Customer Reviews

Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The last Star Wars novel I read that was based on a video game was the excellent "Republic Commando: Hard Contact" by Karen Traviss. I had hopes that "The Ruins of Dantooine" could be nearly as good as the Traviss novel, but it wasn't to be. "The Ruins of Dantooine" felt somewhat like a video game and it just wasn't very good. The story was fairly simple and quest orientated and wasn't nearly as engaging as it could have been.

The Empire learns that a Rebel Holocron has been left on the planet Dantooine. The holocron contains a full list of all of the Rebel Alliance spies within the Empire. If it falls into the hands of the Empire it could effectively crush the ability of the Rebellion to operate. Everything would be compromised. The Empire sends one of their spies to recover the holocron. The Alliance sends Finn Darktrin to locate the holocron before the Empire finds it. An Empire biologist, Dusque Mistflier, somehow gets mixed up into the search for the holocron and assists Finn as Dusque becomes more and more disillusioned with the realities of the Empire.

This book just wasn't very interesting. The story itself is quite basic and followed a video game structure with missions and a boss battle. While the chance to explore Dantooine, and a post Prequel Trilogy Naboo was potentially interesting, the overall experience was weak and lacking. The one good thing here is that there is no need to have played the game to understand the story, but I can only hope that the game was better than this book. It was a nice effort, but the only reason to read this book is to read every Star Wars book published. That's about it.

-Joe Sherry

Having played the game, then read the book, I have to say that I have never read a worse Star Wars novel in my life. Yes, you heard me, 'The Ruins of Dantooine' is terrible. From the very beginning of the book where it tries to tie in the book with the game by inserting some junk about how the main character became a bioengineer by 'mastering scout and learning a medic's knowledge of organic chemistry' (apparently Star Wars characters have to climb the same trees as you do in the game at the Imperial Academy. I bet Luke unlocked his Force Sensitive Character Slot when he mastered Tatooine Dirt Farming by gaining Vaporator Maintenance 4, but I digress). In any event the book is the most boring read that I have ever encountered. Play the game, fine, but stay as far away from the book as possible. Especially if you haven't played the game, because most of the LOL THIS IS JUST LIKE IN STAR WARS GALAXIES LOL jokes will end up going straight over your head and making the book seem worse than it already is.

This is not Baldur's Gate 1 or 2. Thank your lucky stars! For fans of the on-line role playing game, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), this is a neat little novel. I found the plot to be interesting, mostly because I have been playing SWG since it went retail and I thought it interesting to see how many of the game devices were woven into the plot. It's almost as if they developed a list of game characters, planets, professions, and beasts and see how many of them they could get into the book. They even refer to imperials as "imps". I could see my own character in the locations described and felt like "I" was there.

If you are not a player or fan of SWG then skip this Star Wars entry as the characters are mostly cardboard and the plot pretty predictable. I will give kudos to the author(s) for having courage in the ending, however. Overall, I enjoyed it but wouldn't recommend it to a non SWG player

Though I've never played the online RPG Star Wars Galaxies I found this a surprisingly enjoyable read. Sure, it wasn't great, it didn't even have pretensions of trying to be so.

The characters are primarily straight out of central casting. The two major characters are likeable, but with no real surprises. The plot twist, if it is meant to be one, is telegraphed with all the subtlety of a 2x4 to the skull.

However that is only minor as the story, like the Star Wars movies, is really a break-neck ride through one fun and dire situation after the other. In this aspect the book and author succeed at providing some easy to digest entertainment.

Some of the iconic Star Wars movie characters appear, however they are a bit superfluous and could probably be done away with. There was a bit of an effort to have Leia inspire/change the protagonist, but the other appearances were of the "Hi, look it's me, Luke, Luke from Star Wars" variety.

If you are looking for a quick, enjoyable light read this is recommended.

Normally, I love the star wars books, and have prided myself on reading every single book at least twice. I can't even finish this. It took me a month to get to page 200 because I didn't even want to pick the book up. The writing is bad, the plot is bad, and it had so much potential. It took 200 pages to get to a point, and I don't recommend that any read this. Not a normal recommendation from me for a star wars novel.

I play the game and I love it, but this book was a grind getting through, the plot was ok and the ending was above average, but overall the story suffered from a rushed and low budget feeling, and this is a book, not a B movie!

My recommendations is do not buy/read unless you are a hardcore SW fan. It's a waste of time/money.

Ruins is the story of Dusque, an Imperial Bioengineer who becomes involved with a Rebel spy named Finn. This is a novelization of a video game and it reads like those fine Junior Jedi Scholastic Books novels about the Solo kids in their Jedi Academy days.

The writing is simple and straight forward targeting younger readers. Because it was packaged in the same manner as the adult and older teen books this writing style bored me at first. I have read over a dozen of the Scholastic books and enjoyed them, but I was expecting something else here. The story took a long time to get involved with because the characters were a little to card board and unfamiliar. Dusque is a naive younger girl who is very smart. She joins Finn looking for a Holo with the names of rebel spies and sympathizers hoping to secure it before the storm troopers find it.

The events take place after the battle of Yavin where the first Death Star was destroyed. The story itself purports to involve a great mission, but has no importance in the timeline of events for the SW galaxy. The holo is in the ruins of an old jedi temple on Dantooine.

C3PO, Lando, Han, Luke and Leia make cameos. Once Finn enters the story, it gets more interesting and I do recommend it for younger readers.

This was a good book but it had many flaws, for one it wasnt truly an Adult Novel, it had was barely over 300 pages but it had bigger faunt then the other Star Wars books, and it was written like the Young Jedi Knights, which is ok if they didnt try to pass it off as an Adult Novel, all in all a good book with just to many flaws to give it above a 3. (dont get me started on the coverart)

Okay, I'm a pretty big Star Wars nerd, I am a player of SWG, and I really liked the beginning of this book. It was funny to hear references to "crafting stations," and the "transport shuttles." And seeing the moons of Lok and Rori mentioned were really nice and I enjoyed reading a book about places that my Jedi character had been. Also the appearances of the creatures that my character had fought was great too.

However the book took a little long to get started. I mean the book is about 280 some pages long and they don't get to Dantooine until around page 200. Also everyone worth their Star Wars salt knows that you don't make a holocron to keep a list. Holocrons can only be made by Jedi Masters or Sith Lords. Now if they had said that there was a computer terminal or something like that that had the list of rebel sympathizers, that would have been more believable.

Also, unless you actually play the game before reading this book, a lot of it won't really make any sense to you.

In closing, it's a good quick read for the people who have played the game, and a nice little diversion for Star Wars fans, but let's face it, this could have been a lot better.

At first I was enjoying the book and identifying with the lines that referred to actual in game content but then it became forced. The story began to feel as though the story had been written and then an editor who knew something of the game came along and added references here and there. With that in my head it became very annoying instead of enjoyable; but might have been my mood at the time. I am an avid player of SWG and have been since launch off and on and really wanted to enjoy this more than I did.

What I did enjoy though was the ending, it saved the book. The ending was spectacular and as I reflect, well worth the read...I really enjoyed riding it out...slightly predictable by heck of a lot of fun nonetheless.

I noticed that since the release of this edition no others followed...wish they would give it one more shot. 3.5 stars.

*This is a updated review from my older account.