Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I'm an unabashed Stover groupie. And while I recognize that he's not the best writer out there, he's certainly my favorite - there's just something about the way he writes that I find incredibly appealing. He writes what I want to read. But as I said, favorite is not necessarily best, and while Stover's Star Wars novels are among the best out there, Sean Stewart's novel is easily the best Clone Wars novel yet and one of the best Star Wars novels ever written.
Anyone who's been reading my reviews will know that one of my complaints about some recent Star Wars novels is that the prose itself is boring, regardless of the actions and characters it is describing. Not so here. Unlike a good number of Star Wars writers, Sean Stewart has style. His language is often nearly poetic (sometimes a little too self-consciously so, but thankfully not often) - as one Amazon reviewer put it, "at once fluid and precise, impressionistic and razor-fine." Which makes it a pleasure to read this book even during the more sedate moments.
Aside from the language itself, Stewart has many other assets. He's got a wonderful grasp of character, showing for the first time in the novels the character dynamics between Ventress and Dooku, between Dooku and Sidious, between Yoda and Dooku, between Yoda and the rest of the Jedi, etc. He gets into Dooku's and Yoda's heads in a powerful way - Dooku becomes a more sympathetic character while remaining true to the bad guy we know he is, and Yoda in particular is handled fantastically. I was truly worried despite my faith in Stewart that he wouldn't be able to do Yoda justice, but my fears were unfounded. Stewart drew as much from the impish, wise Yoda of ESB as from the more somber, obnoxious Yoda of the prequels, to wonderful effect and more than a few laughs (all of them appropriate - no potty humor here). I particularly enjoyed an exchange about how the Jedi Temple should relocate off of Coruscant, to a more living planet. Finally too we get a little more explanation of the concept between lingering "Force spirits," and the exchange between a certain character and Yoda, especially when it comes to that character's estimation of Dooku, is awesome. Oh, and Padmé finally also gets an appearance in a novel, however brief. There are a couple problems, though. Every once in a while, for example, Stewart seems to have a little trouble with Yoda's syntax.
Continuity gurus should mostly be pleased (I think; I don't really count myself among their number anymore, so there could've been mistakes I missed), as Stewart refers appropriately to other Clone Wars events without being heavy-handed, and his GFFA name-dropping rarely seems inappropriate or out of place. Stewart also manages to convey the pathos in the Jedi Temple very well, as it is so emptied in the months since Geonosis, with so many Padawans without masters, masters having lost friends, and so forth. There are a couple problems though. For example, I found it hard to swallow that the Ithorians would have such a heavily fortified moon - which is particularly annoying considering that the fact that it's the Ithorian system is not relevant to the story, and it could as easily have been any other system.
Also in this book you will find some of the best lightsaber fights ever committed to the page. Including one involving my own personal favorite fencing cheat - which works, against all expectations, because that particular fight is between Padawans using lightsabers dialed down to training-settings. Plus some good heroics, a pretty good dogfight, some wonderful musings on loyalty and the light and dark sides of the Force.
Overall, a brilliant Star Wars novel, and one it's hard to believe will be topped anytime soon (though I have high hopes for Stover's adaptation of Revenge of the Sith). I doubt they'll manage to bring Stewart back for more SW novels, but I sincerely hope they will. Despite a very few minor quibbles, this is a tremendous effort.
If you like this book, I also highly recommend Sean Stewart's novel Nobody's Son.
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