A word from Karen Traviss...

Sas: You should still read the books man! they are the bomb. Just because Lucas is an idiot sometimes doesn't mean that you should read, enjoy, and prefer the books. Honestly the first three movies were amazing, the second three ok, but we all know that the real depth and quality of the universe, WHY IT IS SO AMAZING, is because it has had so many talented writers working towards common goals and themes giving life, variety, and depth. Don't worry about what silly storyline changes Lucas makes because his pride mandates he been in control of these new projects (until he gets bored and hands it off to some one else) they all get smoothed out and fixed by better story tellers later.
 
Get your fill of Karen while you can. After her last book in 2011, we more than likely won't see anymore Star Wars books written by her.
 
Sas: You should still read the books man! they are the bomb. Just because Lucas is an idiot sometimes doesn't mean that you should read, enjoy, and prefer the books. Honestly the first three movies were amazing, the second three ok, but we all know that the real depth and quality of the universe, WHY IT IS SO AMAZING, is because it has had so many talented writers working towards common goals and themes giving life, variety, and depth. Don't worry about what silly storyline changes Lucas makes because his pride mandates he been in control of these new projects (until he gets bored and hands it off to some one else) they all get smoothed out and fixed by better story tellers later.

I'll give her a looksee, I need some holiday reading material.
 
LFL is too adept at spin, and Karen is too British, for either of them to come right out and say whether it was one party, the other, or both who decided to end it. I can therefore only offer my instincts and what I see lurking implicitly between the lines. You can see it most glaringly in the disconnect between Revelation and Invincible of the Legacy of the Force series.

Broadly speaking, she's made Mandalorians too popular and central and identifiable, she has a strong anti-Force-user bias in her writing (don't know about her personal opinions there, but writers tend to not write contrary to bias), and seems to not want to veer too far from there. Which would be great if she were writing a series about how the Mandalorian resistance survived during the Empire, under Fenn Shysa. But when the rest of the EU is trying to get away from Mandos... *shrug*

Despite her anti-Jedi bias, I would rather read her books than anyone else since those of the late Brian Daley. Tim Zahn is good at character, but not as aware of the technical minutiæ as he should be; KJA is a good idea man, but his sense of scope is lacking (three Star Destroyers are a threat to the entire New Republic? Really?); Michael Stackpole writes very good stories for character, scope, and detail, but Corran is such a Mary-Sue... None of the rest have really stood out as spectacularly good or bad.

And out of this current group, Aaron Allston is okay; James Luceno is good, but so flowry with his prose that I too often am exhausted before I can finish slogging through the first page or three; and the less I say abot Troy Denning, the less likely I am to be banned. >_>

--Jonah
 
lol to be honest... I had given up reading the books until Karen revived the mando'ade. The other books are just too boring, or too overflowing with the force. I've started the newest series, but unless something changes soon... I don't foresee myself reading too much more into it. The mando'ade must return! lol More boba, less Luke. Just my opinion, and Karen does a good job at that. She writes for a specific audience with which she is VERY popular and... let's be honest here, mandos add an element of interest to the stories that no other group of characters really brings to the story.

Kal
 
Well, the word just came down at TheForce.Net. Imperial Commando #2 will officially be Kar'Buir's last Star Wars Novel, due to the fact that she doesn't want to have to fight the "canon" visual guides and such to continue her tales of our favorite Mando's.

*is sad*
 
yes very sad!! I quit buying star wars books until I was bored and picked up teh first book of her series. Macho gritty Darkheroes.Loved it. We don't have enough of those gritty heroes anymore. Why do all of our heroes now days have to look like anorexic teens??
Guess I will be back to reading Stephen King.
 
Karen is still doing plenty of other books! I encourage you to pick up her Gears of War books as the writing style is very close to the RC books. She also has a new series of her own that she is working on.

If you like her writing style, then you will definitely like her other books.
 
As much as this sucks! I can see why she has made this decision and support her fully as a fan of her work. However it is still going to be a bittersweet day when IC 2 is released. What she has done for us mando fans is huge! Increasing general awareness of the mandalorians as a culture for the wider Star Wars fan group and expanding hugely on the culture and life style of mandalorians... And hell... Now we are even up there with Star Trek (klingon) and Lord of the Rings (elvish) having our own fictional language, and we owe it all to KT! We all have a lot to thank her for and therefore while I personally wish she didn't have all these canon, continuity issues to deal with, I fully understand her decision to pull out of Star Wars, and will continue to support her in any way I can...

I'll always support you Kar'buir!

Tracyn
 
i feel reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy stupid
 
I'm going to miss her contributions to the Star Wars Universe as well, but I do have a couple of her Wess'har books and plan on getting her GOW ones too.

At least our beloved Kar'buir Mandos will always live on in the books already out and the imaginative tracks we have formed from them.
 
Recently, my branch of Mercs members split from the LA area clan and created our own clan for the club. All of us wear armor designed upon Karen Traviss' Null ARC characters. Most have seen the pix in the costumes threads.

Since we became a clan, we needed a sigil or crest. I had been holding out for Kar'buir to create one however, once her departure was announced I feared it would never happen. So I contacted her and found my fears were justified. Although she had hoped to eventually create the sigil for the clan she had not and didn’t really have any functioning ideas.

After a few emails back and forth, she asked that her fans, the members of the MMC create the sigil for her. Although since she’s not LFL and likely wouldn’t have a chance to incorporate it in her books, if she liked the ultimate design, she would give it her blessing. Members of the mercs club worked diligently for several days and a sigil was designed.

Here is the process we used:
We considered the name Skirata itself. While we weren’t able to find a direct translation for Skirata, we did find the word skira which we assumed the clan name was derived from. In Mando’a, skira means settling scores, revenge. feud (different to vengeance - more personal). To us, that was a similar meaning to vengeance.

We also know that Kal values, lives by and passes on Mandalorian traditions. They seem to be a core to his being. Not knowing a direct correlation for tradition, we felt that duty was a close correlation. As in a duty to uphold the traditions of the Mando’ade.

Next we considered that the patriarch’s from the family were strong leaders, strong men and well respected by their children, even Kal’s biological children came back to him in time of need knowing he was a rock and person they could turn to. Kal seemed to have this adoration for Munin and Kal’s adopted children seemed to have the same regard for Kal. That shows that honoring the father is an important part of the clan.

With those 3 things, we felt we had found the colors for the clans sigil. Sandgold for vengeance, green for duty and red for honoring the father.

Once the colors were selected, we moved onto how the sigil was designed. Whereas most of the clans for the club utilize the club’s Merc Skull, we felt that traditionally, the skull or krebes, were related more to the Mand’alor and his Ori’ramikad, not so much to the rank and file Mando’ade. So, we decided to leave the krebes off the Skirata crest. We focus more on the simple design of the Fett crest. For inspiration, we look at crests such as the Mandalorian Crusader sigil, Fett’s sigil and Jodo Kast’s sigil for design.

Although we had no age of the clan or peace time traditional employment for the clan, we felt we could create some of our own and glean the rest from your writings. We realized that Muni found Kal in a time of relative Galactic peace. Yet, Munin was fighting other people’s wars as a mercenary soldier. We also know that in his younger years, Kal lost his family as a result of always being away from home fighting other people’s wars just as Munin had. This led us to think that perhaps in times of peace, the Skirata’s were not farmers, blacksmiths, butchers, accountants etc. Most likely, they were soldiers through and through.

That led us to look for traditional Mandalorian sigils that represented war and warriors. Two that jumped out at us immediately was the open bladed circle of the Mandalorian Crusader’s and the double Mythosaur axehead sigil which commonly adorned the war droids used by Mandalorian warriors. Both of those sigils are quite old and the use of them would age the clan considerably.

Using those sigils as inspiration we felt we were moving forward with the design. We started playing with idea’s and came up with a promising design. We started throwing designs together and came up with an idea that we really liked. But, we felt it was missing something. That something we decided was the Mandalorian rune for “S”.

With that, we were able to finalize our design.
adencrestcopy.png


I received the approval email this morning. Here is a bit of what Kar’buir had to say about the sigil:

"This looks terrific. It really works well because it's uncluttered. And I speak as someone who used to manage logos and corporate branding!”
 
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Thank you Karen Traviss for your awesome books! You make our imaginations run wild when we start reading your works. Just freakin awesome!
 
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