A review by colinmcev
Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly
2.0
Man, looking over some of the reviews of this book here on Goodreads, it seems a lot of people really HATED this book, huh? As for me, perhaps because I had fairly recently read I, Jedi, which I found absolutely terrible, I didn't think Children of the Jedi was quite as objectionable as many others seem to have. It's a 2.5-star book for me, and I honestly wrestled with whether to round up or down on it. (JUST ADD HALF-STAR RATINGS ALREADY, GOODREADS!) Certainly, Children of the Jedi is a flawed book. It drags at time, and some of its plotlines are cheesy or ineffective, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it for anybody except for Star Wars fanboys/completionists like myself. But it also had some interesting ideas, some moments of good fun, and while I didn't find Barbara Hambly's prose particularly impressive, I found her to be a fine genre writer, and far, FAR better than Michael A. Stackpole in that department. (Have I mentioned that I really hated I, Jedi?)
First, the good: I enjoyed how this book delved a little more into Princess Leia's emotional turmoil over the destruction of her home planet of Alderaan, still understandably strong even 12 years later. I found the guilt she continued to experience -- both at failing to stop the planet's destruction, and over her temptation to use her political power to seek revenge against those tangentially responsible -- to be compelling. I also enjoyed the characters of Cray and Nichos and the questions their relationship raised about how similar human intelligence and artificial intelligence are from each other. (Similar themes were explored with the Callista character, though less effectively for me.) The idea of Cray saving her lover Nichos' life from a fatal illness by transferring his consciousness into a mechanical body made for an interesting subplot, and it made me wish the two characters hadn't disappeared for such a long stretch of the novel.
As for the main plotline -- the asteroid-shaped Eye of Palpatine becoming remotely activated and racing to destroy a planet unless Luke Skywalker (who, by the way, REALLY got his ass kicked in this one!) and company can save it -- it was entertaining enough, but certainly a little half-baked. The idea of the ship abducting a bunch of random alien races and tricking them all into believing they were stormtroopers (with Gamorreans of Return of the Jedi fame all running around with pieces of stormtrooper armor covering their oversized bodies) has its B movie-esque amusements, but the whole thing felt a little too slapsticky. Worse than all that, however, was the romance that Hambly creates between Luke Skywalker and the disembodied Callista. The idea that Luke would fall in love -- let alone so quickly -- with a Jedi whose consciousness has been (for lack of a better word) uploaded into a spaceship for multiple decades just didn't work for me at all, and I'd have much rather all that silliness had just ended with the conclusion of this novel, rather than it being resolved the way it was.
I had a few other narrative qualms with this book (like Leia very conveniently uncovering a criminal conspiracy in deus-ex-machina fashion because she happened to run into and recognize some people on the street who, up to this point, hadn't even been introduced in the novel) but for all these criticisms, I did enjoy it on some level. Perhaps I'm just overly-inclined to go easy on Star Wars books, which is my escapist, guilty-pleasure reading. Suffice it to say, only Star Wars fans should bother with this one, and even they can definitely find better reads elsewhere.
First, the good: I enjoyed how this book delved a little more into Princess Leia's emotional turmoil over the destruction of her home planet of Alderaan, still understandably strong even 12 years later. I found the guilt she continued to experience -- both at failing to stop the planet's destruction, and over her temptation to use her political power to seek revenge against those tangentially responsible -- to be compelling. I also enjoyed the characters of Cray and Nichos and the questions their relationship raised about how similar human intelligence and artificial intelligence are from each other. (Similar themes were explored with the Callista character, though less effectively for me.) The idea of Cray saving her lover Nichos' life from a fatal illness by transferring his consciousness into a mechanical body made for an interesting subplot, and it made me wish the two characters hadn't disappeared for such a long stretch of the novel.
As for the main plotline -- the asteroid-shaped Eye of Palpatine becoming remotely activated and racing to destroy a planet unless Luke Skywalker (who, by the way, REALLY got his ass kicked in this one!) and company can save it -- it was entertaining enough, but certainly a little half-baked. The idea of the ship abducting a bunch of random alien races and tricking them all into believing they were stormtroopers (with Gamorreans of Return of the Jedi fame all running around with pieces of stormtrooper armor covering their oversized bodies) has its B movie-esque amusements, but the whole thing felt a little too slapsticky. Worse than all that, however, was the romance that Hambly creates between Luke Skywalker and the disembodied Callista. The idea that Luke would fall in love -- let alone so quickly -- with a Jedi whose consciousness has been (for lack of a better word) uploaded into a spaceship for multiple decades just didn't work for me at all, and I'd have much rather all that silliness had just ended with the conclusion of this novel, rather than it being resolved the way it was.
I had a few other narrative qualms with this book (like Leia very conveniently uncovering a criminal conspiracy in deus-ex-machina fashion because she happened to run into and recognize some people on the street who, up to this point, hadn't even been introduced in the novel) but for all these criticisms, I did enjoy it on some level. Perhaps I'm just overly-inclined to go easy on Star Wars books, which is my escapist, guilty-pleasure reading. Suffice it to say, only Star Wars fans should bother with this one, and even they can definitely find better reads elsewhere.