quote:

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They were waiting as I stepped through the door into the taverno: three of them, preadult Yavanni, roughly the size of Brahma bulls, looming over me from both sides of the entryway. Big, eager-eyed, and territorial, they were on the prowl and looking for an excuse to squash something soft.

From all indications, it looked like that something was going to be me.

I stopped short just inside the door, and as it swung closed against my back I caught a faint whiff of turpentine from the direction of my would-be assailants. Which meant that along with being young and brash, they were also tanked to the briskets. I was still outside the invisible boundary of the personal territories they'd staked out for themselves in the entryway...

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As with dialogue, don’t thought patterns give us a flavor of the character? And since clichés are okay in dialogue, by extension they’d be okay in thoughts. Granted, there’s such a thing as deep thought where an author can use words and images the character wouldn’t but which express those thoughts in a less clichéd way, but a shallower mode of thought can and probably should mimic the character’s speech more closely. (And granted you wouldn’t want a character to speak or think only in clichés and become a caricature.) I thought the bull comment worked, given the similarities to a Wild West tavern in this passage and the sort of character the guy was.

Also – and this might be a spoiler here, so beware – the main character has a secret throughout the book which caused him to be less a hero, in my eyes at least although others may not think so, but which redeemed him at the end. I really enjoyed the book despite the brawl opening, which wouldn’t ordinarily have kept me reading, and even despite the shadow I thought the character’s shady past cast on it for me. Now, I had a personal reason to keep reading, but with the hindsight of having read the entire book, I don’t know if Zahn could have, or even should have, approached it differently.

Stinker.

It's not the comparison to Brahma bulls, it's the dreadfully worded "roughly the size of" that makes this a total stinker to me. I don't want to invest hundreds of pages in a the head of a character that thinks in cliches.

Call them Brahma bulls with flashing neon chips on their beefcake shoulders, or something like that.

Although a brawling scene isn’t a draw for me, still, in keeping with the deep thought vs shallow thought idea, I thought the bull and indication comments gave a sense of the character’s personality and attitude. But I understand where you’re coming from, Doc.

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert from here on!

I’m torn on that one, pickled. I liked the ending. Had the character been only the one portrayed throughout the book, I’d have not been as glad he resolved the issues, since I find it hard to sympathize with anti-heroes. Had I known who he was throughout, there wouldn’t have been the noble moment when he rises to full stature, which for me was a “Luke, I am your father” moment. (Okay, call me a rube. )

Moreover, because I wanted to keep the guy at arm’s length yet found myself liking him, Zahn invested me more in the character than if I had known the character was indisputably a good guy from the start. With full disclosure, it would have been an entirely different story.

In deference to OSC, I think this is a case of break the rules and count the cost. Had Zahn written the book in third person instead of chancing a less-than-honest first person, I think I’d have had a harder time liking the character, and the revelation then would have seemed author-contrived. And third person without the secret, like first person without the secret, would have been a different story.

And the crapshoot goes on…

"Little did they know that - oh, and you didn't either - that I was actually an interplanetary super spy!"

Groan...

I like roguish heroes, too, to a point. Loved Han Solo. (Why do you say "Lucas slaughtered his personality with that stupid Greedo thing?" Did you not think that was in keeping with his smuggling life?) Maybe McKell, unlike Solo, didn't have someone like Skywalker carrying the noble banner for him while he developed into the noble character he actually was -- kind of like Solo borrowing on Skywalker's purity or honor till he had some of his own.

The revelation really didn't bother me. I suppose it kind of validated how I felt about McKell, so there's probably a psychological thing going on here. Without the revelation, I would have finished the book upset I had been rooting for a rogue. This way, my liking the character was vindicated.

Actually, I submitted this opening because it started with action, a supposedly good thing, though I had been hard-pressed to think of a book that did. Maxey's book came to mind, till I noted that the action scene was in his prologue; the first chapter started more sedately. So I began to wonder if the hoopla about starting with action is not as hoopla-y as we're led to believe.

Thanks!