One of my favorite things about Star Wars is how they can
take a minor character from the movies and make an entire book about them. Oh,
you wanted another book about Luke or Han? Too bad, here’s a Captain Phasma
book!
Resistance spy Vi Moradi is captured by the First Order and
interrogated by a red-armored Stormtrooper called Cardinal. The only thing
Cardinal wants to know is information on how to take down his rival: Captain
Phasma. What follows is Vi regaling Cardinal with the story of Phasma’s past on
the harsh, barren planet Parnassos and her encounter with First Order General
Brendol Hux – the father of the current General Hux – that eventually led to
her induction into the First Order.
The best part of the book is getting to see Phasma in
action. There was much criticism when The Force Awakens came out and Captain
Phasma, the much hyped-up chrome colored Stormtrooper played by the talented
Gwendoline Christie, only had a few minutes of screen time and didn’t even get
to do anything cool. In this book, we see her fight, we see her kill, and –
most importantly – we finally see her character. In The Force Awakens, her
character was more or less “Finn’s boss.” In this book, we see she’s a
survivor. Because of the unforgiving, Mad Max-like environment she grew up in,
she’s willing to betray her friends, her family, and anyone else she cares
about if it means ensuring her own survival. Phasma’s only true loyalty is to
herself. More or this, this book is one big explanation as to why she so
willingly lowered the shields for the Resistance in The Force Awakens and
basically betrayed the First Order.
But here’s the problem with the book: Phasma is the focus,
but she isn’t the main character. Most of the novel is a story being told by a
Resistance spy, and the only reason she knows this story is because she
interviewed someone from Phasma’s past. Meaning that even in the story about
Phasma, the viewpoint character is not Phasma. Sure, we learn a lot about
Phasma’s background and her motivations through this story, but it would have
been so much more interesting if the story took us inside Phasma’s head to see
the inner workings of someone so willing to throw everyone else to the wolves
if it means she lives another day.
When it’s not on that story, the rest of the novel is from
the viewpoint of either Vi or Cardinal. Honestly, Cardinal felt more like the
main character of the Phasma book than Phasma herself. He’s a more sympathetic,
idealistic character who goes through the character arc of gradually becoming
disillusioned with the First Order he once believed was genuinely the right
path, and his quest to destroy Phasma’s image as the ideal soldier.
The other problems I have with the story are just personal
preferences. For example, the novel has this gimmick where Phasma’s backstory
is told in past tense like most books, but the framing device with Vi and
Cardinal is told in present tense. I was always taught to use only one tense
when writing something, and that tense should usually be the past one, so this stylistic
choice ended up being kind of distracting to me. It’s not necessarily anything
wrong with the book or Delilah Dawson’s writing style, just a pet peeve of
mine.
In addition, I also wished that the story had focused more
on Phasma’s rise through the ranks of the First Order. For some reason, I have
this strange fascination with learning more about the First Order and how they
work. Maybe it’s because they’re a new, relatively unknown entity in the new
continuity, maybe it’s because I desperately want more glimspes at the
enigmatic Supreme Leader Snoke. The stuff on Parnassos isn’t bad at all, but I
do kind of wish the quest to find Brendol Hux’s ship was only the fist half of
the book, while the second half dealt with Phasma’s time in the First Order and
how her rivalry with Cardinal took shape.
All in all, Phasma is an okay book. The wandering focus
leaves something to be desired, but it is nice to have a backstory for a
character that was shafted in her first appearance. And it will be neat going
into these movies with Phasma’s backstory tucked away in the back of my mind.
It might actually make some of her actions more significant with this
knowledge.
You know, if the movies take this backstory as canon at all.
Final verdict: 7.5/10
So now that we have a Phasma book, who do I have to talk to
at Disney to get a Kit Fisto novel made?
No comments:
Post a Comment