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Fan fiction is pretty accurate, with Mandalorians as her Mary-Sue group. Cannoli Send a noteboard - 05/11/2011 05:34:48 PM
I'm just curious to hear everyone's opinions on this author. I've read her Republic Commando Star Wars books, which apparently are widely reviled and called little more than fan fiction by some (though I enjoyed them well enough cannon or not). Anyways, I guess Karen Travis is writing the latest trilogy of Halo novels (which I've been a big fan) and before I buy the first of these I just wanted to see what everyone here thought of her.

I've heard some varying opinions on her, but I thought I'd try and get a clearer consensus here. So basically, which of her works have you read, what did you think of them, and what's your opinion of her writing in general?


She appears incapable of writing anything without dragging her apparently self-created Mandalorian culture and characters into it. She wrote a theoretically collaborative nonilogy with two other more experienced Star Wars writers about events taking place when the children of the OT characters are in their thirties, but every third book in the series featured her jarring the plot and character arcs out of their storylines and into a sequel to the Republic Commando video game adaptation series she wrote, with books and books on why Boba Fett is just the baddest-ass in the whole Star Wars universe, and never mind that he did absolutely nothing besides follow the Millenium Falcon somewhere and let Darth Vader make all the arrangements to actually capture his prey. From there, like his father before him, he died like a little bitch, with Princess Leia showing way more badassery in that scene ALONE, despite the most infamously exploitative costume in the history of the genre.

But Karen Traviss has taken the "Mandos" to heart, and therefore Princess Leia's daughter is on the defensive when Boba Fett rails against the injustice his family has suffered at the hands of the Jedi, with a whine about how his daddy must have suffered while his decapitated head retained consciousness for a few minutes after the evil Jedi cut it off for no better reason than Daddy Fett's collaboration with an irredeemably evil space wizard and selling his biological siblings/offspring into slavery as cannon fodder and attempting to murder the Jedi who killed him.

The other two authors of that series were Aaron Allston, who is arguably a technically inferior writer to Traviss, and Troy Denning, who is in some ways an even more egregious fan-fiction writer (his ham-fisted insertion of plot devices and long-lost recordings that allow OT characters to learn the family history as revealed in the prequels), but neither qualifies as the worst author in the series, thanks to Traviss's absurd positions and sympathies and ridiculous PoV justifications (I rail about readers who succumb to the PoV Trap, but she might be the first case of an actual writer falling prey to it), many of which smack of typical internet poster attempts to prove she is SOOOO superior to George Lucas, creatively speaking, by attempting to point out plot holes in the movies, or twist the perspective of the story around. There are any number of little comments made by her "wise" and moral touchstone characters that are thinly veiled digs at the films' story and characters' choices.

Also, her heavy use of British military slang is distracting in a book about an American property, primarily written by American authors.
Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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Opinions on Karen Traviss? - 04/11/2011 02:57:27 PM 950 Views
Double post. Sorry *NM* - 04/11/2011 02:58:03 PM 365 Views
She's terrible. - 04/11/2011 06:57:11 PM 733 Views
Fan fiction is pretty accurate, with Mandalorians as her Mary-Sue group. - 05/11/2011 05:34:48 PM 1437 Views
LOL! What he said *NM* - 05/11/2011 08:14:08 PM 347 Views
the City of Pearl series is ver good. *NM* - 07/11/2011 02:03:55 AM 337 Views
If a little preachy. *NM* - 12/11/2011 03:06:43 PM 332 Views
Maybe towards the end. But a rather unique take. - 14/11/2011 01:10:23 PM 647 Views
All this is more or less what I'd feared. - 08/11/2011 04:49:48 AM 669 Views
She makes Kevin J. Anderson look good. *NM* - 13/11/2011 07:04:36 PM 362 Views
I think I am one of the very few... - 17/11/2011 06:35:02 AM 950 Views

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