Review: An average short story
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 01 17, 2013
I admit it, I snapped this up the moment I saw it on new releases, because I tend to do that with anything written by Timothy Zahn. He is, in my opinion, one of the best contemporary sci-fi authors where it comes to world building, intricate plot, and edge-of-seat action. His Thrawn and Conqueror's trilogies were incredible, Quadrail and Cobra were very unique and engaging, and even his one-off novels like Icarus Hunt and Outbound Flight are excellent. So I figured this would be too.First off, when I hit the end my jaw dropped and I literally said aloud "Huh? That's it?!" I then spent several minutes looking to see if it picked up somewhere else. It is a really short story, barely longer than some of the ones that appear in the 'Tales' Star Wars series (and those books have several of them!). It's also, I must say, a lot less interesting than most of them and probably the single weakest plot I've seen Zahn write. It's not terrible, but it really isn't that great either- there's no twists and at the end you're left wondering where the other half of the story is. The novella revolves around a force of Stormtroopers who are only somewhat memorable (as is the case with most such white-armored shock troops) and though there is quite a bit of action, it kind of reads like a (short) movie or videogame script.Overall, not worth paying for. In fact, it should really be free if you ask me.