Star Wars: Crucible

This book marks the end of an era.  This is almost certainly the furthest ahead in the timeline Star Wars publishing will go before Episode VII comes out.  As someone who is pretty invested in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the concept of Episode VII destroying all of the canon that I have come to love (warts and all) worries me.

Before Episode VII was announced, this book was intended to be a passing of the torch novel.  Luke, Han, and Leia (and Lando!) would fight one last big fight and then at least move a little into the background.  However, when Episode VII was announced Troy Denning actually rewrote the end of the novel so that it was less blatant who the characters were passing the torch to.

Denning obviously felt that he needed more than just the characters advanced age to retire them.  I won't spoil which, if any, of the characters survive the book but basically every single character takes a beating.  Jedi healing trances are pushed almost beyond belief and while there is not that high of a body count, there is a very high injury count.

The book is almost a direct sequel to the last Fate of the Jedi book and it starts in a galaxy that is sort of in a unique position in Star Wars.  There are many Sith throughout, the Jedi are not a part of the government at all, and there are multiple other independent states but still only one big government.  It is a shame that this political situation is (probably) about to get plowed under by the new movie.

There have been some complaints that the villains of this book do not make for a fitting last hurrah for the big three, and maybe that is true.  However, considering all that they have faced, it would be hard to do something so galaxy shatteringly intense that hasn't already been done.  However, these antagonists are different than the vast majority of previous antagonists and that makes them interesting.

Overall, I would give this book a 87%.

The Boat

This book is the original novel the famous movie Das Boot is based upon.  If you have not seen the movie, as I have not, it is the story of German U-boat crew and their adventures in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.  While that description makes it sound like a lighthearted romp, it is anything but.  The entire crew and the boat get pushed to their breaking points and beyond.

The author of the book actually served on a U-boat and he says that while the novel is fictional it is very closely based on real events. The author felt so strongly about this that he complained bitterly when the movie further dramatized the events to make it more exciting.

The book provides some interesting statistics as well.  Out of the 40,000 men who manned u-boats and terrorized the shipping lanes, 30,000 of them never returned.  That is a truly awful ratio.  Another troubling thing that most people do not think about  is how young everyone was.  The book implies that most people serving on submarines were under 20 years old.  However, after reading the book that is somewhat understandable because anyone suffering even the slightest bit from age would probably not be able to hold up under the constant pressure (literal and otherwise).

While I know a fair bit about World War II, most of my knowledge is confined to the land battles.  I did not know that U-boats were vastly different than modern submarines, which spend most of their time underwater.  U-boats spent most of their time on the surface, only going underwater to attack or to avoid being spotted.

I think the thing that I will remember most about this book is that it managed to portray German soldiers in World War II not as Nazis, not as men just following orders, but as tired boys just trying to do their jobs and make it home.   The sufferings of the crew, like not being able to sleep because they are battered by a massive storm for days on end, are really brought to life by the author and descriptions like the green rings around the Chief Engineer's eyes from sleep loss are enough to make one cringe.

Overall, I would give this book an 89%.

The Prince and the Pauper

I have never read any Mark Twain other than those mandated by my middle school curriculum until this one. This is another one of the many books I have inherited from my grandmother.  I decided to read it because this version has the subtitle "A Tale for Young People of All Ages" and I really liked that.

The story is sort of a classic tale of two people switching positions, in this case the aforementioned prince and pauper.  Interestingly, unlike a lot of these stories, the two main characters have no contact with each other for the majority of the story.  Also, considering the age of this tale, it probably inspired a lot of the more modern renditions of the switching story.

This book does portray a pretty grim picture of the differences between the upper and lower classes in England in those days.  Also, it shows some issues with medicine at the time and how willing people were to accept the "prince's" drastic change in behavior and knowledge levels.

What was the most interesting part of the book to me was that there were various endnotes that explained various historical implications of the events of the novel including how he felt the events of the young prince's childhood in this story affected his actual reign as king.  They also talk about various laws and historical facts that influenced his decisions about various plot points in the book.

I think that the thing I will remember about this book is the harshness of the laws presented here.  It is easy to think of things like the Salem Witch Trials as a isolated historical incident but it was really just a harsher and more extreme version of the norm at that time.  The fact that people were actually routinely flogged and burned at the stake, even for relatively minor issues, is a troubling part of our world's history.

This copy was originally published in 1944 (I think, check out this website for the interesting history of this particular printing run http://www.twainquotes.com/UniformEds/UniformEdsCh35.html).  Another interesting thing about this version, is that, because it was published during WWII, it has a small picture in the bottom inside of the back of the dust jacket.  I thought that this was pretty interesting as I had never seen anything like it before.

Overall, I would give this book a 86%.