#Drew Karpyshyn

[infinitepunches]

There’s nothing that warrants a movie trilogy more than the fact that Tarre Vizsla was 55 years old when Darth Bane massacred the Army of Darkness and established the Rule of Two.

So implicitly, the first Mandalorian to become a Jedi fought in the war that was believed to have completely destroyed the Sith.

There’s a Tolkien-style epic buried in there somewhere.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[clevermird]

Review: The Old Republic: Revan by Drew Karpyshyn

I remember that back when this book was released, it was pretty controversial in the Star Wars fandom. Reading it now, I see why. 

The Old Republic: Revan follows two storylines: the first is that of former Sith Lord turned Jedi hero Revan who, years after the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, begins having strange dreams about a dead planet and sets out with Canderous Ordo to figure out what happened to him during the years that he can’t remember. Meanwhile, in an empire hidden in the Unknown Regions, Sith Lord Scourge investigates a series of murder attempts on a high-ranked Sith and begins to learn the truth about the man who sits on the throne.

The first thing that needs to be said about this book is that, while it makes a token effort to be accessible to Star Wars fans who aren’t familiar with the KOTOR games, it really assumes that readers have played at least the first one – characters and their relationships are given perfunctory introductions, important backstory is glossed over, and the story will generally have little impact if you don’t already know and care about this particular sub-era of the Star Wars universe. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it is a sequel/spinoff, after all), but it’s worth noting. 

With that being said, Drew Karpyshyn is an excellent writer. Even when little was happening in the story, his prose kept me engaged and the book was very easy to read. While the main cast is somewhat limited by what was established in the games (Revan, in particular, suffers from the bland “everyman” issues that result when writers are trying to adapt an RPG protagonist whose story is designed to be as flexible for player choice as possible), many of the new minor characters introduced are well-drawn and interesting for the amount of screen time they get. The fight scenes are fun and there’s a cool setpiece or two. 

It’s probably not much of a spoiler to say that the two storylines eventually converge. Around that point, we get a reveal that casts several major events from the KOTOR games in a new light and provides an explanation to some mysteries left unsolved in those games. I really was not a fan of this reveal. In my opinion, it cheapens several characters’ choices and makes one of the most interesting moral questions of the games moot. I also was not a fan of the ending, which I feel treats one of my favorite characters from the games poorly by denying them a resolution to their character arc in favor of turning them into support for Revan’s story. 

My overall thoughts on this book are hard to summarize, but I’d say that it’s a well-written, engaging book that falls apart more the longer I think about it. A must-read for Star Wars expanded universe completionists or for those desperate to know what happened after KOTOR, but confusing for those not familiar with the games and an ultimately unsatisfying addition to the universe. 

Rating: 6/10

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Theron Shan- Annihilation by Drew Karpyshyn

Louis de Pointe du Lac- The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice

Sylvestri Yarrow- Out of the Shadows by Justina Ireland

Ty Blackthorn- The Dark Artifices trilogy by Cassandra Clare

[drelldreams]

drew karpyshyn is the coolest mass effect writer for putting human aliens into the book. a female turian ambassador. a female salarian information broker. a female batarian. that’s so fucking cool. the man did it right instead of pulling an ‘hey lets just leave out female aliens and hope no one notices’ thing.

[strangeshipper]

Kas'im fights rancors at Lehon Star Wars :: Drew Karpyshyn, Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, ch.23

[There is only one rancor in the novel, but I draw two of them just for composition]

"Kas'im wasn't surprised in the least by the ambush. He'd sensed the rancor's presence from several hundred meters away, just as it had surely caught his scent and stalked him from some great distance. He met the creature's charge with calm, ruthless efficiency. (...) Kas'im twisted and dodged, leaping over one attack, then dropping to the ground to roll beneath another. He moved so fast he would have been nothing but a blur had the rancor not been blinded by rage. And with each evasion he struck another blow, whittling away at the mountain of sinew and flesh like a master sculptor working a lump of lommite. The rancor floundered, lumbering and stumbling as if it were performing some drunken spacer's dance. In contrast, Kas'im was quick and precise. With each passing second his opponent slowed, its strength ebbing away. At last, with a forlorn groan, the beast toppled forward and lay motionless."

[mapas-fantasticos]

Map of the Mortal Realms from the Chaos Born trilogy by Drew Karpyshyn.

[pipperoni32-blog]

Revan

Star Wars: The Old Republic (Book 1)

By Drew Karpyshyn / 4 stars

Set after the events of the first Knights of the Old Republic game, we follow Revan, now married to Bastilla. He's been plagued by dreams featuring a lightning covered world and decides to seek help from Canderous to help him decipher what they might mean.

There are nods to the second KOTOR game as well, as gradually the timeline catches up to after the events of that one as well. Written by one of the creators of the story for those games, it's nice to see his take on how life could have gone for the characters. We meet up with The Exile, and she joins in the search for where Revan could have gone, and what he was searching for in the Unknown Regions.

Very well written, with many old friends to catch up with. Now I'll have to take a short break from reading to go play the games again!

While that might be my "official" review for now, there are a few more things to say. xD One, this is a re-read that's always satisfying and is such a great start to get me back into the Star Wars books and universe.

In a sad, glass-half-full perspective, the plus side of having the older books declared a "Legends" series (since the new movies did not follow the same timeline/events) is that now I have an even greater chance of reading them all someday! While some stories might never get told, or reach the conclusion they were building to, I have a lot of great books (some not so great) to look forward to on this journey.

And some of my favorite video games to replay. :D

[omegas-spaghettios]

As someone who has read the Darth Bane trilogy I am 100% convinced if The Acolyte opening was used for those books the same dudebros who are pissy about the show would love it

A sith master (Bane) who believes that discretion and deceit are the key tools of the sith sends his apprentice (Zannah) to prove herself worthy of his title by killing a jedi master without a lightsaber. He does this to illustrate how the sith must hide in plain sight, be untraceable, and demonstrate how the sith are so beyond the short-sighted jedi that they don't even need lightsabers to kill their masters.

The same raging bigots that are furious over this show would love this story if they could simply get past the apparently unforgivable sin of black women being as good at things as the sith lords and assassins they grew up with.

[ryssabrin]

ok color me intrigued

[ipreferfiction]

Elshe'reth and your lovely Revan for the Unhinged Blorbo Bingo

Elshe'reth:

Revan:

[colmansnotes]

Staying on my ME kick, just finished the first game again and had forgotten how absolutely stellar the story is. The pacing, the ramp up in tension, the way the back story is revealed, hell even the little touches like the way the Citadel tower was designed as a landing pad for a Reaper. Everything really comes together in that last hour or so. Hard to remember a story in any medium that tugged that cohesively right to the last moment.

Any streaming studio could buy the rights to this thing, make a few tiny tweaks to dialogue and maybe a few beats here and there, and have a 10-12 episode TV series that would absolutely thrill. Seriously, the amount of work needed to port this thing to the small screen is basically zero. Visual design, characters, the vast majority of the dialogue - it's all there and as close to a slam dunk as possible.

Of course we'd probably get another rewrite and reimagining to avoid retreading the same ground as the game, and the result would be immensely worse for the trouble, but I can dream...

[felassan]

Article: 'Legendary Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect veterans team up for a "high challenge" D&D book that sends you straight to hell'

Excerpt:

"The designer of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, James Ohlen, has written a new D&D adventure with Children of Time author Adrian Tchaikovsky. Called 'Chains of Asmodeus,' this official 286-page sourcebook (which is available on Dungeon Master's Guild) sends your characters into the Nine Hells to save a soul – theirs, or that of a loved one. It also serves as something of a reunion for ex-Bioware staffers. Alongside Baldur's Gate designer James Ohlen, Drew Karpyshyn (who was involved with Mass Effect and many of its tie-in novels) is listed as a writer on the project. While it's primarily available as a PDF download, Chains of Asmodeus will be given the print-on-demand treatment 'soon.' Either way, all proceeds go directly to Extra Life, the charity that provides medical care for children. Designed for players levelled between 11 and 20, this will be more of a challenge than most Dungeons and Dragons books; alongside more than 50 'High Challenge' monsters that would very much like to kill you, adventurers will have to battle through a new item corruption mechanic as well as the Archdevil Asmodeus himself, Lord of the Nine. As those lofty titles would suggest, he's bad news. Such bad news, in fact, that he spends most of his time plotting to entrap major figures like politicians, rulers, and adventurers. That's where you come in - he's either caught your soul in a pact or has captured the soul of a loved one to coerce you. (An average Tuesday for characters in the best tabletop RPGs, in other words.) If the Nine Hells sound familiar, that's because they're the setting of the Baldur's Gate 3 opening. They also feature heavily in the game's D&D prequel, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, so Chains of Asmodeus could serve as a good add-on for that adventure. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can grab Chains of Asmodeus for $29.99 here."

[source]

[attonposting]

Okay, so canonically the Jedi Exile fucks off to the Unknown Regions to go find Revan and leaves their half-dozen adult padawans to spend the rest of their lives wondering when Master's gonna come home with the milk. And in the cut content, Atton squeezes himself along for the Exile's next misadventure, and they go off to have KotOR III instead of some novel we don't talk about.

But in my headcanon, he turns that ship around to Alderaan and forces the Exile to take a vacation for one kriffing moment in the overstuffed responsibility conga line that is their life, and it's peaceful and awkward and maybe a little disastrous at times and romantic if that's your flavor because it's definitely mine, and Drew Karpyshyn can pry that from the rigor mortis of my death-grip fangirl fingers.

Sure, Revan's still on the todo list, but the galaxy's greatest problem causer can wait until the Exile's had their horribly overdue mental health month.

[klerothesnowman]

The one thing in KOTOR2 I hate

I love KOTOR2 a lot, easily one of my favourite games ever. I've grown to be a big Star Wars nerd.

I hate that KOTOR is "The Jedi Civil War" and I hate that it's called that because Chris Avellone wanted to make a point about Star Wars.

Because the idea that the JCW was only about the Jedi is a load of shit. The idea that to the rest of the galaxy the war was Jedi squabbling and dragging everyone into it is low key insulting to Drew Karpyshyn, a man who I admittedly don't have a lot of affection for at best and a man whose name I curse for the world building in The Old Republic at worse.

Because the implication is that the JCW wasn't about anything. That the only thing that mattered was that Revan, former Jedi, wants to kill the Jedi.

Even without all the retcons/additions from KOTOR2 that say Revan was playing 4D chess and preparing the Galaxy for the *real* threat, there was obviously something more going on with that conflict. How can this war be *just* about the Jedi when one of the primary figureheads of the whole thing is Saul Karath, who is most certainly not a Jedi.

The Republic was taken completely off guard by the Mandalorian Wars, struggling to regain their footing after the Great Sith War that preceded it. They were unable to muster an adequate response in time to protect the galaxy.

The Sith Empire is near entirely veterans of that war, the vast majority of the Republic's military forces turning around and going "We should be in charge." When you talk to members of the Empire, or sympathizers, they often talk about how strong and *secure* the Empire is. They call the Republic weak, ineffective, doomed.

And KOTOR doesn't shy away from the Republic's failings either. Because like it or not they *did* fumble the Mandalorian Wars, and they *do* fail their people constantly, especially on the Outer Rim where the prosperity of the Core Worlds doesn't reach. The fact that a lot of planets on the Sith Empire's side of things are on the Outer Rim is probably not a coincidence.

The Jedi Civil War wasn't about the Jedi, it was about what was more important in the galaxy, being free or being safe. It was a philosophical question posed on a galactic scale, what is better? A flawed but fundamentally good Republic, or a strong and secure but fundamentally evil Empire. Is freedom and comfortable living for all worth being unprepared for another massive war?

But all of that was literally forgotten in service of Kreia going "The only thing that matters in the Jedi" so that Chris Avellone can make the metapoint that the only thing most people care about in Star Wars is the Jedi, as he writes a game all about the Jedi.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

Book 1 only for all of these.

Humans are weird, I have the data by Betty Adams

Clean Sweep by Illona Andrews . This is a complicated one genre wise, because there are vampires and werewolves and witches, but they're from alien planets, werewolves are the result of genetic modification, vampires have advanced tech, etc. So fantasy would make sense too?

Cluster by Piers Anthony

Proxima by stephen baxter

Prime Suspects: A Clone Detective Mystery by Jim Bernheimer

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Nova Express William Burroughs,

Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer

Reset by Sarina Dahlan

Omnitopia dawn by Diane Duane

The Dreaming Void by peter Hamilton

Valor's Choice (Huff, Tanya)

Eye to Eye (Jinks, Catherine)

Revan (Karpyshyn, Drew)

Babel (Kuang, R.F.)

The Wandering Earth (Liu, Cixin)

The Merchant of Death (MacHale, D.J.)

Maybe Next Time (Major, Cesca)

The Host (Meyer, Stephenie)

Cloud Atlas (Mitchell, David)

Wild Massive (Moore, Scotto)

Nyxia (Reintgen, Scott )

Revelation Space (Reynolds, Alastair)

Robots vs. Fairies (Parisien, Dominik)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Taylor, Dennis E.)

Spin (Wilson, Robert Charles)

Artifice (Woolfson, Alex)

Androne (Worrell, Dwain)

hello! many of these are queued.

the following are in formats or genres that I’m not currently accepting for this blog:

Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others is a collection of (very good) non-linked short fiction.

R.F. Kuang’s Babel is fantasy.

Robots vs. Fairies (ed. Parisien and Wolfe) is a collection of non-linked short fiction.

Alex Woolfson’s Artifice is a graphic novel.

and I had questions about the following:

Olivia Blake’s The Atlas Six appears to be fantasy — is there something in later books that would make it science fiction?

William S. Burroughs, Nova Express — you said book 1 only, but Nova Express is book 2 of The Nova Trilogy. did you want Nova Express specifically or did you want book 1, The Soft Machine?

Liu Cixin, The Wandering Earth — this appears to be the title of a short fiction collection containing the title story. has the story itself been published in standalone format (outside of a magazine/similar)? if so, could you or someone else point me towards it?

D.J. MacHale, The Merchant of Death — while parallel worlds are integral to the Pendragon books, my impression is that the handling of them (and of travel between them) is primarily fantastic rather than scientific/science-fictional. could you, or someone else, clarify the extent of the science fiction aspects of the series?