'Rogue Planet' by Greg Bear  

Del Rey 2000  

Set 3 years after TPM 

 book cover
Story -- 12-year-old Anakin Skywalker has kind of settled into being Obi-Wan's padawan learner, but is still impulsive and has a lot of 'issues'. The story is basically this - Obi and Ani are sent on a mission to get their little Jedi paws on this really fast ship. On the way, they do a lot of thinking (and some foreboding...) and run into a young Commander by the name of Tarkin...

Original characters from the movies -- Written REALLY well. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Tarkin (he's in his early thirties, here). Mace Windu (briefly) and mentions of other characters (esp. Yoda).

New characters -- Raith Seinar (looks a lot like Tarkin, builds/designs starships, etc.), Charza Kwinn (male Priapulin - very alien, mildly gruesome in places, good guy), Ke Daiv (he's a Blood Carver. With a title like that, you've got to figure he's a bad guy!)
 
Cover art -- Love it! Just love it! Drool! And where did they get a kid that looks so much like an older Jake Lloyd.

Chicks -- Thracia Cho Leem (a female Jedi Master, not afraid to tell the other Masters exactly what she thinks of them; at one point she refers to Yoda as a "big-eared tree stump". Nice person - shame she's not in the book much.); Jabitha , a young girl Ani befriends on the planet they visit (seems to be mainly a plot device for explaining stuff to the Jedi and to the reader!)

Any good? -- beautifully written, although some of the descriptive stuff went on a bit long for me (call me a philistine - I don't care!). Having said that, there's a great action bit at the beginning, and the ending is excellent. Lots of foreboding (you can almost hear 'Vader's March' in the background). Some cute moments (eg. Ani sleeping), lots of thought on the Force, etc. Niggly point - LOTS of chapters (67 and a coda) some of them only about 100 words long - I hate that!

Read it? -- are you a big TPM fan? Can't wait for Episode 2? Are you desperate to find out what happens next? Then go get this book! It's not out in paperback until May 2001, so if you can't afford to buy it, get off to the library! If you're an Original Trilogy/post-RotJ fan, this may not be your thing. But you never know! This is the first (and possibly only) 'between the trilogies' novel.

Rating -- 7 out of 10
 

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