IMHO: Starshatter Book 2, Twin Suns of Carrola
A disclaimer.
Starshatter, or at least the books I have read, is not terrible. I have read worse, and it does have some neat ideas, which is why I tried to give it a chance. Nor do I have anything against the author, who by all accounts seems to be a very reasonable person. If it was a truly terrible story, I would have either briefly dismissed it as such or not written a review at all. But because I believe there is quite a bit of legitimate criticism to be given, I feel like I should describe exactly the problems that Starshatter suffers from so both the author and other writers can be more aware of them going forward.
Also, spoilers ahead. Lots and lots of spoilers, as I can’t go into detail on the problems without discussing the actual content. You have been warned.
The Micro
1. Confusing Terminology
There are a lot of hard to remember names; a rather minor and subjective criticism, but one I still feel is relevant. Lilly randomly became Lillyanna right in the middle, and not even in dialogue. It’s also listed in the glossary, so I can only assume it’s intentional. It causes great confusion to have two names for the same character that are so similar, though one is almost never used and the difference is never really acknowledged. Personally, and again, this might just be a personal gripe… I’m not a fan of having apostrophes in the middle of a name to make it look more exotic. It makes spelling and remembering them incredibly difficult. Examples:
Anit’za
Dzenta’rii
Dozan’re
Kil’ra
Taz’aran
Continuing on that note, there is an absolute labyrinth of factions, races, and planets that I genuinely have trouble keeping track of. The names for the guns and technology is similar, where I struggle to keep track of what everything is and what it is capable of. Perhaps this is just me, in that I don’t really have much in-depth knowledge on existing types of guns, but I have trouble enjoying a story that requires I learn so much terminology just to understand what is going on. The fact that we jump heads often and suddenly refer to the same things in different ways makes it even more confusing.
One thing I noticed early on as well; there are quite a few grammatical errors and strange sentence structure, compounding the confusion when faced trying to learn everything already being presented. This was the most jarring series of errors I found:
“It was not his intention in the first place, that was simply him being nice nice. Found the brother of that deceased dude that he picked up his new grappler from. Did try paying for it but the man was adamant and refused any compensation.”
Even if you are trying to speak in the voice of a character, their internal monologue still shouldn’t be so difficult to follow. A lot of small minor errors add up to make a larger work very difficult to read.
2. Putrid Politics
There are also a couple examples of political messaging that is just annoying. Even if I agree with an author’s politics, I don’t want such stuff arbitrarily inserted into art.
Ainufon, a place only mentioned once in passing by a character who was tangentially thinking about jokes in general. Pretty sure it is just No Fun-ia backwards, but that might be me overthinking it. Still, the fact that it is an ancient civilization that banned all entertainment and began thought policing, only to then collapse, makes me believe I’m right in that assessment. The name isn’t the problem, but including this clear anti-censorship message in such a forced way takes away from the story, rather than adding to it. If I recall correctly, Kera merely thought about this while thinking about how the uplifted hamster race was fond of jokes. Ainufon has no additional significance to the plot in this book, and given that the civilization is long dead, I don’t see what further significance this particular detail might have in the future.
When Lilly is sneaking through the slave market, and suddenly thinks of how she doesn’t care about cat calling(altered to “bunny-calling”, given her species) after seeing how one of the incognito crewmembers is catcalled. For gods sake… why? They are on an alien base getting into position before a full fledged assault. She just killed multiple people and hid their bodies. And this is where her mind is at? Perhaps a person might briefly think of this in a similar situation, but you don’t want to narrate all random thoughts of one character, as that slows things down and bogs down the reader with irrelevant information.
Not paying the freed slaves a simple sum of money to get back on their feet, as that would make them dependent. This one annoyed me most of all.
Okay… it’s clear this is a parallel with government handouts. But it doesn’t match. Charity, when done properly, is much different from redistribution of wealth. Giving the rescued slaves some money to reset their life WOULD help them out. For the following reasons:
1. It’s not a reoccurring payment. It’s just a flat sum, so if they spent it poorly, that’s not the fault of the one who gave it to them. At that point, Anit’za has no further obligations towards them. They are still free from bondage, so they can figure out their life for themselves.
2. These aren’t merely impoverished people. These are people who, in all likelihood, had functioning lives before they were attacked and kidnapped by aliens with everyone else they knew being brutally murdered. They very likely had lives beforehand, or if they were all taken as children, then that still doesn’t mean they weren’t instilled with good values by their parents or a surrogate parent who was also captured as a slave.
3. The training they provide instead could have been bought with money. Arguably, Anit’za ended up spending more money on the slaves. Certainly not an immoral thing to do, but to present this as an either-or dichotomy with charity is obnoxious, and even more so when it appears politically motivated.
Another thing that could be construed as political is the male-female relationships that run throughout, and basically encapsulates the main dynamics for no less than four characters. I dunno… not really a fan of how much this is brought up, nor does it make a whole lot of sense to have spouses on the front lines of combat. That doubles the chances one of them will end up a widow, and can quickly emotionally compromise them should one be injured. Heck, this is a large argument against the inclusion of women in any sort of military, as men are predisposed to offer females more assistance than males in the same condition. Generally, you don’t want a military operating in a non-objective and emotional manner. This one, however, at least has story relevance throughout, so it isn’t as bad. I still recommend against overt political messaging in any story, though, as it feels like preaching unless handled properly. And I almost never see it handled properly.
3. Frequent Headhopping
This is sometimes limited to chapter breaks, but not always. And even when jumping between perspectives within a chapter, the switch is not always clearly indicated. The place I noticed it most was near the start and in the epilogue, but even if this never happened without clear indication… it’s generally bad practice to be changing perspective so often. You usually want to pick a PoV character, and follow them. Adding a second or third PoV character is also acceptable, but more is generally discouraged. Less perspective switching makes the story easier to follow, as it keeps you grounded in the action. Exposition through thoughts is also not ideal, especially when jumping heads a lot. Some of this is just my own style of writing mixed with my bias, though, so perhaps other people don’t mind these things as much as I do.
4. So Very Many Plot Questions
Why would the chief engineers continue fixing the ship when Omasa is systematically executing them all when their jobs are done? Did he only kill them all afterwards? If he can do this without reprisal, wouldn’t other commanders have done this before? It’s an open secret that Pion construction is terrible, so certainly these workers would have been executed long ago. Heck, thinking about this after reading the epilogue, where fundamentally that happens, it makes me wonder how the Taz’aran have ANY people left when they are constantly dying at astronomical numbers not simply because of war, but because of unbelievably high chances of death for any sort of failure. Also, why are the engineers so comfortable with their sub par performance given this kind of brutal culture?
Why give the one non-combatant, peace loving character a form of weaponized ballet? That’s absurd for both pragmatic and philosophical reasons. She should either have an armed guard(she kinda does with Ort) or just carry a simple non-lethal weapon. Or a lethal weapon, since she kills people anyways! If she’s going to fight back, why not use a weapon? This isn’t the dark ages, kicks can’t possibly be as effective as even a simple gun! Or even spiked, bladed, or reinforced shoes? I don’t know, this felt so out of place in a space epic.
Why establish an elite team of commandos as a threat, and then have a single bunny kill three of them by herself? For that matter, why establish Omasa as a less incompetent antagonist, only to then have him nearly obliterated by the same protagonists?(they are working as a team now, but still) You can’t paint it as anything more than an EXTREMELY Pyrrhic victory, despite him having far more resources than his enemy and being attempted to be shown as not stupid.
Why did the commandos turn on Nedal if he was still returning to the ship? What’s the point of killing him if he simply fails to meet expectations, as I thought the point was to kill him if he attempts to abandon post? Omasa ended up with all of his commandos dead instead of just most of them, so arguably Omasa further screwed up by giving the commandos these orders in the first place.
Why have an Epilogue that is so long, to the point where it could have been two new chapters? In fact, I think it would have been better as two separate chapters, as you have Omasa do some things and then Anit’za do some things. This isn’t just wrapping up loose ends, some actual plot happens here. This is an especially minor gripe, but I’m just trying to understand the rationale here.
So, that’s all the minor stuff. I could actually include more, but all I wanted to do was show that either the plot is poorly structured, or it is not being presented coherently enough for me to follow along. Both of these are problems for the author, as it doesn’t matter how amazing your story is if your reader can’t enjoy it. I tried, I really tried… but all of these minor details really began to irk me. All of this, however, I believe is an outgrowth of the larger macro problems.
The Macro
Let’s consider the broader ideas at play here. We got a story about a crew of a spaceship going on adventures. There are lots of little details, but at its core, that is the story. The problem is in how this crew is portrayed.
Imagine the first Star Wars, A New Hope. This movie was originally standalone, and was later made to be episode four in a much larger series of movies. We have Princess Leia running from the Empire, more specifically from Darth Vader. Vader catches the ship, catches Leia, but fails to acquire the Death Star plans. The two droids that escape with the plans bump into Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, and the story continues from there.
But imagine if Leia, after much damage to the smaller spaceship, actually held off the Empire and escaped in her much smaller ship. She actually escapes Vader, but since we still want Luke and Ben to be a part of the story, she has to stop by the planet for some contrived reason to end up joining up with them. For that matter, let’s take a step back even further… imagine if we gave a full back story for every character before we started the story. We give a full back story for Vader, Leia, Luke, Ben, R2D2/C3PO, Han Solo, and maybe even the Emperor before the events of the planned story. Then we start the story. Do you honestly believe that everyone would still be paying attention once the plot started?
Additionally, the idea of Darth Vader being completely thwarted early on presents massive problems for establishing him as a threat. Even if you have characters talk constantly about how powerful and dangerous he is, the audience doesn’t get to see that early on. For all we know, he could just be a paper dragon… a villain who is all talk. And while such scenarios can be rationalized as realistic to some degree, it does not make a good story to have heroes fighting a villain that is simply not much of an obstacle. Now, you could still have a compelling story where a paper dragon presents obstacles through other means, or there is some other antagonistic force… but that still fundamentally requires the creation of a threat. If you don’t replace Vader’s imposing presence with something, it leaves a massive void in the story that warps everything surrounding it. The heroes become less heroic because the villain isn’t as villainous.
These are my two biggest problems with Starshatter. Entire chapters are dedicated to character development, primarily through inner monologues or narration rather than through some unique plot actually unfolding. I don’t want to hear about how Omasa murdered an engineer for failing him… let Omasa inspect the work, find it lacking, confront the engineer who then makes all kinds of excuses, and then have Omasa very visibly commit the deed to make an example of him to the other engineers. Or at least, I would have that happen if I was going to have this Omasa character exist in the same way he does in Starshatter at all.
As an aside, Omasa is a really strange choice for a villain… he’s a poor mans Anit’za. No, seriously. He understands that you want to lead with a carrot and not just a stick, that you need teamwork and camaraderie among your crew, that you need to fight smarter as opposed to just throwing resources at a problem… but it all falls flat. He still loses to Anit’za because he is not taking those concepts far enough. He is still focusing too much on quantity over quality. Now, this might be just me, but in most stories the villain is diametrically opposed to the hero or, if not, a far more radical version of the hero. We get neither here; Omasa is a more moderate Anit’za, just raised in a different culture with different values. This would be a bit of a theming problem even if Omasa was shown to be a threat, which he wasn’t. If Nedal hadn’t returned in time with the reactor assembly, Omasa might be dead. Perhaps he could survive with an escape pod, but he would have still lost almost everything. That’s closer to the start of a story of redemption from nothing rather than the introduction of a villain who can actually challenge the heroes.
If I was to rewrite Omasa, I would have done one of two things. One, he would be a tyrannical, yet highly capable, captain that does not tolerate failure. He rewards success by promotions and such, but if you even hint at insubordination or an unwillingness to follow his orders, you are executed. This actually gels better with his initial characterization, but still requires changes to how he acts throughout the story. Nedal should be executed, honestly. Or Two, he would be the leader of an almost cult-ish crew that worships him unconditionally. Through drug/telepathic/technological based dependence, he would warp their minds to the point where they are incapable of disobeying him. Both of these would present more an interesting contrast between him and Anit’za.
This odd characterization is not helped by the pacing. You could have taken the first chapter from the first book, tacked it on to the second chapter of the second book, and ran the story from there. Have Lilly be introduced to the new characters slowly along with the audience as she goes on missions with them. Have her fly as copilot with Awesome, lend a hand to Kera in the medbay after an especially brutal battle, fight alongside Cat, Brynjar and Boris on some alien planet, confront Omasa in a climactic battle alongside Anit’za… y’know, same kind of thing that Star Wars and other space odysseys did. It also doesn’t always need to be Lilly, but the number of PoV characters should still be limited. I legitimately had trouble keeping the characters straight while reading because the second book simply offloaded all character introductions to isolated, sterile arcs in the first book. I confused Kera and Vasilisa, Boris and Brynjar(and Alric)… heck, I even confused Cat with Snark at one point.
The problems introduced by having such lengthy and isolated introductions don’t end there. When they finally joined forces, they all worked as a team flawlessly, but this felt undeserved given most of them were complete strangers to one another. Not only does this feel weird, it robs them of any meaningful character development. We’ve established that the Taz’arans deserve no sympathy, so it’s fine that the crew of Starshatter hates them completely. We’ve established that, both alone and in a team, the crew of the Starshatter is better than the Taz’arans in pretty much every way. We’ve even established that the crew, with the extremely brief exemption of Mack, gets along very well. What is there to develop or improve? The Starshatter crew is nigh flawless. All that’s left is to go kill aliens that are scum, both morally and in terms of how they fight.
In the end, I keep coming to the same conclusion. I believe the author is too inexperienced to write a full ten story epic as his first set of books. If you take it as a set of short stories, his first book isn’t bad. As the first of ten books, I find it rather abysmal. The plot feels disjointed, and having so many main characters with more being introduced in the very next book leads to some serious head hopping syndrome. It is genuinely hard to keep all those characters straight, and the plot in the second feels copied and pasted from the first book; get attacked by aliens, proceed to kill them all. It feels to me that the entirety of not just the first, but also the second book, is not meant to be a story, but the construction for the larger story. The problem is that the first two books suffer for this, and I believe that will alienate readers from ever experiencing the planned larger story, myself included.
I don’t plan on reading any further Starshatter books. If you are someone who does and you find them amazing, that’s fine. But I am simply not engaged with the world, the story, and the characters, despite having already read two books. I’m sorry, but I have a long list of books that I want to read, and limited time with which to do so. If you can’t grab my attention when I’m willing to read two full books, I don’t think a third is going to change anything.