(no subject)

[skygiants]

I was going to wait to write up Star Wars: MedStar I: Battle Surgeons until I had read the second book in the duology (Star Wars: MedStar II: Jedi Healer, for the record) but in fact I enjoyed Battle Surgeons SO much that it seemed better to write it up in the full force of my enthusiasm before I discovered whether or not Jedi Healer could live up to it ...

I picked up Battle Surgeons after hearing the folks on the Clone Wars podcast I've been listening to read the blurb out loud, because it's extremely funny:

A surgeon who covers his despair with wisecracks; another who faces death and misery head-on, venting his emotions through beautiful music … A nurse with her heart in her work and her eye on a doctor … A Jedi Padawan on a healing mission without her Master … These are the core members of a tiny med unit serving the jungle world of Drongar, where battle is waged over the control of a priceless native plant, and an endless line of medlifters brings in the wounded and dying—mostly clone troopers, but also soldiers of all species.

Yes! I thought. I do want to read Star Wars: General Hospital! This is sure to be a very funny experience!

... obviously I got punched at least four times with feelings about clones, because I play myself in entirely predictable ways.

Otherwise, Star Wars: Medstar I: Battle Surgeons does exactly what I hoped it would do and does it enjoyably: leans into being a specific kind of genre story about more-or-less ordinary people in the Star Wars universe. The only character I recognized in these books is Barriss Offee, who's there on some kind of Padawan mission, but she's not any more protagonist-y than anyone else and most of her C-plot is about squinting disapprovingly at the local martial artist/weapons instructor who seems to be going homicidally Heart of Darkness --

-- sidenote, can one really sidestep the racism embedded in the history of this particular "sucks to be a noncombatant experiencing a jungle war in a climate that feels inherently inimitable to you, a white person" genre (Heart of Darkness, Year of Living Dangerously, etc.) by setting it on a fake science fictional extra-unpleasant jungle planet with no indigenous population? great question although not one I am going to deeply consider today because that would involve thinking about this book significantly harder than I really intend to --

anyway. Aside from Barriss' personal semi-homicidal nemesis, other plots include:

- local hotshot military surgeon is bored of operating on identical clones, then distressed to confront the notion that clones are people; finds true love in the arms of sexy and minimally-characterized nurse!
- Someone Is A Separatist Spy!
- Someone Else Is Secretly In Cahoots With Black Sun And Also, Unrelatedly, Enjoys Playing The Most Dangerous Game For Sport!
- a cynical three-foot-tall war correspondent is investigating the Hutt quartermaster in order to pursue a personal vendetta!
- a world-weary formerly-independent droid who used to be a smuggler is trying to recover missing memories to figure out how he ended up as a piece of Republic medical equipment!
- another local hotshot surgeon copes with the trauma of war by playing beautiful space classical music on his not!cello!

... this is not a full plot tbh I just really love the sweet Zabrak doctor whose burgeoning classical music career got cut short by the outbreak of galactic war and feel he deserves a shoutout. I do actually have a vested interest in Barriss and I also, predictably, love the cynical war correspondent and the independent droid. I have no particular interest in hotshot surgeon or the corrupt official who also likes to hunt people for sport, but a.) the hotshot surgeon is an avenue for clone feelings and b.) the corrupt official who also likes to hunt people for sport plot is so over-the-top and yet so absolutely irrelevant to any of the actual doctors doing their actual jobs that it does add, you know, a certain atmospheric element ...

Really the book is structured more like a season of a TV show than a novel; all the plots are happening alongside each other and there's at least one scene of everyone playing poker together or cracking wise at the bar in between any major forward momentum on any of them, but by and large everyone's just kind of pursuing their own personal storylines. Life in a jungle medical unit is a rich tapestry! I refuse to make any kind of assessment of the book's actual quality but I enjoyed it very much and will absolutely read the next one, hope with all my heart it remains exactly as episodic and unrelated to Major Star Wars Plot. In conclusion, please experience some sad clone fanart from this book from Twitter with me!

Comments

[sovay]

- a cynical three-foot-tall war correspondent is investigating the Hutt quartermaster in order to pursue a personal vendetta!

Sold.

- a world-weary formerly-independent droid who used to be a smuggler is trying to recover missing memories to figure out how he ended up as a piece of Republic medical equipment!

Also sold.

Life in a jungle medical unit is a rich tapestry!

I really want to know if the author just pitched this book as Star Wars: M*A*S*H*.

[musesfool]

I really want to know if the author just pitched this book as Star Wars: M*A*S*H*.

That's what I was going to say!

[copperfyre]

I was also thinking that this sounded like Star Wars: M*A*S*H! And that both based on that and this summary of it, I absolutely want to read it.

[skygiants]

I feel like it must've been and I'm so happy they just let it be that. The fate of the galaxy is in no way at stake regarding anything that happens! A bunch of doctors and assorted noncoms are just having a stressful time!

[sovay]

A bunch of doctors and assorted noncoms are just having a stressful time!

For given values of war zone, it sounds delightful!

[starlady]

Steve Perry wrote one of the unequivocally good EU Star Wars books (Shadows of the Empire, which, yes, was a video game tie-in) so I would bet this book is objectively at least decent. Star Wars does M*A*S*H*, what can go wrong?

[skygiants]

I don't think I'd heard of either of the authors before in any context but they absolutely did not do me wrong here!

[cyphomandra]

- sidenote, can one really sidestep the racism embedded in the history of this particular "sucks to be a noncombatant experiencing a jungle war in a climate that feels inherently inimitable to you, a white person" genre (Heart of Darkness, Year of Living Dangerously, etc.) by setting it on a fake science fictional extra-unpleasant jungle planet with no indigenous population?

I really liked Joan D Vince’s World’s End, which is pretty much this (as well as part of her Snow Queen series), although the first time I read it I’d just been studying Heart of Darkness and thought I’d broken my critical facilities to the extent that now I was reading everything as Conrad, until I flipped back and found that Vinge had actually stuck in an HoD epigraph for the temporarily perplexed.

I am also v tempted by the amnesiac droid with a Past! (has a type)

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think, like -- so much of the Vibe of Heart of Darkness and descendants(it's been many years since I read Heart of Darkness) even aside from the dehumanization of actual characters is 'this muggy gross climate is a metaphor for the mire of moral ambiguity in which we find ourselves by our mere presence here in a place that's Unfit for Real People (Like Us)' and, like, on the one hand, it's really effective, and on the other hand, can you fully separate that Vibe out from its original context or do the sticky fingerprints of its colonialism leave an indelible stain? Unsure tbh but I did truly enjoy how it was deployed here! I should probably try some Vinge at some point, I've never read any of her stuff.

I love the amnesiac droid with a Past! Sits around at the bar with the reporter and mourns the inability of droids to get drunk!

[raven]

omg so I am not even Star Wars adjacent (I have seen the films but possibly only on planes) but I am extremely here for M*A*S*H in space! would it work with no fandom knowledge do you think?

[skygiants]

I absolutely do, one of the things that delighted me about it was how almost entirely standalone it is (I mean, within the context of being the first of a two-parter) -- really the only context you need is 'there's a horrible and deeply pointless war going on and even the characters don't understand why it's happening.' Also perfect for M*A*S*H vibes!

[slashmarks]

I remember I really loved these two books as a teenager! This says nothing about their quality, though. Side note, they're not in continuity with CLone Wars, there was a retcon for the show that inexplicably de-aged Barriss as well as making her uh, all of that.

[skygiants]

I didn't get a sense that Barriss was wildly different in this book from her age in the Clone Wars show (she seems still pretty close to Padawan-age here? Though I might be misreading/misremembering) but then, uh, yes, there is all of that .... anyway, I really dug the Barriss-Luminara stuff in this one, "you MUST tell me what is in the bakery window" actually a great Jedi training tool.

[slashmarks]

Yeah, it probably wasn't obvious in this particular book, but in the EU in general she was previously Anakin's age/in his cohort instead of Ahsoka's, she's in some of the other old EU books about him as an apprentice, as well as appearing briefly in AotC and in a RotS deleted scene. I have a lot of angry feelings about the retcon there, in part because, while this may not be super obvious, her costume and appearance and Luminara's are based off of Middle Eastern women's folk tattoo practices and dress. (Some pictures.)

[oracne]

I feel my childhood watching M.A.S.H. might be experience that should be applied to this book.

[skygiants]

I've actually never seen any MASH but I've osmosed enough to feel confident agreeing with that statement!

[ceitfianna]

Huh, I apparently already had this book marked as to read, it sounds like an interesting addition to the Clone Wars' era books.

[skygiants]

I really dug it! One of the things that the Clone Wars show very rarely gives us is the POV of non-clones or Jedi who are involved in the war doing other things and what they think about what's going on, and I really liked the variety of perspectives and attitudes in the book.

[obopolsk]

Thank you so much for alerting me to the fact that this book exists. I need it in my life.