Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars

By: Sam Maggs

Narrated by: Sean Kenin Elias-Reyes

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

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

Narrator and writing problems

Why does the narrator sound like he was directed to read this like the pre-recorded announcer for a Disney land ride? So friendly it feels sterile and a little awkward…maybe I’ve become spoiled by the adventurous and dynamic performances of Marc Thompson. Sean has a good sounding voice and does well enough justice to character voices. I feel like it’s more of a director mistake than bad performance.

The writing reads more like a romance novel packaged in a Star Wars wrapping. So far I’m bored :(

I’m a couple of hours in. I’ll give an updated review if it improves but so far that doesn’t seem likely.

DO NOT RECOMMEND Teenage level romance novel, and nearly insufferable.

First, I’ll say I reeeeally wanted to like this. I played through the game and was looking forward to this to bridge the games. I’m familiar with the characters and their stories, but I also know what to expect from Star Wars stories and feel I had basic and realistic expectations. I have read (and/or listened to) nearly 100 Star Wars books, and this is among the worst handful.

An absolutely overwhelming, overbearing, and unnecessary amount of this story (I would very literally estimate 30% of the “story”) is spent describing the non-binary masculine bodied 1/2 of a lesbian love interest.

I’m not making this complaint based on the fact that it’s a lesbian—alien love affair, it’s just gratuitous and doesn’t matter which to creatures it is about- it is teenage level writing “romance novel” poodoo and is NOT at all to the level of a Star Wars novel…not even a young adult one. Reading the cheesy Anakin/Padme stuff was nothing in comparison to the unnecessary detail and over the top abrasive insertion of lesbian alien sex-and not in the fun way.

I’m about 2/3 of the way through this book, and it is nearly insufferable, but I feel like it’s a matter of principle at this point to finish.

So far…overHALF of the way through the entire book and nothing at all has happened. Minor things have been set up, or hinted at…but there has been no plot value at all.

This is just a teenage lesbian live story where we know the main characters. They even took the MAIN character and made him a bumbling, too-happy, annoyingly positive and chipper dumb-boi character that felt incredibly forced. (No pun intended)

The narration is good, and though I’m 100% a Marc Thompson fan, I can say this guy does a pretty good job- although Cere has an accent and that’s weird.

I feel like the chick who wrote this did so based on the Cliffs Notes version of the game plot and pulled a teenage lesbian romance novel out of her locker and inserted Star Wars into it.

This book is absolute trash and unfortunately discouraging for looking forward to the second game in the event ANY of this overlaps.

I do not recommend this at all, and in the event I do finish it- I’ll be returning it.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK

This author is too horny for star wars

Oh my lord is the writing in this just 70% lesbian desires and 30% the real story. I was hoping for more of Cal and BD-1 but what the hell is wrong with the author for doing this to the book. It should be a completely different story focused on Marrin, and not a fallen order follow up. The narrator is beyond bad as well.

Disappointing

I wanted a Jedi adventure, not an underage lesbian romance. I got 4 hours in but won’t be finishing it.

Disappointed

I’ve listened to a great many Star Wars novels on this platform, and of them all, this would have to be the worst. Off the bat, I was jarred with the narrators pacing. Really hard to follow. This is the first audiobook I’ve used the tool to slow the recording for.

The writing itself is amateur, at best. It feels like it was written for YA, contrasted in substance with bizarre, fetishized, violence and some of the most explicitly cringe-inducing “romantic” scenes, dialogue, and plots you will find in Star Wars. (and that’s saying a lot!)

The characters are flat, fladerized, husks of their original counterparts. The mcguffin plot only exists to move the characters around from point A to point B, with very little of significance occurring throughout.

I’ve been looking forward to the next big adventure with Cal and crew since finishing the game in 2019, but this ain’t it.

Wow what a waste of a credit.

This book was a true waste of my time and money.

at first it worked well describing the characters and how they'd but it ended up with a weird story that sounds like fan-fic author going into a k-hole.

if none of this matters in the next game I will be outraged because this is bad.

the performance was solid though.

Bad Romance Novel

Whatever you expect from a Jedi: Fallen Order/Survivor book tie in this is not it. Doesn’t really feel like a Star Wars book either, after coming off the twoThrawn Trilogies, Master and Apprentice, and Tarkin book this feels like a farcry from what you would expect from a Star Wars book. While it does have action and adventure like the game do not confuse this with an action adventure book like the others mentioned this is a romance novel with some action adventure elements.

This broke me

I am a huge fan when it comes to Star Wars but I got Jedi: Fallen Order not having heard anything about it and a few minutes in I fell in love with it, great character Amazing game and since I thought maybe Merrin would be Cal’s love interest that hyped me up for the Sequel and the beautiful possibilities of the next chapter of that beautiful story, This book destroyed that the author has no understanding of the characters, I can see in this book she wrote the story she wanted not a story we needed, I’m not even mad this just depresses me,this is just another sign that story telling as a whole is a fleeting beauty which is sad because I always used to believe in the power of good story telling

Avoid buying

I'm on a star wars book binge right now so I'm comparing this to legends novels like the bane trilogy and I was so let down with this book. I could handle the background noise alright, taking a break when that high pitch alarm noise rang for so long, but the writing was so dry and basic that I felt I was reading fanfiction. Then there's the space witch romance, as a gay guy I don't mind inclusion of LGBTQ+ stuff but the way Sam Maggs wrote the romance was way to sexualized. I've read other books that handle physical romance much better, the main problem with this was the amount of time spent describing these scenes was way to much for me. If I wanted to read a romance novel I would but this was so out of place that it removed me from the world the book was set in and I had to stop reading it. With not so much romance in Jedi: Fallen Order, it made zero sense to switch the genre to romance and then to present it in overly gratuitous way was too much for me enjoy reading. Even if it was a straight romance it still wouldn't feel in line with the tone of the game.

Beware of audio quality.

6 chapters in and there is this horrible high pitched ringing noise that keeps playing in the background. I have listened on multiple devices and it's still persistent and it's painful to continue to listen too. Stay away until they fix this.