TAZÍ

Details

• Writer: Kevin J. Anderson
• Format: E-book
• Year of publication: 1994
• Genre: Sci-Fi

So reading the title of this second book in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, you know Luke is going to have a hard time in this one, and I was immediately thinking: who will be the dark apprentice? Well, you have to read it to find out. However read my review for my thoughts on it first and see afterwards if you want to read this and the former book in the trilogy Jedi Search!

Premise

Luke starts his Jedi Academy while dark forces are rising and the remnants of the Empire began their dastardly strike on the new republic.

Analysis

The prose of Kevin J. Anderson is fast, has a cinematic feel to it and focuses on high stakes action on a massive scale. Sometimes his writing is a little too over-the-top (the sun crusher for example), but that didn’t bother me all too much. The novel is fast-paced and he uses a multi-Point of View structure with short, punchy chapters. Almost every character is in a POV from Luke to C3PO to even the twins. Often a chapter ends on a cliffhanger and he then switches to a character on the other side of the galaxy to maintain momentum. However sometimes his character depth is sacrificed for plot speed, as is seen with Kyp Durron – a pivotal character in this trilogy, but his motives are not entirely fleshed-out. Talking about Kyp, let’s talk next about the characters!

So the holy-three (Luke, Leia and Han) are personality-wise the same as in the movies, which is great – they are not out of character and there are no out-of-character moments. Admiral Daala is a pretty layered villain and one you shouldn’t underestimate. Ackbar and Qwi-Xux where surprises for me – they were really layered in this novel and I would love to hear more from them in the next novel, especially from Ackbar.

Final verdict

Star Wars: Dark Apprentice is enjoyable and a pretty good novel. It’s not perfect as seen with some lack of character development in places and it doesn’t have that many stand-out moments for me, except for the “Ackbar maneuver” (which is much better that the sequels’ “Holdo maneuver” in my opinion). The positives are that we finally see the jedi academy being created and of course we see Mara Jade for the first time within this trilogy, who btw is my favorite Legends character! So without further a do, I give this novel a solid 3.5/5 ⭐️.

I recommend this novel to Star Wars fans, especially fans of the original trilogy and the original thrawn-trilogy books.

Have I interested you into reading it and the former book Jedi Search? And if you have read it/them, please let me know what you think of it:

Thanks for reading and ’till the next one!

Yours,

Rain