Star Wars: Medstar II - Jedi Healer (A Clone Wars Novel, #5) in The Expanded Universe

Dec 07, 2020 Keith rated it did not like it

Shelves: star-wars

I feel almost the exact same way about this book as the first except there was more that was objectionable about this book. Like the first, it is essentially MASH (or at least my understanding of MASH) in space. The characters were vaguely interesting, but the story felt entirely inconsequential to any of the events in the EU. The book completely depended on likeable characters, and I think it failed. The characters that I liked were by and large made less interesting by this story. (view spoile I feel almost the exact same way about this book as the first except there was more that was objectionable about this book. Like the first, it is essentially MASH (or at least my understanding of MASH) in space. The characters were vaguely interesting, but the story felt entirely inconsequential to any of the events in the EU. The book completely depended on likeable characters, and I think it failed. The characters that I liked were by and large made less interesting by this story. (view spoiler)

I didn't feel like the first book was poorly written. This one was. It was bad enough in the last book when he dropped the, "War. What is it good for?" line. Jedi Healer had that kind of stuff on steroids. There was almost a complete retelling of the golden goose fairytale but he substituted an alien in for the goose. Who thinks this kind of crap is a good idea? Reaves spent far too much of this book droning on about philosophy in sappy and eye rolling fashion. The plot and how Reaves executed the plot was far superior in the first book as well. (view spoiler)

The first book was sort of like a soap opera with the love story, and this book was basically like a stupid teenage love story. (view spoiler)

This complaint goes back to the first book. The wonder plant Bota is absurd. I absolutely hate it when an author or a writer for a movie is working within an established universe and they come up with an idea that doesn't fit that universe. Instead of scrapping that idea, they often think to themselves, "I'll just come up with a reason why this doesn't affect anything else in the universe and it's all good." Wrong. It rarely is. My example is always the Last Jedi. (view spoiler) This book does something similar (though not nearly as offensive). Bota is pretty much miraculous and can cure anything. It isn't exaggeration to say that it can cure practically anything. (view spoiler)

(view spoiler)

This also goes back to the first book, but it was exasperated in the second book. These wonderful doctors are not the type of people who get drafted. (view spoiler)

Much of the writing was laughable in this book. One line went something like this, "The Dark side isn't evil, and it isn't good. It simply is what it is." Wow. Profound. Barriss' argument was essentially that although Dooku murdered a planet or a continent, the slaughter inspired a really nice song, so it wasn't all bad. That was really her argument. It would like saying, "Yeah, it wasn't great that Hitler murdered millions of Jews. BUT, maybe the survivors felt a greater appreciation for life because they survived, so you can't really say Hitler was evil. He just was what he was." If you want to come up with a shades of grey argument, it would be hard to find a worse one that Reaves did. They even make some absurd argument that it would be evil to kill Dooku if they had the chance. Why? It was another one of those, "It would make us just as evil as them" type of arguments, which may be the dumbest argument of all time. It isn't even like the moral dilemma of "would you kill baby Hitler?" This has no dilemma. This isn't about killing baby Dooku. This is, "Would you kill Hitler as he was in the process of murdering millions of people?" Your answer is obviously yes unless you are a total idiot or completely spineless. Reaves has this be an argument that the good side is, "of course we wouldn't kill Hitler because killing is bad". And it is even portrayed as bad that one of them would want to kill him.

The ending (view spoiler)

Another irritant was that this was a camp full of nurses and doctors, and they spend about 90% of their free time getting drunk. They daily get random batches of injured people to work on. They never stop drinking, and the only thing Reaves does to try to make it ok is to have I-5 give them some anti-hangover cure. Okay, but what about all the doctors being drunk and then operating on everyone? This being a problem didn't seem to cross Reaves mind.

For reasons I can't understand, (view spoiler)

There was a moment where it felt like an editor came to Reaves and said, "Hey man, you haven't referenced other Star Wars locations and species yet. Add in about 30 more." Some of them were okay and not really noticeable. Others were ridiculous like how one doctor hadn't been many places but had been to Hoth. Really. Hoth? The whole point of Hoth was that there was no reason to go there since it was a worthless ball of ice. That's why the rebels hid there. I guess people are supposed to get all giddy and be like, "Hoth. I know that place. This is cool." Another character just happens to be from Tatooine. Someone else if from or went to school on Alderaan. Worst of all, a C-3PO protocol style droid, I-5, plays the exact same board game from A New Hope on the Millennium Falcon. He wins, and the wookie he is playing against rips his arm off. Hmm...sound familiar. I am mostly stunned that whomever was in charge for Lucas allowed this pathetic ripoff to be included.

Another cringe-worthy scene. (view spoiler)

We finally find out (view spoiler)

Apparently Correllians can't marry outsiders. News to me and all Correllians. ...more

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Jun 11, 2011 Rachel rated it really liked it

I liked this book better than the first one. The bit about getting the droid drunk was rather funny. It was good that the spy got it in the end. I still have the same problem with this one that I had with the first one. Now that I've finished the book, these characters no longer matter. The whole duology is very much M*A*S*H, Star Wars style. ...more

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