Spoiler

That's what I thought. But then why is the Emperor so confident to send Luke after Vader? Because he seems to want Luke to kill Vader and not the other way around.

 

Awesome fucking sauce!

 

Just finished reading this through to the latest chapter. I read Chapter 1 back when it was first published, but for reasons I can't really remember, I never read past that point until now.

My first thought is that the writing is, overall, superb, which was expected. My second thought is that I really liked the Son of the Suns trilogy better. As a huge SW geek and part-time canon-nazi, a lot of the background details, or rather how they were altered to suit the plot, really bothered me. A few examples:

1) Han Solo was dishonorably discharged five years before the Battle of Yavin (5 BBY). At the point where the fic begins, Luke is fifteen, going on sixteen, making the time period sometime in late 4 BBY. At that point in time, Han was already a smuggler working with Chewbacca, and should have been participating in the Battle of Nar Shadda against the Empire.

2) The Death Star should not have been complete for another three years. There is zero reason why Luke's presence in the Imperial court would accellerate that process. The subsequent battle of Yavin makes no sense in the context of this faster development, because the Rebel Alliance had not even established a base there yet, mainly because...

3) The Rebel Alliance didn't exist yet. The Alliance was founded in 2 BBY, a full year after the latest chapter takes place. There were rebel groups scattered across the galaxy pretty much from the founding of the Empire, many of them formed by Separatist holdouts, but after the Empire broke the back of the CIS remnant, there was no cohesive organization among the various dissident groups.

4) Even assuming the Rebel Alliance was formed earlier, the presence of Mon Calamari Star Cruisers is out of place. The Mon Calamari didn't donate their warships to the Rebellion until 1 BBY, after Ackbar was freed from Imperial slavery to act as an advocate for joining the Alliance within the Mon Calamari resistance.

5) The Han/Leia romantic subplot makes less sense than in canon, and actually comes across as more than a little creepy in this fic, considering that Leia is 16, and canonically Han is 26 (even worse, Han is mentioned as being "close to thirty", which implies to me that in this fic, he's actually a little older than in canon).

Overall, my attitude is that, if you want to change canon for your fic, go ahead. But shuffling the whole timeline around to fit your plot with no regard for having it make sense in the context of the larger picture just smacks of a certain literary laziness. If you only take the time to look and think about it, you can find loopholes even in extremely complex canon timelines (like SW) to fit your plot into it.

My personal rule of thumb is that you stretch your plot to accommodate canon backstory, not the other way around. For me, it preserves suspension of disbelief allowing greater enjoyment of the story, rather than struggling to ignore your canon-radar going off every five sentences. There were a number of relatively easy ways to avoid this personal pet peeve of mine, but Blank101 didn't bother.

One example: Have Luke meet Han a year earlier when he's fourteen and Han is still in the military, then spread the interaction between the two of them out over the course of a few years. In the beginning, it was constantly brought up how Luke had pretty much all of his time monopolized by the Emperor and Indo's lessons, yet from what I can tell of the story after that, 90% of Luke's day seemed to be free time to screw around outside the palace or to have plot-serving chats with various characters. If he really had so little time to himself, there would be no reason to rush the timeline. You could even do it in pretty much the same amount of writing; all you would need to add is a throwaway line here and there about how x-amount of time has passed between interactions.

So yeah, TL;DR: I found it to be a very well-written, intensely frustrating read. 4/5

 

You're assuming that every Star Wars fan ever read the Expanded Universe novels.

Really, the only books I read were the Han Solo Trilogy and I, Jedi. That's it. I believe the reason why Blank isn't molding his plot to fit canon is because he assumes (and rightly so, in my opinion) that a lot of Star Wars fans either don't give a rip about EU canon or find the greater part of it a piece of shit, like I do. The EU books, much like the prequels, was only created with the intention of earning Lucas some more profits. He didn't have any creative input in the EU books at all. His only rule was: "Don't mess with the original trilogy timeline." The reason why so many fans hate the EU is because a great deal of it reads as particularly bad fanfiction, which it technically is. Lucas is simply making money off of it.

 

Why do you know this? And what does it matter? This isn't that. It's not canon; by way of being written by a completely different author than Lucas, none of that shit matters. Not a lick.

Fanon is based off canon, often as loosely as the author desires. I wonder though, how many people could claim such profound Star Wars knowledge. It's scary, really.

 

Lol, holy shit, I am a huge nerd :facepalm. Honestly, it doesn't matter. All I can say is that it does bug me some, and that I have a tendency to fly into nerd rages very easily when I'm extremely tired.

EDIT: after reading over what I posted earlier, I do still stand by bullet point #5 and the final paragraph, even if the rest is just kind of embarrassing...

 

As scary as in depth knowledge of Harry Potter.

 

I guess ignorance is bliss here.

I read like 50 of the EU books when I was younger. I recently tried one again and realized if it was a fic recommended on DLP it wouldn't even make the library.

If canon gets in the way of a good story, change it. There's no point in trying to stay loyal to the original if it hurts you. Just as long as it's explained in a believable way.

As for Leia/Han, you're assuming that A Galaxy Far, Far Away holds the same moral outlook that we've (only recently) gained regarding ages for romance, and just like in the movies, Leia is extremely mature here.

 

...ya, regardless, the Han/Leia romance still comes off as rather creepy. I just try not to think about it too much when reading. I am reminded of bad Naruto fanfiction where Naruto is 12 years old and somehow in a relationship with someone like Anko or Kurenai who is in their 20's.

 

My big oroblem with the author's disregard of the EU (well, most of the EU) is that we don't ever see him write Thrawn. Which I imagine would be awesome.

 

Update

Spoiler

No Han this chapter, but a lot of Vader. I think we should've seen a bit more from Luke's point of view during the fight, but apart from that, what a chapter.

Indo's in on the plot too now. I'm almost surprised at how smoothly Vader managed to convince him to turn.

 

I'm not. He had a real stiffy for his son.

 

More that he actually believed what Vader was saying about the truth of his son's death with no evidence to back it up.

 

Read the latest chapter.

Spoiler

Bit annoyed with how it looks like Vader's going to sacrifice himself to keep the Emperor in place while the Rebels execute their plot.

 

It's over. I don't know what to think of it actually. It went in a totally different direction than I thought originally. I think it held more potential as a startup to a tale than an actual story. All the build up we went through was mostly ignored, though some aspects had bearing.

I hope the sequel will be more fleshed out. This, actually, left me lacking.

 

Pretty epic conclusion in my opinion; It managed to tie up loose ends with the emperor and Vader much better than I honestly expected, and not necessarily in the way I expected it.

For a while there I was thinking that Luke would turn on the Emperor after being forced to kill Vader, and then just disappear into the woodwork in the ensuing chaos. What Blank managed to do satisfied me on a basic level from Vader's characterization and Indo's, but left enough threads built up to have a clear cut sequel that I'm looking forward to without feeling like I was left hanging. I was a bit disappointed with Han in the last few chapters, but it was a curve ball that I didn't really see coming, which was very nice.

I must admit that the random set of scenes after the last chapter I really could have done without, as it was a bit much of a teaser for the sequel, and now I'm antsy...

 

I just got the alert, sequel is up! IIRC from his other fics, we should be getting an update a week from now on because it's already (mostly) finished!

 

Wow, I thought blank had disappeared! I'm tempted to reread the first one, now...

I don't like the name, though. Especially given the Emperor is dead now.

 

You mistake it. He is not the son of the Emperor, he is the son of the Empire. An important distinction to make.

 

Yes, but that arises from his connection to Palpatine, and raising in the palace. With the Emperor gone, I would say the focus shifts from that - as Luke says in this chapter, his connection was always to the Emperor, and not the Empire.

Anyway, I'm not saying it's no longer true - he still remains the eponymous Empire's Son - just that I don't like that being the title, and don't think it fits as well.