We Don't Need
Their Kind of Scum
Review by Toryn Farr
Boba Fett is without a
doubt one of the more popular characters in the STAR WARS
Universe... But what's his story?!
The
Mandalorian Armor (Book 1 of The Bounty Hunter Wars)
Slave Ship
(Book 2 of The Bounty Hunter Wars)
by K.W. Jeter
I usually read a book twice -- once very fast to find out what happens, and again, out loud, to my husband as we're driving in the car. I often find that what seemed like an action-packed thrill ride on first reading can morph, on being read aloud, into an interminable, tedious mess.
Unfortunately, both of K.W. Jeter's forays into the Star Wars universe have been nearly unfinishable on second reading. The characterizations stink, the plot is riddled with continuity errors, and the writing is so padded with pages of boring introspection I kept wondering if Jeter got paid by the word. The editors must have been asleep at the switch for this train wreck. I suspect they already knew the contract was going to Del Ray, so why bother putting any effort into this series?
Where shall I start? How about with characters. First of all, even the publisher seems to think there are no "good guys" to root for in this series. They are wrong, though. Boba Fett has the potential to be a riveting character. He was fascinating and actually somewhat heroic in Daniel Keys Moran's story "The Last One Standing" in Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Moran gave us tremendous insight into this complex character whose overdeveloped (and warped) sense of morality led to his killing a corrupt fellow Protector, serving the Empire as a stormtrooper and later as a bounty hunter, and despising Han Solo for smuggling spice even as he himself worked for Jabba the Hutt. It's too bad that in Jeter's books he has been reduced to an overly-talkative automaton careless enough to allow one of Jabba's dancing girls to get the jump on him in his own ship. At the end of Slave Ship, he is again standing in Slave I looking down the barrel of a blaster -- this time held by Bossk. Fett is saved not by his own cleverness but by Bossk's stupidity. Jeter's "Boba Fett" seems to be constantly reneging on deals, which goes completely against his characterization elsewhere as a man of his word. Be warned -- those of you who love Boba Fett, look elsewhere for him. He ain't here.
Jeter's utter lack of understanding of the characters he is writing about surfaces in his portrayal of the other bounty hunters, especially Zuckuss, who goes from being a Gand "findsman" with a native prescience similar to the Force (and who joins the Rebellion at the end of M. Shayne Bell's story, "Of Possible Futures") to a sniveling, gullible wimp in this current trilogy. Dengar, far from being the awesomely strong Imperial-trained cyborg assassin whose brain has been altered to eliminate emotion, has been reduced to a love-sick mush-brain who can't seem to do more than wring his hands about how he and his lady Manaroo have been separated, and how he needs lots of money so he can retire and marry her. Neelah is a self-centered, victimized shrew. Vader and Palpatine are openly antagonistic (and endlessly chatty) with each other, and Prince Xizor displays such reckless temerity he should have been fried by Force lightning or choked by Vader before ever bringing his plans to fruition. And what nonsensical plans they are. There are wheels within wheels within wheels in these books. Everybody's conspiring against everybody else, and there's really nobody to root for.
The books are each divided into portions labeled "THEN" (around the time of A New Hope/Shadows of the Empire) and "NOW" (during Return of the Jedi). It all gets terribly confusing, but I'll try to sort it out.
THEN, Prince Xizor convinced the Emperor that the way to crush the Rebellion was to destroy the Bounty Hunters Guild, thus ensuring that only the fittest would survive -- and become agents of the Empire's will. Please! Am I the only person who thinks this is a stupid plan? If you want to hire the bounty hunters, just do it. They respond well to great gobs of money. There's no need to kill off most of them first; all you're doing is killing off skilled potential employees. Regardless, Xizor anonymously hires Boba Fett to destroy the Bounty Hunters Guild. (Kud'ar Mub'at, the spider-like intermediary sitting in the center of an intricate web, both literally and figuratively, spinning off lies and subnodes with equal ease, is one of the few highlights of the stories.) At the same time, the hereditary head of Kuat Drive Yards, Kuat of Kuat, sets in motion a plot to destroy Xizor by falsely implicating him in the destruction of Luke Skywalker's homestead on Tatooine.
In Book One, Boba Fett joins the Bounty Hunters Guild and teams up with Bossk, Zuckuss, IG-88, and an old friend, the cyborg D'harhan, to capture a Hutt from the Shell clan. (D'harhan would have been a great deal more interesting if he hadn't been summarily killed off -- used up and tossed aside by Boba Fett like a blown Kleenex.) Bossk goes back to the Bounty Hunters Guild and kills its head and his father, Cradossk, thus partially fulfilling Fett's secret mission. (I have to say that I enjoyed the portrayal of Bossk, whose main delight in life seems to be in killing and eating other creatures.)
In Book Two, the Guild has been split into two factions. To finish its disintegration, Xizor arranges an irresistible bounty -- a renegade stormtrooper commander worth five million credits. Boba Fett again teams up with Bossk (and, in a bizarre way, the dead Zuckuss) to capture him. Bossk tries to cheat Fett, but ends up stuffed in an escape pod instead. All that was THEN -- interjected into the story of NOW in huge chunks.
NOW begins in Book One with Boba Fett being rescued by Dengar and Jabba's dancer, Neelah, as he lay dying after blasting his way out of the Sarlacc. Neelah needs him alive because he has clues to her forgotten past, which is all tied in with Kuat of Kuat. Dengar wants him alive to help him earn enough money to retire from bounty hunting. The three form a precarious partnership and escape to Fett's ship, which Bossk has wired with explosives. In a beautifully done scene, Fett turns the tables, and Bossk is left in an escape pod once again, wondering Why won't he just die?!
In fact, Fett's ninety-nine lives seem to be the underlying theme of these books, as far as I can tell. Boba Fett should have died a dozen times. Several more times, he seems to be dead, only to show up alive after all. At the end of the second book we read "How many times, wondered Boba Fett, could he die--and yet not die? Someday it would be all over for him . . ." But not yet. Fett won't tell Neelah and Dengar where they're going, so the passengers spend time talking about Boba Fett's history THEN. That's really about all that happens in the NOW plot. We're left in hyperspace, clueless about our destination, and waiting for Dengar to tell us what happened THEN when Boba Fett came limping in to Kud'ar Mub'at's web with Prince Xizor waiting to kill him. At least, I think that's where we are . . .
A part of my confusion lies with the weird plot construction, but another part is due to the apparent lack of research on Jeter's part. Even a half wit could have bought copies of Tales of the Bounty Hunters and Tales from Jabba's Palace and figured out that:
1) IG-88 wasn't created
yet during the timeframe of this story,
2) Zuckuss was
not paired with Bossk but with 4-LOM in the hunt for Han
Solo,
3) Bossk, when
last we saw him in Tales, was in a cage about to be
executed,
4) Jabba's
sailbarge was not made at Kuat Drive Yards,
5) "A long
time ago in a galaxy far, far away" cannot be
characterized as "NOW."
Finally, the writing itself was almost insufferable.
In the NOW plot, a character says one line, followed by three or four pages of introspection. By the time another character replies, I had to turn back to recall what had been said. A lot of the narrative has a high "duh" factor -- repeating stuff we already know, as if we're too stupid to remember something that happened two chapters back. Throughout the second book, I kept wondering if maybe they'd tried to stretch a decent standalone plot into a trilogy so they could make three times the bucks.
The dialogue often bordered on the ridiculous: Bossk thinking, "I'm outta here," or saying, "Don't sweat it," appear alongside howlers like, "Wait just a Standard Time Part," and "keep your vocal apparatus muted." Jeter uses the term "barve" about a jillion times, meaning either "guy" or "bastard" or something in between -- I can't tell. ("You're one dangerous barve.") But in the original J.D. Montgomery story, I believe a "barve" was really something along the lines of a cow. (?!)
Oh, and one more thing before I go: The cover blurb for Slave Ship reads in part "Hoping to fuel rumors of his death, Boba Fett abandons his ship, Slave I, and sets out to claim the prize. Yet his every move leads him closer to a trap set by the cunning Prince Xizor. Fett will die before becoming Xizor's pawn in the Emperor's war against the Rebels. And he may have to. For in order to gain his freedom he must outwit a sentient weapon that feeds on human spirits." I sure hope this weapon is in Book Three, because for the life of me I don't recall seeing it. Perhaps I fell asleep at a critical moment . . .
Despite all my complaints, I will buy the third book, Hard Merchandise. Like the barve getting married for the fifth time, I am eternally hopeful that the next one will be better.
(Toryn Farr is better known in Real Life to her friends as Chris, is a new contributor to ECHO STATION. During the 90 minutes per day her two-year-old is napping, Chris attempts to run an internet design business and write fantasy fiction.)