Delusions Of Grandeur

By: Emily Gadek & Kelly Jones
  • Summary

  • Emily and Kelly grew up before Star Wars returned to the big screen—when novels were fans' only hope. Now, they're re-reading them with fresh eyes for plot twists, new characters, and surprisingly apt socio-political themes. Delusions of Grandeur is a podcast about the good, the bad, and the truly bizarre stories of the Star Wars novels.

    delusionspod.com
    Emily Gadek & Kelly Jones
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Episodes
  • Darksaber Ch 1-5
    Nov 14 2024
    With great personal bravery, we continue with the "Callista Trilogy" and crack open Kevin J. Anderson's Darksaber: a book that would like you to find fellow Star Wars Fans on the World Wide Web. Although the cover would suggest that an Empire era Luke Skywalker is embracing life as a bisexual icon alongside his devoted friend Kurt Russell, most of these chapters take place on Tatooine! Han and Luke go undercover with some Tusken Raiders (who appear to have some culture after all...) and break into Jabba's Palace to try and find out what his fellow Hutts are up to (no good, obviously). And we meet lovable Imperial bumbler/David Lynch clone Bevil Lemelisk: a man who just wants get some lunch in his tum tum but sadly must oversee an evil mining operation instead.
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    52 mins
  • Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu Ch 11 - 20
    Oct 30 2024
    What is there to say about these chapters? Our intrepid hosts take a cue from Lando, light up a metaphorical cigarette with our electronic space jackets, and lie down on a cosmic people mover to be passively borne towards an unsatisfying conclusion. In the end, Vuffi Raa abandons his brief career as a fashion accessory to chose true love over being a narc, Mohs loses his eyeballs but gains the knowledge of how his ancestors sold him out, Lando flies off into the sunset, and the Mindharp phones home.
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    51 mins
  • Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu Ch. 1 - 10
    Oct 23 2024
    Patreon's prompt for this description is, "Why do you create?" And honestly, when the source material is this bad, it's a great question. Mostly to yell about someone else's art, I guess? Anyway: join us as we traipse from sabacc table to sabacc table — from tapcafé to tapcafé — at the whim of a threatening magician, to discover what the actual heck a mindharp is. The good news is that there is a lot of goofiness (dinosaurs! jackalopes!) sprinkled among some terrible eugenicist nonsense. We learn (unsurprisingly) that Lando Calrissian can never be without a cumberbund. Even in bed. Even tied to a cactus. Even, somehow, while also wearing a loincloth.
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    1 hr and 7 mins

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Somehow, the EU returned...

Though they have a mild tendency to gloss over smaller scene details and give silly(er) names to the galaxies odds and ends, what you most get from them is a real love of the old cannon. They spend precious little time tying things back to the pre- and sequels, and though I've never watched Andor or any of the new shows, the references there are a similarly light touch. Mostly they deal with what's in front of them; the sometimes absurd texts, the wild machinations of the galaxy, the choices of the authors, and of course, the bonkers cover art.

Instead of strictly going though and parsing the text for technical details and inaccuracies, they joyously and with a great amount of humor point out that Lando tricked Luke into drinking Hot Chocolate as his fancy drink. That Wedge is a gawd awful spy from "Space Skokie". That you can't just mind meld with nine week old embryos. Things I never picked up on twenty years ago, and that I'm having an absolute ball discovering a new.

Only caveat to my ironclad recommendation: if you read these for the lightsaber duels and space dogfighting, they summarize fights and battles. Kelly (I think) doesn't follow these actions scenes very well, but they are recapped completely and, as with all other things here, with humor and a clear love of the books*.

It's a blast and I've already made a brother and a few friends into listeners as well.

*Except Courtship of Princess Leia.

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