Product Description

Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero - the sequel to Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact - is set a year after the battle of Geonosis, and follows the continuing missions of Omega Squad. As the Clone Wars casualties mount, the commandos find themselves deployed on increasingly dangerous missions that take them beyond the battlefield and further into sabotage and intelligence operations in the heart of Separatist territory. Newly-promoted Jedi Generals Etain Tur-Mukan and Bardan Jusik are also catapulted into front line combat roles and find themselves identifying strongly with the clone soldiers under their command, who turn out to be anything but predictable cannon fodder. Then Omega Squad survives a close brush with disaster to end up in the most potentially dangerous hot spot in the galaxy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14842 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-04
• Released on: 2006-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

About the Author
Karen Traviss is now a full-time novelist, but has spent much of her working life as a journalist. Previous jobs include advertising copywriter, police media liaison officer, journalist lecturer and public relations manager. Originally from Portsmouth, Karen now lives in Devizes, Wiltshire.

Customer Reviews

Traviss is a genius!
Karen Traviss really is brilliant the work she has done for the star wars community is fantastic, she is the NO.1 authority on the clones and mandalorians. Republic Commando is an amazing book that shows the true face of war and shows that the clones arent just mindless beings, but that they are human and you really feel what they go through. The story is a classic and the group of commandos she has created are all brilliant individuals and you really feel connected to them. go and buy this now as you wont regret it.

Exceptionally researched but lacking in character
Triple Zero will be a seminal work in the Star Wars universe, one that will be quoted and referenced for many years to come thanks to author Karen Traviss' development of Mandalorian culture, from customs and traditions to language.

Unfortunately, Triple Zero may not be remembered as a particularly great book.

Nothing much seems to happen over the course of 400 pages. There's a long and often confusing build-up to introduce the 16 main characters (10 commando clones, 2 null clones, 2 sergeants, 2 Jedi), and the meat of the story involves tracking nameless, faceless, motivation-less and therefore ultimately uninteresting villains. As a former reporter on the military and member of the armed forces, Traviss obviously knows her stuff and the breadth of detail is impressive, but in the end tiresome.

Which is a shame as she has proven herself very skilled at developing character. When she allows herself to do that in Triple Zero, the story starts to shine. Sadly, those moments are few and far between. The most compelling subplot [SPOILER] involves the slow unfolding of romance between a Jedi padawan and one of the clones, a pair I hope Traviss has the opportunity to revisit in the not too distant future. [END SPOILER]

If you liked Traviss' first commando novel, Hard Contact, or if you like her Wess'Har War series (recommended if you've just come to her through Star Wars), you may still not like Triple Zero.

ADDENDUM: There is a coda, of sorts, a short story called "Odds" from Karen Traviss revisiting the commandos of Triple Zero in Star Wars Insider magazine #87 (May/June 2006). In their continuing hunt for Kaminoan cloning engineer Ko Sai, the commandos discover a piece of a holo transmission showing Palpatine dealing directly with the Kaminoans to establish cloning facilities on Coruscant. There is no mention of the pregnant Jedi.

A good new series
Having completed Karen Traviss' Mandalorian/Clone Wars series I felt I had to go back and review all three books retrospectively. I thought Hard Contact was a strong start to a promising new series. KT quickly introduces us to a grittier universe than a lot of Star Wars novels portray. Coming from a military journalism background she clearly has a lot of 'front line' stories and experiences to draw from and this is put across well when describing the commando's tactics and actions.
I also enjoyed seeing things from the Seperatist point of view, through the T-Shaped visor of Ghez Hokan which gave me further insight into the Mando ideals.
All this with a few Jedi, shapeshifting predators and some cracking firefights thrown in made this a really good read and would be highly recommended.