the stories aren't as finessed as mainstream authors, they are all excellent reads. I liked Zahn's backstory for Talon Karrde, and would've loved to read "Mist Encounter" or "Command Decision", two Thrawn stories alleuded to in the intro. Corran Horn fans also take note: this novel features a bit of Corran's backstory, as well as a four-part story featuring the father-son team of Hal and Corran and how they captured Zekka Thyne (from Stackpole's X-Wing novels).

The bottom line: Get this novel. It is a true testament to the power of Star Wars fans and how they've kept the SW Universe alive for sixteen years.

First of all, I like short stories. I find that because they often focus on little known characters, they are more creative and interesting. This doesn't mean they are unimportant, as new characters that later become well known are introduced. (Mara Jade) As for the book as a whole, well, I won't spoil the stories for you, but I personally thought this book was really food for thought. The stories were not just about glory and adventure and let you see the little things, giving you time to concentrate on the fact that there was war going on, and things aren't always pretty. Do No Harm is a good example of this, and it manages to drive in a point despite that there are no well known characters and the story only focuses on one operation. Don't get me wrong, Corran Horn and Talon Karrde are in this book too, and with stories from both Stackpole and Zahn, this book is a prize for even an experience "EU" (expanded universe) reader. Another appealing aspect of this book as it does not concentrate just on the Empire. Many different points of view, from different sides, are brought into play, so you can really see the whole picture. That is, in war, everyone suffers. Without a doubt, Tales from the Empire is a good read, both for sci fi lovers and Star Wars fans.

One would think with a title like this, the stories would be about the EMPIRE. Wrong! Many stories have the empire as a small footnote, or nothing at all. I expected stories with empire characters, but there were few. I liked a few stories, like Blaze of Glory, but most of them were pathetic. I dont recomend you buy it, but it mind be good to borrow.

What the title and the cover seem to promise is far from the actual content. Sure the stories are set in the Star Wars universe, but unlike the other collections (Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Tales of the Mos Eisely Cantina, Tales from Jabba the Hutt) these stories are very bland, and uninteresting at times.

Sure, some of the stories and characters were noteworthy, but a large disapointment to fans of Boba Fett, Grand Admiral Thrawn, other main characters and the ideology and structure of the Empire itself. Actually, a few stories had nothing to do with the Empire at all it seemed, maybe just a footnote, but nothing that compares to the grandeur of the Empire as depicted in the movies and some of the other recent novels.

I am a huge SW fan, and have read about 80% of 'all' novels set within the universe, and this by far is one I want to forget about.

This has about 10 stories in it, the last being of 4 parts, written by both master authors, Timothy Zahn(my personal favorite) and Michael A. Stackpole, a great author in his own right. This last tale takes up about 100 pages and is really good. In fact, Many of these tales are quite good. One is about a medic assisting a recue team at an Imperial prison, one describes how Mara Jade came into Talon Karrde's service, and the others are good too. I highly recommend this collection of tales.

Short review: most of the stories in here are just okay. For the most part the writing isn't bad, just a little less polished than you might expect in a mass-market release. The biggest problem I had with the collection was that so many of the stories are basically retreads of one another. For instance, there are two stories about crack Rebel commando teams that read almost literally as the exact same story, just told by different writers with different characters; and at least four stories featuring some idealistic individual (usually young, female, implausibly brilliant, and at first not at all interested in the Rebellion) thrust into a crisis and making a decision to join "on principle". Add to this the number of stock situations and interchangeable characters and, well, the collection really does read like some of the better stuff you might find on ff.net. It is not surprising that probably the best story of the collection -- "Side Trips", a collaboration by Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole -- was written by the only writers in the book who had actual, long-standing writing credits to their names.

Don't expect great things with this collection. Go into it knowing its a sort of better class of fanfiction, and little more.