Author Archives: Val Broody

About Val Broody

Valerie Broody never sleeps. The mother of a toddler, wife of a husband, social worker by day/MSW student by night, a lover of books, and a lurker of the internet, frankly it's amazing she's still able to stand up straight. She would like to thank coffee, beer, and her loved ones for getting her through the days.

princess-leia

A love letter to The Star Wars Holiday Special

The Star Wars Holiday Special is a thing of legend. It was a television special set in the Star Wars universe that ran one time in November 1978. The story goes that George Lucas thought the special was so bad, he said that if he had enough time, he would smash every copy in existence.

As a Star Wars fan, I was naturally curious about the special. What could be so terrible about the piece of history that introduces Boba Fett to the world? Could anything Lucas touched really be that bad? (Even the prequel trilogy has its defenders.) A copy of the special is not exactly easy to come by, but thanks to the miracle of the Internet, my friends, husband, and I were able to obtain one. We picked a night and settled in to what we thought would be two hours of “it’s-so-bad-it’s-awesome” television.

We could not have been more wrong — or more right.

First, let’s discuss the basic plot of the movie: Han Solo and Chewbacca are racing through space, dodging the Empire, and trying to get back to Chewie’s home planet of Kashyyk in time for the Life Day celebration. For all intents and purposes, Life Day appears to be the Wookiee version of Christmas. We get to meet Chewie’s family and actually end up spending a good deal of time getting a peek at how a “typical” Wookiee family prepares for Life Day … including approximately 15 to 20 minutes of untranslated Wookiee conversation.

You read that correctly, no need to go back. There is a significant portion of the show in which the audience is left to either speculate what Chewie’s family might be saying to each other, pull out their Wookiee dictionaries, or do what I did and lie on the floor crying out that they didn’t understand what was going on.

The strangeness doesn’t end there. The audience is subjected to suggested Wookiee porn (go to 3:30 in this video), an obviously not-all-there Carrie Fisher singing a Life Day song to the tune of the Star Wars theme, Bea Arthur looking sadly out of place as the owner of the Cantina, and a pretty fantastic Jefferson Starship non sequitur. It was honestly enough to make several in our group fall to the floor and wish for death to take them, non-ironically.

I will not say that The Star Wars Holiday Special is without merit — this is a love letter, after all. As I stated before, no matter how you may feel about the character, the fact that the special was the first appearance of Boba Fett is a pretty noteworthy thing in Star Wars fandom. There was a fantastic cast that, under normal circumstances, would have made the special worth viewing just by being on the screen. If you watch it with a group of friends, you will definitely feel bonded for life to those people with whom you have shared the experience of watching the most terrible, most nonsensical, and — somehow — the most awesome holiday spin-off special in existence.

And if the fact that so many people are willing to go to such great lengths to find, watch, and experience this piece of Star Wars history doesn’t make Lucas feel at least a little better about its existence … well, then I don’t know what will.

broken-harbor

Broken Harbor pulls reader into murder case

Broken Harbor by Tana French is the fourth book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. With this work, French once again displays she is a master of police procedurals. She has created another tale of complex characters that draws the reader into the compelling plot.

French established herself at the outset as a great writer of crime fiction. The first book in the series, In the Woods, won several awards, including the 2008 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. French, who now resides in Ireland and has also lived in Italy and Malawi, excels at writing about the “broken hero.” Her books feature an imperfect protagonist: a homicide detective with a checkered past — thought to be safely buried away, but brought to the surface by the case at hand.

In Broken Harbor, French has improved her game by introducing us to Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy, a murder detective who always gets his man. Kennedy, along with his rookie partner, are assigned a high-profile triple murder that takes Kennedy to the estate of Briantstown, formerly known as “Broken Harbor.” The place holds powerful memories for Kennedy — memories that are disturbing enough on their own, let alone in light of the recent murder of Patrick Spain and his two children, and the attempted murder of Spain’s wife, Jenny.

The appeal of Broken Harbor, as with French’s other books, is the expert way in which she manages to weave the detective’s tortured past into the present horror he or she is facing. French not only takes the reader through the process of solving the murder, but also exposes how this particular case will tear the protagonist apart from the inside out. Kennedy’s search for the truth will force him to come to terms with both his past and his present, while also making him question his future.

As Kennedy and his partner work the case, they encounter more questions than answers. French’s stories sometimes have a touch of the supernatural to them, lending them a sense that things aren’t always what they appear to be. In Broken Harbor, the unreliability of the narrator draws the reader into the search for that missing piece of the case.

The stories French creates make her books difficult to put down. As the detectives dive into the lives of the victims in order to solve the case, it is easy to forget they are dead. French’s characterizations and plot construction propel the reader on a nonstop whirlwind to the last page of the book. Don’t expect that conclusion to be a happy one, where everything is wrapped up with a neat little bow as our hero rides off into the sunset, however. Much like real life, French’s books don’t end that way.

If you are looking for a crime novel that has amazing character development, will pull you in, make you question the protagonist’s point of view, and make you think about the ending long after you put it down, then Broken Harbor is the book for you.