talyseon's Full Review: Steven Barnes - The Cestus Deception: A Clone Wars...
Star Wars The Cestus Deception by Steven Barnes.
"From water we are born, in fire we die. We seed the Stars." Clone Warrior Death Service. (Complete)
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Kit Fisto are given the task of stopping the production of JK droid series production on Ord Cestus. JK stands for Jedi Killers, and the droids, which include a bio component drawn from a native Cestus Dasha eel, are incredibly dexterous and display intuition, making them the best, most sought after personal defense droids in the galaxy.
Obi-Wan of course wishes to try diplomacy and legal tactics first, and to that end he takes an old friend Doolb Snoil, vippit barrister at law. If that goes south, Kit Fisto and five clone troopers will organize the local resistance for a possible coup against the government.
Cestus was originally a penal colony that grew into legitimacy. The native insect species, the X'Ting, were decimated by plagues, and now are a minority of the population. The Regent, an X'Ting currently in the female phase, is G'Mai Duris. The real power though, rests with the Five Families, the ruling elite of Cestus.
Into a maze of politics and deception go Obi-Wan and Doolb. And the resistance is considerable. However, Regent Duris is intelligent and wants what is best for all her people, and Obi-Wan finds working with her pleasurable.
In the mean time Kit Fisto, Jedi Knight, and the five clones set about organizing Desert Wind, a local resistance movement, into an army.
The clones are all Kaminoan grown copies of Jango Fett, and include CT-X270 (Xutoo) the pilot, CT-36/732 (Sirty) logistics, CT-44/444 (Forry) physical training, and Ct-12/74 (Seefor) communications. They are led by ARC A-98 (Nate) an Advance Recon Commando. Each one is a specialist, but each one has been cloned to be a perfect soldier, absolutely loyal, and to take their identity from their role as a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The clones know exactly how to whip a group of people into a fighting force, and Kit and Obi-Wan are well pleased with the results.
Nate, leader of the clones, meets Sheeka Tull, a pilot. She seems strangely drawn to him, and he discovers that as a young girl, she actually dated Jango Fett! Their mutual fascination with each other begins to develop into something more. She is fascinated with the clones' similarities and conditioning, and even more with their differences. He is in awe of someone who knew his "Father"
Obi-Wan and Doolb find the way to a simple solution blocked by the Five Families. Is it greed, or something more? With every stratagem he is blocked and countered, and he does not know by what. And Regent Duris is under attack as well, particularly by Quill, the X'Ting representative of the Hive Council. He slew Duris' mate in a duel, and challenges her to the same. Pondering this disastrous turn of events, Obi-Wan shares her Death Meal with her, a ceremonial meal, like the Tea Ceremony, that requires complete relaxation and concentration, and a solution presents itself to the Jedi. If Duris is killed, the Quill takes her place, and it is a disaster. If they both die, then the Council will appoint someone, and likely a moderate. Duris must there for use her training to remain completely calm and relaxed, and when the much better Quill strikes, let him sting her, just sting him back, basically trading his life for hers.
The strategy works far beyond expectation. Quill is so unnerved by her lack of fear, he concedes, fearing she has a trap of some sort.
But this does not resolve the basic deadlock. Then, Obi-Wan and Kit concoct a plan to bring the Five Families in line... They stage a hijacking of a subway car carrying many members of the Five Families, and Obi-Wan launches a daring and highly visible rescue, jumping from moving sub way vehicle to the next, coming into the holding area off the radar. He and Dooku's representative (Fisto) battle it out, with Obi-Wan winning by a narrow margin. Fisto "escapes" and Kenobi is a hero.
Until a holovid of the planning stages is revealed....
Disgraced, Obi-Wan is banished, and it looks like the JK droids will be added by the hundreds of thousands to the Separatists forces!
So now it is guerrilla warfare to disrupt the economy. But even that won't work right....
Meanwhile, Nate and Sheeka continue their cautious...romance? Exploration? Getting to know each other? And Nate is asked some questions he never really thought about. What do you want to do if you actually live through the war? Is there more to you than being a soldier? How are you different from your brothers?
Individuality in an army of clones sounds hard, but each clone, after the basic training, was set up to follow special purposes. Nate is very elite, less than ten percent are chosen for ARC. And training takes place on different planets, and then there are different battles, and each one changes you, just a little. Different diets even produce different body scent, so as time marches forward, each clone becomes more unique.
And the clone troopers receive basic force training in "flow" by Jedi Fisto. Nate does the best.
But as Sheeka points out they don't have names, ‘Nate' is just shorthand for 98. She asks if she can give Nate a name. He thinks about it and says yes. So Nate is then Jangotat, which is Mandalorian for Jango's brother.
Jangotat and Sheeka become very close, and she shows him the simple life she has built for herself, and tactically asks if there is any part of him that wants to be part of it.
And he is surprised to find there is.
But all is not as it seems on Ord Cestus, and from the Five Families, to the criminal underclass, to the whole reason for being there, there is layer after layer after layer of deception, all cloaking the true nature of the trap from Obi- Wan Kenobi. And the author of this web of lies?
Asajj Ventress.
This novel is sort of a mixed bag. I got it as a discount at Books-A-Million, so I definitely feel I got my moneys worth.
On the down side, there are of course no galaxy changing things; those are planned out by TPTB and Lucas, and given to bigger named authors. So, only three characters from the larger universe, and they walk away with nothing really major changed.
That is the nature of shared universe books. The other criticism is more specific to the author. His flow needs work. There are 396 pages, and 83 chapters. This jumps around a lot, and if you set the book down for a day or two, you might have trouble keeping up with where you left everybody.
Now, to the upside.
Cestus is a neat world. A sort of Australia on a planetary scale, complete with aboriginal peoples.
The X'Ting are interesting, something I don't usually have to say about insectoid aliens. Their cycle of gender change had some interesting moments, but what I liked was seeing the various castes; Duris is planetary regent, Trillot, a crimelord, Fizzik, a lackey, and Resta, good frontier stock.
There is a bit more under the carapace to this race than your standard bug-eyed alien.
I also enjoyed the honesty of the people in their situation, caught between two giants, fairly sure they are going to get squashed; they come from a backwater insignificant mud ball, but by cracky! It's THEIR mud ball!
And most of all, I liked the view into the mind of the Clone Trooper. Most people, even Jedi, don't see them as people. But no matter if they are born or decanted on Kamino, they are living beings with the chance to grow.
So many books have been written about birth order, but what do you do when you are twin to a million brothers?
And the Kaminoians built in conditioning; compliance, following orders, the best death you can hope for is to die in the service of the GAR. But beyond that, they develop into real people. /They play the stupid twin tricks, ‘no, I'm Nate, he's Xutoo.' They care for each other, and with the right kind of stimulus, about others too. They are grown in the test tubes of Kamino, die by the thousand for people who will never understand them, they will not be honored of remembered, but they were here, and they mattered.
"From water we are born, in fire we die. We seed the Stars."
ARC A-98's evolution from Nate to Jangotat is a great bit of writing. Steven hooked into something that hasn't really been explored, and really worked it over with surprising insight. And that alone is enough to make me forgive any of the other short comings. Final analysis, good action, good story line, great characterization; an overall winner.
Ord Cestus, a planet mostly barren and inhospitable to life, was first colonized as a prison world-until a handful of hardy pioneers discovered its ri...More at HotBookSale
Ord Cestus, a planet mostly barren and inhospitable to life, was first colonized as a prison world--until a handful of hardy pioneers discovered its r...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.