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Title: The Price of the Stars
Series: Mageworlds #1
Authors: Debra Doyle & James Macdonald
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SFF
Pages: 406
Words: 143.5K
| Synopsis: |
From Fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/Mageworlds_(series)
Freebooter at heart, spacer by trade, Beka Rosselin-Metadi doesn’t want to hear about how her father whose rugged general ship held back the Mageworlds — or her highborn mother whose leadership has held the galaxy together since. Beka pilots spacecraft — as far from her famous family as possible.
Then Beka’s mother is assassinated on the Senate floor, and her father offers her the title to Warhammer, prize ship from his own freebooting youth — if she agrees to deliver the assassins to him “off the books.”
Looking for assassins has a tendency to make assassins look for you. In doing so, Beka’s arranged her own very public death and adopted a new identity; now all she has to do is leave a trail of kidnappings and corpses across five star systems, and blow the roof off the strongest private fortress in the galaxy.
| My Thoughts: |
This book, the first of seven, was published in 1992. Timothy Zahn had published his seminal Heir to the Empire in 1991 which ignited the much beloved and much maligned Star Wars Extended Universe. This obviously was trying to catch some of that popularity. While it may not have taken off like the EU, where it was FAR more successful was in how it passed the torch to the next generation.
What killed the the EU (besides Lucas simply killing it off because he’s a jackass, just like Disney, but Disney is a jackass whore) was the fact that none of the writers used ever created any characters who could hold a torch to the Big 3 (Luke, Leia and Han). Even one of the final books, Crucible, was ALL about those 3 characters while ignoring sub-characters who were supposed to be the next generation of heroes.
Doyle & Macdonald don’t make the mistake of passing the torch. That’s already done. And what’s more, one of the big 3 is killed right at the beginning, thus propelling the whole adventure. It was handled masterfully. When I started the Galaxy’s Edge series I was overpowered by the Star Wars vibe. It was Stormtroopers as the goodguys and it was fantastic. This series had the Star Wars vibe, but it was much more of the rogue’ish trader and mystic than the military. It was a different aspect but it was just as fun.
My only complaint was that the timeline didn’t feel like it was told as. I believe this book was supposed to have taken about 2 years but honestly, it felt like 2 months. That’s a nitpicky thing, I know.
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
How much for a matching lapels and eye-patch combo? I wish I could accessorise for myself, but off the shelf will have to do…
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I think that outfit will set you back about 15,000 semolians…
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Is she a space pirate?
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Yes. She’s the daughter of “alternate Princess Leia who gets assassinated” but takes after her daddy “alternate Han Solo” more and as such goes the rogue pirate working under cover route.
The short answer is Yes 🙂
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She is definitely channeling Adam Ant!
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I had to look up who that was, but when I did the image search, man, you weren’t kidding!
Almost twins with some of those outfits he wore 🙂
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I thought Fraggle was spot on with the Adam Ant comment, and am disturbed you didn’t get it. Don’t you remember the Ant Dance? Goody-two, goody-two, goody goody two-shoes?
*sigh* Kids these days.
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I’d let you get away with this comment IF I was a musically inclined person and blogged about music. But I am not and therefore I won’t.
Why would I know who this guy is? He’s based in London. I’m American. He does rock (I assume from his costumes) and I listen to classical and easy listening. He’s a toff & nabob and I’m the salt of the earth. He whores himself out for the masses while I am a productive member of society and do actual work.
* looks at the above critically *
Yep, I think that takes care of that! 😉
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Are you saying you don’t drink? Don’t dance?
What do you do?
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Come now Alex, have you not hung out around here long enough to realize the answers to ALL those questions?
Correct, Correct, Read.
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I was trying to lure you into a sing-along. Though I guess the right line was don’t drink, don’t smoke. I messed up.
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Ahhh, a sing along.
Yet another thing I don’t do 😉
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Was this a SW spinoff? Sounds interesting, yet I am not too eager to go down a whole SW black hole just yet.
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Not a spinoff but an “alternate take”. So you get the “vibe” of star wars without any of the actual star wars’ness. Almost like a fanfiction perhaps?
We’ll see how the series progresses. While I really enjoyed this first book, you just never know what the future volumes will be like.
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HEY! YOU FOUND THEM! Hope you didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg….
😀
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My good friend Jack Sparrow has lent them to me 😉
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Nice.
I do wish these books had made it to the 5/5 or 6/6 or even 10/10 level and been bona fide genre classics, but honestly they’re perfectly charming and readable even with the Star Wars serial numbers imperfectly filed off and the authors giggling and making pew-pew noises during the gunfights as they typed.
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I kind of hope they go more their own way later on in the series. While I didn’t mind the alternate references to Han, Luke and Leia, I suspect it could get distracting if it keeps up.
I DO like the whole Mage/Adept thing though. Give me some good old Force Fights 🙂
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Hm. Well, I can report that the plot does definitely tend in its own direction, so… 🙂
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I am glad to hear that.
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I like the idea of this lady space pirate – with an eyepatch to boot! 🙂
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For the eyepiece, just be aware it’s all show, to change her identity.
But even when she’s being herself, she’s definitely the daughter of a rogue and a princess 🙂
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Never heard of this 😉 not sure if I’d like it or if I’m already way too tired by SWEU 😛
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I had never heard of it either until Riders talked about it in one of my Galaxy’s Edge reviews a while back.
Since Star Wars is pretty much utter crap right now, I don’t mind other sources filling that void 🙂
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Pretty cool that you’ve found another series to fill that SW void and it seems like it’s on the right track too!
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This seems to be following the “Big 3” style of Star Wars and the magic side, whereas Galaxy’s Edge still had the space opera but was more military focused. It’s really nice having both though. Makes me realize just how much the original movie trilogy impacted my life.
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