Children of the Jedi

Children of the Jedi

By Barbara Hambly

**Spoiler Disclaimer** As with all my reviews, I note up front that there will be spoilers in this post. I’d like to evaluate the stories on a number of different merits, and that sometimes involves giving away plot points. If you’re like me, you don’t care…you just want to know what happened.**

Children of the Jedi, by Barbara Hambly, continues the adventures of Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca, along with new additions Cray and Nichos as they try to discover why one of Han Solo’s old smuggling buddies showed up, deranged and physically decrepit, screaming about how everyone’s gonna die.

It seems that some Jedi hid Force-sensitive younglings on Belsavis when the Emperor did his thang at the end of the Clone Wars. The story quickly branches when Luke, and his Jedi protégés Cray and Nichos (a married couple) head off in one direction to see what they can find at some cryptic coordinates they somehow uncover (I read through the scene three times and didn’t quite figure out how), while Leia, Han, and Chewie head off to the planet Belsavis to follow up on the crazed smuggler’s information. As an avid player of Bioware’s MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, it was a thrill to see Belsavis crop up in this book (indeed, this was the first time the planet was mentioned). Alas, none of my guild mates seemed as thrilled when I logged in to brag about reading it, but so it goes.

Luke eventually ends up on the superweapon (yep, another one) Eye of Palpatine, which has laid dormant for decades but has somehow been activated and is now headed to Belsavis to wipe out the Jedi settlement. Meanwhile, Leia, Han, and Chewie discover that the Jedi young have since fled Belsavis, but there still seems to be something…strange going on planetside. They stick around to see if they can get to the bottom of some disappearances and try to determine what about this planet made Han’s buddy go so crazy.

For me, this book is half and half. I liked the Han/Leia story, but wasn’t crazy about the Luke plot. The Luke story was confusing and the payoff was disappointing. This is true both from a Star Wars and a literary point of view.

Literarily, I had trouble getting in to the book in the first few chapters because Hambly seemed to jump ahead of herself, only going back to explain what was going on when she felt the reader was adequately confused. The book would jerk from scene to scene with no real transition. One conversation wasn’t contiguous with another that just ended. It was jarring and weird. A few chapters in, Hambly’s writing became more fluid, at least in the Han/Leia story.

The Han/Leia story was far more engaging than Luke’s. I could easily follow the Belsavis plotline, and it did have some nice setpieces, though the only character I felt actually “changed” by the end of the book was Mara Jade, who only pops in for a few lines here and there. There were a few nice twists along the way and we got some interesting glimpses into Leia’s upbringing on Alderaan. I also thought Hembly did a good job dabbling in some of the intergalactic intrigue surrounding Alderaanian organizations that popped up after the planet was destroyed.

Luke’s plot, on the other hand, was fairly disastrous in execution. You always feel a few steps behind Luke, but not in the good, suspenseful way. It was tough to follow and Hembly didn’t really give us many reference points. Luke is trapped on the Eye with a myriad of sentient creatures like Gamoreans, Tusken Raiders, and Jawas. The Eye has brainwashed these creatures to become the Emperor’s men through and through (to varying degrees of success). They wander around the ship like crazy people, and not even in a way that logically fits the story. The computer that runs the Eye supposedly indoctrinated them to be professional soldiers who could carry out a ground mission to wipe out Jedi on Belsavis, but none of them act like soldiers at all. They really do act like they are members of an insane asylum, breaking out into nonsensical internal fights or sitting around command rooms acting out space battles (complete with sound effects). It’s surreal. Luke’s apprentices get kidnapped and provide a ticking clock device as one is to be publicly executed and needs savin’. He spends most of his time going through corridors and finding things. It’s about as thrilling as it sounds, and because you never really know where Luke is in relation to anything else in the Eye, it’s befuddling as well.

There are some interesting conceptual components to Luke’s plot; namely the sub-plot of his apprentice’s relationship. Cray, before becoming a Jedi, was an AI engineer and roboticist (one of the best in the galaxy, actually). When her husband Nichos was diagnosed with an incurable, fatal disease, she designed a perfect droid replica of him and somehow transferred an imprint of Nichos’ brain into it. There are some heavy ideas there about what makes life and how far you should go to save a loved one. But this plot is but a pleasant diversion from the tangled mess of Luke’s primary arc.

I might have forgiven the Luke storyline if it were not for Callista. As he explored the hallways of the Eye, he stumbled on Callista, a Jedi who had successfully infiltrated the Eye but had died before she could destroy it. She had managed to store her consciousness and spirit in the Eye’s weapon systems. Alright, I guess I can buy that. There’s precedent for such a thing in other Star Wars stories. As you might guess, she helps Luke figure out how to get the gaggle of sentients on board evacuated and destroy the Eye. But then it gets weird. She interfaces with Luke through a computer, except sometimes when she shows up in physical form. Luke falls in love with her, and vice versa. It even implies that Luke and ghost-computer-Jedi sleep together at one point. Uh, ok. That’s odd. But wait, there’s more. Towards the end of the story, Callista makes it clear she’s going to get blown up with the Eye when it gets destroyed. Weepy-eyed Luke can’t take it, and begs her to get put into a droid like Nichos. She refuses, pointing out that Nichos is hardly human, only a replica of a memory. Ok, nice ethical message.

Cut to: end of the book. Nichos and Cray (in what was apparently supposed to be a surprise) sacrifice their lives to destroy the Eye. But Callista magically turns up, having taken over Cray’s body. It isn’t perfect, though, because she has lost her connection to the Force. She becomes, in essence, only a replica of a memory. Hembly pretty much took her message and said “Phoey and Pishah! I want Callista to be a person.” A very unsatisfying ending that really shouldn’t have happened. Callista should have died with the ship.

From a Star Wars point of view, I loved exploring Belsavis and learning a bit more about a planet that has more recently been thrust to the forefront of the lore. There were a couple of interesting scenes in deep catacombs on the planet where our heroes stumble on Jedi Padawan training equipment, giving Luke yet another boost in his quest to figure out how the Jedi Order functioned before the Jedi purge. Luke’s story I feel like just ignoring. I don’t want to dive into another list of problems like I did with the Jedi Academy books, but I’ll just mention this: in this book, Gamoreans can speak Basic. That’s just…so wrong.

I know I focused a lot on the shortcomings of the Luke plot and didn’t really spend much time with Leia and Han, but that’s because the Belsavis plot is just so much better. I don’t have a lot to pick at there. Children of the Jedi is worth the read if for no other reason than that. And Luke’s story is hardly unreadable, it’s just confusing. Unfortunately, it does hold the book back from being an overall satisfying read.

Should you read it? Overall, Children is a fun read and worth picking up. It’s not a page-turner like Heir to the Empire, but doesn’t push me away, either. It falls into that same “second tier” category of the Jedi Apprentice series. Start with something else like the Thrawn trilogy or X-Wing and work your way down into some of the less outstanding works.

Bronze Star (Read once you’ve read everything else)

Revenge of the Sith (Novelization)

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

By Matthew Stover

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) was the novel adaptation of the film, novelized by Matthew Stover. Normally I would spend time here giving a basic plot summary, but in this case I don’t find it necessary. If you’re reading this blog, you know what happens in Revenge of the Sith. The real question is less about the story as it is the quality of the writing. Everyone and their mother (if you have a cool mother) has opinions on Revenge of the Sith, so for a moment put those aside.

The author, Matthew Stover, is somewhat of a known in the Star Wars EU, having written one of the New Jedi Order books and Shatterpoint, one of the major movie tie-ins with Attack of the Clones. I read Revenge a good month before I saw the movie (the book was released in April 2005, but the film wasn’t until May), so I had the unique experience of experiencing the story of the film told through a different medium. Without the clunky dialogue.

In other words, don’t write off Revenge of the Sith just because you didn’t like the movie. A lot of the ideas in Episode III were tough to bring to the big screen. It would have taken a rock-solid script to show Anakin’s descent, and Lucas himself is the first to admit that he is not good at writing dialogue. So why didn’t he get some third parties to help him with that? I digress…

In book form, Stover was not constrained by time or the innately visual medium that is film. He could explain feelings and emotions and motivations through internal conversation, not just the outward dialogue Lucas had to work with. He could spend time explaining just how intricately Palpatine had orchestrated pretty much every event in the galaxy for the past few years. He could work through the story at his leisure. Indeed, one of the things that surprised me most about the movie the first time I saw it was how short the opening space battle sequence was. Anakin and Obi-Wan land, fight Dooku, and crash land the Iron Fist on Coruscant. The entire sequence is about 11 minute of a two-hour film. In the book, the sequence takes up a substantial portion of the story; over 1/3 of the novel is dedicated to the battle.

I remember reading the duel between Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Dooku, and how Dooku was desperately fighting off the two Jedi, barely summoning the power to overcome Obi-Wan so he could focus on Anakin. Imagine my surprise in the movie when Kenobi was down in five seconds. The seeds of Anakin’s psychological descent are sown on the ship, with Anakin and Kenobi bickering about the nature of evil and the Dark Side. Same goes for the later battle between Obi-Wan and General Grevious, by the way. In the book, it goes on for a little while and I got really excited when the movie came out and I could tell the duel was about to start. And then Obi-Wan beats Grevious almost instantly.

More than anything, though, the book succeeds at capturing the tension between Anakin and Padme. It is upon this relationship that the entire story hinges. If I as a reader don’t really understand the desperation in Anakin’s heart to keep Padme safe, then his whole conversion to the Dark Side doesn’t make sense. Whether you think that emotion was captured in the film or not, you certainly see it in the novel.

The best part of the book, however, is Stover’s writing. This story, in the hands of a less competent author, could have ended up being just another run-of-the-mill adaptation. But Stover crafted something special here. I personally believe the book is better than the movie, and this is coming from someone who likes the film (it’s not the greatest of the movies, but it’s certainly not the worst). I’ll put it this way: I had tears in my eyes when I finished the book. I can’t say the same for the movie.

Should you read it? Yes. Not only is it sublimely written, but it fills in so many of the gaps left in the movie. The first time I read it (before I saw the movie), there were definitely some “OH SNAP!” moments, especially when it dealt with Palpatine and his manipulations over everything ever. I didn’t feel those moments in the movie (although, to be fair, I already knew the story). Whether you are a fan of the prequals, or someone who pretends they don’t exist, I think you should give Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith a shot. Hey, if you hated the movie, your opinion can only go up. Right?

Gold Star (Highly Recommended)