Nerds That Geek Book Review - 'Star Wars: Death Troopers'

Written by Scott Edwards

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away a detention ship named Purge is on its way to make its delivery to a facility when the engines go out. Just floating alone in space the prisoners become restless and start demanding answers from their captors. With no answers to be found, the captain notices a Star Destroyer just floating lifelessly in front of them. The scanners pick up twelve life forms in the massive rig that usually houses a minimum of ten thousand Imperials.

Knowing that their distress signal will not be answered in a timely manner by the Empire, Captain Sartoris arranges a boarding party with two teams, one to find out what happened to the destroyer's crew and the other to salvage parts for his lifeless ship's engine. During the investigation of the seemingly abandoned ship, the boarding party finds no survivors and no bodies to speak of and returns home with what they hope will be enough spare parts to get the Purge back into service. But unbeknownst to them, they brought something else back with them, something that no one will survive.

Dr. Zahara Cody is working down in the medical bay with her droid counterpart named ‘Waste’. Upon the arrival of the boarding team back onto the Purge, the doctor's patient level sky rockets with a strange illness she cannot explain. Knowing that there must have been something that the team ran into on the abandoned Star Destroyer, Cody calls them all in to be quarantined, but her decision is too little, too late. The infection has shot through the ship faster than even a droid could have predicted. The crew quickly dies, save for six souls aboard and it quickly becomes clear that there is no help coming. Against her better judgment, the doctor goes to seek out a pair of important survivors, ones that can help her fly the ship back to safety. Finding her best hope in the isolation chamber where only the worst of the worst are housed on such transports, she releases the renegade Han Solo and his first mate, Chewbacca.

Star Wars: Death Troopers takes you on a little romp of survival where we also find a pair of classic heroes in the last place we expected to find them...in a prison transport. You get to follow the steps of two teenage inmates, Trig and Kale Longo who only want to get off of the ship, along with Doctor Zahara Cody, who only wants to end her current employment with the Empire, and the two classic heroes I made mention of, Han Solo and Chewbacca, picked up on a charge of smuggling. The group pulls together and tries to survive the onslaught of a new breed of life form that the Imperial Biological Weapons Division has made up, basically, the undead.

What a fun ride this story takes you on, because how on earth could you go wrong with joining two iconic genres? It's Star Wars meets Zombies! I am new to Star Wars books as a whole, but if you are looking for the timing of this story, it takes place 19 years before A New Hope. Something about a reluctant hero just brings a smile to your face when they come in and save the day, against the living dead none the less. You may not get the splattery, undead kills you would expect with such a novel, but hey it is Star Wars, you are in space, you have silly droids and blasters and freaking zombies. Top that off with Solo and Chewbacca, you are just bound to have a good time.

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