At long last, we read Kevin J. Anderson's final Star Wars book project, 1995's Tales From Jabba's Palace. Unfortunately, it's more of a slog than anything else, and it lacks the gems that the last short story collection had. Whiffs abound from our regulars. Topics include why the fuck Kevin J. Anderson hates fat people so much, if Kathy Tyers is qualified to be telling a story about human trafficking, and the socialist character of the Gran homeworld Kinyen.

Content warnings include slavery, trafficking, sexual assault, misogyny, fatphobia, drug use, and general physical violence.

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We return to Kevin J. Anderson, the Expanded Universe's evil puppet master, for his 1995 piece of shit Darksaber. This book is bad in all the ways you'd expect a KJA book to be, but also in plenty of new ways! It also foreshadows the ways that Star Wars will be bad thirty years after this because KJA and Dave Filoni have way more in common than is comfortable. Topics include Han Solo being a "where's my hug?" guy, Kevin J. Anderson's constant racism/misogyny/fatphobia, if Kevin J. Anderson killed his transcriptionist, and Callista's insistence on not giving Luke disgusting half-breed children.

Content warnings include misogyny, racism, fatphobia, and eugenics.

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We finish up Roger MacBride Allen's Corellian trilogy with 1995's Showdown at Centerpoint. Does Roger stick the landing? Did the ending of this book get rushed due to page count limits from the publisher? Does the New Republic handle its crisis of legitimacy in a way that allows for future sedition in the exact same way? Listen to find out! Topics include the dropped ball of Gaeriel Captison's daughter, the evolutionary origin of humans in Star Wars, Han Solo's cultural chauvinism, and Lando marrying a woman he's spent a total of four hours with.

Content warnings include racism, xenophobia, colonialism, and mentions of suicide.

-- MEDIA --

We get something a little different with 1995 short story collection Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina. Some of the stories are genuinely very good! Some of them are very bad! And all of them make up a book that's one of the prime suspects in the franchisization of Star Wars. Topics include if it's necessary for every weirdo in the cantina scene in Star Wars to be doing something of galactic importance, the Force being more mystical and unexplainable in some of these stories, and the exciting and deserved fate of the disgusting misogynist pickup artist with the big cones on his head.

Content warnings include sexual assault, misogyny, racism, references to ethnic cleansing, and general physical violence.

-- MEDIA --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxpz3Lp-PCk

We return to Roger MacBride Allen's Star Race Wars with 1995's Assault at Selonia. It's fine! It's better than the previous one but Roger still has the annoying tendency to elaborate in excruciating detail about stuff that really just does not matter to the plot. Topics include the proper way to anthropomorphize mustelids, why everyone forgot that they've been working with Mara Jade for like 7 years at this point, and who takes credit for false flag terrorist attacks.

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[libsyn is not letting me upload this today. I will try again soon!]

We go long on Barbara Hambly's 1995 heater Children of the Jedi! Luke falls in love with a ghost in a machine who ends up inhabiting the body of one of his students so they can be together (it was a different time). Hambly is one of the first authors we've read on here that uses Themes and is also very good at putting sentences together, so we actually had a great time with this one. Topics include identity as a result of one's material conditions, Orientalism in Hambly's ex-husband's 1986 cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, and what all was actually involved in being an Emperor's Hand.

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(Johnny joins us about an hour in. This was recorded during Ramadan so cut him some slack)

We're joined by Jacob from socialist book podcast Workers' Lit to discuss Roger MacBride Allen's 1995 trilogy opener Ambush at Corellia. Allen's clumsy attempt to write an analogue to the Bosnian War and the collapse of Yugoslavia in the Star Wars universe doesn't work particularly well, but we appreciate his attempts to grapple with the politics of Star Wars and the toothless New Republic. Topics of this episode include Mon Mothma and the New Republic's unwillingness to get rid of the reactionary elements in their government, Lando risking it all for a sexy vampire with a castle, and how much hotter Han Solo would be with some gray hair, a beard, and a few extra kilos.

Content warnings include discussions of genocide and ethnic cleansing, fascism, and racism.

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After some recording hiccups, we return to discuss 1994's The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre. Some have called this the "worst Star Wars novel" ever published, which you should know off the bat is an insane, uninformed, likely misogynistic opinion! The book isn't the best SW novel we've read, but it's so much better than anything Kevin J. Anderson ever read into a tape recorder. Also everyone respects C-3PO in this one more than ever before. We discuss the phenomenon of quislings for fascist governments, how often Chewbacca sees his family, and Ben Kenobi using mind tricks to avoid paying for beer.

Content warnings include misogyny, slavery, suicide, racism, and genocide.

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Star Wars Chess - All Yoda Battles