The Crystal Turd

by Beau DashingtonE

Editors note: There’s apparently a lot of bad Star Wars books.

If I’m completely honest, I’m not really that into Star Wars. I’m more of a Star Trek kind of guy. But even as someone who doesn’t get into the Star Wars universe, its impossible not to notice it as a landmark on the pop cultural landscape. I haven’t really loved any of the twelve Star Wars movies that have been released in my life. And it is twelve, if you include Ewoks: the Battle for Endor, which I definitely do, since I watched it many times as a child. I think the main reason I was fascinated with it was the fact that I bore a striking resemblance to the lead character. In my childhood ignorance, I was unsure if they were a boy or a girl, thus leading me to ask questions about myself that I wasn’t equipped to answer then, and probably still am not now. Moving on.

To me, the most fascinating thing about Star Wars is just that; the immense public fascination with Star Wars. Any lover of film and any pop culture historian would surely agree that the original trilogy were classics, but since then George Lucas and his heirs at Disney have produced a fairly consistent amount of tripe. Whether its A Star Wars Christmas, or Ewoks: The Battle of Endor, or The Phantom Menace, the franchise has produce some real turd nuggets. At the same time, the franchise continues to be a roaring success. The franchise was sold by George Lucas for $4billion USD in 2012, and it only took Disney 6 years to make the money back, through the media of films, but also merchandising, theme parks and even television. Like it or not, Star Wars is like sand; its course and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

Almost everyone is familiar with the movies, but perhaps you are only peripherally aware of the books. Depending on how you count, there are between 400 and 500 Star Wars novels. Prior to the sale of Star Wars to Disney, a whopping 381 books were produced, all considered canon, and all consistent within the same universe. With the stroke of a pen, Disney renamed them “Legends”, and removed their status as canon, starting a new line of “canon” literature that followed the plots of the sequel trilogy, of which there are already 80 or so entrants (with more coming at regular intervals). If you include all books that were not in either the old canon or the new, as well as all officially licensed books, you get well over a thousand books. Which really makes me wonder; has anyone actually read them all? According to the internet, the answer is no.

Which begs a second question: what is the biggest possible Piece of Shit™ in all these hundreds and thousands of books? Unless you really don’t know how this blog works, you will already have realized that it is The Crystal Star by Vonda M. McIntyre, originally written in 1994 as part of the Expanded Universe. The book opens with Han and Leia’s kids getting kidnapped, which makes me realize that I am probably reading a book somewhere in the middle of the 381 book series. The children’s names are Anakan, Jaina and Jacen (uggh). Turns out they have been kidnapped by a thoroughly uninteresting character Hethrir, who wants to rebuild the empire. His plan is to sacrifice the children to a mysterious entity who can grant him dark powers. By coincidence – the laziest of tool in the writer’s arsenal – Han and Luke are visiting that very entity, and the cult that surrounds him. The primary antagonist of the book is Waru, who is describe as a large talking altar covered in gold plates that leaks blood everywhere.

A shitty gold plated character that annoys and confuses me. And Waru.



Although I give Vonda marks for originality, its really hard to identify any kind of emotion towards an altar, be it either compassion or fear. If nothing else, Star Wars’ success in the popular imagination is fixed primarily because of a few key things: laser swords, space ships travelling at hyperspeed, and evil villains. Can you compare Waru as a villain to someone like Darth Vader? The answer is clear:

It turns out that Waru wants to eat their kids, in order to get dark powers or something. It turns out that his main special skill is that he blocks the ability of anyone – Jedi or Sith – to connect to the force, meaning that another of the key elements of Star Wars has been removed from the plot of the book. After 200 pages of dithering, Hethrir tries to sacrifice Anakin (no not that one, the other one) to Waru, but when Han and Leia try to stop him, Waru claims to be missing his true home, and he basically self-destructs and leaves.

And that’s it. That’s the book. Its not the worst Piece of Shit ™ ever, its just kinda boring. It doesn’t help that the book includes a number of absurd and fantastical alien species, including “ghostlings”, “wyrwulves” (six legged wolves), and even centaurs. I can’t detect any kind of theme in the book, other than that racism is bad, since Hethrir and Waru inexplicably hate all races other than humans. Which is an interesting twist for a Star Wars book to take, given that it has been constantly accused of racism in its history. The racism in Star Wars is quite strange. Everyone knows that Jar Jar Binks has been regularly accused of being a bizarre minstrel act from the Prequel Trilogy. But there is more. There’s a character in 1999’s the Phantom Menace, with a big nose who is very tight with money, whose name is Watto. Many have noted that his vaguely Middle Eastern Accent and large nose are some kind of Jewish stereotype. So blatant it was that Jewish Currents referred to him as a “galactic shylock”. But just in case you didn’t know that, the Crystal Star is here to let you know that racism is bad.

Well, that’s all I have for today. There really isn’t much to say about this book other than its easy to see why Star Wars fans hate it so much; there’s no real villain, no travelling in space, no Force, and thats it.

Apropos of nothing, please enjoy this video of a Stormtrooper falling down the stairs.

Beau Dashington, 2019.