David's Review of Republic Commando: True Colors

4/5 Rancors - Republic Commando: True Colors is the third in a series of four books by Karen Traviss with the first being Hard Contact and the second Triple Zero. The fourth book is Order 66. Ms Traviss is an excellent writer. She does a good job of developing characters, especially when those characters actually spend most of their time covered by helmets and suits of armor. You come to know some of these men, and you realize that even clones coming from Jango Fett have subtle differences when you get to know them. Her books are always fun to read, and she almost always forces the reader to stop and think while going through the book. That’s a good thing.

True Colors takes place during the Clone Wars with the Grand Army of the Republic fighting an ongoing war against the Separatists. Of course, those of us who are privy to the post-Clone Wars films and books understand that the war is ongoing because Emperor Palpatine wants it that way. His devious machinations that seem obvious after-the-fact are not so clear-cut when you face them for the first time. The clones themselves in the book gradually begin to entertain suspicions about strange troop buildups and exorbitant weapons expenditures that seem completely unnecessary based on the strength of the opposing forces.

Most of the characters in this book are familiar to us from the first two books. For example, we have Omega Squad, Delta Squad, Sergeant Kal Skirata, Null ARC Troopers, Jedi Knight Etain Tur-Mukan, Jedi Knight Bardan Jusik, and Treasury Agent Bessany Wessen. What we don’t have are the usual Star Wars heroes like Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie. That makes the Rebel Commando series very refreshing just on its own. We get to read about many of the characters we haven’t even known about before.

There are several key factors in the book. One is the father-son relationship that has developed over the years between Sergeant Kal and the clone troopers, especially the Null ARC Troopers. He considers them to be his boys, and he desperately wants to find a way to extend their life spans. He also wants for them to have a future. They were bred on Kamino to fight and die. That was it. No loves, no families, no normal activities – just an extremely structured existence for amazingly effective fighting machines. It is one of the interesting things you don’t think about when watching the films. Thinking seriously about the troopers as human beings under the armor is difficult.

A second factor and an extremely interesting one is the relationship between the troopers and the Jedi. Are the troopers just cannon fodder to the Jedi generals? Just part of the overall fighting force? Can male troopers and female Jedi be attracted to each other even though it’s not allowed? Well, of course they can, and the results are interesting.

The heart of the story raises questions that are well worth considering. What will happen to the clone troopers when the war ends? They are solely trained fighters and know no other lifestyle. Would it be possible for any of the troopers to adopt normal lifestyles with wives and families during their abbreviated life spans? Darman and Etain continue to develop their relationship, and questions of this type come front and center. Each character has a different way of dealing with the quandaries that come up. What happens to clones that are too severely wounded to go back to the battlefront? Do clone rehabilitation centers exist? What if a clone deserts? Should he be eliminated or left alone to seek out a more normal lifestyle. Questions like these are a strong point of the Karen Traviss Rebel Commando series, and I find it to be fascinating stuff. I cannot wait to get into Rebel Commando: Order 66.