Book 1 - 'Jedi Search' by Kevin J. Anderson  

Bantam Press 1994  

Set 7 years after RotJ 

 book cover
Story -- Han and Leia now have a third child, Anakin; all three are with Winter on a hidden planet (to keep them from 'dark side influences'), but the twins are now old enough to return to their mother. Meanwhile, Han and Chewie are taken prisoner while on a diplomatic mission to Kessel - not a nice place! And Luke is trying to reestablish the Jedi Knights by setting up a training academy and tracking down potential students. Then a new Imperial Admiral shows up...

Original characters from the movies -- sorry, I'm not convinced. Han and Leia are OK, but Luke is portrayed as mildly incompetent and rather depressing. And poor Wedge has a ground-based job (how likely is that?!)

New characters -- Zahn's characters are mischaracterized or ignored altogether (Karrde and Mara Jade are mentioned briefly, and the Noghri appear to have vanished into thin air). Introduction of some of the Jedi students (including Gantoris, Kyp Durron, and Streen), along with a couple of baddies (Moruth Doole and Admiral Daala) and the confusing Qwi Xux.
 
Cover art -- quite nice, actually.

Chicks -- Leia (working too hard), Admiral Daala (a protege of Tarkin, and just as ruthless) - yipee, a female baddie! Qwi Xux - oh, come on! How could someone design something called 'Death Star' and not know what it's for!?

Any good? -- didn't make me jump up and down, to be honest. Reading about Kessel, mining spice, and how Han made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs was vaguely interesting, but it went on a bit. As did most of the book.

Read it? -- some of the events/characters are continued in subsequent books, so you might want to read it just for that. But if I had to choose between this trilogy and 'I, Jedi' (set during the same time period), I'd probably plump for the latter.

Rating -- 4 out of 10
 

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