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A review by toggle_fow
Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart
4.0
I had LOTS of fun with this one, fellas.
This book is about Yoda and Dooku, but it is kind of also about the spiritual toll the Clone Wars are taking on the whole Jedi Order. Yoda is a hard character to get a read on, in my experience. Often, fans project whatever viewpoint they want onto him, and he features most often as a wise (or unhelpfully abstruse) word or two inserted in someone else's story. It was interesting to see him get a story of his own, and to see how telling a story about Yoda is essentially telling a story about the Jedi Order itself. He is very much the heart of their community, for good or for ill.
So many people show up in this story. Ventress, obviously, and Obi-Wan and Anakin come around for a minute or two. Padme has a cameo. Most of the book, though, has Yoda on a mission with a crop of OCs. I can see this being kind of annoying under certain circumstances, but honestly... I love them. Maks Leem? She is... amazing. I love her. I want her on the Jedi Council. Jai Maruk? Really, he's the least important of the OCs but I'm fond of him. The description of his last fight with Ventress was powerful.
Really though, Whie and Scout, two very different padawans, are the most vital characters in the book besides Yoda. They are on the same mission as he is, but their experience is completely separate. For them, confronting the dark world beyond the Temple walls for the first time, it is a coming of age moment. For Yoda, his mission is a last, desperate attempt to appeal to the vestiges of Light within Dooku and bring him back home.
Some highlights:
This book is about Yoda and Dooku, but it is kind of also about the spiritual toll the Clone Wars are taking on the whole Jedi Order. Yoda is a hard character to get a read on, in my experience. Often, fans project whatever viewpoint they want onto him, and he features most often as a wise (or unhelpfully abstruse) word or two inserted in someone else's story. It was interesting to see him get a story of his own, and to see how telling a story about Yoda is essentially telling a story about the Jedi Order itself. He is very much the heart of their community, for good or for ill.
So many people show up in this story. Ventress, obviously, and Obi-Wan and Anakin come around for a minute or two. Padme has a cameo. Most of the book, though, has Yoda on a mission with a crop of OCs. I can see this being kind of annoying under certain circumstances, but honestly... I love them. Maks Leem? She is... amazing. I love her. I want her on the Jedi Council. Jai Maruk? Really, he's the least important of the OCs but I'm fond of him. The description of his last fight with Ventress was powerful.
Really though, Whie and Scout, two very different padawans, are the most vital characters in the book besides Yoda. They are on the same mission as he is, but their experience is completely separate. For them, confronting the dark world beyond the Temple walls for the first time, it is a coming of age moment. For Yoda, his mission is a last, desperate attempt to appeal to the vestiges of Light within Dooku and bring him back home.
Some highlights:
• There is a powerful bond between Dooku and Yoda in this. Weirdly enough, this book name-drops someone else as "Dooku's master," claiming that Yoda only taught him directly when he was in the creche. But their relationship is deep and poignant here in a way that was COMPLETELY missing in Dooku: Jedi Lost, even though Yoda was Dooku's actual master in canon.
• I love an Apprentice Tournament. The descriptions of lightsaber combat? The intense rivalries? The rule disputes? The weird last round that they held in the Temple Refectory for some reason? *kisses fingers* Magnifique.
• Ventress in this is intriguingly different from Ventress in Dooku: Jedi Lost. Shes hungry and ambitious to advance further in the ways of the Dark Side. It's interesting to imagine how she could have come from that place, unwillingly enslaved, to jockeying for the right to stand at Dooku's side.
• Half of my purpose in reading this was to meet and love Scout and Whie. Mission accomplished. I have adopted them, and they are mine now.
• Especially Scout. A padawan who is weak in the Force? Color me invested. I love her and her stubbornness and her brashness and her insecurity and her aggressive friendliness. Accidentally befriending an undercover assassin droid? Amazing. Did I mention that I love her?
• Okay, the whole concept of "attend secret meeting with Dooku, turn him from the Dark Side back to the Light" sounds legitimately insane to me. Like... uh, okay. Dooku? Really? But what gets me is HOW CLOSE YODA ACTUALLY CAME. Dooku was on the edge, knowing his choices were bad and waffling about whether there was any way back, and then... Anakin Skywalker showed up. Dooku took one look at his face and immediately went into a towering rage.
• SCREW THE WHOLE JEDI ORDER, ACTUALLY, he said, and then jumped out a window.
• The sheer power of looking upon Anakin Skywalker's face... I'm aghast. And Palpatine specifically sent him and Obi-Wan there. Did he KNOW that Dooku was wavering, and that a single glimpse of Anakin would be enough to restore his commitment to the Dark Side?
• The Yoda characterization in this book is DEEPLY interesting. He's wise and funny and also a complete gremlin -- exactly the insane, cackling swamp toad Luke first ran into in ESB. Clearly, that has always been a genuine side of Yoda's character. Honestly, it's obvious that he really does just want to teach and play with the younglings. Let Yoda Retire And Be A Preschool Teacher 2k19.
• Obi-Wan and Anakin's like... three scenes are iconic. It's wild how they just can't exist without completely stealing the show. The banter? Amazing. Anakin throws a grenade on a whim and almost kills Yoda and some children. Obi-Wan goes off on him. Anakin's eyes fill with glassy tears. Obi-Wan INSTANTLY flips to reassure him. They're so stupid.
• All the details and descriptions of how the war has changed the Jedi Order. Hints and tidbits about dissident, pacifist Jedi? Change brought on by the deaths of so many Jedi? Yes... give me those sweet sweet details...
• Something about Jai Maruk's angry realization that Ventress is just a better warrior than him as he fights for his life struck me. It would be hard to accept that your story is about to end, seemingly abruptly and uselessly, and that you're not going to be the one anyone remembers.
• Whie in general is a good boy and I love him, BUT what's more important is this detailed look at what it is like to experience the future-telling dreams of a true Jedi Seer and precog. It is very interesting and distinct, and nothing at all like Anakin's vague, fear-filled dreams.
• All the casual outsider POV mentions of Obi-Wan and Anakin. It's like nobody can really discuss the war without discussing them. Anakin in particular comes up a LOT, especially when anyone is talking about the relative merits of different padawans.
• Qui-Gon's brief appearance! It seems as if Yoda knows he's genuinely there, and that he's speaking with Qui-Gon's spirit, not merely an apparition or vision. Very strange. Has Yoda been communing with Qui-Gon this whole time?
• Dooku is soooooooooooooo jealous of Anakin. It's really astounding. It's like he thinks that HE was the Order's favorite son, and now Anakin has taken that spot and it's a specific insult to Dooku himself. He acts like he's jealous of Yoda's attention to Anakin, which is crazy, since Yoda has never particularly favored Anakin. I can only assume that he is actually projecting the jealousy he feels for Palpatine's attention to Anakin.
• All the discussion of the Dark Side and the Light. I'm always hungry for more philosophizing on this topic, ever hopeful that someday it will make sense to me. It was very interesting how Jai Maruk echoed a common sentiment among Jedi that there is no going back once a person has truly fallen to the Dark Side -- while he is literally part of a mission to convince Dooku to do that exact thing. Clearly, Yoda doesn't hold the same view.
• The constant mentions of the Jedi Order as a family. This book explored the negative impacts of cutting children off from their families and raising them into the Order from toddlerhood almost more than any other book I've read so far. "Every Jedi is a child his parents decided they could live without," says Dooku. And yet the Jedi Order is a family, and that was shown as well.