Hard Contact

When is a Star Wars novel not a Star Wars novel?

That seems to be one of the questions raised by Republic Commando: Hard Contact. On the surface, it very much seems to be one - you have a group of Commando clone troopers trying to rescue a young Jedi from a Mandalorian warrior, and the Clone Wars are very actively happening in the background of the novel's action. Despite these surface similarities, however, the novel bears very little in common with the rest of the Star Wars universe, and what is the “house style” of the EU (Expanded Universe) novels in general. If a few names and titles had have been changed, this could have very easily been an ‘original fiction' title, rather than a tie-in novel. For all of the stories that have been written in the Star Wars universe, most of them have focused very heavily on the ‘Star' portion of the title, with little if any focus done on the ‘Wars' part. Hard Contact changes that by delivering a story of military sci-fi, focusing on an elite group of Commando clones.

Throughout the course of the novel, Traviss does a very good job of developing all of her clone soldiers as distinct individuals. In other parts of the Clone Wars saga, the clones exist more or less as cyphers; in addition to sharing a genetic code, it appeared that they all shared a character (or lack thereof). One of the themes that Traviss explores is the idea of finding both a culture and an individual identity, and the difficulties that would be associated with that, when there are millions of others who share both your physical form and most of your personal past. [return][return]I generally try not to be a snob when it comes to liscenced material, but in the past year I've read a few that were really a chore to get through. Hard Contact is the exact opposite of that; with or without the Star Wars name attached to it, it was a really enjoyable piece of fiction writing.