Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars

De: Sam Maggs

Narrado por: Sean Kenin Elias-Reyes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Cal Kestis leads the Stinger Mantis crew on an adventure set between Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

Cal Kestis has built a new life for himself with the crew of the Stinger Mantis. Together, Cal’s crew has brought down bounty hunters, defeated Inquisitors, and even evaded Darth Vader himself. More important, Merrin, Cere, Greez, and faithful droid BD-1 are the closest thing Cal has had to a family since the fall of the Jedi Order. Even as the galaxy’s future grows more uncertain by the day, with each blow struck against the Empire the Mantis crew grows more daring.

On what should be a routine mission, they meet a stormtrooper determined to chart her own course with the help of Cal and the crew. In exchange for help starting a new life, the Imperial deserter brings word of a powerful, potentially invaluable tool for their fight against the Empire. And even better, she can help them get to it. The only catch—pursuing it will bring them into the path of one of the Empire’s most dangerous servants, the Inquisitor known as the Fifth Brother.

Can the Imperial deserter truly be trusted? And while Cal and his friends have survived run-ins with the Inquisitors before, how many times can they evade the Empire before their luck runs out?

©2023 Ballantine (P)2023 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Author Sam Maggs has managed to turn a tie-in novel that bridges the gap between two video games into one of the most romantic and riveting Star Wars books of all time. Jedi: Battle Scars blows every expectation out of the water for a thrilling and intimate tale of messy found family and finding your fire and purpose in the galaxy.” —Dork Side of the Force

“Maggs is a strong writer and the story is incredibly compelling.” —SlashFilm

“A perfect bridge from Fallen Order to Survivor . . . Battle Scars provides a fun and exciting new adventure for Cal & Co.” —That Hashtag Show

Horny teenage fan fiction

Starting off with the pros, the narrator is fantastic does unique voices for each character and there are cool sound effects played throughout, something I was pleasantly surprised with since I haven’t listened to an audiobook in some time.
As for the story, I am quite disappointed. I just finished so the Light of the Jedi novel which is fantastic and finished the Jedi Survivor game which is fantastic so I was going into this with high expectations. However, the author dedicates the most time and effort detailing a steamy lesbian romance that this book ends up feeling more like a cheap romance novel filled with Star Wars jargon then an actually interesting and original Star Wars story.

Wasn’t as bad as others say but still pretty bad

I read through this book as quickly as possible because I just wanted it to be over. The story felt more focused on Frett’s physical features for the first 5 hours than actual proceeding with the story, which felt all over the place half the time I could barely follow what they were actually doing, and honestly the only interesting part of this book was when Cere actually joined in the action I will never forgive Sam Maggs for this garbage.

Glorified Fanfiction

This book was pretty disappointing. It was less of a story and more of an illustration of the author's Lesbian Alien Fetish. It was pretty much the smut you find on the fan fiction sites (which is great over there) but how this became a licensed Star Wars book I have no idea.

The Narrator was pretty good, doesn't nearly have the range that Marc Thompson does but that's okay.

I will say the actual action was very well written.

False advertisement

The title says “Battle Scars” not “50 Shades of Green”.

I was excited to learn about these awesome characters from a game I played only to find myself paying for a self-insert fanfic.

Greeze was the BEST character to be fleshed out in this entire novel, I didn’t even care what happened to him in the game until I read this book, unfortunately that is only because everyone else is barely given screen time outside of Merrin and Frett.

As for Merrin I felt like I was listening to a meta version of a Gen Z teen and not a deep mature individual who was seeing the whole world in a new light.

Cere is an idiot who thinks that Rowena’s Diadem is gonna impress a bunch of space people.

Cal barely contributes as much as he simps after a girl we ALREADY established as his “friend-zone” friend who “happens-to-be-a-girl”.

BD barely shows up at all.

The narrator is the best voice I’ve heard read a Star Wars novel so he and Greeze are the true power couple carrying this book. Seriously the narrator literally felt like his own character. Do not change!

In short the consequences of the ending barely qualify this story as anything other than filler. There. I said it.

Who approved this?

Imagine buying a star wars book expecting a star wars book. STAY AWAY from this book if you're a star wars fan. This is glorified fan-fiction. Actually, I take that back. That's insulting to fan-fiction.

I love romance in stories, don't get me wrong. But this is a star wars book. The main focus of it shouldn't be between a brand new character and one of the crew INSTANTLY falling in love and obsessing over eachother for most of the book.

The only reason I gave this 2 stars is because of the production quality, and the speaker which was actually decent.

also, if I hear "we're family" from Cal one more time I'm going to lose my marbles.

Severely Dissapointed

I’ll get this out up front right away. I did not like this story at all. I read the reviews and thought it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the reviews it’s gotten. Sadly they check out.

First off I’ll say some positives. The performance was decent and the sound effects were good. That’s all.

The story felt like a soft core fan fiction at several moments and literally left me eye rolling and wanting the scenes to progress to the actual story. Problem is there really isn’t a story. It’s all a maguffin with no resolution. Without all the fluff of long monologues and describing how Marrin and her love interest want to go at it; the story is roughly around three or four hours. There are multiple hamfisted moments asking the audience to remember little moments from the game. Ultimately nothing really happens other than a bunch of arguing and lying for no reason.

None of the established characters feel like the ones from the game except Greeze at some moments. Cal is basically some goofy child that is diving headlong into danger so other people don’t get hurt. Never saw that in the game.

I’m guessing this story is maybe three or four years after the first game, but if none of this gets referenced in the new game I’ll never read one of these books again. Honestly I’m going to completely avoid this author as well. It’s rare a story will irritate me to the point of audible frustration, but this is one of the few.

TLDR this isn’t a “woke” story like some of the other reviews have said. It’s just a bad story.

If you played fallen order, you will appreciate this much more

Firstly, the narrator took a bit getting used to. He uses a very chipper voice that reminded me somewhere between a cheerleader and a sports announcer. But the further I got into it, I realized he fit the tone and style of the authors writing, and his execution of the light humor is very well done. I also commend him on his impressive imitations on most of the characters voices from the game.

Speaking of the characters, if you have not played fallen order, I really don’t think you’d find any enjoyment in this at all. It’s marketed as a story leading up to survivor, which I haven’t played yet, but I can say it was really great to see what these characters have been up to since fallen order.

The action scenes are awesome, and draw a lot from the games.
As for the story, it is focused on the straining relationships of the mantis crew and a couple newcomers as the stress of nearly being murdered every day as they all try to achieve personal/unclear goals begins to weigh heavily on them.
Despite what you may expect, 50% of the story is a romance novel. This doesn’t offend me quite as much as it seems to many other reviewers, but to each their own. It reminded me of anakin and Padme from attack of the clones, but being a novel, it’s a good deal more fleshed out and steamy.

Overall, I enjoyed reading about the characters, and their relationships, because that would be what would happen when stuck on a ship for years with the same people. It has a good deal of lengthy, exciting battles to tickle that Star Wars fancy too.

Think Full House (if it was made today with lgbtq mandated stuff) meets Star Wars.

The only redeemable thing is the voice acting

Couldn’t finish it. So sad that this particular story was given to this author. I’ll just pretend it doesn’t exist

Really? Don't listen to others rebiews

I happened to catch some reviews about this book before reading it. They tried to indicate that this was soon hot and heavy romance novel and totally different from other Stars Wars novels. Not true at all. One reviewer actually posed the question wondering if the author was horny. Really? That is so far from truth. This is a fine, typical Star Wars novel. You will enjoy it more if you happen to already be familiar with the characters.

major tone shift from TFO

This book really did kinda feel like a waste of time. The book is almost instantly made pointless.by 5 minute of JS. The whole point that spans the across the book is just shattered within 4 seconds of booting up the game. The action and story is pretty ok but it includes way to many odd sex scenes and long draw explanations of how much thet raher be boning then doing whatever they are doing at the time. I'd be fine.with the romance selection if it was even mildly hinted at in TFO. The action is fun and the main arc is interesting but then long draw out romance selection are overkill.