Star Wars: Death Troopers

Decided to take a step into the Legends universe, and wanted to start with a good stand-alone title. Death Troopers worked pretty well for that.

It's a fun zombie horror set in space, with a good cast (and a couple cameos I think most people will enjoy see show up halfway through). I think my favorite part of the book was introducing a common enemy, so we had Imperials & Rebellion working together (sort of), or at the very least saw them fighting the same group. Though, It was the Imperials responsible for it all in the end, so they're still pretty much the bad guys. .

Sartoris was probably my favorite character. The bad person in denial about it, who gets to be our sympathetic, grey-morality fella. Little sad with how things ended for him, but I did see it coming.

The pacing was decent, and the horror/action seemed pretty balanced. The death count wasn't as high as I was thinking, but still up there. It was a fun, quick, read and if zombie horror is your thing and you like Star Wars, you'll probably enjoy it, too.

A curious idea: zombies and Star Wars. The SW franchise pretty much has the skill to grab whatever genre may be popular at the time and make a Star Wars tale out of it. That's what all those Republic Commando stories were, for instance; they were off the fact that a while back all those squad-based combat video games were popular. The zombie idea is not a bad one, but it is not great either. It's basically nice entertainment for a while. The novel uses the bioweapon/virus angle (think things like Resident Evil or even the recent Walking Dead) for the zombies, but there is a bit of a twist to that, which I won't reveal. Also for a draw a couple of well known characters make an appearance, which I thought was neat. The book does start a bit slow, but once it gets going, you keep on going pretty much until the end. And there are hints leading to the prequel (is this the best term) Red Harvest. Like many of the novels in the SW Expanded Universe, the strength of this one is that you get to see other characters and other situations besides the "usual" cast, like say some lesser known part of the Imperial service (in this case their corrections units and a prison barge).

Overall, if you are looking for some quick entertainment, and you are a Star Wars fan, odds are pretty good you will like this one. If you like zombies, but you are a bit skeptical about how they fit in Star Wars, I would say give it a chance. However, the book is more of a borrow from the library rather than buy, but as I said, it makes for some quick entertainment. I did label it horror, mostly for the zombies, but the gore levels are fairly tame compared to other zombie works.