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A review by jaredkwheeler
The Last Jedi by Michael Reaves, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
3.0
Star Wars Legends Project #195
Background: The Last Jedi was written by [a:Michael Reaves|12537|Michael Reaves|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1272842062p2/12537.jpg] and [a:Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff|247692|Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1522884251p2/247692.jpg]. It was published in February 2013. Reaves has written or co-written several Star Wars novels, including the Coruscant Nights trilogy (this is a sequel to those). Bohnhoff has co-written three novels with Reaves. This is the second. Apparently she co-wrote the last Coruscant Nights book with him, but went uncredited.
The Last Jedi is set some months after Patterns of Force, about a year after Order 66 (17 years before the battle of Yavin). The main characters are Jax Pavan, I-5, and Den Dhur. Darth Vader plays a significant role, as do several surviving characters from the Coruscant Nights trilogy. The novel takes place on Coruscant, Toprawa, Mandalore, Dathomir, and various points in outer space.
Summary: Things have gotten too hot on Coruscant for Thi Xon Yimmon, the leader of the Whiplash resistance movement, so sort-of-ex-Jedi Jax Pavan and the rest of his rebel cell are tasked with moving him to a new base on Dantooine. But when the mission ends in catastrophe, Jax and the others are left reeling, with the nascent rebellion on the brink of extinction. Every choice feels like the wrong choice, and the only alternative that's worse is no choice at all.
Review: I have no insight into the division of labor between Reaves and Bohnhoff, and I wasn't even aware that she cowrote Patterns of Force until just now, so I wasn't thinking about that as I read it. If I had to guess at Bohnhoff's influence, I'd say she improves the style over Reaves writing alone (fewer contemporary references dressed up in Star-Wars-ese), but the narrative lacks drive. There was a lot of pointless wheel-spinning in Patterns of Force compared to the first 2 novels in the trilogy, and that effect is even more apparent here since this novel is over 100 pages longer than the longest of the Coruscant Nights books.
It's definitely longer than it needs to be, though not to the extent you might expect. There is a lot going on in this story, and now that the characters are finally allowed to be somewhere other than Coruscant there's a lot more for them to do. It's also one of the few novels from this era that incorporates significant tie-ins with The Clone Wars animated series, particularly in its depictions of Mandalore and Dathomir. Some of this is good stuff, some less so, but I don't want to get too deep into spoiler territory.
I find that I have surprisingly little to say about this overall, actually. It begins by significantly raising the stakes from where they were in the trilogy, and it's a much more satisfying conclusion to the storyline of these characters than the last book was. I liked it better than any of the Coruscant Nights books. On the other hand, it was still a bit of a chore to get through, and while it introduced some interesting new characters, I didn't feel like I got to know them as well as I should have, almost like they were being held at arm's length. This was particularly true of Sacha Swiftbird. I-5's storyline in this was also weird, almost a transplant from a Star Trek story. And I'm not sure I bought the tension between Jax and the others. At the very least it wasn't well-explained.
In the end, although there's plenty to like here, it's spread too thin across too high of a page count, and I'm definitely more than ready to move on from here. It feels like Star Wars writers in this era don't know what kinds of stories to tell, particularly when they involve Jedi. That feels like a crucial mistake when dealing with the Dark Times (outside of, obviously, the excellent Dark Times series of comics). Writers keep wanting to tell stories of a nascent rebellion, but we know from the opening crawl of Star Wars that any real victory of a rebellion movement is literally almost two decades away. They're missing huge opportunities to tell stories that aren't just Jedi vs. Sith or Rebellion vs. Empire. I want to see stories about morally grey anti-heroes who operate in the underworld as the Empire tightens its grip on power. I want to see stories about ordinary people (as in non-Force users) dealing with day-to-day survival after this massive shift in galactic government. Most of all, I don't want stories whose endings I already know because they're about rebellions that are destined to fail and missions that can't possibly succeed. Your heroes want to assassinate the Emperor or try to take out Darth Vader? I already know how that ends! We all do! Find a better plot! Surprise me!
B-
Background: The Last Jedi was written by [a:Michael Reaves|12537|Michael Reaves|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1272842062p2/12537.jpg] and [a:Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff|247692|Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1522884251p2/247692.jpg]. It was published in February 2013. Reaves has written or co-written several Star Wars novels, including the Coruscant Nights trilogy (this is a sequel to those). Bohnhoff has co-written three novels with Reaves. This is the second. Apparently she co-wrote the last Coruscant Nights book with him, but went uncredited.
The Last Jedi is set some months after Patterns of Force, about a year after Order 66 (17 years before the battle of Yavin). The main characters are Jax Pavan, I-5, and Den Dhur. Darth Vader plays a significant role, as do several surviving characters from the Coruscant Nights trilogy. The novel takes place on Coruscant, Toprawa, Mandalore, Dathomir, and various points in outer space.
Summary: Things have gotten too hot on Coruscant for Thi Xon Yimmon, the leader of the Whiplash resistance movement, so sort-of-ex-Jedi Jax Pavan and the rest of his rebel cell are tasked with moving him to a new base on Dantooine. But when the mission ends in catastrophe, Jax and the others are left reeling, with the nascent rebellion on the brink of extinction. Every choice feels like the wrong choice, and the only alternative that's worse is no choice at all.
Review: I have no insight into the division of labor between Reaves and Bohnhoff, and I wasn't even aware that she cowrote Patterns of Force until just now, so I wasn't thinking about that as I read it. If I had to guess at Bohnhoff's influence, I'd say she improves the style over Reaves writing alone (fewer contemporary references dressed up in Star-Wars-ese), but the narrative lacks drive. There was a lot of pointless wheel-spinning in Patterns of Force compared to the first 2 novels in the trilogy, and that effect is even more apparent here since this novel is over 100 pages longer than the longest of the Coruscant Nights books.
It's definitely longer than it needs to be, though not to the extent you might expect. There is a lot going on in this story, and now that the characters are finally allowed to be somewhere other than Coruscant there's a lot more for them to do. It's also one of the few novels from this era that incorporates significant tie-ins with The Clone Wars animated series, particularly in its depictions of Mandalore and Dathomir. Some of this is good stuff, some less so, but I don't want to get too deep into spoiler territory.
I find that I have surprisingly little to say about this overall, actually. It begins by significantly raising the stakes from where they were in the trilogy, and it's a much more satisfying conclusion to the storyline of these characters than the last book was. I liked it better than any of the Coruscant Nights books. On the other hand, it was still a bit of a chore to get through, and while it introduced some interesting new characters, I didn't feel like I got to know them as well as I should have, almost like they were being held at arm's length. This was particularly true of Sacha Swiftbird. I-5's storyline in this was also weird, almost a transplant from a Star Trek story. And I'm not sure I bought the tension between Jax and the others. At the very least it wasn't well-explained.
In the end, although there's plenty to like here, it's spread too thin across too high of a page count, and I'm definitely more than ready to move on from here. It feels like Star Wars writers in this era don't know what kinds of stories to tell, particularly when they involve Jedi. That feels like a crucial mistake when dealing with the Dark Times (outside of, obviously, the excellent Dark Times series of comics). Writers keep wanting to tell stories of a nascent rebellion, but we know from the opening crawl of Star Wars that any real victory of a rebellion movement is literally almost two decades away. They're missing huge opportunities to tell stories that aren't just Jedi vs. Sith or Rebellion vs. Empire. I want to see stories about morally grey anti-heroes who operate in the underworld as the Empire tightens its grip on power. I want to see stories about ordinary people (as in non-Force users) dealing with day-to-day survival after this massive shift in galactic government. Most of all, I don't want stories whose endings I already know because they're about rebellions that are destined to fail and missions that can't possibly succeed. Your heroes want to assassinate the Emperor or try to take out Darth Vader? I already know how that ends! We all do! Find a better plot! Surprise me!
B-