Greg StonesCritiques

Thought this was going to be funny. It wasn’t. I like a clever, cute children’s book. This was neither. Unfortunately, I bought this AND Sock Monkeys Have Issues, and that one is still on the way here.

Book 1 in my Zombie-a-thon 2022

Hilarious and brilliantly illustrated picture book.

Book 2 of my Zombie-a-thon 2022!

"Zombies have issues with performance reviews"

Library Thing Early Reviewer:

This is a very simple, yet adorable reader, for a super young Star Wars fan. This talks about all the ways that we lose Stormtroopers. It is laden with straightforward art, that sometimes is all about the starkness of what is missing from a picture and sometimes fills the whole page. It's delightfully full of in references from all of the movies they are in, and characters/situations in them that we never saw stormtroppers in.

A very naughty person told me that reading graphic novels is cheating to accumulate books for my reading challenge. I say not. But this book? This is definitely cheating.
This book can be read in 2 minutes. A literal 2 minutes.
But it was 2 minutes of giggling, and I call that a win. I must spread the jocularity.
Therefore, despite the vile accusations that will come my way, I will face them bravely to recommend this book. This very short book.

The art in this is pretty nice. But I didn't so much as crack a smile while reading it. There were no "jokes". Not funny to me.

Hilarious just plain hilarious!

It was nice to take a break from his books and come back to this one. Hilarious all the way and yes I laughed out loud a lot. The sharks were my favorite... as always. Cute small book to read and enjoy.

Ah even more funny things with zombies!! I love it from beginning to the very last cute page! Not only did the zombies have issues with things, but i learned the things they loved, and things they hated the most... always funny and very informative (you know if we have a zombie apocalypse!).

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yes it is almost as good as the zombies and gnomes books. I laughed a lot throughout the book. Zip line with the alligator... priceless! And there's more unread books from this author I have yet to read! Woo hoo!

Funny but not as funny as the other classics I read from this author. Still awesome though since I am a Star Wars fan and seeing the storm troopers die in various ways makes me happy! I do not have a favorite because they are all great!

I did not think that anything could've beaten Zombies Hate Everything... but this did. I could not stop laughing throughout this book! It was hilarious from beginning to end. Some of my favorite were the snow, bird bath, and moose poop. The ending was just great and so cute! Highly recommended!!

Oh my god!!! I absolutely loooooove this book! Definitely a quick read (like 2 minutes!). It shows everything that zombies hate, love and hate even more! The best was the shark, zip line and the mooning monsters. That's all I'm going to say. Hilarious perfect book and I'm so looking forward to reading the rest of the author's collection.

I liked this book. Its a quick read and easy to get through for most children. 99 bottles of beer style of storm troopers. Harkens of a classic but not quite there.½

This is a cute and funny little book, and a quick read. It's basically the Star Wars version of Bunny Suicides. You find yourself going "ohhhhh!" on just about every page, and the ending is the best part. Fun to peruse!

When I finished 99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire, I felt the same as after I had watched the "Dumb Ways to Die" video -- mildly amused, but a bit creeped out. Here, we have almost a hundred hapless stormtroopers living in the Star Wars universe, which is predominantly the original trilogy, although there are a few that reference the prequels, the one currently existing sequel, and Rogue One. And they all manage to get into a bit of trouble.

I like to end my reviews with a recommendation: which readers would really like the book, and who should stay away? I'm at a loss on this one. It's written on the level of a children's book, with each description usually ten words or fewer, and a gigantic picture on the opposite page. But all of the stormtroopers are facing a perilous death, so that may not be the thing you want to read to your entering-school-age kids before bed.

LibraryThing haiku:
Lives of menial
stormtroopers end quickly
in so many ways.

[Early Reviewer book]

99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire... On the one hand it's very cute and there are some great moments in the book. However, I feel as if the book suffers from a sort of identity crisis. It's not quite sure what it wants to be. Most of it feels like a classic children's book, but then there are some abstract moments young children absolutely will not understand. That are other moments you probably don't want children to understand, as in Darth Vader enters the picture and this thing happens. There is a countdown from the beginning of the book and its pages constantly remind you where the count is, so you'll always know about how far you are from the end of the story. That may bug some people. Also, if you're going to be bothered by skipping around Star Wars timelines and events, this book will scoot you a little farther down Bonkers Ave.

If you're a Star Wars fan and can enjoy things for what they are, despite some inconsistencies with things as they happened in the movies, then you may enjoy what Mr. Stones is offering here. It probably won't stay on my shelf, but I'll ask friends with slightly older children if they'd like a romp.

Plainly put, this is a picture book where a group of 99 newly enlisted stormtroopers die. Some as individuals, some in groups. Some are comical allusions to specific moments in the films (i.e. "Han shot first"), while others are just random deaths one may expect in the Star Wars universe. The illustrations are well done in a childish sort of way: no vast amounts of blood and gore relating to the deaths. And before you know it, the last page is turned. Fun romp through the equivalent of Star Trek's Redshifts? sure. Worth the money to buy? probably not. Spending any amount of time in a book store could have you read the entire book cover to cover and not get any suspicious looks from anyone for reading too long in the aisle.

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire is an absolutely adorable little Star Wars-themed picture book. The book opens by introducing the ninety-nine stormtroopers who have joined the Imperial forces, and the succeeding pages show how, in groups from one to thirty-six, they meet their demise. The various deaths are played for humor, with the troopers dying from a variety of causes that will be fairly recognizable to anyone who has seen the Star Wars movies. The entire book is illustrated in a cute, kind of whimsical style, with cartoonish and somewhat surprisingly (given the violence inherent in many of the deaths) bloodless artwork.

The entire book has kind of the same tone as Ed Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies, mirroring it somewhat with the creative ways the stormtroopers die. It is also somewhat reminiscent of the old children's song Ten Little Indians, especially since the book keeps a running account of how many stormtroopers are left as each page goes by. One the other hand, such comparisons aren't entirely accurate. Unlike Gorey's Gashleycrumb work, there is no rhyme to the text, and unlike both of the aforementioned works, there is no apparent pattern to the forms the stormtroopers' deaths take or how many stormtroopers die per page. I suppose the fact that the deaths are so completely random is part of the joke - disposable stormtroopers dying in completely unpredictable ways highlights the casual, almost offhand manner in which the characters in the movies treat these fatalities.

One question that comes to mind when reading this book is exactly who is its intended audience. At first, one might think that this is a cute Star Wars book aimed at young children, but I suspect it really wouldn't work for them. The "jokes" are really only funny if you know what the author is alluding to: "One stormtrooper fails to shoot first" isn't really funny unless one has seen the cantina scene from the original Star Wars (and followed the ensuing controversy as the scene was cut and recut in various editions of the movie). "Two stormtroopers think the security droid is on their side" is really only funny if you have seen Rogue One. And so on and so forth. The problem is, kids who are still in the "picture book" stage generally won't have latched on to the Star Wars movies yet - they are just too young to appreciate them, at least in my experience. Some of these sorts of works, such as Darth Vader and Son, work as humor even if one doesn't really get the references. They are enhanced when one knows what the author is alluding to, but that is unnecessary for the enjoyment of the book. Without the references, 99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire is just a bunch of guys dying creatively, and that's probably not all that interesting. I can only surmise that the true intended target for this book are people who grew up on the film series who want something cute they can put in their infant's nursery because it looks cool to have it there, or possibly leave on the coffee table as a conversation piece.

Overall, 99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire is a cute little book that delivers exactly what one would expect. Ninety-nine stormtroopers enlist, and then amusingly die as a result of a combination of the Empire's callous indifference and their own ineptitude. The book is not really much more than silly fun, but it is fairly clever silly fun, chock full of Star Wars references that are used to humorous effect. This book is unlikely to change anyone's life, and probably won't occupy anyone for more than ten or fifteen minutes, but it will be a joyful and goofy ride while it lasts.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds.

Shoot, I liked this book so much that I kept forgetting to actually review it.

I will preface with, uh, I thought going into this book that it might be a little bit of a children's book, yep, nope, not at all. It's awesome though. The book starts with 99 stormtroopers, and on each couple of pages another one or two (or sometimes more, heh, those were some of the best) get well, mostly dead, by the various dangers that exist in the Star Wars universe (like the garbage compactor and such).

It's hilarious, and personally I loved the art as well. Now I think I need to go back and read it again and laugh all over. Hilarious.

Greg Stones’ 99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire is a delightfully macabre book about the types of humorous fates that may await Stormtroopers upon joining the Galactic Empire. He plays with events, aliens, and locations from throughout the original and prequel trilogies as well as The Force Awakens and Rogue One. Stones manages to portray both the troopers and backdrops in a simplistic, yet detailed manner. Though Stormtroopers’ helmets prevent any real display of emotion, he makes use of body language to suggest worry, schadenfreude, and whimsy. Even those fates which would be violent are rendered in a manner akin to Looney Tunes violence so that parents could share this with their young Padawans and enjoy a laugh together, or have a chuckle with their adult friends. It will make a great gift, too.

The bunny suicides meets Star Wars?? Dark humor, complete with a few that go too far...

The snark of 99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire made both my daughter and I laugh and smile. She also had to count the stormtroopers to ensure that they numbered 99 (they did, although some of them only had a single limb in the picture to count). The art is quite cute for such a disturbing topic as the demise of the stormtroopers, as most Star Wars fans might imagine. I was surprised to see such a book with dark humor come out from Disney, but I think it works for what it is. It's a funny gift book, and one that a mature child would find amusing.

The dark humor of 99 Stormtroopers Join the Emprie makes it the counting book equivalent of The Gashlycrumb Tinies. It's not great literature but it did elicit some chuckles.½

"99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire" is a charming little children's book following the (brief) careers of 99 troopers in the service of the Galactic Empire. Each page describes a trooper or group of troopers' sad, grizzly, surprising, and hilarious demises.

The artwork is a little muted for the story being told, but the situations themselves will delight fans of the Star Wars films.

NB: I received a free copy of this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.