The Shriek at Bakura Pt. 1
Added 2024-04-26 14:00:14 +0000 UTCThe Truce at Bakura chapters 1-7
We're back! Work has been kicking both of our asses lately, but we've finally convened to discuss the first third of the fascinating Star Wars Legends novel 'The Truth at Bakura'--as a little break between Hunger Games novels.
Have you ever wondered what happened after Return of the Jedi? Like, maybe fifteen minutes after the movie ends? Well, it turns out some dinosaurs are putting guys' brains in droids and only Luke Skywalker and his friends can save them. How will he do that? Well, so far it seems like mostly by taking meetings. We discuss the bizarre plot, the interesting author, and the broader spectrum of mass media franchises being strung along forever by mass market paperbacks.
Comments
Putting in a request for the podcast to pivot back to the Star Wars novels for a quick cleanser after Mockingbird is done. Courtship of Princess Leia came out right after Bakura, is a stand alone, and imho sucks ass in a way you might like.
DJ
2024-11-03 07:54:33 +0000 UTCNot really the same vibe but if you want weird licensed novels the one that comes to mind for me is the Doom novels. They Make Some Choices that absolutely make sense for a boomer sci fi author working with the concept of "mars outpost gets invaded by demons" but which are still very funny in the context of what the game is. Turns out the city in Doom II is Salt Lake City and there's a bunch of weird shit about Mormons
Kzinssie
2024-05-06 05:27:10 +0000 UTCxeecee i just needed to share that my partner and i are also afflicted with the plex hoarding condition. we have all of voyager on it for some reason?? neither of us even really like voyager (we’re a ds9 household primarily)
cml
2024-05-05 21:08:49 +0000 UTCHave you heard about the drama with Sonic the Hedgehog suddenly starting to have a consistent canon within the last 5 years or so and people being extremely mad about what is and isn't included
Kzinssie
2024-05-04 14:47:43 +0000 UTC"The dinosaur aliens are making the Borg" alright you got me. I gotta get my hands on this thing
Commander Freddy
2024-05-02 21:24:42 +0000 UTCI genuinely maintain that the Elder Scrolls tie-in novels (The Infernal City & Lord of Souls) are some of the best fantasy novels I've ever read, the first one in particular has some really, really fun concepts in it
Lauren O'Donoghue
2024-05-02 17:02:19 +0000 UTCI consider The Courtship of Princess Leia loud. I get fully destroyed off half a chapter of that “Han kidnaps Leia to stop her from marrying an alien prince” shit.
TJ Guiney
2024-05-01 14:49:19 +0000 UTCOverwatch has a few (three?) published novels. I read one and it wasn't bad. They are mostly backstory for individual heroes. I don't think they will publish more. Their focus seems to be exclusively pvp now.
Lea Schmidt
2024-04-29 16:46:02 +0000 UTCThe DC Icons series are published by Penguin Random House. As well as SJM, Leigh Bardugo did their Wonder Woman instalment, and Marie Lu did Batman! They had some pretty big YA authors for their extended universe. Also, big-time crime writer Lisa Jewell is writing a Jessica Jones novel for Marvel, I think!
Pamela Koehne-Drube
2024-04-29 11:54:50 +0000 UTCYeah, like 600k+ words across 40+ chapters. IIRC the printed published copies are in five bound books. To be fair, their not published by the IP owners of Fallout or MLP, but that’s still a lot of work.
Crock272
2024-04-28 22:48:49 +0000 UTCyeah, for sure!
sam
2024-04-28 22:40:26 +0000 UTCI just want Kyle Katarn back... what's he been up to
The Shrieking Shack
2024-04-28 19:58:00 +0000 UTCOh wow, I had no idea! That's really interesting, and SJM feels like a huge get for that sort of thing
The Shrieking Shack
2024-04-28 19:57:25 +0000 UTCfive!?
The Shrieking Shack
2024-04-28 19:54:22 +0000 UTCOh man yeah. I didn't even play DnD but I had some of the Drizz't novels and a bunch of games. Thank you for the really interesting insight! It really does seem like there used to be a tier of popular author that would get a healthy amount of offers for this sort of work that's just gone now
The Shrieking Shack
2024-04-28 19:54:16 +0000 UTCone kind of hyperspecific example of franchise tie-ins that I think (unfortunately) speaks to the state of the industry is D&D in-universe fiction. you can see just by looking at the list of official fiction on wikipedia that the amount being produced has dropped significantly since the pre-Hasbro days in the 80s & 90s, and even more so since the 10s. I'd speculate that this is quite frankly due to the fact that they're not hiring as many in-house, non-freelance writers, so unless you're an established presence like Salvatore you're highly unlikely to get a foot in the door. (plus they don't even seem to have their own production pipeline for fiction anymore and seem to outsource everything to IP publishers like Random House Worlds.) sorry for the long inside baseball post from a publishing-adjacent person LOL
sam
2024-04-28 18:10:30 +0000 UTCYou're absolutely right. I more just gave that one as an example of a well-known author who is doing extended universe tie-ins. Have edited for clarity.
Pamela Koehne-Drube
2024-04-27 19:42:23 +0000 UTCFallout has a weird distinction of having five volumes of published MLP crossover novels
Crock272
2024-04-27 19:11:32 +0000 UTCCan I get the Shriekcast official stance on this post about Swifties in the Star Wars universe: https://www.tumblr.com/vaders-georg/748762649205112832/spiff-fans-also-known-as-spiffies-insist-that?source=share
Lambda
2024-04-27 18:11:25 +0000 UTCCatwoman is DC.
Ryan
2024-04-27 18:08:30 +0000 UTCWhere was Yoda on January 6th?
A sudden absence of bees
2024-04-27 16:29:48 +0000 UTCMarvel absolutely do have novels, but they're almost exclusively published for YA audiences by Disney's publishing arm. Sarah J Maas wrote a Cat Woman one for DC, and Cat Valente did the Black Widow one iirc!
Pamela Koehne-Drube
2024-04-27 12:53:22 +0000 UTCAvatar: The Last Airbender started getting spin-off novels in 2019. Obviously that's not aimed at adults, but the novels are clearly shooting older than the shows (more blood and gore, much more willing to kill characters, more winking and nodding about sex, etc). They've been doing a book every one or two years, but they feel very tightly editorially controlled. They're about past Avatars, so every book (or two books) is another Chosen One coming-of-age into a True Hero. Nothing as weird as the Star Wars EU.
Ryan
2024-04-27 05:11:43 +0000 UTCRemember that time Chewbacca was crushed by a falling moon while saving orphans? Legendary
Dax
2024-04-26 22:56:07 +0000 UTCThe incredible tension in the moment where Xeecee was deciding what specific insane things they wanted to put into Yoda's mouth And then they knocked it out of the park, of course!
Lambda
2024-04-26 20:39:43 +0000 UTClink for the curious: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/738610.Mary_Jane
Miles
2024-04-26 20:13:35 +0000 UTCThe discussion of Marvel novels gave me a sudden flashback to the early 2000s, when Marvel was pretty sure teenage girls wanted to read a book about Mary Jane dealing with her parents' divorce and developing an eating disorder.
Miles
2024-04-26 20:13:14 +0000 UTC"The emperor was trading prisoners because he wanted to use their Entechment technology" Oh shit is what he did to Vader him trying to do his own version of Entechment? (I know nothing else about extended universe or Legends stuff I just paused the podcast at 1:15:00 to comment)
Archie
2024-04-26 15:36:17 +0000 UTCI totally misread the title in my notifications and thought it said "Shrek at Bakura" and just took that at face value, couldn't figure out why the description wasn't mentioning Shrek before realizing I should probably read the title again...
Katie Knight
2024-04-26 14:17:51 +0000 UTC
