Notes: Imperial Justice, Pt. 1
Why I hated writing a book a lot of people really liked
WARNING: These notes will completely spoil Servants of the Empire: Imperial Justice. Haven’t read it? Stop and go here.
(Start here for notes for Edge of the Galaxy and here for Rebel in the Ranks.)
Being a writer means you can never separate a book from the experience of writing it.
Imperial Justice is the third book in the Servants of the Empire series and a lot of people’s favorite of the four. But I can’t see it that way. For me, it’s the one that was torture to write and that I wasn’t sure worked – a feeling I almost never have once a book is finished. My memories are mostly about hating this book and wanting it out of my life.
What happened? The chapters in the middle of a larger story are always tough – you’re past establishing the characters and the stakes but haven’t reached the resolution and closure. But beyond that, Imperial Justice posed narrative problems that I hadn’t fully anticipated while writing Edge of the Galaxy and Rebel in the Ranks.
The first problem was where to put the break between it and The Secret Academy. Zare Leonis’s story in Imperial Justice had to incorporate his cameo in the Rebels episode “Vision of Hope,” in which he tells Ezra he’s being transferred to Arkanis. My original idea was to continue the story beyond that, ending with Beck Ollet recognizing Zare in the mysterious tower on Arkanis.
That would have been a cliffhanger to appreciate even by my nasty standards, and one I filched from the ending of Tolkien’s The Two Towers. It also would have meant Zare’s chunk of the story included both a real accomplishment – getting to Arkanis – and a gigantic, potentially fatal reversal.
Good plan, except that moment didn’t work as a break between the books – I had too much story before it and not enough after it. So I had to back up, and the break point wound up being one that left Zare essentially stuck at the Lothal Academy for the duration of the book. Given that Zare enrolled in the academy to find his lost sister Dhara, I worried that readers would get impatient with Zare or turn against him for not pushing hard enough.
The saving grace was I had more room to maneuver with Merei Spanjaf, who’d evolved from a supporting character into a full-fledged protagonist. Rebel in the Ranks ended with a cliffhanger. as Merei discovered that a) the software she’d installed in an Imperial ministry hadn’t deleted itself as planned and b) her mother had been assigned to track down the intruder. Having that room was a relief, but not a solution – I couldn’t have Zare twiddling his thumbs for a whole book while Merei’s story unfolded.
When you’ve got a storytelling problem you can’t solve, sometimes the answer is to lean into the sharp points – put the problem at the center of the story. That’s what I wound up doing: I started with the fear and frustration of being stuck, then ratcheted up the pressure on Zare and Merei until something had to give.
That made Imperial Justice work, but it was no fun as a writer. Worse, it came at a time when I was struggling with The Rise of Earth, the third book of my Jupiter Pirates series. (About which more here.) Normally I like switching back and forth between projects – I can recharge my batteries for the idle project while getting things done on the active one. But The Rise of Earth was another middle chapter that came with similar storytelling challenges to Imperial Justice. So I’d switch gears only to immediately feel stuck all over again.
Here’s one good thing: this was the first book in the Servants of the Empire series that I got to name. And it’s even a pretty good title, which is rarity for me. A small thing, but at the time I’d take anything I could get.
Part 1: Loyalty
We start with Zare and the cadets out for one of their dawn runs, bantering and even singing a martial song. If that seems oddly cheery considering this is the Imperial military, that was what I was after.
I wanted the narrative to stick close to what I thought of as a shadow story. In the shadow story, Dhara was never kidnapped and Zare didn’t witness the killing of innocents. Instead, he followed his sister to the academy, ready to serve the Empire he and his family believed in, and was molded into a model Imperial officer by Sergeant Currahee and Lieutenant Chiron – to whom he gave his gratitude and loyalty.
A lot of scenes in the first part of Imperial Justice would fit that story if given a slight twist. Chiron is a familiar character type, the Noble Villain, but he really is a good person – his fatal flaw is his inability to see that the Empire he serves only exists in his head. Currahee’s the tough drill sergeant who’s mean for her soldiers’ own good, and by the end of Imperial Justice we get a hint that there’s a heart somewhere inside her scarred self. Oleg’s a jerk, true, but cadets such as Kabak and Rykoff (the replacements for Dev Morgan and Jai Kell) seem decent enough. And in the first half of Imperial Justice we see that Zare is becoming both a capable soldier and a leader, coolly navigating the battlefield and the barracks.
So at least at first, the real story and the shadow story aren’t so different. Even Zare’s confrontations with Oleg would play differently if we didn’t know the Empire is fundamentally evil and Zare’s in danger every day he’s a cadet. The idea was to make the reader uneasy and establish a growing sense of claustrophobia as the cadets are ordered to do things that are harder and harder to justify.
Merei has a shadow story too. She gets drawn into Yahenna Laxo’s web, running messages and thumb drives to the crime boss’s clients. Which is kind of fun … at least at first. Merei gives as good as she gets from Laxo’s hirelings and customers, is paid better than any teenaged schoolgirl could expect, and even enjoys arguing with Laxo, who’s smart and has a certain slouchy charm. Once again, you can imagine a story where Merei overlooked a few unsavory things and rose up the ranks, winning Laxo’s trust and becoming a loyal operative. As with Zare, in the beginning that story’s not so different from the one that actually unfolds.
Some quick notes about part 1:
Note that the dust storms are getting worse, and Zare is snapped out of his good mood by the sight of a construction site for a weapons lab, one that’s torn open the green fields of Lothal. To the Empire Lothal is a world occupied to be used up and thrown away, and we see its exploitation worsen as the series goes along.
The marching song was fun to write – it’s basically the Marines’ Hymn with locations from Legends subbing for the likes of Montezuma and Tripoli. Oddly, while writing Imperial Justice I also made up a song for the Star Wars Insider short story “Last Call at the Zero Angle” and I had a pirates’ ditty in mind for The Rise of Earth. (The last one got scrapped.) I have no idea why I thought every project should be a musical during those couple of weeks.
The demise of the nanny droid is a horrifying scene – one where I saw a way to turn writing for a younger audience to my advantage. You probably wouldn’t have Oleg execute a living prisoner in a kids’ book, but you can dispose of a droid – and fairly graphically at that. The scene shows you the kind of officer Oleg will become, and that his cruelty will be rewarded, not punished. There’s also a subtle commentary on the difference between living beings and droids, and whether there should be any.
Kabak and Rykoff are named for baseball writers of my acquaintance, though our own maneuvers were limited to drinking beer and arguing about the Hall of Fame. Since they’re Yankee fans, I made them bad guys.
The scene featuring Merei, her mother Jessa and her father Gandr is an info-dump and a recounting of what’s come before – I decided to take care of both things in one shot so I could move on with the story. Scenes like that work better if the info-dump is delivered through dialogue – it’s easier on the reader, and you can also use the conversation to bump characters into each other. So in addition to learning what Merei’s up against, we also get some insight into Jessa and Gandr’s relationship, a bit of conflict between Merei and her mother, and a sense that Jessa is a formidable opponent.
Young banthas were cubs in Legends, which was cute but zoologically questionable. Now they’ve calves. That was Story Group’s sensible suggestion.
I liked the scene where Merei fences with Laxo about what led him to a life of crime. Laxo sees the Empire for what it is and opposes it, but he’s an opportunist rather than a revolutionary – perceptive, but lacking the moral clarity that would turn perception into action. As with the shadow stories, it’s a small difference that means everything.
The unnamed Gotal criminal was also a fun character to write, particularly his ongoing war of words with Laxo. Kriffing Laxo!
Zare’s interrogation about his loyalty was an interesting bit to write – it starts out as a comic scene, with Zare thinking about all the extraordinarily disloyal things he’s done and then blandly answering “no sir” each time. But then it takes an ominous turn, as Roddance pushes Chiron aside. And it ends with a callback to the prequels that means nothing to Zare but the reader immediately knows is a dangerous development.
Next up: A poet and a breakup. And whatever happened to Oleg?