Questionable Questing

The prose is pretty good, but like I said with it lacking edge sometimes, they talk about war and they talk about both sides committing atrocities and all these horrible things Sidious does but they don't really show it on screen so to speak. I'm still pretty early in, but a great example is the duel with Count Dooku. Some fun stuff, of him slowly realizing he was a pawn to Sidious the whole time.

That Anakin was going to be Sidious's true apprentice, not him, and their dreams of building a human centric empire and transforming the Jedi into a new Sith order was all bullshit. That this entire time he was just a tool to get Anakin angry enough he dips his toes into the dark side for the first time. Some really cool stuff about realizing he had wasted his life on a lie.

But when it describes what it's like for his hands to get cut off, they literally only give it two lines. Lol. They give more lines describing how many fans Anakin and Obi-wan have on the Star wars version of the Internet. Again it's surprisingly bloodless despite the very dark undertones.

There is a Star Wars internet? And they are war heroes, they'd have many fans. Does the novel discuss the ethics of clone troopers

I think it's called the Holo Web? And it's kind of like the internet but not really. It's based off of 80's/90's idea of what they thought the internet would be, so rather than a big interconnected web like we would imagine now, it's a bunch of smaller more localized chat rooms, forums, and a bunch of inaccessible private servers. Kind of cool to see how people's idea of the internet has evolved.

But with the Clone troopers they aren't beating you over the head with it, but there's plenty of moments that show how fucked up it is. It's like there was a scene where Anakin and Obi-Wan were about to enter the ship to go rescue Chancellor Palpatine from Count Dooku thus setting the stage for their duel, but to reach it they had to dog fight their way through a separatist fleet.

Which almost ended up killing them, but thankfully they were saved by a squadron of Clone's who were able to distract the separatist long enough for them to slip in to the main ship. And Anakin has the moment of hesitation where he says if they don't help the Clones beat back all these ships, they're going to die.

And Obi Wan just said, they would happily give their lives for the mission and asked Anakin if he felt like saving them was worth risking the Chancellor's life. To which Anakin reluctantly agreed, their lives were less important.

That is cold and what is the horror vibe of the charlie thing

I mean I get it, This is the middle of the war. Who's more important a few grunts on the ground or the President who was kidnapped? But still like you said, very cold how casual they were about it. A perfect representation of why even if Sideous had randomly died of a heart attack then and there, the Jedi where doomed to fail regardless.

But the Horror Vibe with Charlie is that some of her kids don't come out right. Maybe because the father had a few extra mythical ancestors in his bloodline that isn't mixing well with Charlie's unholy energy. Maybe they unknowingly did it near a recent ritual or powerful rune. Maybe Charlie's energy was just a little too strong.

Regardless, what ends up happening is instead of being born human, but with demonic heritage they are a little more demon than human, and since demons are less physical and more spiritual in terms of biology they have a hard time surviving on Earth. Now Charlie loves her children very, very much and is willing to do whatever it takes to properly bound them here on Earth with her.

Where we going with this

One of the best ways for a demon to stay here on Earth is for them to possess someone. Which is easy enough for Charlie to find a dead body that she can manipulate with her magic into a proper form for her child. But possession slowly sucks the life out of that body, human life which is not something Charlie can replicate.

But fortunately for her there are plenty of morally acceptable targets she can steal their life from. Rapist, murders, child predators. All evil awful people that Charlie will feel nothing if she has to kill. But she's not just killing them, she ripping them apart and then infusing the shreds of their souls into her Children like it's medicine.

It's fucked up and evil no matter who you do it too, but Charlie loves her kids and is willing to make those kinds of compromises if it means they can stay with her. Thus like I said, the perfect mix of family love and very horrific undertones.

Does this need to keep going or do they stabilize over time and her kids survive?

They do stabilize over time, but depending on how powerful or how out of whack their bodies are it could take a couple dozen people for one kid.

Good cow

A couple dozen bad people and not even require years? That's a worthy investment