Adventures of Teen Jesus: Meaningless Reviews in a Galaxy Further Away
Before Disney rebooted the Star Wars Universe, there were a bunch of dog-eared paperbacks describing the adventures of Luke, Leia, Han, etc in the years following the events of the movies. This is a review of one of these stories, which is itself one of nineteen in a series. For the rationale behind such an ill-advised quest, click here. For the previous entry in the series, follow this link here. In this edition, we’ve got teen romance, ass kicking, and plenty of Dankin….
Lucky number seven, and the third Duology in the series, Edge of Victory 1: Conquest. It was written by Gregory Keyes, and published in the spring of 2001.
Let us begin today with a meme:
Let us now proceed to the newest trailer for The Last Jedi:
In short, critical theory has now come to the philosophy of the Force. Despite the fact that all of these movies will make a billion dollars, the issue facing Star Wars is one of narrative stagnation. Over the course of seven movies (the main storyline), the pendulum has shifted from light to dark to light and now back to dark. It’s getting old.
Which brings us now to the summer of 1998. The writers of The New Jedi Order sat down to plot out the narrative and were aware that this same issue was plaguing the stories of the expanded universe. It was time to do something different, something to expand the idea of the Force beyond a binary between light and dark.
After six novels, the series now shifts toward the foundations of the idea the writers conceived.
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Here’s the simplified plot of Conquest:
Important Characters: Links in this section are from the Star wars wiki. Be forewarned, the articles are all way too long, and if you are allergic to puns, you’d best stay away, as the thing is called Wookiepeedia. Characters I’ve already described are denoted by an asterisk.
The Jedi:
Anakin Solo:* Here’s really all you need to know about Anakin Solo, in this or any other novel in the series (but especially this one):
Tahiri Veila: A fourteen year old Jedi-in-training at Luke Skywalker’s academy on Yavin, Tahiri is Anakin’s bold and fiery and totally inexperienced best friend.
Ikrit: An ancient Jedi Master that was awoken from a coma stretching back several hundred years by Anakin and Tahiri (it’s a really long, bad story) Ikrit serves as one of the teachers at Luke’s academy.
The New Republic:
Talon Karrde: A smuggler turned information broker, Kaarde is one of the better (and one of the original) characters from the expanded universe. Generally favors the New Republic, and the Jedi especially, as his former second in command is now Luke’s wife.
The Yuuzhan Vong:
Vua Rapuung: A former commander, now horribly disfigured and shamed, looking to get revenge against the one who inflicted his torment. Rapuung is fanatical and also a formidable fighter, despite his disfigurement. More on that in a moment.
Nen Yim: A shaper adept (more on shapers in a second), Yin harbors a deep and abiding curiosity about the galaxy. Answers to…
Mezhan Kwaad: The master Shaper, Kwaad is ambitious and analytical, to the point of heresy.
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At the end of the last installment, the Yuuzhan Vong warmaster declared a cease fire, on the condition that all Jedi be turned over to the aliens, dead or (preferably) alive. This book opens with several scenes of Jedi meeting their ends.
Luke calls what by this point in the series feels like the hundredth meeting of the Jedi, where the group promptly pulls itself apart, as several of the younger Jedi, already dissatisfied by Luke’s leadership to this point, now more or less openly break with him. Their mantra is Jedi for Jedi, which much like the slogan America First, might make some people feel a little better, while also making the actual situation worse in just about every conceivable way.
Anakin realizes that his friend Tahiri is in danger and jumps in his ship and scoots off to Yavin to save her. He is unsuccessful and she is taken prisoner by the Yuuzhan Vong. So he goes on a rescue mission. Along the way, he meets Vua Rapuung, who enters into an uneasy alliance with Anakin in order to get revenge on Mezhan Kwaad. That’s the plot of this one — it’s by far the most compact of any of the stories in the series thus far.
The novel is one of the first glimpses into Yuuzhan Vong life beyond the military, introducing both the Shaper and Shamed castes. The Shapers are like bioengineers, which is relevant because literally every device the Yuuzhan Vong use is somehow alive. The Shamed Ones are Yuuzhan Vong that for one reason or another have found disfavor or suffer from afflictions that prevent them from receiving implants or the ritual scarring that the Yuuzhan Vong use to denote rank.
The unlikely alliance between Vua Rapuung and Anakin is pretty spectacular and often quite funny, as Rapuung is caught between disdainful pride and annoyance at having to side with a Jedi and Anakin’s wary sarcasm in return. It’s the one of just a few such alliances in the series. It’s a welcome reprieve from all the warfare, though Rapuung tries to kill Anakin more than once.
Rapuung and Anakin’s partnership also allows this novel to strike a nice balance between big ideas and ass kicking. It’s fun, in other words.
Nen Yim and Mezhan Kwaad are shapers, and it falls to them to transform Tahiri following her capture. It quickly becomes apparent that there are limits to the Yuuzhan Vong understanding of the galaxy, and they move to broaden that understanding. Unfortunately, this is heresy, as all knowledge according to the Yuuzhan Vong orthodoxy had already been gifted to the race.
One of Talon Karrde’s crewmembers answers to the name Dankin, which I assume means the man is either stoned all the time or is a purveyor of really good memes.
Anakin breaks his lightsaber, much like his namesake, but unlike his namesake, he repairs it using a telepathic crystal harvested from the Yuuzhan Vong compound, making it the first example of unified Yuuzhan Vong/New Republic technology. As a result, this will be an important symbol over the remainder of the series.
By this point in the series, it is clear that Anakin Solo is special, even among the Jedi. He is a powerful warrior and has a command of the Force unmatched by any of the younger cohort, save perhaps his older brother Jacen, who sucks. His actions are talismanic, inspiring the other Jedi to action, and is increasingly looked to as a savior by the beleaguered New Republic. Following the events of this book, and the eventual redemption of Vua Rapuung, increasing portions of the Yuuzhan Vong will also view him as a savior.
He’s also only sixteen. The best portions of this novel are the parts where the author just lets him be a teenager, like when he’s tooling around on a speeder and just spacing out, or in the burgeoning but awkward romantic relationship between Tahiri and Anakin. Mercifully, that romance plays out without a single trace of anything approaching this scene:
Also mercifully, Jacen Solo is not really in this one, save for a scene at the end where he manages to preach self-righteously at Anakin. Never count out sanctimonious Jacen.
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Cliches In Space:
“Writing on the Wall” becomes “Pattern on the Huj Mat.” I’d like to think that the cliche is derived from a similar story as our version, and that some divine being took like six months to weave a message of doom into a tapestry, in the slowest burning capture of a capital city ever.
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The Jar Jar Binks Award for Worst Addition to the Galaxy:
Because the Holiday Special was far from the only poor choice George Lucas made
Two of the worst series in the Expanded Universe are the series detailing the adventures of the young Solo children at Luke’s Academy. The plots are basically Home Alone meets the Star Wars Universe. They’re just bad. Master Ikrit, a Jedi Master and one of Anakin Solo’s primary instructors, was introduced in one of these series. He’s wise and powerful like Yoda. He looks like this:
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Recommendation: One of the big ideas in The New Jedi Order is that the invading aliens are not present in the Force, as if they simply don’t exist. If they don’t exist in the Force, are the Yuuzhan Vong inherently part of the dark side? Are they somehow light side? or are they something entirely different, something outside of the cycle entirely? The introduction of at least a third option is a neat way of resolving the binary. In order to fuse the technologies, Anakin reaches an epiphany, though the exact contours of that epiphany remain unclear at this point.
This is one of the best written books in the entirety of the series. Gregory Keyes has several long passages in this thing that really spool out in vivid ways, which is always appreciated.
I would go so far as to say that it stands with the best of the expanded universe, and is better than at least two of the movies.
Anakin’s epiphany regarding the Force and the Yuuzhan Vong is a brief foreshadowing of what’s to come with regards to the Jedi. In addition, the cracks in Yuuzhan Vong society — the tensions of the Yuuzhan Vong underclass, as well as the institutionalized limits on Yuuzhan Vong understanding and technology — will be extremely important in the back half of the series. Read it.
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This has been Meaningless Reviews in a Galaxy Even Further away, in which I read through the entirety of The New Jedi Order and write about it.
