Reviews

A perfect blend of heart and fun. Some genuinely funny moments and heartbreaking passages. Plus it features Asajj Ventress, which is always good, and the Yoda/Dooku relationship is suitably tragic.

yanailedit's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

A few good pieces of dialogue... and a whole lot of Wacky Races running around and busywork. Way too much 'girls this', 'now kiss', and 'rare grim smiles'. The 'dark rendezvous' itself never really happened and everything that seemed interesting about the premise didn't pan out.

In terms of characters, I loved Ventress and liked Yoda, but Dooku and his tragic flaw didn't receive nearly enough exposition for the bittersweet ending to hit home. The kids were super inconsistent in terms of age and power/abilities and seemed to exist only to throw some awkward forced romance dynamics in while acting as youthful foils to Yoda's wisdom. The secondary Jedi characters were spectacularly flat and slow-witted: always responding as the plot needed them to (after chewing thoughtfully or smiling coldly as if reading from a teleprompter without their glasses to figure out what's needed from them) rather than as actual characters.

Also jeez, the droids and their Spoiler 5 minutes of screen time for unnecessary violence and forced badassery. Meanwhile, so many of the major movie characters in the background felt like poor theatrical imitations of themselves, monologuing on and on at each other while winking at the audience.

None of this was helped by how much time was given to infodumping extremely complex settings for throwaway characters to exchange a few sentences in reaction to the plot happening around them. It was pretty rough to sit through because it was always clear that none of what was happening would ever influence the inexorable plot. It all felt a bit fan fiction-y and decoratively gratuitous.

To add to it, there isn't a female character who doesn't appear without a comment being passed about her body, her beauty or lack thereof, her lips, her smile or lack thereof, or her maternal qualities. Meanwhile men are lithe powerful warriors who open doors in barely slipping towels and 'grate' all of their replies in pensive impatience at having their brooding interrupted.

On its own, it's nothing too overt. In the wider context of 2000s storytelling, this book ticks every single casual gender trope.

Also, seriously, Jai Maruk 'smiled grimly' 3 or 4 times per page... and his biggest character trait is that he smiles rarely? Bruh. This man's walking around like >:) based on the descriptions, and there's still people who have never seen him smile. Also him saying Spoiler 'there were women' which is only topped by Dooku trying to tempt Yoda to the dark side with promises of passion and love. Yikes my dude.

Once the stylistic details and tropes fade in my memory, I think I'm going to fondly remember this story as a TCW-style adventure. The author had a lot of fondness and warmth for certain settings and characters and those are the things that will stay with me in a good nostalgic way. The rest... has aged poorly.

yanailedit's review against another edition

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3.0

2.5ish-3ish

A few good pieces of dialogue... and a whole lot of Wacky Races running around and busywork. Way too much 'girls this', 'now kiss', and 'rare grim smiles'. The 'dark rendezvous' itself never really happened and everything that seemed interesting about the premise didn't pan out.

In terms of characters, I loved Ventress and liked Yoda, but Dooku and his tragic flaw didn't receive nearly enough exposition for the bittersweet ending to hit home. The kids were super inconsistent in terms of age and power/abilities and seemed to exist only to throw some awkward forced romance dynamics in while acting as youthful foils to Yoda's wisdom. The secondary Jedi characters were spectacularly flat and slow-witted: always responding as the plot needed them to (after chewing thoughtfully or smiling coldly as if reading from a teleprompter without their glasses to figure out what's needed from them) rather than as actual characters.

Also jeez, the droids and their

Spoiler

5 minutes of screen time for unnecessary violence and forced badassery

. Meanwhile, so many of the major movie characters in the background felt like poor theatrical imitations of themselves, monologuing on and on at each other while winking at the audience.

None of this was helped by how much time was given to infodumping extremely complex settings for throwaway characters to exchange a few sentences in reaction to the plot happening around them. It was pretty rough to sit through because it was always clear that none of what was happening would ever influence the inexorable plot. It all felt a bit fan fiction-y and decoratively gratuitous.

To add to it, there isn't a female character who doesn't appear without a comment being passed about her body, her beauty or lack thereof, her lips, her smile or lack thereof, or her maternal qualities. Meanwhile men are lithe powerful warriors who open doors in barely slipping towels and 'grate' all of their replies in pensive impatience at having their brooding interrupted.

On its own, it's nothing too overt. In the wider context of 2000s storytelling, this book ticks every single casual gender trope.

Also, seriously, Jai Maruk 'smiled grimly' 3 or 4 times per page... and his biggest character trait is that he smiles rarely? Bruh. This man's walking around like >:) based on the descriptions, and there's still people who have never seen him smile. Also him saying

Spoiler

'there were women' which is only topped by Dooku trying to tempt Yoda to the dark side with promises of passion and love

. Yikes my dude.

Once the stylistic details and tropes fade in my memory, I think I'm going to fondly remember this story as a TCW-style adventure. The author had a lot of fondness and warmth for certain settings and characters and those are the things that will stay with me in a good nostalgic way. The rest... has aged poorly.

jaredkwheeler's review against another edition

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4.0

Star Wars Legends Project #155

Background: Yoda: Dark Rendezvous was written by [a:Sean Stewart|13143|Sean Stewart|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1284293091p2/13143.jpg]. It was published in November of 2004. Stewart is best known as a pioneer of alternate reality gaming. This is his only Star Wars work.

Dark Rendezvous is set 30 months after the Battle of Geonosis (19 years before the Battle of Yavin). The main characters are Yoda and Count Dooku, with secondary roles for Asajj Ventress, Obi-Wan, and Anakin, plus a pair of Jedi Masters and their Padawans. Most of the story takes place on Coruscant and Vjun.

Summary: As the Clone Wars near their climax, Count Dooku sends a startling message to the Jedi on Coruscant: He wants to negotiate peace, but it must be in secret, and Master Yoda must come to him. Yoda knows it's probably a trap, but he knows even better that he can't afford to ignore the possibility that it isn't. But Dooku and Yoda have a long history, and their connection will shape this meeting in ways neither of them could anticipate.

Review: Let me just start by quoting this novel's opening paragraph:

"The sun was setting on Coruscant. Shadows ran like black water, filling up the alleys first, then climbing steadily higher, a tide of darkness rising to drown the capital. Twilight's gloom spread over retail districts and medcenters, and crept like a dark stain up the walls of the Chancellor's residence as the sun slipped below the horizon. Soon only the rooftops were gilded with the day's last yellow light; then the shadows conquered them, too, swarming up the pinnacles of the Senate Building and the spires of the Jedi Temple. The long day of the Republic had come to an end."

That is a solid opener, and overall the book lives up to that promise. And I'll try not to spend this whole review just quoting my favorite bits from the book, but Stewart really knows his way around a turn of phrase. Like this: “Every Jedi is a child his parents decided they could live without.” Right there he takes something that every Star Wars fan knows about the Jedi and how they work, and turns it to a slight angle . . . and suddenly it's like we'd never seen it before.

So he can certainly write, there's no question about that. So, what doesn't work as well. This is ostensibly Yoda's novel. He's the title character, and this is the only Star Wars novel to focus so extensively on this massively important character . . . which makes me wish he didn't spend portions of the book taking a backseat to a couple of nobody Jedi Padawans we've just met. Where the story lags most is in it's focus on self-absorbed, uptight Whie, whose character arc can't begin to enlist the sympathy it seems meant to, particularly when saddled with a fairly clunky reliance on not-so-portentuous foreshadowing. The other Padawan, Scout, is a much better character, much more enjoyable to read about, but it still feels like an odd choice to give her such a central role in a Yoda novel.

My one other significant complaint is that the book lags quite a bit in the middle, particularly surrounding a kind of goofy subplot involving a Yoda impersonator and a false report that Yoda has been killed. Not much happens for the majority of the book, but the early scenes in the Jedi Temple offer lots of engaging character development, and it only becomes noticeable that the story is overdue to move things along when it seems to be spinning its wheels in the second act.

Oddly, what I appreciated most about this novel was its depiction of Count Dooku. Dooku should be one of the richest prequel characters and instead he's one of the shallowest. He's a wise and experienced Jedi Master who switches sides to join the Sith, but still at least comfortably wears a mask of adhering to rigid and upright principles. What are his true motivations? We have no idea, and given the variety of roles he's juggling we can often not even be sure what game he's playing. This novel finally gives us a glimpse into who Dooku truly is and how his Jedi past has shaped and continues to shape him. And it's very well done. I particularly appreciated exchanges like this one between Dooku and Ventress:

“The Count watched her, bemused. ‘How strange it is, to know your every thought before you think it.’

“‘Not even the dark side can give you that power,’ Ventress said, unnerved.

“The Count smiled, ‘I have a power greater than the dark side, my pet. I am old. Your fresh furies are my ancient mistakes.’”

Best of all, though, is that Stewart really gets how to write Yoda as a character who is wise and powerful and revered by the entire Jedi Order, but who also has a sense of humor and can be the butt of a good joke. Consider this scene from early in the book:

“Frankly, even beings who would follow Yoda to the gates of death preferred not to share his meals. Perhaps traveling the length and breadth of the galaxy had given the Master a more wide-ranging palate than mere mortals, or perhaps he was so evolved a being that he didn’t care what he put into his body; or perhaps when one lived eight-hundred-odd years all one’s taste buds died. Whatever the reason, the old gnome’s preferred foods were notoriously disgusting.”

I love that, and I love how it fleshes out how he's seen by other Jedi while it ties in with a favorite scene from the original trilogy, but even better is what comes next, as Yoda waxes philosophical over dinner:

“‘...Each choice, the branch of a tree is: what looked like a decision, is after all only a pattern of growth. Each act, you see, is like a fossil, preserved in the Force, as—*aiee*!’ Yoda broke into a sudden squawk as a rectory droid came to the end of the table and took his bowl, still half full of stew. ‘Stop! Stop! Eating this, I am!'

“‘This bowl contains a substance my sensors cannot identify as food,’ the little round droid said. ‘Please wait here, and I will bring you one of today’s specials.’

“Yoda grabbed on to the edge of his bowl. ‘Ignorant machine! Not on menu, my food ever is. Made special for me, was this!’

“The droid’s servos whined as it fought to pull the bowl from the table. ‘Preliminary readings cannot confirm the contents of this bowl. Please wait here, and I will bring you one of today’s specials.’

“‘Back!’ Yoda cried, whapping the droid on the arm with his cane. ‘Mine! Go away!’”

This is another great call back to the original trilogy, and a hilarious moment in its own right . . . I can't think of any other writer who would interrupt Yoda in the midst of dispensing his famous Jedi wisdom for a moment of pure slapstick bliss. That's when you know you're in good hands here. There's probably a lot more that I could say, but I'll just conclude by affirming that I recommend this and I wouldn't want to ruin any of the book's story surprises. Instead, I'll leave you with one more of the many great Yoda moments this novel gives us:

“‘...How did you know?’

“... ‘Secret, shall I tell you? ... Grand Master of Jedi Order am I!’ he said loudly right in her ear. ‘Won this job in a raffle I did, think you?’ He snuffed and waved his stubby fingers in the air. ‘How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?’ he said mincingly, followed by another snort. ‘Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is.’”

B+

grimdark_dad's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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