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A review by kynan
Star Wars Omnibus: Tales of the Jedi, Volume 1 by Kevin J. Anderson
2.0
I recently rediscovered the Star Wars universe, courtesy of my son, and decided I wanted to know more about the story that came before A New Hope (not the new prequels).
According to http://librarything.com/series/Star+Wars, Tales Of The Jedi was probably a good place to start. Its stories occur 5000ish years before the events depicted in Star Wars AND there was a copy available locally to me :)
Unfortunately, I didn't find what I was looking for. I was going for more Jedi/Sith prehistory than is provided in this volume, which basically states in the first panels of the first story that the dark-side Jedi were banished from local space and, in their wanderings, ultimately discovered the Sith people, whom they promptly enslaved and took the name of. I wanted to know more about what happened before that banishment and the last story in the volume has a tangential reference to the fact that the hyperdrive had been around in the "current" universe for 20,000 years already. 20,000 years! Just for reference, at the time I'm writing this my ancestors of 20,000 years ago were working out that sharp rocks were useful and wondering if there might be something more to life than this whole hunt-and-gather thing.
I didn't have a particular problem with the stories told in this volume, but they didn't grab me either. They were kind of interesting but there didn't appear to be any overarching storyline that we were following (after reading Volume II, turns out there was, but it's a long game we're playing here) and the technology portrayed in the stories, set five thousand years before Star Wars, seemed almost on par with what will come. I think that was the thing I found most annoying. I'm finding it difficult to believe that the universe that spawned the faster than light hyperdrive then proceeded to rest on its laurels for twenty thousand years...it just doesn't make sense.
Anyway, it was OK, I think the final story in the book (3,999 years before Star Wars) was the best and I might try to dig up Dawn of the Jedi which will apparently enlighten me with regard to what harkened in that mysterious 20,000 year ago past.
According to http://librarything.com/series/Star+Wars, Tales Of The Jedi was probably a good place to start. Its stories occur 5000ish years before the events depicted in Star Wars AND there was a copy available locally to me :)
Unfortunately, I didn't find what I was looking for. I was going for more Jedi/Sith prehistory than is provided in this volume, which basically states in the first panels of the first story that the dark-side Jedi were banished from local space and, in their wanderings, ultimately discovered the Sith people, whom they promptly enslaved and took the name of. I wanted to know more about what happened before that banishment and the last story in the volume has a tangential reference to the fact that the hyperdrive had been around in the "current" universe for 20,000 years already. 20,000 years! Just for reference, at the time I'm writing this my ancestors of 20,000 years ago were working out that sharp rocks were useful and wondering if there might be something more to life than this whole hunt-and-gather thing.
I didn't have a particular problem with the stories told in this volume, but they didn't grab me either. They were kind of interesting but there didn't appear to be any overarching storyline that we were following (after reading Volume II, turns out there was, but it's a long game we're playing here) and the technology portrayed in the stories, set five thousand years before Star Wars, seemed almost on par with what will come. I think that was the thing I found most annoying. I'm finding it difficult to believe that the universe that spawned the faster than light hyperdrive then proceeded to rest on its laurels for twenty thousand years...it just doesn't make sense.
Anyway, it was OK, I think the final story in the book (3,999 years before Star Wars) was the best and I might try to dig up Dawn of the Jedi which will apparently enlighten me with regard to what harkened in that mysterious 20,000 year ago past.