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lesserjoke 's review for:
Queen's Peril
by E.K. Johnston
This Star Wars novel has a few neat moments -- like handmaiden Sabé's brief female love interest -- but is overall far too disjointed to be effective. It's a prelude to the first prequel movie followed by a retelling of that film's events from the perspective of different characters, generally but not exclusively centered around Queen Amidala and her cohort. But instead of presenting a cohesive independent storyline for readers, the narrative is full of isolated scenes that don't connect back to anything else in the book, with e.g. a random interior monologue from Jar Jar Binks serving no clear purpose whatsoever.
This is, technically, also a spinoff of author E. K. Johnston's earlier tie-in work Queen's Shadow, which was set in between Episodes I and II. So that makes it the prequel to a prequel of a prequel, which may speak to its difficulty in staking out the distinctive space to situate a plot of its own. Still, The Phantom Menace is one of the weaker entries in the Skywalker saga, and it seems like this title could have offered a fresh take to help shore up its many flaws. Yet without a disciplined approach to keep the focus on one or two key protagonists, it only squanders that era of the franchise further.
[Content warning for menstruation.]
--Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!--
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This is, technically, also a spinoff of author E. K. Johnston's earlier tie-in work Queen's Shadow, which was set in between Episodes I and II. So that makes it the prequel to a prequel of a prequel, which may speak to its difficulty in staking out the distinctive space to situate a plot of its own. Still, The Phantom Menace is one of the weaker entries in the Skywalker saga, and it seems like this title could have offered a fresh take to help shore up its many flaws. Yet without a disciplined approach to keep the focus on one or two key protagonists, it only squanders that era of the franchise further.
[Content warning for menstruation.]
--Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!--
Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter