I want to say Merry Christmas to my readers...or whatever holiday you wish to observe. In any case, I was able to get Nemesis available at least in Amazon for the Christmas holiday. It will be available everywhere else on January 3, 2017.
At last, Nemesis is finished, and I am finished with Starfire Angels. This story wraps up the lives of all the major characters and I am very satisfied with how it concluded. I hope you will enjoy it.
Description (updated):
Since stealing Raea from Valdas and her team of Shirukan, Leksel was
never on good terms with the Shirukan general. He sliced her face in the
fight to take back the Crystal Keeper. She destroyed his wing in
retribution. When circumstances bring them face-to-face through an
unlikely source, a truce is tenuous at best. Leksel needs Valdas to
guide him to the Keeper that set her free from the du’kir brood ship and
to retrieve the Starfire shard on the infamous Annihilator, and Valdas
needs Leksel to help her destroy those who betrayed her. Two former
Shirukan working together to cut out the heart of the Shirat Empire
might be a powerful alliance, if they can overcome their loathing for
one another.
On a side note, I wish to say that I corrected my review of Rogue One after my husband corrected me. I had thought that Tarkin was played by Wayne Pygram, and sometimes it sounded very much like him, but apparently, I should have looked closer. I have made the correction, but I sure could swear that it was Scorpius. Scary that those actors could have such similar voices and bone structure.
Today, my husband and I had a movie day, sans kids. (Yay! They're old enough to stay home. Too bad they didn't get their chores done--we checked in on our home security system.)
We had the movie without the typical commentary from our oldest child, which made for a more pleasant experience. She loves to chat through the whole movie. Unfortunately, she probably gets that from me as I see a face I know and have to ask my husband who it is--he typically can identify the actors since we both tend to watch the same shows (science fiction and fantasy).
In the case of Rogue One, I heard the voice of Scorpius (Farscape villain) from Governor Tarkin, although it didn't quit look like him. My husband confirmed that, while Wayne Pygram played Tarkin in a small scene at the end of one of the prequels, this was Guy Henry, who was a minor character in the Harry Potter movies. The only problem I had was the bad CGI trying to alter the actor's face to make him look like Peter Cushing. I am not fond of the computer animation of real faces. It came off much better for Michael Douglas in Ant-Man, but there they just made him look younger. In this case, they were trying to put on a similar face and it looked too animated and not real, especially with all the other actors around him being live.
Other than that, I enjoyed the show. It felt more like it was meant to be an Easter-egg than a full-on Star Wars movie, something to appease the full-on fans like my husband. Don't be mistaken, I like Star Wars, but I don't need to know every little detail of every character or ship or planet or whatever. My husband role-plays and miniature games in the SW universe, so he's totally absorbed. I don't need that degree of immersion. That said, it had the feel of a fun side story, which, if I'm not mistaken, is what it was intended to be, something to fill in the gaps from the main canon.
The plot could have come from a YA/NA or animated series crossed with a SW Rebels story. In fact, there are references to the animated series in this--a call for Syndulla over an intercom and several shots of the Ghost. And one of the characters helping Jyn bore a striking resemblance to Kanan while another character was blind like Kanan but could as well have had eyes for his fighting skills (like Kanan). The supporting characters overall were largely caricatures of themselves, VERY distinctive traits perhaps exaggerated too much to make up for lacking real depth.
I will give kudos to the ending. It wasn't what I was expecting in some ways but how it played out for the main characters was the only way to explain their absence in A New Hope et al. I was pleased with it breaking from the typical Star Wars story. The events made the ending feel like it truly fit with the rest, and that brought me a sense of satisfaction; but others may not feel the same.
