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A review by twilliamson
Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly
1.0
If Vonda McIntyre's The Crystal Star is the worst Star Wars novel ever, Barbara Hambly's Children of the Jedi desperately wants to try for the title. It takes a lot to make a book as bad, but virtually every decision Hambly makes for Luke and company is the wrong one.
The books flaws are multitude, but it bears repeating the worst parts:
1) Luke spends the entire novel passing out, with almost every one of his chapters ending with a fade to black, as if that helps build narrative tension;
2) Luke has a wet dream about a Force ghost and then decides he is in love with her in spite of only knowing her Force ghost self for, like, three days or something;
3) Luke's Force ghost girlfriend inhabits the corpse of one of Luke's hot students;
4) Luke's hot student only gives up her body because she can't stand to live without her boyfriend;
5) Mara Jade gets mad that she wasn't the only one of Palpatine's side pieces;
6) The main antagonist of the novel doesn't show up for almost 60% of the book;
7) The main crisis of the book is yet another stupid megaweapon lost by the Emperor somewhere;
8) The main antagonist of the novel is believed to be one of Palpatine's heirs;
9) The book retroactively decides that the Galactic Civil War, which ended prior to Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy, isn't over anymore;
10) All the Gamorreans speak Galactic Basic now for no reason whatsoever;
11) Tusken Raiders show up on the giant spaceship superweapon, along with Jawas and plant people, for absolutely no fucking reason other than to add length to an already overwrought plot.
It's also worth noting that while Hambly is objectively the best prose writer of any of the Star Wars books from 1976-1995, the book's plot doesn't start to come together until well over half the book's length, at which point the development of the plot barely resembles its original premise. In spite of her prose, the book is a slog of boring exposition, ridiculous subplot elements that do nothing to serve the characters or the setting of Star Wars and its lore, and simply retcons whole developments of the expanded universe timeline for no appreciable reason. Some of that blame surely lies at the feet of the editorial team behind the expanded universe's design, but it seems objectionable that Hambly simply ignores much of the expanded lore in order to shoehorn whatever bad idea she has for the universe--whether it be on the nature of Gamorrean speech or on the truly abominable sexual politics of this novel.
But, hey, at least the cover's bitchin', right?
The books flaws are multitude, but it bears repeating the worst parts:
1) Luke spends the entire novel passing out, with almost every one of his chapters ending with a fade to black, as if that helps build narrative tension;
2) Luke has a wet dream about a Force ghost and then decides he is in love with her in spite of only knowing her Force ghost self for, like, three days or something;
3) Luke's Force ghost girlfriend inhabits the corpse of one of Luke's hot students;
4) Luke's hot student only gives up her body because she can't stand to live without her boyfriend;
5) Mara Jade gets mad that she wasn't the only one of Palpatine's side pieces;
6) The main antagonist of the novel doesn't show up for almost 60% of the book;
7) The main crisis of the book is yet another stupid megaweapon lost by the Emperor somewhere;
8) The main antagonist of the novel is believed to be one of Palpatine's heirs;
9) The book retroactively decides that the Galactic Civil War, which ended prior to Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy, isn't over anymore;
10) All the Gamorreans speak Galactic Basic now for no reason whatsoever;
11) Tusken Raiders show up on the giant spaceship superweapon, along with Jawas and plant people, for absolutely no fucking reason other than to add length to an already overwrought plot.
It's also worth noting that while Hambly is objectively the best prose writer of any of the Star Wars books from 1976-1995, the book's plot doesn't start to come together until well over half the book's length, at which point the development of the plot barely resembles its original premise. In spite of her prose, the book is a slog of boring exposition, ridiculous subplot elements that do nothing to serve the characters or the setting of Star Wars and its lore, and simply retcons whole developments of the expanded universe timeline for no appreciable reason. Some of that blame surely lies at the feet of the editorial team behind the expanded universe's design, but it seems objectionable that Hambly simply ignores much of the expanded lore in order to shoehorn whatever bad idea she has for the universe--whether it be on the nature of Gamorrean speech or on the truly abominable sexual politics of this novel.
But, hey, at least the cover's bitchin', right?