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A review by jaredkwheeler
The Clone Wars by Karen Traviss
4.0
Star Wars Legends Project #126
Background: The Clone Wars was written by [a:Karen Traviss|12672|Karen Traviss|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1199058946p2/12672.jpg] and published in July 2008. Her other Star Wars books include the Republic Commando series and 3 of the Legacy of the Force novels. She also wrote several Halo and Gears of War novels, as well as some original science fiction.
The Clone Wars takes place somewhere between 2 and 16 months after the Battle of Geonosis, 21-22 years before the Battle of Yavin. The timeline surrounding this period is crowded and muddled, mostly because it was filled by a coordinated media blitz of Expanded Universe novels and comics published between the releases of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and then filled again with the release of the The Clone Wars movie and subsequent 6 seasons of the TV show and related novels and comics beginning in 2008. For the most part, the problem with these overlapping events isn't so much that they can't be imagined as fitting together, because while it's clear that not all of this could have happened during such a short period, and that Anakin's apprentice Ahsoka Tano would have merited mention elsewhere had previous EU authors known of her existence, the two timelines only explicitly contradict each other in one major detail:
In the original EU timeline, Anakin Skywalker is raised to the rank of Jedi Knight 36 months into the war, shortly before the events of Revenge of the Sith, and in The Clone Wars show, he is promoted only a month into the conflict. And even this isn't as much of a problem as it appears, because Anakin appears in relatively few of the stories from the previous timeline. He is entirely absent from the Republic Commando books for example, and even from books like The Cestus Deception, where I believe he is referred to one time as Obi-Wan's apprentice but never actually appears. These sorts of things are fairly easy to ignore, and ignoring them makes far more sense, to my mind, than the official method of reconciliation, which is to move all of the previous EU material from when it is actually set to all happen within the first month of the Clone Wars.
So, according to the official timeline, this novel takes place around 7 weeks after the Battle of Geonosis, but other hints dropped here and there throughout which reference events in other media, most notably the Battle of Jabiim, suggest that it may make more sense to place it around a year and a half into the conflict, or at least to read it after the material that I have placed before it in my own Legends project. That is, of course, assuming that it makes sense to include it in the "Legends" timeline at all, since the show and associated materials are still officially considered canon. The point is . . . it's a mess.
The main characters of the novel are Anakin and his new apprentice Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan, Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku, Jabba the Hutt, and the clone Captain Rex. The action takes place mostly on Christophsis, Tatooine, and Teth.
Summary: Jabba the Hutt's son has been kidnapped, and it seems the timing couldn't be more perfect for the Republic. The Hutt's crisis provides the Republic with a chance to gain some leverage in acquiring access to Hutt space as the only route to the Outer Rim that isn't under Separatist control. But all is not as it seems. The kidnapping is a Separatist plot to frame the Jedi and simultaneously turn the neutral Hutts against the Republic while closing off access to the Outer Rim territories. The Jedi most readily available for the mission are Obi-Wan and Anakin, just wrapping up a hard-won victory on the planet Christophsis. For Anakin, playing lackey to a Hutt raises difficult memories from his past, and his plate is already full with a headstrong new apprentice assigned to him against his will by the Council. For Anakin personally, and for the Republic as a whole, the stakes of this mission couldn't be higher.
Review: I saw The Clone Wars when it was first released in theaters in 2008, and I believe I've watched it 2 or 3 times since then. It is not a good movie. The plot is a mess. The dialogue is terrible. Ahsoka and Anakin spend the whole movie battling over who is going to be the most annoying character in a movie that includes a shrieking baby Huttlet. In terms of theatrical releases, this is scraping the bottom of the Star Wars barrel. So, I'd say my expectations for this novelization of the movie were pretty modest. And danged if Traviss didn't blow it out of the water.
It was obvious from the beginning that I was reading a version of the same story the movie told, but beyond that, this was barely recognizable . . . one of the more powerful illustrations I've seen of the difference good writing makes versus bad writing in approaching the same idea, and perhaps the greatest departure of a novelization from the source material I've ever encountered. Gone is the constant bickering between Anakin and Ahsoka, replaced by genuine character development and internal monologues that give new depth and meaning to what the characters are going through. Rex, the clone commander who barely registers as a presence in the movie, is foregrounded here as a fully-fleshed out and compelling personality in his own right. And, of course, her depiction of the clones dovetails perfectly with how she depicted them in her own Republic Commando series. Ventress and Dooku, flat cartoon villains in the film, are also fully-realized, even sympathetic, people with believable, reasonable motivations here.
This is something I noted that Traviss did particularly well in the first Republic Commando novel, Hard Contact (my review). She humanizes the antagonist as well as the protagonist, and turns them into compelling characters that you want to hear more about. One of my favorite scenes in the novel, the duel between Obi-Wan and Asajj, is told entirely from Asajj's perspective, and (using strictly the movie dialogue) Obi-Wan comes off looking like kind of an ass. You feel why he and his smarmy wisecracks embody everything Asajj hates about what she sees as the flippant arrogance of the Jedi, and also why her hatred is at least somewhat justified.
Even the plot, which makes so little sense in the movie, almost works here. Traviss puts in a lot of work talking us through things that were never explained in the film, seemingly because no one thought of them. In so doing she ends up highlighting how absurd the movie's plot as presented actually is, while at the same time almost redeeming it. This, like most of the book's other flaws, lies squarely at the foot of the source it was forced to work with. I got to the end of this book and wondered if perhaps I hadn't been way too hard on the movie . . . if it weren't, perhaps, far better than I remembered it being. And then I rewatched it. It was not better than I remembered. That was all Traviss. So, if you haven't seen The Clone Wars, don't watch it, but do read this. And if you have seen The Clone Wars . . . I'm sorry. Give this a shot anyway.
A-
Background: The Clone Wars was written by [a:Karen Traviss|12672|Karen Traviss|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1199058946p2/12672.jpg] and published in July 2008. Her other Star Wars books include the Republic Commando series and 3 of the Legacy of the Force novels. She also wrote several Halo and Gears of War novels, as well as some original science fiction.
The Clone Wars takes place somewhere between 2 and 16 months after the Battle of Geonosis, 21-22 years before the Battle of Yavin. The timeline surrounding this period is crowded and muddled, mostly because it was filled by a coordinated media blitz of Expanded Universe novels and comics published between the releases of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and then filled again with the release of the The Clone Wars movie and subsequent 6 seasons of the TV show and related novels and comics beginning in 2008. For the most part, the problem with these overlapping events isn't so much that they can't be imagined as fitting together, because while it's clear that not all of this could have happened during such a short period, and that Anakin's apprentice Ahsoka Tano would have merited mention elsewhere had previous EU authors known of her existence, the two timelines only explicitly contradict each other in one major detail:
In the original EU timeline, Anakin Skywalker is raised to the rank of Jedi Knight 36 months into the war, shortly before the events of Revenge of the Sith, and in The Clone Wars show, he is promoted only a month into the conflict. And even this isn't as much of a problem as it appears, because Anakin appears in relatively few of the stories from the previous timeline. He is entirely absent from the Republic Commando books for example, and even from books like The Cestus Deception, where I believe he is referred to one time as Obi-Wan's apprentice but never actually appears. These sorts of things are fairly easy to ignore, and ignoring them makes far more sense, to my mind, than the official method of reconciliation, which is to move all of the previous EU material from when it is actually set to all happen within the first month of the Clone Wars.
So, according to the official timeline, this novel takes place around 7 weeks after the Battle of Geonosis, but other hints dropped here and there throughout which reference events in other media, most notably the Battle of Jabiim, suggest that it may make more sense to place it around a year and a half into the conflict, or at least to read it after the material that I have placed before it in my own Legends project. That is, of course, assuming that it makes sense to include it in the "Legends" timeline at all, since the show and associated materials are still officially considered canon. The point is . . . it's a mess.
The main characters of the novel are Anakin and his new apprentice Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan, Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku, Jabba the Hutt, and the clone Captain Rex. The action takes place mostly on Christophsis, Tatooine, and Teth.
Summary: Jabba the Hutt's son has been kidnapped, and it seems the timing couldn't be more perfect for the Republic. The Hutt's crisis provides the Republic with a chance to gain some leverage in acquiring access to Hutt space as the only route to the Outer Rim that isn't under Separatist control. But all is not as it seems. The kidnapping is a Separatist plot to frame the Jedi and simultaneously turn the neutral Hutts against the Republic while closing off access to the Outer Rim territories. The Jedi most readily available for the mission are Obi-Wan and Anakin, just wrapping up a hard-won victory on the planet Christophsis. For Anakin, playing lackey to a Hutt raises difficult memories from his past, and his plate is already full with a headstrong new apprentice assigned to him against his will by the Council. For Anakin personally, and for the Republic as a whole, the stakes of this mission couldn't be higher.
Review: I saw The Clone Wars when it was first released in theaters in 2008, and I believe I've watched it 2 or 3 times since then. It is not a good movie. The plot is a mess. The dialogue is terrible. Ahsoka and Anakin spend the whole movie battling over who is going to be the most annoying character in a movie that includes a shrieking baby Huttlet. In terms of theatrical releases, this is scraping the bottom of the Star Wars barrel. So, I'd say my expectations for this novelization of the movie were pretty modest. And danged if Traviss didn't blow it out of the water.
It was obvious from the beginning that I was reading a version of the same story the movie told, but beyond that, this was barely recognizable . . . one of the more powerful illustrations I've seen of the difference good writing makes versus bad writing in approaching the same idea, and perhaps the greatest departure of a novelization from the source material I've ever encountered. Gone is the constant bickering between Anakin and Ahsoka, replaced by genuine character development and internal monologues that give new depth and meaning to what the characters are going through. Rex, the clone commander who barely registers as a presence in the movie, is foregrounded here as a fully-fleshed out and compelling personality in his own right. And, of course, her depiction of the clones dovetails perfectly with how she depicted them in her own Republic Commando series. Ventress and Dooku, flat cartoon villains in the film, are also fully-realized, even sympathetic, people with believable, reasonable motivations here.
This is something I noted that Traviss did particularly well in the first Republic Commando novel, Hard Contact (my review). She humanizes the antagonist as well as the protagonist, and turns them into compelling characters that you want to hear more about. One of my favorite scenes in the novel, the duel between Obi-Wan and Asajj, is told entirely from Asajj's perspective, and (using strictly the movie dialogue) Obi-Wan comes off looking like kind of an ass. You feel why he and his smarmy wisecracks embody everything Asajj hates about what she sees as the flippant arrogance of the Jedi, and also why her hatred is at least somewhat justified.
Even the plot, which makes so little sense in the movie, almost works here. Traviss puts in a lot of work talking us through things that were never explained in the film, seemingly because no one thought of them. In so doing she ends up highlighting how absurd the movie's plot as presented actually is, while at the same time almost redeeming it. This, like most of the book's other flaws, lies squarely at the foot of the source it was forced to work with. I got to the end of this book and wondered if perhaps I hadn't been way too hard on the movie . . . if it weren't, perhaps, far better than I remembered it being. And then I rewatched it. It was not better than I remembered. That was all Traviss. So, if you haven't seen The Clone Wars, don't watch it, but do read this. And if you have seen The Clone Wars . . . I'm sorry. Give this a shot anyway.
A-