A Bitter Winter

Written by: Patricia A. Jackson

Appeared In: Star Wars Adventure Journal 5

The problem with Star Wars short stories that don’t involve known characters from the Star Wars universe is that they all too often can feel like random stories shoehorned into the universe rather than stories that come from the universe. A slight but important distinction.

This was one of those times. The lead character is a Drake Paulsen a slightly Force sensitive pirate/smuggler in the era of the Empire. In this short tale he is forced to face the fact that his mentor and father figure, Toob Ancher was stricken with Brekken Vinthem (or Bitter Winter) disease. It slowly drove him insane and in the end Drake was forced to shoot his friend.

It wasn’t a bad story. It started out slow and never really got going to any consistent level. But I’ve read worse certainly. The worst part about it is that at the end of the tale I didn’t really feel anything about the characters at all. That in and of itself is a problem of some short stories as well.

C