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A review by twilliamson
The Golden Globe by Nancy Richardson Fischer, Nancy Richardson
2.0
The first in the Junior Jedi Knights series, The Golden Globe features all-new adventures for Anakin Solo and his new friend Tahiri, a Force-sensitive girl from Tatooine. In this first junior novel, Nan Fischer begins a mystery for younger fans of Star Wars to dig into and begin their journey into the broader fiction of the franchise's extended universe.
As far as youth novels are concerned, The Golden Globe doesn't really manage to accomplish very much. The one prominent theme in the book is a question of lineage and destiny versus choice and individual action, and while the book plays at these themes through Anakin Solo, it doesn't offer much by way of plot to keep a narrative hook moving forward. The book's central mystery, which has to do with a series of precognitive dreams Tahiri and Anakin have together, is not settled by the conclusion of this thin volume, and even the story's other questions aren't resolved until the final three pages of the book. The story itself feels less like a fully-contained adventure and more like an hour of aggressive throat-clearing before it can effectively set the stage.
I don't think it's fair to judge a book by the merits of a general audience novel when the primary audience is children in middle grades, but I do find this book to be structurally imbalanced and deeply repetitive in spite of being fairly short. Its main premise--the plot driving the story forward--feels too anemic here, with not nearly enough action to get the story moving forward. The creative hook to sell the series doesn't come until the last chapter, which just feels way too late.
If I weren't reading all Star Wars in order of publication, I likely wouldn't even bother to track down the rest of this series, but I do hope that future volumes provide a more fleshed out adventure than this first story. As a preamble to a larger series, it might serve its purpose, but as a stand-alone adventure, it fails to capture much imagination.
As far as youth novels are concerned, The Golden Globe doesn't really manage to accomplish very much. The one prominent theme in the book is a question of lineage and destiny versus choice and individual action, and while the book plays at these themes through Anakin Solo, it doesn't offer much by way of plot to keep a narrative hook moving forward. The book's central mystery, which has to do with a series of precognitive dreams Tahiri and Anakin have together, is not settled by the conclusion of this thin volume, and even the story's other questions aren't resolved until the final three pages of the book. The story itself feels less like a fully-contained adventure and more like an hour of aggressive throat-clearing before it can effectively set the stage.
I don't think it's fair to judge a book by the merits of a general audience novel when the primary audience is children in middle grades, but I do find this book to be structurally imbalanced and deeply repetitive in spite of being fairly short. Its main premise--the plot driving the story forward--feels too anemic here, with not nearly enough action to get the story moving forward. The creative hook to sell the series doesn't come until the last chapter, which just feels way too late.
If I weren't reading all Star Wars in order of publication, I likely wouldn't even bother to track down the rest of this series, but I do hope that future volumes provide a more fleshed out adventure than this first story. As a preamble to a larger series, it might serve its purpose, but as a stand-alone adventure, it fails to capture much imagination.