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A review by jaredkwheeler
Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller
3.0
Star Wars Legends Project #33
Background: Knight Errant was published in January 2011. It was written by [a:John Jackson Miller|20028|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1272316895p2/20028.jpg], , whose other works of course include the excellent [b:Star Wars Omnibus: Knights of the Old Republic, Volume 1|17705149|Star Wars Omnibus Knights of the Old Republic, Volume 1|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364740474s/17705149.jpg|24753104] comic series (my review) and unique [b:Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories|13023324|Lost Tribe of the Sith The Collected Stories (Star Wars Lost Tribe of the Sith)|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1326407357s/13023324.jpg|18186079] (my review).
Knight Errant is set 1032 years before the Battle of Yavin (or 1000 years before The Phantom Menace). The novel begins a month or two after the events of [b:Aflame|11099746|Aflame (Star Wars Knight Errant Comic, #1)|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403209180s/11099746.jpg|16021815] (my review), with the return of protagonist Kerra Holt and rival Sith Lords (and siblings) Daiman and Odion. The action takes place across several previously unmentioned planets in Sith space.
Summary: Jedi Kerra Holt, still stranded far behind Sith lines with no hope of Republic support, remains torn between her obligation to help downtrodden Sith subjects and her desire to wage war on their masters. Meanwhile, she knows that any action she takes may have grave and unexpected consequences. But she doesn't know that, behind the state of permanent conflict between rival Sith in the sector, darker forces are pulling the strings, and they may have plans for her, as well.
Review: I really wanted to like this more than I did. So much so that I kept trying to convince myself that I was enjoying it until I finally realized near the end that I really wasn't very much. As I said of the comic that precedes this story, the set-up has a lot of potential, and I still love how unique it is among other Star Wars stories. The things I like about this premise (and at least some of the execution) are just as true of this novel as they were of that comic.
It may be that some of my problems have to do with this not being a comic, itself. Given that it continues a story begun in a comic, and is continued in further comics, I wonder why the decision was made to write this portion of Kerra's story as a novel, instead. There is an episodic quality to the story that would probably have been better served by the multi-issue comic format. And a lot of the new characters, particularly the diverse variety of Sith Lords that appear throughout the story, are practically begging for a more illustrated depiction.
The book's portrayal of the Sith in general remains it's greatest strength. We often don't get a lot of variety when it comes to Sith Lords in Star Wars. They all kind of want the same things, and they all kind of go about getting them in the same ways, just with different-shaped lightsabers. This really feels like Miller took a step back and said, "Wait a minute, evil can take a lot of forms. Let's explore some of those." There are half a dozen or more Sith that play a significant role in this story, and every one of them feels totally unique and fresh and distinct from the others. I loved that.
Unfortunately, I'm just not as excited about the protagonist. Not only is she far from being the most interesting character, she never feels very interesting in her own right at all. Miller leaves all the scheming and plotting and ambiguity and nuance to his other characters. Kerra is just a standard-issue hero Jedi. And even though she finds herself dealing with no-win scenarios on a scale that no other hero Jedi has to face, her unique circumstances don't make her any more unique as a character. She ends up playing second-fiddle to the other two semi-protagonist anti-heroes: Rusher, an independent mercenary with a crack force of artillery for-hire to the Sith with the deepest pockets, and Narsk, a Bothan spy and saboteur whose true motivations and allegiances remain shrouded in mystery for much of the novel. But they aren't really interesting enough (or developed enough) to carry the entire story, either.
And, while several other characters are sporadically engaging, the story moves forward a bit at a time without developing any recognizable greater arc until quite late in the book. I noted in my review of Aflame how mystifying it is that Kerra failed to kill a Sith that was at her mercy, without any explanation as to why. This bizarre decision is rendered even more annoying when Kerra spends the first half of this book attempting to assassinate the same Sith she spared before. But that just ends up feeling like an attempt to give her something to do until the rest of the plot could develop.
Trying to pinpoint exactly why this novel didn't work for me, even though so many elements of it did, I keep coming back to Kerra herself. Miller doesn't really do anything with her. It's almost as though, after making her the central character of this series, he lost interest and spent all of his attention elsewhere. She doesn't seem to grow a great deal as a character over the course of the book. She rarely seems to have any agency, always being used or manipulated by those around her, and generally lacks any meaningful choice in how to proceed. This is exacerbated by her stubborn black-and-white attitude towards anyone she regards as morally-compromised (which is basically everyone in Sith space). Even though she is constantly confronted with the complicated moral realities of negotiating life among the Sith, she remains weirdly inflexible towards several characters who are just doing what they have to do to survive.
There's still enough payoff and potential here that I'm looking forward to the remainder of the series, but there are too many obvious flaws for this really to work the way it should.
C+
Background: Knight Errant was published in January 2011. It was written by [a:John Jackson Miller|20028|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1272316895p2/20028.jpg], , whose other works of course include the excellent [b:Star Wars Omnibus: Knights of the Old Republic, Volume 1|17705149|Star Wars Omnibus Knights of the Old Republic, Volume 1|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364740474s/17705149.jpg|24753104] comic series (my review) and unique [b:Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories|13023324|Lost Tribe of the Sith The Collected Stories (Star Wars Lost Tribe of the Sith)|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1326407357s/13023324.jpg|18186079] (my review).
Knight Errant is set 1032 years before the Battle of Yavin (or 1000 years before The Phantom Menace). The novel begins a month or two after the events of [b:Aflame|11099746|Aflame (Star Wars Knight Errant Comic, #1)|John Jackson Miller|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403209180s/11099746.jpg|16021815] (my review), with the return of protagonist Kerra Holt and rival Sith Lords (and siblings) Daiman and Odion. The action takes place across several previously unmentioned planets in Sith space.
Summary: Jedi Kerra Holt, still stranded far behind Sith lines with no hope of Republic support, remains torn between her obligation to help downtrodden Sith subjects and her desire to wage war on their masters. Meanwhile, she knows that any action she takes may have grave and unexpected consequences. But she doesn't know that, behind the state of permanent conflict between rival Sith in the sector, darker forces are pulling the strings, and they may have plans for her, as well.
Review: I really wanted to like this more than I did. So much so that I kept trying to convince myself that I was enjoying it until I finally realized near the end that I really wasn't very much. As I said of the comic that precedes this story, the set-up has a lot of potential, and I still love how unique it is among other Star Wars stories. The things I like about this premise (and at least some of the execution) are just as true of this novel as they were of that comic.
It may be that some of my problems have to do with this not being a comic, itself. Given that it continues a story begun in a comic, and is continued in further comics, I wonder why the decision was made to write this portion of Kerra's story as a novel, instead. There is an episodic quality to the story that would probably have been better served by the multi-issue comic format. And a lot of the new characters, particularly the diverse variety of Sith Lords that appear throughout the story, are practically begging for a more illustrated depiction.
The book's portrayal of the Sith in general remains it's greatest strength. We often don't get a lot of variety when it comes to Sith Lords in Star Wars. They all kind of want the same things, and they all kind of go about getting them in the same ways, just with different-shaped lightsabers. This really feels like Miller took a step back and said, "Wait a minute, evil can take a lot of forms. Let's explore some of those." There are half a dozen or more Sith that play a significant role in this story, and every one of them feels totally unique and fresh and distinct from the others. I loved that.
Unfortunately, I'm just not as excited about the protagonist. Not only is she far from being the most interesting character, she never feels very interesting in her own right at all. Miller leaves all the scheming and plotting and ambiguity and nuance to his other characters. Kerra is just a standard-issue hero Jedi. And even though she finds herself dealing with no-win scenarios on a scale that no other hero Jedi has to face, her unique circumstances don't make her any more unique as a character. She ends up playing second-fiddle to the other two semi-protagonist anti-heroes: Rusher, an independent mercenary with a crack force of artillery for-hire to the Sith with the deepest pockets, and Narsk, a Bothan spy and saboteur whose true motivations and allegiances remain shrouded in mystery for much of the novel. But they aren't really interesting enough (or developed enough) to carry the entire story, either.
And, while several other characters are sporadically engaging, the story moves forward a bit at a time without developing any recognizable greater arc until quite late in the book. I noted in my review of Aflame how mystifying it is that Kerra failed to kill a Sith that was at her mercy, without any explanation as to why. This bizarre decision is rendered even more annoying when Kerra spends the first half of this book attempting to assassinate the same Sith she spared before. But that just ends up feeling like an attempt to give her something to do until the rest of the plot could develop.
Trying to pinpoint exactly why this novel didn't work for me, even though so many elements of it did, I keep coming back to Kerra herself. Miller doesn't really do anything with her. It's almost as though, after making her the central character of this series, he lost interest and spent all of his attention elsewhere. She doesn't seem to grow a great deal as a character over the course of the book. She rarely seems to have any agency, always being used or manipulated by those around her, and generally lacks any meaningful choice in how to proceed. This is exacerbated by her stubborn black-and-white attitude towards anyone she regards as morally-compromised (which is basically everyone in Sith space). Even though she is constantly confronted with the complicated moral realities of negotiating life among the Sith, she remains weirdly inflexible towards several characters who are just doing what they have to do to survive.
There's still enough payoff and potential here that I'm looking forward to the remainder of the series, but there are too many obvious flaws for this really to work the way it should.
C+