Stormtroopers Books

I was very favorably impressed with this book. It was thoroughly researched and well put together. I found the information enlightening and revelatory in many aspects. In accordance with some of the other reviews I have read with regard to this book, some of the art work could be regarded as sub-standard in quality but that could be a matter of subjectivity. I regard this book as a valuable addition to my World War One library and I plan to acquire other volumes from this series and author.

Although few Osprey "Warrior" series books deal with soldier's uniforms and equipment, "German Stormtropper" gives all comprehensive information on German assault units' specialist equipment and weapons, as well as uniforms alterations. Furthermore, the book is packed with interesting facts on combat on the Western front and is interesting to read.

The subject of the German stormtroopers in World War I and the German innovative tactics is extremely interesting and Ian Drury achieves his target presenting a wide variety of facts in a very readable manner. The photographs are very good also and well chosen and the text analyzes every aspect of the stormtroops, like uniforms, weapons, organization and battle tactics. The drawings section is a great disappointment though, because its quality is below average for the Osprey standards. Buy it if you are a student of tactics and military theory and skip it if you are a modeller.

I'm a modeller, and the kind of information you find in this book is just what you need for finishing WW1 German Assault troops.

The book is filled with pictures of about every used item, and you also find the usual Osprey center color drawings.

I'd recommend getting this book, along with Brassey's book on german uniforms, and Osprey's book on the german army from 1914 to 1918, so as to get the widest possible coverage of the subject.

This book does a very good job at introducing the reader to Stormtroopers in only 64 pages. In that short length it discusses their historical development (both institutionally and in terms of their place in German offensive military strategy), the "men" in the organization (i.e., typical background, etc.), tactics used and weapons used along with the reasons they could not bring German victory. For 64 pages (an hour or so of reading), a good introduction to the Stormtroopers of WWI.

This is an excellent, tightly written history of German infantry shock troops that were developed at the end of World War 1.

A good overall look at the SA, with a basic history of the organization and some eye-opening facts and figures (as the history of the SA is traced all the way through 1945 - far from fading into obscurity after the death of Roehm in 1934), with equal time presented to "Evolution of the SA Uniform" (which includes insignia), history, and a description of sub-organizations.

Would have benefited from full colour treatment of the insignia sections, but that would have taken away from the lovely full colour plates by Volstad.

Insignia portions of the text are well done, with physical descriptions accompanied by regulations for such things as long-service chevrons and stripes - good overall look at this very complicated subject. Many details of insignia given, another example are the summaries of collar patches and piping, which describe the abbreviations worn on the patches and which districts they correspond to.

Good look at history and organization, with special emphasis placed on uniforms.

The elite infantry Stosstruppen (or 'stormtroops') of the German army won significant victories on the battlefields of the Western Front and in Italy too, often against the odds. In their search for tactical progress, the Stosstruppen effectively invented modern infantry tactics, and time and again proved their bravery on the battlefield. Germany's tanks in World War II were accompanied by a new type of soldier, the world's first fully mechanized infantrymen, or panzergrenadiers, popularly known as "stormtroopers."

Interesting full page photographs are combined with colorful drawings to make this a Great book. The text is rich with first hand accounts of events, and Have alot of quotes from original training manuals which make it a really special book. This fully illustrated account of the uniforms, equipment and tactics of the panzergrenadiers, both Army and Waffen-SS, also includes a bibliography and a world directory of museums and interest groups.

The best writer of the star wars genre,this book does not dissapoint as with all his previous books i couldnt put it down,great visuals, intreiging characters,great action and suspence,no letdown ,great book HIGHLY recommended.

In the days shortly following the Battle of Yavin, Han Solo finds himself being sent on yet another mission for those crazy Rebels that he just cannot seem to get away from. While he, Luke, and Chewie go in one direction, Leia Organa has her own assignment from Mon Mothma. Meanwhile, Mara Jade is far more at ease with her force skills, albeit on the Dark side, than Luke Skywalker is with his Light ones. Her assignment as the Emperor's Hand takes her to the same planet the Falcon's crew is headed for. The real stars of this adventure are a bunch of AWOL stormtroppers who want to do the right thing and don't feel like they can uphold their oath to protect the citizens of the Empire as official servants of it. Having turned renegade, they will prove to be great allies for Luke and Han as they try to successfully complete their mission and get Leia to safety when she runs into the inevitable trouble.

**** Though until now, I had somewhat given up on the Expanded Universe novels as they did not retain the same emotions that the original trilogy inspired me with, at least, they did not for me, this book brings back that old "YES!" feeling. Having Luke, Leia, and Han back to being the people I fell in love with as a little girl made the prose sing for me. The plot was fun and fast paced, but didn't skimp on the characterization. If you've gotten bogged down trying to keep track of who is who, what the Vong or what have you are, and you have turned to fanzines in hopes of recapturing the magic of Star Wars, then add this book to your keeper shelf. It's got all the right stuff. ****

Amanda Killgore for Huntress Reviews

This book was awesome, I loved the storyline and the overall flow of it. I enjoyed watching what happened to LaRone and his fellow Stormtroopers. And there were just so many thing I did not expect, twist and turns but I never really got confused. One point I lost track but it was shorter than a page. The second Star Wars book Ive read, I dont really remember the other, but Im deffinitly buying more. I would recomend this to Every star wars fan...

The first 40 pages of Allegiance show some glimmer of thought, effort and promise. The rest is little more than a novel-by-numbers - shallow characters shuffled through a convoluted plot that adds nothing to the Star Wars universe.

Set in the days between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Allegiance opens with the story of five stormtroopers deserting their posts after taking part in a retributory slaughter of innocent civilians. When the story then shifts focus, it turns into a slow, uneventful, and for the SW universe pointless story about an Imperial governor using a criminal syndicate to skim funds to finance secession. There are three separate threads, one each with Mara, the stormtroopers, and Han, Luke, and Chewie following the criminals, another with Leia meeting with rebels who want to bring the secessionists over to the Alliance, a thread on the criminals, and yet another on Captain Ozzel. The five stormtroopers manage to stumble across most of these, teaming up with Han and Luke to get to the scene of the crime and then aiding Mara in putting the conspiracy to rest. As with much of Zahn's work, keeping up with the various threads is a tiresome and unrewarding endeavor. He doesn't write about people so much as he does build complex plots and would be better suited to writing video games.

His characters are flat, two-dimensional stand-ups, puppets that he moves about in very carefully choreographed sequences. You never really feel anything for any of them because you never get to know them. Allegiance is built around five new characters, stormtroopers that except for their names and specializations are indistinguishable. There's not a funny guy, a philosophical guy, a serious guy, a sentimental guy, a guy with kids, a guy with girlfriends, a guy who wanted to be a painter, a rich guy, a poor guy, a guy who wants to travel, a guy who likes flying, a guy with sisters, a guy who wants a big family - just five guys in white armor who call themselves the Hand of Judgment and who in moments of great decision regurgitate platitudes, the ideals that motivated them to first enlist, such as protecting the weak and preserving order (as well, presumably, as mom, apple pie, baseball, and puppies).

These five socktroopers (lead by former Quebec pro-wrestler Daric LaRone) decide to chuck their careers as casually as you might decide to throw out some old clothes. Their moment of truth is about as believable as Anakin's conversion in Revenge of the Sith. When was the last time you heard of elite soldiers (of any country's service) deserting because they were asked to carry out ethically questionable orders?

The socktroopers aren't the only characters that strain credibility. Mara Jade is far more competent in the use of weapons, her ability to pilot ships, and her knowledge of espionage than any 18 year could ever be. What's more she never makes a mistake (one that matters, that is), and she sasses both the Emperor and Vader - and gets away without a Force slap or shove.

Whatever happened to the Bad Guys, anyway? Mara, Vader and the Stormtroopers are supposed to be evil. But in Allegiance (as in many EU novels and comics of recent vintage) the Good Guys are good and the Bad Guys, well, they're Bad, but only if they're minor characters. The characters fans know by name and reputation (and the ones they dress up as because they have cool costumes) - Mara Jade, Darth Vader, Admiral Ozzel, Stormtroopers - they aren't really bad. They don't kill people without just cause. They're not sadistic. They're just trying to do their jobs. They're the lovable bad guys, the lower case bad guys. The deserting troopers, for example, seem more concerned with protecting civilians, and with their oaths to do so, than with their own lives; Mara goes out of her way to try and save a pirate she captured in battle and who acted as an informant; Admiral Ozzel is shocked by a plan proposed by an Imperial spy to kill a few low-ranking troopers to cover up his mistake. So who is it the reader is supposed to identify with?

If a meandering story and wooden characters weren't bad enough, Zahn's style shows a complete lack of variety or wit. Nearly every direct quote has to be attributed with a reporting verb. His characters repeatedly shiver, wince, groan, and growl. Vader broods and strides, and his cloak swirls and billows. The good guys (which are also the bad guys, not to be confused with the really Bad Guys) are painfully earnest, trotting out cliches on duty, honor, responsibility, order and freedom that are meant to fortify their resolve (while helping the reader feel good, in the case of the Hand of Judgment, about supporting what are supposed to be the fantasy equivalent of Nazi soldiers).

If fan response is positive, we have the unfortunate possibility of future volumes featuring the Hand of Judgment. It's hardly giving anything anyway to let you know that all the major characters survive, as do the five socktroopers, who by end the book are adopted by Mara Jade as her private security force. I can't think of anything worse than a Hand of Judgment series except perhaps another chapter of Dark Empire, or another Thrawn novel.

Del Rey, please do us all a favor and put Zahn out to pasture.

If you'd care to read a well written novel about the ethical dilemmas of soldiers, that just also happens to be a Star Wars novel, try True Colors

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Let me preface this by saying that I've loved virtually all of Zahn's Star Wars novels to date and tend to blaze through them like the pages are on fire. The "Hand of Thrawn" duology might have been kind of slow, but the more recent "Outbound Flight" was great and the original "Thrawn Trilogy" was just classic.

So I was rather surprised when it took me three attempts and a final, concerted act of willpower to get through Allegiance.

I wanted to like it. I really did. But Allegiance was something that I hadn't expected a Star Wars novel to be: it possessed the fatal flaw of being extremely boring. Others will obviously disagree, but I found nothing in this novel to really connect to. The characters were all tepid at best, lifeless cutouts that utterly resisted my every attempt to know or like them. The new renegade Stormtrooper characters are boring, and there was so little difference between them character-wise that I found myself forgetting which was which for the first half of the book, and then eventually gave up the effort for the second half and discovered that it didn't actually matter if you could tell them apart. They might as well have been clones for all it mattered. The Stormtroopers are just dull, their desertion and escape from the Empire convenient, contrived, and unconvincing. Their main role in the plot is to shoot stuff and provide angst about their desertion. I hope we never hear from them again, because honestly I can't think of a single thing that they could add.

A few classic characters from the movies star as well: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and cameos by Vader and Palpatine. As characters, they are remarkably poorly-written. Zahn's rendition of Luke, Leia, Han, etc. in his books has never been great, but this is a low point. Luke is useless and annoying. Leia is written blandly and spends the book doing bland things (including, at one point, waiting tables and shooting at drain pipes). And Han is polite and reasonable with everyone, with nary a trace of sarcasm, wit, or personality.

Zahn's own Mara Jade is another major player in the book, and while I've always been a fan of her, this is a very weak rendition, and with good reason. I think that many people will squeal with glee at the prospect of seeing Mara in her prime, as the Emperor's Hand, carrying out Palpatine's dirty work without actually being a dark Jedi or anything. Personally I was bracing myself for it, and my fears were confirmed: Mara Jade in this book has practically no personality. She is entirely defined by her uber-powers, her elite assassin/espionage abilities, her Force use, innovative lightsaber skills, etc. This might be in part my personal vendetta against the stereotypical "elite assassin" character that has been proliferating in literature over the last ten years, but Mara Jade really has no personality here. She's like an empty shell stuffed with assassination and infiltration skills. If you want to see her doing "cool stuff," then I can see the appeal. But you could use a find-and-replace tool to change every reference to "Mara Jade" in the text to "Belinda Stronach" and the characterization would be just as accurate. She's faceless, and that's a real shame.

There are also a few character moments that are just downright silly and make me wonder what Zahn was thinking when he wrote this. Here's a few of my least-favorite examples, some of which I've already mentioned: Han being nice to everyone. Leia waiting tables. Vader throwing a temper tantrum and attacking Mara Jade for absolutely no reason. "Captain Ozzel" and his dumb, convoluted plan to murder a high-ranking Imperial agent. Vader sitting at a computer terminal doing research at the library (okay okay, this is a personal quibble, but every time I go to a public library there's always a bunch of homeless guys slouched at the free Internet access stations, and I could not get this image out of my mind when I read about the Dark Lord of the Sith doing the same thing). Just silly things that really poisoned my reading of the book.

There's other stuff I could whine about, but I'll cut this short. The action's okay, but there's too much talking and being reasonable and rational when people should just be doing interesting things. I've noticed this with Zahn before, but never to this extent. But for me, it all comes down to characters. If you can't pitch me good, believable, compelling characters, then you won't have my attention and I probably won't finish your book. I finished this one in tribute to Zahn's earlier Star Wars work, but consider it a waste of time and effort. The characters were all badly rendered, and the plot was structured entirely around the characters; there wasn't even any particularly big plot points going on to take our attention away from the weakness of the characters. It was all small, piddling stuff centered around a bunch of boring, lifeless protagonists.

I really wanted to like this, and I really want to like what Zahn writes for Star Wars in the future, if he continues at it. But this weak effort speaks to me of someone who's about to hang up his spurs and call it a day. And maybe that's for the best.