From a Certain Point of View: Part 4

[colls]

Welcome to our last check-in and discussion posts for our Book of the Month.

This month’s book is Book: From A Certain Point of View by Various Authors

Stories 21-40
There Is Another
Palpatine
Sparks
Duty Roster
Desert Son
Grounded
Contingency Plan
The Angle
By Whatever Sun
Whills

1) Which stories did you like the most? the least?
2) Which characters stood out as interesting?
3) Other thoughts?

Reminder: Next month is theme: Book #1 of a series

Comments

[barbiejedi]

1. "The Angle" was my favorite out of the set-- it was neat to see the news of Alderaan and the Death Star reach a character that the larger saga narrative won't meet until the next film.

I was surprised at the in-jokey nature of Duty Roster with "Fake Wedge" and the meta editorial on the opening crawl in "Whills."


3. Since this was the first of the FACPOVs and I imagine both the editors and writers were testing the waters on this style of anthology, I wonder how much of the format and premise the other two maintain-- whether they keep the movie order organization, and whether the authors (are permitted to?) widen their focus. I may toss the others on my To Be Read list for next year.

[brokenmnemonic]

I'm tempted to pick up the next volume, too. Or possibly suggest it as one of our upcoming reads - I'm intrigued to see what's in the next two volumes, particularly if they perhaps put more emphasis on the heroic activities of droids and less on the internal agonising of stormtroopers...

[brokenmnemonic]

1. One of the things I find a little amusing is that two of my favourite stories from this - Duty Roster and Grounded - have mutually exclusive setups, in that one is all the feelings of pilots who couldn't join the Death Star attack because of a lack of fighters, while the other features the feelings of the ground crew leader who highlights that they always have more fighters than they do pilots and that there are several grounded, empty fighters that could be flying if they had the people.

I enjoyed the Angle quite a lot, although I'm a little conflicted over it; does it play into his decisions in ESB? I'm not sure if I feel that this story makes Lando's decision to support Vader's trap less plausible, or if it makes his decision to help Leia and the others escape more plausible. Which is possibly why this was one of my favourite stories from this batch. I have mixed feelings about There is Another because on the one hand, it feels like we could've had Leia as a Jedi, and on the other hand, we could've had Leia as a Jedi.

I think maybe my least favourite stories this week were Desert Son and By Whatever Sou. I don't have anything against either, but I've already the comics that feature Biggs, and the story didn't really add much to his history other than telling us how he felt right at the very end. As for By Whatever Sun, I can't honestly say I know (or remember, possibly) who the character is, despite them apparently being from the expanded canon, and I think I would rather have had this spot filled with something from the wider universe, like someone on the Imperial side learning of the destruction of the Death Star, or an Alderaanian expatriate who decides to join the rebellion because of both the destruction of Alderaan and the rebellion's destruction of the Death Star in turn.

2. I really enjoyed reading about Dex and Kase - particularly Dex. I hadn't realised that it bugged me that we know all about the survivors of the attack on the first Death Star other than the lone Y-wing pilot... and let's face it, anyone flying an old fighter like a Y-wing is already at a disadvantage, assuming they can get it off the ground safely. And these are the people who survived the battle in Rogue One, no less.

3. I'm curious about what the editorial direction was on the stories for this anthology, partly because I'm nosy, but also because I'd like to see what it's like in the next couple of books.

[barbiejedi]

we could've had Leia as a Jedi.

It's been years since I read them, but IIRC back in the Dark Horse days the first use of the "Infinities" tag was on a miniseries of comics that were basically "What If?" style AUs of the OT movies-- have you by chance run across them? The ESB one might be up your alley.

[brokenmnemonic]

I've read three of the Infinities mini-series (the ones corresponding to each of the three original films) as part of my readthrough of the Dark Horse comics via the Marvel Unlimited app and they were all interesting - I wasn't convinced by the ROTJ one, but I thought the other two were very good :)