I think that any effort to humanize the characters to a game is a move worth seeing. Karen Traviss is currently working on a book that is expected to do just that for the clones in Star Wars. A bright and brilliant step to showing the world that this sort of thing is based on similar events in our own history. I am looking forward to see what she comes up with.

Now the question that many of you may be wondering? Does she actually know anything about Star Wars? Surprisingly at first she did not. According to StarWars.com, she sort of learned as she went on though the creation of the novel.

Traviss was given an initial briefing of the key elements the book needed to convey. The story line had to feature a clone commando squad, one of whose number is stranded behind enemy lines. She was also given information regarding weaponry, basic armor types and other information from the video game, Star Wars: Republic Commando — which is expected to hit shelves in February 2005.

Even though to topic of Republic Commandos were somewhat unexplored territory, Traviss was still required to keep her writing references within the Star Wars canon. The book was to be written for an adult audience, and yet suitable for younger readers, which meant many of the soldier’s expressions of pain and frustration that she used in her first novel, City of Pearl had to be excluded.