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I will say that this book is, as one of the reviews on the back said, difficult to put down, with lots of twists and turns to keep the reader interested. I definitely was interested! So why the low star rating?
I subtitled this book "Star Wars: Because This Universe Needed Settler Colonialism," and indeed, much of the ire I feel towards this book as a lot to do with the way that Miller wrote this, as he noted in his acknowledgments, as a western. A western. On Tatooine. Which I know have to think of as "the frontier," along with everything that comes along with that.
Maybe it's my lack of previous knowledge about the Star Wars universe--I had somehow missed that Tatooine was a planet that had to be "settled" in the first place, and that Sand People were Indigenous people who attack settlers (they're literally referred to as such in the text multiple times) over land claims. Oh, Ai, that's wonderful, the Star Wars universe is taking on complicated questions, except 1) they already did an incredible arc about settler colonialism and futurity in Clone Wars, and 2) it's so terribly, ham-handedly done that it's just offensive on all ends.
Though Miller does eventually pull a kind of 'Dances With Wolves'/'Last of the Mohicans'/every other movie with a white savior siding with Indigenous peoples narrative, part of his TWISTS!!!! narrative form involves setting up the settlers initially as Good Guys--which means portraying the Sand People as Savages. (Again, that word is literally used in the text to describe them--by a settler character, but it's still disturbing.) By the time he pulls out the 'just kidding, it's the SETTLERS who are bad (well, one specific Bad Guy Settler)!!!!!' twist, Miller has already done enough damage; he's relied hard enough on tropes that dehumanize American Indian people that his humanization of his Indigenous Sand People continues to rely on similarly dehumanizing tropes.
Are we better off for all the knowledge we gained in this book about Tatooine, Sand People, and Obi-Wan Kenobi? I'd say no, although it's nice to know that Tuskan is a slur! But though this was a page-turner for sure, it felt more like a chore--that I had to bear witness to this mess of a book--than the delightful diversion I was looking for.Don't even get me started on the weird 'every woman has a crush on Obi-Wan Kenobi' thing; it's only believable if every man does too, guys. Somewhere in the middle of the book, I wrote that I was so glad that it was a "Legends" book, and not officially canon; I don't normally care about these types of things, but thank goodness and good riddance.
I subtitled this book "Star Wars: Because This Universe Needed Settler Colonialism," and indeed, much of the ire I feel towards this book as a lot to do with the way that Miller wrote this, as he noted in his acknowledgments, as a western. A western. On Tatooine. Which I know have to think of as "the frontier," along with everything that comes along with that.
Maybe it's my lack of previous knowledge about the Star Wars universe--I had somehow missed that Tatooine was a planet that had to be "settled" in the first place, and that Sand People were Indigenous people who attack settlers (they're literally referred to as such in the text multiple times) over land claims. Oh, Ai, that's wonderful, the Star Wars universe is taking on complicated questions, except 1) they already did an incredible arc about settler colonialism and futurity in Clone Wars, and 2) it's so terribly, ham-handedly done that it's just offensive on all ends.
Are we better off for all the knowledge we gained in this book about Tatooine, Sand People, and Obi-Wan Kenobi? I'd say no, although it's nice to know that Tuskan is a slur! But though this was a page-turner for sure, it felt more like a chore--that I had to bear witness to this mess of a book--than the delightful diversion I was looking for.