Welcome to Dead World

Galaxy of Fear #2: City of the Dead

Author: John Whitman

Medium: Junior novel

Publication date: February 1997

Timeline placement: 0 ABY

 

Back Tagline: Welcome to the city of the dead . . .

Interior Tagline: A grave matter . . .

 

Official Book Description:

When Hoole, Tash, and Zak stop on Necropolis to look for a new starship, Zak immediately makes friends with the local kids. And he's willing to pull a crazy stunt—like going into the Necropolitan cemetery at midnight—just to prove he's as tough as they are.

The cemetery is silent as death and full of white, wriggling boneworms. And maybe Zak should have thought twice before accepting this dare. Just because the bodies are buried doesn't mean they're dead. 

Brief Synopsis:

Having barely escaped being Eaten Alive, the Heroes of Yavin ferry the Heroes of D'vouran to the nearby planet Necropolis. Once Luke Skywalker and his friends depart aboard the Millennium Falcon to carry on the business of the Rebellion, Hoole and the Arrandas set about acquiring a new ship. Typically fearless Zak has recently begun having nightmares about the decayed corpses of his dead parents tapping on his bedroom window at night, and is further disturbed by the Necropolitans' traditional welcome ceremony, which involves the locals dressing up like mummies and popping out of coffins. His fears are not assuaged by learning that the notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett is also on the planet, hunting the wanted criminal Dr. Cornelius Evazan, better known as "You'll Be Dead" Guy. In the book they just call him Dr. Evazan, though, because no one had decided he needed a first name yet.

 

Zak quickly befriends one of the mummies, a boy his own age named Kairn. The only other Necropolitan of any relevance we meet is Pylum, the planet's Master of Cerements. It's his job to keep the beliefs and traditions of Necropolis alive by constantly shouting that everyone is doomed like Crazy Ralph in Friday the 13th. Pylum explains the Curse of Sycorax, a legend about a witch who hexed the planet after her son was murdered. If the Necropolitans don't show the proper reverence for the dead, they will rise from their graves and take their revenge, or something.

 

That night, Zak snarks out with Kairn and some of the other local boys. They take him to the nearby cemetery and double dog dare him to sneak in, find the Crypt of the Ancients at its center, and stab a knife into the ground to show he was there. It was around this point that I realized Zak is the main character of this novel. It's been close to 30 years since I've read these books, but I always remembered Tash being the de facto lead. Maybe they'll keep rotating protagonists every book.

 

Zak finds the sacred crypt but just as he sticks his knife in the ground, zombies start popping out of it! Zak flees back to the cemetery's entrance, where he finds his friend Kairn dead, having been force-fed poisonous cryptberries by Dr. Evazan. Before the good doctor can do the same to Zak, however, Boba Fett appears and shoots Evazan dead. There's actually a somewhat complicated ruse involved where Fett strips off his armor and somehow turns it into a freestanding decoy to distract Evazan, even though his outfit is like 75% cloth. Even reading this as a twelve-year-old I thought this made no sense.

 

I do generally like Whitman's portrayal of Boba Fett, though. Daniel Keys Moran's Fett stories are some of the best Star Wars fiction ever written, so I'm often critical of how other authors depict him. Whitman has a pretty decent grasp of his character, though. His Fett hews closely to the Man with No Name archetype used in the best Boba Fett stories: a taciturn antihero who is unbothered by killing but prefers to kill only those who deserve it. He rescues Zak from Evazan, but not out of any altruistic sensibility; it's only incidental to taking out his target. 

 

The next day, Hoole takes the Arrandas and their robotic babysitter, DV-9, starship shopping at Meego's Starship Emporium. While Hoole looks at the safe and reliable family minivan ship, Zak sneaks aboard a sweet Arakyd Helix Interceptor with an Incom GBp-629 hyperdrive. Unfortunately this particular craft isn't yet available for sale, because Meego only just took possession of it after its previous owner was killed in a graveyard by Boba Fett the night before. And here he comes now! Dr. Evazan scurries past Zak and out of the ship, seemingly very much not dead. What chicanery is afoot?

 

Later, Tash finally gets something to do when she overhears Uncle Hoole attempting to hire that vicious bounty hunter Boba Fett. She tells Zak, and the two of them attempt to follow Fett to discover what their uncle is up to. They decide to split up so they can do more damage, and Zak soon finds himself on the trail not of Fett, but of his dead friend Kairn, seemingly very much not dead. 

 

Judging by both his appearance and mannerisms, Kairn is clearly a brain-damaged undead freak, but Zak stupidly accompanies him back to the cemetery anyway. Kairn leads him to the Crypt of the Ancients, where Zak hopes they will encounter the Blair Witch, but instead it turns out that Dr. Evazan has set up a lab inside the crypt, where he has been clandestinely conducting his Mengelian experiments. Evazan explains that he has been working for the Empire to develop a serum that can reanimate the dead, providing the Emperor with a limitless army of strength-enhanced troops. Knowing that Boba Fett was after him, Evazan had the foresight to inject himself with the serum before his death, allowing him to spontaneously self-resurrect once he was buried and the native boneworms started eating his bone marrow, activating the dormant serum with their slime. Okay but how did he get out of his grave afterward?

 

The only side effect, the doctor says, face twitching, is irregular uncontrollable muscle spasms. But now he's ready to test how the serum affects a corpse that hasn't been violently murdered. Ordering Kairn to hold down his friend, Evazan injects Zak with diluted cryptberry juice, paralyzing him and reducing his vital functions so that he appears dead. He appears so dead, in fact, that everyone assumes he committed suicide and they put him in a coffin, have a funeral, and bury him. He spends like the next three chapters buried alive with boneworms gnawing through the coffin to eat his marrow.

 

Meanwhile, Tash convinces Uncle Hoole that some chicanery is afoot, and they return to the cemetery to investigate the scene of Zak's death while Deevee makes the final arrangements to procure their new spaceship. When they enter the graveyard, though, Tash and Hoole discover a roving horde of zombies. Pylum appears at the head of an angry mob. Zombies are attacking people all over the city, and the Necropolitans blame the offworlders for desecrating their consecrated ground. They drag our heroes to the Crypt of Ancients. Pylum takes them into the tomb, where he reveals that he has been in league with Dr. Evazan all along. The terrible twosome unleash their zombies on Hoole, observing how they fare against the Shi'ido's shapeshifting abilities. 

 

Back at Meego's Starship Emporium, Meego tells Deevee that he has already sold the ship Hoole made a down payment on to someone else, and they will just have to buy a more expensive model if they want anything at all. Deevee tells the slimy used ship salesman about the Tal Nami, a species Hoole befriended in his travels that base their society around a fair and equitable barter system, and travel lightyears to draw and quarter dishonest merchants. Meego tells them that he'd be all too happy to let them have Dr. Evazan's ship, the Shroud. 

 

Remembering that Zak claimed to have seen the dead doctor aboard ship earlier, Deevee scans the Shroud's memory banks and discovers the nature of Evazan's experiments. Realizing what must have happened to Zak, Deevee teams up with Boba Fett, who is investigating the doctor's apparent return from the grave, and together they hurry back to the cemetery. Fett digs Zak out of his grave, and Zak, now recovered from the paralytic cryptberries, leads the bounty hunter to the Crypt of Ancients, where we get to see Boba Fett fight zombies.

 

While Fett keeps Evazan and Pylum distracted, Deevee deevises an antidote to the reanimation serum, but with Hoole and Tash captured, it's up to Zak to save the day. He appeals to the lingering humanity in Kairn and manages to break through his friend's mental conditioning. Kairn administers the antidote to all the zombies, including himself, and they all die a second death. Pylum escapes, but Boba Fett throws the last of the antidote into Dr. Evazan's scarred face, sending him back to hell where he belongs. 

 

As they leave the crypt, the gang finds Pylum lying dead on the floor, having slipped on a banana peel and broken his neck. Perhaps the Curse of Sycorax is real after all... 

 

But the twist is...

As Zak works on the Shroud's engine, a massive twitch runs through his body. I guess he really did die and Evazan's serum brought him back. Ohhh he's a zombie now. Wait when did he die?

 

the Platonic Boy-Girl Relationship:

Tash Arranda and her brother Zak, who disappears into a coffin halfway through the book. 

 

Memorable Cliffhanger Chapter Ending:

Ch. 3/4:

Zak awakens from a horrible nightmare of his dead, rotting parents trying to get in his bedroom window and blaming him for forgetting about them. Thank goodness it was only a dream, he thinks... until he hears something tapping on his window again. Is it a zombie? No, it's just his friend throwing rocks. 

 

Title Drop Alert:

"We need to purchase a new ship. This is the closest inhabited planet."

"What's it called?" Tash asked.

"Necropolis."

"Necropolis?" Zak said. "What a strange name. What does it mean?"

"It means," Hoole said as they felt the Millennium Falcon descend into gravity, "City of the Dead."

 

"That's the true Necropolis," Kairn said. "The city of the dead." 

 

Zak wrapped the heavy cloak around his shoulders and took a step into the graveyard, holding the glowrod in front of him. Its light barely penetrated the rolling mist. Row after row of tombstones vanished into the darkness before him. He took a few more steps. The headstones looked like a miniature city. A city of the dead.

 

"May the spirit of Sycorax receive this departed being in peace. May Kairn, who is gone from the living, remain now forever in the city of the dead!" 

 

All around them the ground was churning. Massive headstones collapsed or sank into the ground as the creatures below struggled to reach the surface. Hundreds of graves were on the verge of breaking open, spilling forth their buried inhabitants.

The city of the dead was coming back to life. 

 

Cameo Alert:

Dr. Evazan, Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2

 

Conclusions:   

The most notable trivia about this book is that it features the canonical death of a movie character. "You'll Be Dead" Guy has been a beloved fixture of the franchise since the original Star Wars debuted in 1977, and City of the Dead shocked fans around the world by killing him off in a spooky children's book. Unfortunately, the shock quickly wore off when the StarWars.com Databank entry on Evazan nonsensically placed his death in Galaxy of Fear before his continuing adventures with his friend Buttface in the short story "Doctor Death: The Tale of Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba," explaining his survival with the throwaway line that Evazan "somehow escaped yet again." The Essential Reader's Companion corrected this grievous error by moving the short story back on the timeline, so City of the Dead remains the good doctor's final demise.

 

There's a decent character arc for Zak where he starts to recover from the trauma of his parents' death by realizing that there is no witch's curse that can bring back the dead but they're never really gone as long as the living remember the good times they shared, but it's pretty boilerplate. I liked the use of Boba Fett and Dr. Evazan getting to be a major character in something, but with so much of the book focused on Zak, I found myself missing Tash and wishing she had more to do in the story. 

 

3/5 Death Stars. Decently entertaining but not up to par with Eaten Alive.