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A review by twilliamson
Dark Apprentice by Kevin J. Anderson
1.0
Dark Apprentice, the sequel to Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Search, is as equally baffling as the first. Incoherent even in its best light, the book continues to struggle to do anything to develop the characters of the Star Wars established canon or even flesh out any of the new characters Anderson introduces to the worn drama of the series.
The book opens, for example, with a dramatic starship crash, then abruptly transitions to a scene with Han Solo skiing with Kyp, one of the new characters of this trilogy. There's no narrative reason for the skiing sequence except that it's a place to flex Anderson's sense of action (which overpromises and underdelivers every time). Narrative tension is lost again when Solo decides to play a game of sabacc with Lando Calrissian over the fate of the Millennium Falcon.
The narrative diversions sap away from any momentum or focus on what feels like should be the focal point of the novel, and the trilogy on a whole: Luke Skywalker's efforts at creating a new Jedi Order and training a new generation of Jedi Knights. With so much of the book oriented toward the expanding cast of the series, very little is done to add a sense of growth to any single one of the characters. Moreover, because so little is done to help flesh out character motivations, things seem to just happen for almost no reason entirely. What's the relevance, for example, of the Jedi children getting lost on Coruscant for a chapter? Did we really need any of the dumb museum sequence, or was that just an excuse to introduce yet another stupid minor character of no considerable weight or importance to the story and its characters?
Indeed, the only character who receives any significant arc or development is Kyp, whose change in attitude is not discovered over the course of the book but instead occurs abruptly within the span of only a handful of pages, and we're explicitly told why his attitude changes instead of being given the opportunity to experience his change through the actions of the narrative. Anderson's approach to character development is simply an exposition dump.
Dark Apprentice is not really the worst Star Wars novel I've read, but it is thoroughly inconsistent, incoherent, incohesive, and in desperate need of major revision. It is one of the most unfocused novels I've ever read, and not even being tie-in fiction can disguise how poorly written, poorly constructed, and poorly implemented the novel's story is.
Star Wars deserves better than this.
The book opens, for example, with a dramatic starship crash, then abruptly transitions to a scene with Han Solo skiing with Kyp, one of the new characters of this trilogy. There's no narrative reason for the skiing sequence except that it's a place to flex Anderson's sense of action (which overpromises and underdelivers every time). Narrative tension is lost again when Solo decides to play a game of sabacc with Lando Calrissian over the fate of the Millennium Falcon.
The narrative diversions sap away from any momentum or focus on what feels like should be the focal point of the novel, and the trilogy on a whole: Luke Skywalker's efforts at creating a new Jedi Order and training a new generation of Jedi Knights. With so much of the book oriented toward the expanding cast of the series, very little is done to add a sense of growth to any single one of the characters. Moreover, because so little is done to help flesh out character motivations, things seem to just happen for almost no reason entirely. What's the relevance, for example, of the Jedi children getting lost on Coruscant for a chapter? Did we really need any of the dumb museum sequence, or was that just an excuse to introduce yet another stupid minor character of no considerable weight or importance to the story and its characters?
Indeed, the only character who receives any significant arc or development is Kyp, whose change in attitude is not discovered over the course of the book but instead occurs abruptly within the span of only a handful of pages, and we're explicitly told why his attitude changes instead of being given the opportunity to experience his change through the actions of the narrative. Anderson's approach to character development is simply an exposition dump.
Dark Apprentice is not really the worst Star Wars novel I've read, but it is thoroughly inconsistent, incoherent, incohesive, and in desperate need of major revision. It is one of the most unfocused novels I've ever read, and not even being tie-in fiction can disguise how poorly written, poorly constructed, and poorly implemented the novel's story is.
Star Wars deserves better than this.