When Deathtroopers was first announced back in February, I thought it was a joke at first. A Star Wars horror book? No way! Star Wars has always been a very PG universe. That means no explicit sex and no major blood and gore. Did you ever notice how everyone ever shot with a Blaster or sliced in half with a Lightsaber never bleeds? That's what I'm talking about. PG Universe. So the idea of a dark and disturbing horror story set in the Star Wars universe just didn't seem like a realistic possibility to me. When I saw the cover of the book (pictured above), I thought it was some sort of prank. And when I found out the book was supposed to be about zombies, I was even more convinced it was a joke.
But color me suprised, it was real. Lucasfilm had agreed to allow a known horror writer named Joe Schreiber to write a full-on R rated horror story set in the Star Wars universe. Being the fan of both Star Wars and zombies that I am, you can imagine that I was pretty excited. I've spent the last few months eagerly awating October when I would get to read a tale that blended two of my favorite genres into one. Well, that time has finally come. The book came out a few weeks ago, I have finally read it, and I am here to share my opinions.
Before we get going though, I am going to throw out a MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING here. I'm not going to reveal every single plot point in the story, but there is definitely one major suprise in the book that I am going to discuss as it pertains directly to some of my thoughts and feelings about the book. So consider yourself warned. Ok, here we go.
Let's begin with a brief summary of the plot set up, shall we? Death Troopers is a story that takes place about a year before the events of Episode IV: A New Hope. The Empire is firmly in charge of the galaxy, the rebellion has started up and is going strong, Alderaan is still around and the name Luke Skywalker hasn't been heard of by anyone other than some punk kids on Tattooine. We begin aboard an Imperial prison barge called The Purge as it is flying out to a remote penal colony to drop off a bunch of prisoners. On board along with hundreds of other prisoners are two teenage boys named Kale and Trig Longo. They and their father had been arrested for being petty grifters a few weeks back. Their father had been killed on board the Purge a week or so earlier by a prison guard named Jareth Sartoris, and now the boys had been left to fend for themselves.
They run afoul of a prison gang pretty quickly and are very much worried for their lives when the day-in and day-out routines aboard the prison barge are suddenly interrupted by a major mechanical failure of the ship's engines. While still a long ways away from the prison colony, the ship drops out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere. The Imperial officers running the ship determine that their engines are completely shot as well as the long distance communications systems. With no ability to go anywhere or call for help, the Purge finds itself in a very desperate state. Luckily for them though, their sensors are picking up an Imperial Star Destroyer close by.
Something's strange though. The Star Destroyer isn't responding to any of their hails. The ship's systems are running, but only a dozen or so life signs are registered on board the massive craft which typically has a crew of 10,000. Not knowing what else to do though, the Purge's captain orders two teams to board the Star Destroyer to try to find out what's happing over there and to possibly salvage repair parts for their own engines. Jareth Sartoris ordered to command the teams.
On board the Star Destroyer, no signs of life are found. It's as if all of the ship's crew had just up and vanished. Jareth's teams split up and go searching for parts. A little while later, after some searching, his engineers find the parts they need to fix the Purge's engines. They call the second team but get no response. Figuring they must have already gone back to the Purge, Sartoris and his team return to the ship as well. On the way back down to their ship though, something strange starts happening. Two or three members of his team start showing severe signs of an infection. They begin coughing and vomiting and suffering from seizures.
Once back aboard the Purge, the team is taken to the medical bay where the chief medical officer, a woman by the name of Zahara Cody, attempts to treat them. The disease is like nothing she's ever seen though, and soon enough she realizes that it has already spread throught the entire prison barge. The disease is lethal too. Within hours, over 99% of the ship's crew are dead. The few survivors must have some natural immunity to the disease.
It's here that the story really gets going. The disease is obviously what creates the zombie army our survivors have to deal with. At this point, the only people left alive are Dr. Cody, Kale and Trig , Officer Sartoris, and two unknown prisoners who had been holed up in solitary confinement this whole time. More on those two in a bit though. As a setup for the story, I was really hooked into how things were going. One of my favorite things in a horror story is watching as the situation goes from normal to all sorts of messed up, and the author did a great job here. The prison barge was already a crappy place to be stuck on at the beginning of the book, but as the disease spreads it goes from being crappy to being a living hell hole. Dead bodies are everywhere, they've covered the walls and floors of the ship with vomit and blood and god knows what else from the disease. The stink of death is everywhere aboard the Purge.
As horror stories go, that's a pretty sweet setting. I was really looking forward to seeing the dead stat to rise, and how our main characters would deal with them. I was also really enjoying the fact that I was getting to read a Star Wars book that didn't have any major characters from the movie in it. One of my biggest pet peeves about Star Wars books is the fact that the same characters are used over and over and over again. Exactly how many times do Han, Luke and Leia have to save the galaxy anyways? 20? 30? 100? In a story telling setting that is literally the size of a galaxy, why do we always have to go back to the same five people time and time again to save everyone? Are you telling me that no one else is available to save the day for once?
My favorite Star Wars books by far have always been the X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole. Aside from my love of X-Wings in general, this is because the majority of those books are about new characters we've never seen before. Sure, some minor characters from the films like Wedge Antilles are there in force and you'll get the occasional one or two page cameo by Luke, but the vast majority of those stories were about characters who had never appeared in a movie. That's a rarity in Star Wars books, and I was absolutely loving that this book was only featuring characters I'd never heard of before. It was new people doing new stuff. I was all for it. Besides, how could you possibly include any of the major existing characters into a zombie story anyways. That would be insane, right?
As I said, I was really enjoying the book's set up and was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the zombies when the ship's Dr. decides to head down to solitary confinement to try to save the two unknown prisoners that are down there. This too had me excited as I had no idea who was down there and I was looking forward to more new characters to read about. Soon enough, Dr. Cody gets down to solitary and opens the cells. And then it happens. On page 96 of the book, everything that I had been loving about the story so far entirely goes away. On page 96, what was obviously meant to be a cool suprise for Star Wars fans takes place and not one, but two major characters from Star Wars lore step out of their cells and into this story that they really have no right being in. On page 96 he swaggers out of his cell with a lop-sided grin a mile wide.
Han Fucking Solo.
Yeah, that's right, Han Solo and Chewie just happen to be prisoners aboard the ship that is about two seconds away from being introduced to a full on zombie apocalypse. I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped when this happened. I was shocked, and not in a good way. I was not happy to see this development, no not at all. I was angry. Why the hell would you include Han Solo and Chewie into a story of this nature? They were a total distraction to what the focus of the story should have been, the zombies and the survivors. Han and Chewie are a known element. We all know that there's no chance in hell that either of these two are going to die from a zombie bite, so any potential dramatic tension regarding them is completely non-existant. It's like watching a horror film after being told in the opening credits who's going to live and who's going to die. It sort of defeats the point.
The enjoyment of a good zombie story is getting to find out who lives and who dies. Zombie stories are survival tales where we see a rag tag group of people who are forced to work together, and you know that most of them aren't going to make it. Having Han and Chewie in there just ruined everything. It was pretty obvious at that point who our survivors would be, and who was about to become zombie bait. Who do you think will survive a zombie apocalypse, Han Solo or some random Imperial guard named Sartoris? That's almost like asking who would die in a Star Trek away party, Kirk, Spock, McCoy or Ensign "No First Name" Johnson?
It's not that I don't like Han Solo. I fucking love Han Solo and Chewbacca. They (along with Lando) were my favorite characters from the original trilogy. I love reading about them. I've read tons of books about them. However, I did not want to read about them here. They would have been the last people I would have wanted to see in this story. You can imagine then that I was highly disappointed at this point. The book I had been waiting months for had just been ruined, but I was determined to try to enjoy the rest of it. After all, it is a zombie book and I hadn't even gotten to the zombies yet. I couldn't quit now. So, pushing aside the bitter taste in my mouth, I plunged on.
I will admit, the rest of the book is decently entertaining. It's not a great book by any means. There's nothing mind blowing about it, but it definitely has some solid strengths going for it. Author Joe Schreiber is a very talented horror writer. He did an excellent job of making the story every bit as gory and gruesome and creepy as it should have been. Never before in a Star Wars book have I read lurid details about peope's limbs being severed or intestines falling out. Never have I ever read detailed descriptions about what happens to someone who takes a blaster shot to the face (it's really not pretty). As a writer, Schreiber excels at conveying the dark and bloody world of Death Troopers. This definitely isn't your typical Star Wars book. This is something far uglier, and I mean that in the best way possible.
The book is also rather short (only 234 pages or so), and it's paced very well. It's a quick and easy read and at no point did I feel that the story felt bogged down or slow. The ending is a little abrupt though and felt a little anti-climatic. I was expecting some big action sequence near the end where they blew up the Star Destroyer or something, but that never really happened. On the plus side though, the story is entirely self contained. No prior knowledge of Star Wars other than the movies is required to enjoy this book. Even if you've never read a Star Wars book before, you can still pick this up and be completely entertained. I liked that a lot as most Star Wars books these days are heavily steeped in expanded universe crap to the point where if you haven't read every other Star Wars book first, you'll have no idea what's going on.
Overall, the book is fun. It's entertaining and will definitely appeal to both fans of Star Wars or zombies. However, it's a bit short and the inclusion of Han and Chewie was a really poor decision in my opinion. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's entirely possible to have a good Star Wars book that doesn't feature any characters from the film at all. I think Death Troopers would have been better had Han and Chewie not been it it.
Final Grade: 3 Stars out of 5
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