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A review by blancwene
Jedi Search by Kevin J. Anderson
1.0
For 2020, I decided to reread (in publication order) all the Bantam-era Star Wars books that were released between 1991 and 1999; that shakes out to 38 adult novels and 5 anthologies of short stories & novellas.
This week’s focus: Jedi Search by Kevin J. Anderson.
SOME HISTORY:
All of the previous 90s Star Wars books were originally hardcover releases, but the [b:Jedi Academy Trilogy|760109|Jedi Academy Trilogy (Star Wars)|Kevin J. Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1212712018l/760109._SX50_.jpg|746206] was the start of something new: books released solely in paperback. Beginning in 1994, Bantam released a number of paperback books plus one or two hardcovers each year. The trilogy also relies heavily on the [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180] comic, which is both a blessing and a curse. If you’ve read the comic, it’s nice to see the repercussions of the Reborn Emperor still affecting the galaxy a year later. If you haven’t read the comic, though, you’re afloat in a sea of foreign information that isn’t extensively explained.
Jedi Search did better than the previous release, [b:The Truce at Bakura|302618|The Truce at Bakura (Star Wars)|Kathy Tyers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718249l/302618._SY75_.jpg|591520]; the book made it to #4 on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for two separate weeks--the week of February 27 and the week of March 13--and ultimately stayed on the NYT list for 8 weeks.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
I had conflated events from the next two books with Jedi Search, so reading it led to me constantly shaking my head and going “that happened here?” I remembered Luke's Jedi search, and that Daala shows up, but was very hazy where other plot events fell in the trilogy’s timeline. I had somehow completely forgotten Lando’s trip to the Umgul blob races, but perhaps that was my own protective amnesia...
PRINCESS LEIA COSTUME CHANGE COUNT:
Leia changes out of her “diplomatic clothes” in the beginning, but we don’t get any sense of what they look like. When she shows Gantoris the images of Dantooine, she’s wearing a robe. This is clearly insufficient wardrobe descriptions!
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
Newly-proclaimed Jedi Master Luke Skywalker wants to restart the Jedi Order, and asks the Senate for permission to find Jedi acolytes and form a new Jedi Academy. At the same time, Han Solo and Chewbacca are sent to Kessel on a diplomatic mission that goes horribly awry. And hidden nearby in the Maw Cluster, Admiral Daala waits for word from Grand Moff Tarkin to unleash the Imperial’s newest superweapon on the unsuspecting galaxy...
THE CHARACTERS:
It’s hard for me to approach this book objectively, because KJA introduced so many characters and elements I hate into the SW universe. Still, I tried very hard during this reread. Han and Chewbacca have an interesting plot line (even if the logistics of their mission didn’t make complete sense to me), and I felt that their portrayals were closest to the SW baseline. Han provokes the bad guys, and even when it looks like they’ll never escape, he’s still plotting and scheming. I appreciated, too, that Chewie is with him the whole time--thus far, some of the SW authors have felt the need to send Chewie off somewhere else, but it makes sense to me that Han and he would undertake this mission together.
Luke behaves weirdly in this book. I understand that he’s working through a lot of guilt and trauma from the events of [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180], but he comes across as humorless and remote. There are very few glimpses of the kind, pleasant man that we saw in the Thrawn trilogy or even [b:The Truce at Bakura|302618|The Truce at Bakura (Star Wars)|Kathy Tyers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718249l/302618._SY75_.jpg|591520]. Similarly, his Force powers are so far beyond anything we have seen him do up to this point, which I assume is in keeping with how he behaved in [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180]. He jumps out of a volcano hole! He walks on lava! Why KJA? It leads to this feeling that, combined with his new personality, I’m reading about a pod person who has taken the place of the original Luke. I didn’t like it.
Leia is singularly useless in this book. She’s Minister of State, but the only glimpses we get into her job revolve around Ambassador Furgan from Carida, and then one instance where she’s frustrated and overworked and takes out her annoyance on a subordinate. Han doesn’t report back in from his mission, and she sulks and worries that he’s fallen back into his old smuggler ways. She’s not particularly necessary to the plot; once she decides they need to check on Han, it’s Luke and Lando who head off to Kessel to check things out.
Poor Lando. We get an explanation that he lost Nkllon in a card game and is now down on his luck--really?? Lando has a particularly ridiculous plot line, in which he heads to the Umgul blob races to investigate one of Luke’s potential Jedi. Of course, he takes C-3P0 and R2-D2 with him; of course, he returns empty-handed. I understand that KJA needed something for Lando to do, but surely anything would be better than the blob races!
Of Luke’s potential Jedi: Gantoris is so obviously bad news, oh my word. A dark man has appeared to him in his dreams? His inevitable betrayal will not surprise me one bit. Streen is sweet, I guess. Kyp Durron is interesting, and I enjoyed his developing friendship with Han.
Leia and Han’s twins appear in this book, after two years (??--I’ll get into that) on a hidden planet. They are two years old. Plot lines involve Threepio trying to keep track of them. I absolutely hate this part of the book.
Now to the baddies. Moruth Doole is a space frog. (Haha, he’s a Rybet, I see what you did there KJA.) His second-in-command has the atrocious name of Skynxnex. Qwi Xux is so naive that it completely ruins my suspension of disbelief. Admiral Daala strikes me as a Mary Sue with an horrifyingly undelved backstory. Of course she was the youngest Admiral ever, and the best at the Imperial Academy, and she has oft-described long thick auburn hair. But the fact that she was Tarkin’s mistress at such a young age, and was pretty much groomed for her current position, is both awful and never actually addressed.
ISSUES:
Whoah do I have so many issues with this book. First, it’s surprisingly easy to put down. Up to this point, I was averaging one SW book a week, but Jedi Search took me weeeeks to finish. There’s action scenes, but they don’t reach the same level of gripping excitement that Zahn achieved in the Thrawn trilogy.
There are also numerous references or callbacks to [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180], which only works if you’re familiar with the comic. If not, you’re left wondering why Coruscant needs to be rebuilt, or who is Vima-Da-Boda, or why Luke is struggling with Dark Side stuff. It’s a good chunk of setup that most readers probably never got.
And that’s not even taking into consideration all the new stuff KJA just drops on the reader. Apparently Force-sensitive children are most vulnerable during their first two years, which is why Jaina and Jacen were kept on a hidden planet (?) found by Luke and Admiral Ackbar (??) for the past two years? Where is any of this coming from? What is the source for this??
I find the reintroduction of superweapons into the SW universe disappointing at best. Even worse, superweapons are not simply reintroduced, but rather continually bulked up and increased in power. Sure, the Death Star is scary, but Daala had a Sun Crusher, which could destroy entire solar systems! There’s no strategy involved with superweapons, not when you can blow up entire worlds.
I am also unclear on why exactly the New Republic wanted good relations with Kessel. They use slave labor to produce an addictive drug. Why would you want any part of that? For me, Han’s plotline on Kessel falls apart the more I think about the ethics of his mission.
IN CONCLUSION:
Jedi Search introduces a lot of characters and concepts to the GFFA, some of which endured all the way to the end of the Legends era. It’s pivotal to the development of the Expanded Universe. It’s a pity then that it’s just not very good.
Next up: [b:The Courtship of Princess Leia|161540|The Courtship of Princess Leia (Star Wars)|Dave Wolverton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326717007l/161540._SY75_.jpg|806845] by Dave Wolverton.
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/7HASsSmbYzk
This week’s focus: Jedi Search by Kevin J. Anderson.
SOME HISTORY:
All of the previous 90s Star Wars books were originally hardcover releases, but the [b:Jedi Academy Trilogy|760109|Jedi Academy Trilogy (Star Wars)|Kevin J. Anderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1212712018l/760109._SX50_.jpg|746206] was the start of something new: books released solely in paperback. Beginning in 1994, Bantam released a number of paperback books plus one or two hardcovers each year. The trilogy also relies heavily on the [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180] comic, which is both a blessing and a curse. If you’ve read the comic, it’s nice to see the repercussions of the Reborn Emperor still affecting the galaxy a year later. If you haven’t read the comic, though, you’re afloat in a sea of foreign information that isn’t extensively explained.
Jedi Search did better than the previous release, [b:The Truce at Bakura|302618|The Truce at Bakura (Star Wars)|Kathy Tyers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718249l/302618._SY75_.jpg|591520]; the book made it to #4 on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for two separate weeks--the week of February 27 and the week of March 13--and ultimately stayed on the NYT list for 8 weeks.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
I had conflated events from the next two books with Jedi Search, so reading it led to me constantly shaking my head and going “that happened here?” I remembered Luke's Jedi search, and that Daala shows up, but was very hazy where other plot events fell in the trilogy’s timeline. I had somehow completely forgotten Lando’s trip to the Umgul blob races, but perhaps that was my own protective amnesia...
PRINCESS LEIA COSTUME CHANGE COUNT:
Leia changes out of her “diplomatic clothes” in the beginning, but we don’t get any sense of what they look like. When she shows Gantoris the images of Dantooine, she’s wearing a robe. This is clearly insufficient wardrobe descriptions!
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
Newly-proclaimed Jedi Master Luke Skywalker wants to restart the Jedi Order, and asks the Senate for permission to find Jedi acolytes and form a new Jedi Academy. At the same time, Han Solo and Chewbacca are sent to Kessel on a diplomatic mission that goes horribly awry. And hidden nearby in the Maw Cluster, Admiral Daala waits for word from Grand Moff Tarkin to unleash the Imperial’s newest superweapon on the unsuspecting galaxy...
THE CHARACTERS:
It’s hard for me to approach this book objectively, because KJA introduced so many characters and elements I hate into the SW universe. Still, I tried very hard during this reread. Han and Chewbacca have an interesting plot line (even if the logistics of their mission didn’t make complete sense to me), and I felt that their portrayals were closest to the SW baseline. Han provokes the bad guys, and even when it looks like they’ll never escape, he’s still plotting and scheming. I appreciated, too, that Chewie is with him the whole time--thus far, some of the SW authors have felt the need to send Chewie off somewhere else, but it makes sense to me that Han and he would undertake this mission together.
Luke behaves weirdly in this book. I understand that he’s working through a lot of guilt and trauma from the events of [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180], but he comes across as humorless and remote. There are very few glimpses of the kind, pleasant man that we saw in the Thrawn trilogy or even [b:The Truce at Bakura|302618|The Truce at Bakura (Star Wars)|Kathy Tyers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326718249l/302618._SY75_.jpg|591520]. Similarly, his Force powers are so far beyond anything we have seen him do up to this point, which I assume is in keeping with how he behaved in [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180]. He jumps out of a volcano hole! He walks on lava! Why KJA? It leads to this feeling that, combined with his new personality, I’m reading about a pod person who has taken the place of the original Luke. I didn’t like it.
Leia is singularly useless in this book. She’s Minister of State, but the only glimpses we get into her job revolve around Ambassador Furgan from Carida, and then one instance where she’s frustrated and overworked and takes out her annoyance on a subordinate. Han doesn’t report back in from his mission, and she sulks and worries that he’s fallen back into his old smuggler ways. She’s not particularly necessary to the plot; once she decides they need to check on Han, it’s Luke and Lando who head off to Kessel to check things out.
Poor Lando. We get an explanation that he lost Nkllon in a card game and is now down on his luck--really?? Lando has a particularly ridiculous plot line, in which he heads to the Umgul blob races to investigate one of Luke’s potential Jedi. Of course, he takes C-3P0 and R2-D2 with him; of course, he returns empty-handed. I understand that KJA needed something for Lando to do, but surely anything would be better than the blob races!
Of Luke’s potential Jedi: Gantoris is so obviously bad news, oh my word. A dark man has appeared to him in his dreams? His inevitable betrayal will not surprise me one bit. Streen is sweet, I guess. Kyp Durron is interesting, and I enjoyed his developing friendship with Han.
Leia and Han’s twins appear in this book, after two years (??--I’ll get into that) on a hidden planet. They are two years old. Plot lines involve Threepio trying to keep track of them. I absolutely hate this part of the book.
Now to the baddies. Moruth Doole is a space frog. (Haha, he’s a Rybet, I see what you did there KJA.) His second-in-command has the atrocious name of Skynxnex. Qwi Xux is so naive that it completely ruins my suspension of disbelief. Admiral Daala strikes me as a Mary Sue with an horrifyingly undelved backstory. Of course she was the youngest Admiral ever, and the best at the Imperial Academy, and she has oft-described long thick auburn hair. But the fact that she was Tarkin’s mistress at such a young age, and was pretty much groomed for her current position, is both awful and never actually addressed.
ISSUES:
Whoah do I have so many issues with this book. First, it’s surprisingly easy to put down. Up to this point, I was averaging one SW book a week, but Jedi Search took me weeeeks to finish. There’s action scenes, but they don’t reach the same level of gripping excitement that Zahn achieved in the Thrawn trilogy.
There are also numerous references or callbacks to [b:Star Wars: Dark Empire Trilogy|8287494|Star Wars Dark Empire Trilogy|Tom Veitch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403200157l/8287494._SX50_.jpg|14421180], which only works if you’re familiar with the comic. If not, you’re left wondering why Coruscant needs to be rebuilt, or who is Vima-Da-Boda, or why Luke is struggling with Dark Side stuff. It’s a good chunk of setup that most readers probably never got.
And that’s not even taking into consideration all the new stuff KJA just drops on the reader. Apparently Force-sensitive children are most vulnerable during their first two years, which is why Jaina and Jacen were kept on a hidden planet (?) found by Luke and Admiral Ackbar (??) for the past two years? Where is any of this coming from? What is the source for this??
I find the reintroduction of superweapons into the SW universe disappointing at best. Even worse, superweapons are not simply reintroduced, but rather continually bulked up and increased in power. Sure, the Death Star is scary, but Daala had a Sun Crusher, which could destroy entire solar systems! There’s no strategy involved with superweapons, not when you can blow up entire worlds.
I am also unclear on why exactly the New Republic wanted good relations with Kessel. They use slave labor to produce an addictive drug. Why would you want any part of that? For me, Han’s plotline on Kessel falls apart the more I think about the ethics of his mission.
IN CONCLUSION:
Jedi Search introduces a lot of characters and concepts to the GFFA, some of which endured all the way to the end of the Legends era. It’s pivotal to the development of the Expanded Universe. It’s a pity then that it’s just not very good.
Next up: [b:The Courtship of Princess Leia|161540|The Courtship of Princess Leia (Star Wars)|Dave Wolverton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1326717007l/161540._SY75_.jpg|806845] by Dave Wolverton.
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/7HASsSmbYzk