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crystalstarrlight's review against another edition
1.0
Separatist Admiral Pors Tonith has attacked Praesitlyn, home of the communications hub of the Republic. Palpatine sends Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Padawan, and Nejaa Halcyon, a shamed Jedi Master (he lost a ship to Zozrider Slayke, who coincidentally, happens to be defending Praesitlyn), to regain control of Praesitlyn and restore communications to the Outer Rim worlds.
NOTE: Based on novel and audiobook.
When I first reviewed this book several years ago, I said it was the worst Star Wars book. Of course, that was when I liked "The Crystal Star". So, I decided to go back and "reread" to see if it is as bad as I feared.
It is.
I had probably listened to barely a minute of the audiobook, when I made my first note, which was "Wow, the writing style is worse than Jude Watson, who purposefully writes for children". From there it went downhill.
For its credit, "Jedi Trial" does a few things okay. There are some continuity nods, most notably using the communications center on Praesitlyn, which was first established in "Heir to the Empire", Armand Isard, and Nejaa Halcyon. Also, it's obvious that the authors are well aware of how the military functions.
If you can't already tell, I am really grasping at straws, trying desperately to find any sort of "good aspects" to this book. This book is positively dreadful, a pain to read. I found I could only listen to a few minutes at a time; it was as if the book was giving me real, physical damage.
What's wrong with "Jedi Trial"? Let's detail it in an infamous list!
1. Characters. From established movie characters like Anakin and Obi-Wan to Expanded Universe ones like Nejaa and Asajj to original characters like Odie and Reija, the characters are dreadful. They are one cliché built on top of another, barely characterized beyond one or two words.
a. Anakin feels blank and under-developed. If it weren't for the fact his name is "Anakin", I would never have known that this is the man who becomes Darth Vader - or even the whiny teenager in "Attack of the Clones". He inexplicably becomes instantly attached to Reija, a transparent and blatant "Shmi" insert, so that he can become enraged when she is harmed in a cheap ploy for "drama". The whole thing feels out of character; Anakin has never seemed like the kind of person to become so quickly and indiscriminately attached to people.
b. Nejaa Halcyon, Corellian Jedi with a wife and child of his own, could have been "Anyone Jedi" for all his character development. He spends one moment even thinking about his family; most of his other scenes are him planning, yelling, or doing a bad job commanding. It's particularly sad because this is Corran Horn's grandfather, and I had been so looking forward to this ever since Corran hit the scene.
c. Asajj Ventress, big and splashy on the cover, plays a cameo role, in which she does nothing but growl at Pors Tonith for no reason. (There must be a rule book where all people on the "bad guy" side must growl and yell at their underlings.) Oddly enough, Count Dooku appears more in this book than Asajj. So why is she on the cover? Did someone mix up this cover with the one for "The Cestus Deception"?
d. Pors Tonith is a classic Cackling Villain. Most of his scenes center around him chuckling about how smart he is, how clever his plans are, and how he drinks dianoga tea that stains his teeth. It's a bad sign when one of the highlight characteristics of your villains is the color his teeth have been stained.
e. Reija Momen was painted as this wonderful, perfect "everyone's mother" (so called by an alien, of all beings) that came off so clichéd and over done. It was completely obvious how he authors were attempting to set up the "conflict" within Anakin.
f. Odie Subu not only has a horrible name (be honest - you thought of Garfield as soon as you read that name!) but she is the most boring, bland, uninspiring, stupid woman ever. The authors tell us that she supposedly is the best recon pilot, but we never get to actually see her doing anything intelligent. Instead, Odie does what any good traditional woman should and lets her man, Erk, make all the decisions.
g. Erk Harmond is a horribly clichéd fighter pilot. Take Han Solo, Dash Rendar, and Corran Horn, remove away any characteristics that aren't related to piloting, exaggerate all the over-confident, arrogant mannerisms, have him laugh at the most inopportune times and give him the personality of a doorknob and you have Erk.
h. What is with everyone worshiping Zozrider Slayke? The guy drove me bonkers, and if I had to listen to another of his "motivational speeches", I will strangle myself.
2. "Show, don't tell". The authors must have skipped this lesson in Writing Fiction 101, because the novel is basically one long "telling scenes" and interspersed with a couple of "showing scenes". When Nejaa is first mentioned, Anakin talks about how Nejaa is great. Well, that's nice, but can't we see how Nejaa is such a good Master and swords-being? When Reija enters, we are told she's a good administrator and that she's kind, but we never see her being kind to her employees. Ditto for her being "everyone's mother". And one of the highlights of the book, one of the biggest reasons I had to read this book, to read how Nejaa and Anakin, both married men, relate to each other when this is one of the biggest no-no's of the Jedi Order, is so hastily, sloppily, and pathetically done, it's embarrassing. Anyone, literally anyone, could have written a better scene where Nejaa and Anakin reveal their marital status and make it more stirring and impactful. The scene literally goes "Nejaa told Anakin about his wife and son...Anakin told Nejaa about Padme"!
3. Vagueness. Time and again, a scene is written as if it is a summary. When Anakin and Nejaa spar, their session is described in the barest of terms and lasts maybe three paragraphs. I have no clue what half the characters look like, besides vague descriptions such as "short, brown hair" (as for Odie) or "everyone's mother" (for Reija, and no, I'm never going to let that go). About the only time the authors aren't vague is when they are going into excruciating, mind-numbing detail about the tactics that will be used to fight the war (but, Force Forbid, never for the actual battle).
4. Bad writing. Hold it, that should be "God-awful bad writing". Seriously, I've not listened to and read such bad writing in forever. From questionable sentences like "Lan Moore was perspiring faintly" (he was close to fainting?) to "Someone cursed foully" (isn't all cursing technically foul?) to the grammatically incorrect list including "highly trained, highly motivated and equipped with armored vehicles", the pages are rife with writing that wouldn't pass in a fourth grade English class. I honestly don't know how the authors could have submitted this work. I would have been embarrassed. I was embarrassed as I listened to this.
5. Bad Dialogue. Characters talk all the same, without any distinction between Outer Rim and Inner Rim, Jedi and soldier, alien and human, male and female. They also tend to spout off clichéd sayings such as "Surrender is not an option", "It has been a pleasure to fight along side you", and "Attack, attack, attack" (which, apparently is not uncommon for pacifistic Alderaanians say).
6. Romance. Hang me up by the ears right now! I've railed against many an author who has written a bad romantic pairing, but none has come to the sheer awfulness that "Jedi Trial" has. Odie and Erk are barely one-dimensional characters. Throwing them together in a rough environment, inserting dopey dialogue, and having them "bond" ("Be my wingmate!" "Sure!") over the course of a few days does not a romance make. Callista and Luke's romance is better than this. Anakin and Padme's romance in "Attack of the Clones" is better than this. Edward and Bella's romance is better than this. I thank the Maker that whoever edited the audiobook excluded Anakin officiating their wedding. I've already abused myself enough over this book; I think hearing that would have taken me to the funny farm.
7. Laughing. I am so glad that people in this book can laugh at the drop of a hat. Odie and Erk meet and two minutes later, they are laughing with each other. Anakin and Nejaa spar...and then share a laugh. Erk is in the middle of a combat zone...and laughs. Slayke makes a joke about not having a plan, and then everyone of his team bursts into gales of laughter. Does any of this sound, oh, I don't know, awkward to you? I don't know about you, but I just don't think people would be laughing and joking as much as they do in this book. Well, perhaps if the jokes or situations were actually humorous instead of cringe.
8. Too much focus on battle plans. Yes, this is a Clone Wars novel. Yes, I expect a big, huge Clone Wars. No, I don't want to read the intricate, detailed plan of such an attack. I don't want to read about how much food they must supply, I don't want to read about where they are going to move this artillery and I certainly don't want to know what sort of retreat they have in plan. I want to read about the actual battle, the clones on the battlefield, the Jedi leading the way, spaceships flying and maneuvering.
9. Too little Star Wars. Minus character names and some technology, this book could have been set in Earth's future (or "Any Planet's" future). Artillery, military rankings, and the gushing over how much an officer is loved by his men for getting his hands dirty feels out of place in the galaxy far, far away. Meanwhile, I still don't know how a Star Wars ship could be boarded without one of the bridge officers noting the drop in the shields. Other ignorance of Star Wars technology makes the book frustrating.
When I first read this book, I hated it with a vengeance, like I've never despised a Star Wars novel before and since. And when I reread it, I found my opinion hadn't changed. This book is absolutely the worst novel in Star Wars Expanded Universe, worse than "The Crystal Star", the entire Jedi Academy Trilogy, and the Black Fleet Crisis combined. While I am a bit perturbed at how the new Clone Wars TV series has changed continuity of this era, I will gladly accept it if it means that it totally retcons and throws this piece of bantha excrement from Star Wars EU. I have one thing to say: Avoid at all costs, unless you take enjoyment out of picking on novels MST3K style.
NOTE: Based on novel and audiobook.
When I first reviewed this book several years ago, I said it was the worst Star Wars book. Of course, that was when I liked "The Crystal Star". So, I decided to go back and "reread" to see if it is as bad as I feared.
It is.
I had probably listened to barely a minute of the audiobook, when I made my first note, which was "Wow, the writing style is worse than Jude Watson, who purposefully writes for children". From there it went downhill.
For its credit, "Jedi Trial" does a few things okay. There are some continuity nods, most notably using the communications center on Praesitlyn, which was first established in "Heir to the Empire", Armand Isard, and Nejaa Halcyon. Also, it's obvious that the authors are well aware of how the military functions.
If you can't already tell, I am really grasping at straws, trying desperately to find any sort of "good aspects" to this book. This book is positively dreadful, a pain to read. I found I could only listen to a few minutes at a time; it was as if the book was giving me real, physical damage.
What's wrong with "Jedi Trial"? Let's detail it in an infamous list!
1. Characters. From established movie characters like Anakin and Obi-Wan to Expanded Universe ones like Nejaa and Asajj to original characters like Odie and Reija, the characters are dreadful. They are one cliché built on top of another, barely characterized beyond one or two words.
a. Anakin feels blank and under-developed. If it weren't for the fact his name is "Anakin", I would never have known that this is the man who becomes Darth Vader - or even the whiny teenager in "Attack of the Clones". He inexplicably becomes instantly attached to Reija, a transparent and blatant "Shmi" insert, so that he can become enraged when she is harmed in a cheap ploy for "drama". The whole thing feels out of character; Anakin has never seemed like the kind of person to become so quickly and indiscriminately attached to people.
b. Nejaa Halcyon, Corellian Jedi with a wife and child of his own, could have been "Anyone Jedi" for all his character development. He spends one moment even thinking about his family; most of his other scenes are him planning, yelling, or doing a bad job commanding. It's particularly sad because this is Corran Horn's grandfather, and I had been so looking forward to this ever since Corran hit the scene.
c. Asajj Ventress, big and splashy on the cover, plays a cameo role, in which she does nothing but growl at Pors Tonith for no reason. (There must be a rule book where all people on the "bad guy" side must growl and yell at their underlings.) Oddly enough, Count Dooku appears more in this book than Asajj. So why is she on the cover? Did someone mix up this cover with the one for "The Cestus Deception"?
d. Pors Tonith is a classic Cackling Villain. Most of his scenes center around him chuckling about how smart he is, how clever his plans are, and how he drinks dianoga tea that stains his teeth. It's a bad sign when one of the highlight characteristics of your villains is the color his teeth have been stained.
e. Reija Momen was painted as this wonderful, perfect "everyone's mother" (so called by an alien, of all beings) that came off so clichéd and over done. It was completely obvious how he authors were attempting to set up the "conflict" within Anakin.
f. Odie Subu not only has a horrible name (be honest - you thought of Garfield as soon as you read that name!) but she is the most boring, bland, uninspiring, stupid woman ever. The authors tell us that she supposedly is the best recon pilot, but we never get to actually see her doing anything intelligent. Instead, Odie does what any good traditional woman should and lets her man, Erk, make all the decisions.
g. Erk Harmond is a horribly clichéd fighter pilot. Take Han Solo, Dash Rendar, and Corran Horn, remove away any characteristics that aren't related to piloting, exaggerate all the over-confident, arrogant mannerisms, have him laugh at the most inopportune times and give him the personality of a doorknob and you have Erk.
h. What is with everyone worshiping Zozrider Slayke? The guy drove me bonkers, and if I had to listen to another of his "motivational speeches", I will strangle myself.
2. "Show, don't tell". The authors must have skipped this lesson in Writing Fiction 101, because the novel is basically one long "telling scenes" and interspersed with a couple of "showing scenes". When Nejaa is first mentioned, Anakin talks about how Nejaa is great. Well, that's nice, but can't we see how Nejaa is such a good Master and swords-being? When Reija enters, we are told she's a good administrator and that she's kind, but we never see her being kind to her employees. Ditto for her being "everyone's mother". And one of the highlights of the book, one of the biggest reasons I had to read this book, to read how Nejaa and Anakin, both married men, relate to each other when this is one of the biggest no-no's of the Jedi Order, is so hastily, sloppily, and pathetically done, it's embarrassing. Anyone, literally anyone, could have written a better scene where Nejaa and Anakin reveal their marital status and make it more stirring and impactful. The scene literally goes "Nejaa told Anakin about his wife and son...Anakin told Nejaa about Padme"!
3. Vagueness. Time and again, a scene is written as if it is a summary. When Anakin and Nejaa spar, their session is described in the barest of terms and lasts maybe three paragraphs. I have no clue what half the characters look like, besides vague descriptions such as "short, brown hair" (as for Odie) or "everyone's mother" (for Reija, and no, I'm never going to let that go). About the only time the authors aren't vague is when they are going into excruciating, mind-numbing detail about the tactics that will be used to fight the war (but, Force Forbid, never for the actual battle).
4. Bad writing. Hold it, that should be "God-awful bad writing". Seriously, I've not listened to and read such bad writing in forever. From questionable sentences like "Lan Moore was perspiring faintly" (he was close to fainting?) to "Someone cursed foully" (isn't all cursing technically foul?) to the grammatically incorrect list including "highly trained, highly motivated and equipped with armored vehicles", the pages are rife with writing that wouldn't pass in a fourth grade English class. I honestly don't know how the authors could have submitted this work. I would have been embarrassed. I was embarrassed as I listened to this.
5. Bad Dialogue. Characters talk all the same, without any distinction between Outer Rim and Inner Rim, Jedi and soldier, alien and human, male and female. They also tend to spout off clichéd sayings such as "Surrender is not an option", "It has been a pleasure to fight along side you", and "Attack, attack, attack" (which, apparently is not uncommon for pacifistic Alderaanians say).
6. Romance. Hang me up by the ears right now! I've railed against many an author who has written a bad romantic pairing, but none has come to the sheer awfulness that "Jedi Trial" has. Odie and Erk are barely one-dimensional characters. Throwing them together in a rough environment, inserting dopey dialogue, and having them "bond" ("Be my wingmate!" "Sure!") over the course of a few days does not a romance make. Callista and Luke's romance is better than this. Anakin and Padme's romance in "Attack of the Clones" is better than this. Edward and Bella's romance is better than this. I thank the Maker that whoever edited the audiobook excluded Anakin officiating their wedding. I've already abused myself enough over this book; I think hearing that would have taken me to the funny farm.
7. Laughing. I am so glad that people in this book can laugh at the drop of a hat. Odie and Erk meet and two minutes later, they are laughing with each other. Anakin and Nejaa spar...and then share a laugh. Erk is in the middle of a combat zone...and laughs. Slayke makes a joke about not having a plan, and then everyone of his team bursts into gales of laughter. Does any of this sound, oh, I don't know, awkward to you? I don't know about you, but I just don't think people would be laughing and joking as much as they do in this book. Well, perhaps if the jokes or situations were actually humorous instead of cringe.
8. Too much focus on battle plans. Yes, this is a Clone Wars novel. Yes, I expect a big, huge Clone Wars. No, I don't want to read the intricate, detailed plan of such an attack. I don't want to read about how much food they must supply, I don't want to read about where they are going to move this artillery and I certainly don't want to know what sort of retreat they have in plan. I want to read about the actual battle, the clones on the battlefield, the Jedi leading the way, spaceships flying and maneuvering.
9. Too little Star Wars. Minus character names and some technology, this book could have been set in Earth's future (or "Any Planet's" future). Artillery, military rankings, and the gushing over how much an officer is loved by his men for getting his hands dirty feels out of place in the galaxy far, far away. Meanwhile, I still don't know how a Star Wars ship could be boarded without one of the bridge officers noting the drop in the shields. Other ignorance of Star Wars technology makes the book frustrating.
When I first read this book, I hated it with a vengeance, like I've never despised a Star Wars novel before and since. And when I reread it, I found my opinion hadn't changed. This book is absolutely the worst novel in Star Wars Expanded Universe, worse than "The Crystal Star", the entire Jedi Academy Trilogy, and the Black Fleet Crisis combined. While I am a bit perturbed at how the new Clone Wars TV series has changed continuity of this era, I will gladly accept it if it means that it totally retcons and throws this piece of bantha excrement from Star Wars EU. I have one thing to say: Avoid at all costs, unless you take enjoyment out of picking on novels MST3K style.
kb_208's review against another edition
2.0
So far this has probably been my least favorite Star Wars novel. It wasn't a terrible book or anything, but it just wasn't what I like in a SW books. It's not an essential book in the Clone Wars series much at all and it is much more military strategy based, which I'n not really into. My biggest problem was that it was very anti-climactic at the end. The odds are stacked strongly against them and then boom, Anakin goes berserk and saves the day in a few minutes, the end.
trueperception's review against another edition
2.0
Simply put: The worst Star Wars book I've ever read, and a contender for worst book read, period.
jaredkwheeler's review against another edition
1.0
Star Wars Legends Project #154
Background: Jedi Trial was written by [a:David Sherman|766185|David Sherman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1339448923p2/766185.jpg] and [a:Dan Cragg|20578|Dan Cragg|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. It was published in October 2004. Sherman is the author of a series of Vietnam War novels and Cragg is the author of several nonfiction books about the military. Together they have collaborated on a series of military sci-fi novels. This is their only Star Wars work.
Jedi Trial is set . . . okay, well, about that: According to the novel itself and any other sources printed around the time of its publication and for several years after, it is set 30 months after the Battle of Geonosis (about 20 years before the battle of Yavin) and depicts Anakin's ascension to the rank of Jedi Knight during the final months of the Clone Wars. Then The Clone Wars animated series came along and decided that Anakin was made a Jedi Knight about a month into the war, a good two and a half years before this. The official attempt to reconcile this was to declare that any works depicting or mentioning Anakin as a Jedi apprentice (i.e. most of the comics, novels, and YA novels, etc. published as part of the collaborative Clone Wars multimedia project during the years between the release of Episode II and Episode III) now take place in the first 6 months of the way.
This is a stupid solution, and the sheer absurdity of it finally struck me full-force as I read this novel. I wrote a bit before in my review of The Clone Wars novel about what a mess this all was from the point of view of trying to figure out the timeline in advance of reading my way through all the Clone Wars stuff. Now that I have, it ends up looking even worse. At the time I just figured it was really confusing, but that contradictions would be fairly minor. But it runs quite a bit deeper than that. The problem is twofold:
First, the inconsistencies and contradictions are significant, not in what the older material states, but in what it leaves out. It simply isn't possible to imagine the events of The Clone Wars animated series happening in-between or around the events of the Clone Wars multimedia project that came before it. Too many important things happen, and they would come up. Ahsoka Tano alone leaves a gaping vacuum that can't be plausibly filled.
Second, if you're trying to construct some sort of combined Legends timeline, as difficult as that is, the majority of the animated series stuff falls together right in the middle of the multimedia project stuff. But the multimedia project was written as a coherent whole to tell the story of the Clone Wars, and it's pretty disruptive to the narrative flow for it to be interrupted by a completely different story of the Clone Wars halfway through.
When it was announced in 2014 that the Star Wars Expanded Universe was no longer canon and would be rebranded as "Legends," splitting it off into its own closed alternate timeline, it was a big deal. At the time, I'd read little or none of the Clone Wars multimedia project, and hadn't seen any of the Clone Wars animated series beyond the pilot movie, so what I didn't realize then was that the timeline had already split. Disney may have formalized it, but the animated series had already broken ranks with all previous Star Wars media by totally disregarding and even outright contradicting previously established material. I've already noted at least one instance where this totally derailed an ongoing storyline in the EU. Namely, that it resulted in Karen Traviss bowing out of completing her "Republic Commando" series because the animated series completely scrapped all of the lore she had painstakingly established about Mandalore.
And don't get me wrong: The animated series is a wonderful gift to Star Wars fans. It's great, and it has fed directly into the even-better Rebels animated series. It's not perfect, but it is consistently better than much of the EU covering the same period. I didn't know how I'd ever get through reading The Cestus Deception and Jedi Trial is (spoiler for the rest of this review) utter crap. But I don't like the way the series showed such total disregard for others playing in the same sandbox, often in ways that weren't really necessary.
What's weird, then, is that when the EU split happened, everything up to that point remains part of the Legends timeline, but the animated series was basically the only thing outside of the films to also make the transition into the new canon. In my opinion, this means the obvious solution to the timeline weirdness is to consider the animated series tie-in stuff to be part of the new canon only, where it actually makes sense and actually fits, and if I were beginning this project again, I'd cut all of it out of the Legends timeline entirely.
Summary: Praesitlyn is a planet that houses the beating heart of the entire Republic communications network, and a Muun admiral named Pors Tonith has just swept in to take it with an overwhelming force. With resources already stretched too thin, but forced to act, the Jedi Council assembles a small army of clone troopers to be led by the only two Jedi available: the disgraced master Nejaa Halcyon of Coruscant and Anakin Skywalker. Both are hungry for an opportunity to prove themselves, but the odds are stacked against them and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Review: On paper, this had to have sounded like a brilliant idea: Get two authors with military and combat backgrounds and experience writing about the military who have collaborated on military sci-fi to write you a Star Wars war novel. But then it turns out that they're terrible writers and the book is terrible. Somehow Jedi Trial manages to be orders of magnitude crappier and less gritty and less visceral and authentic (for lack of a better word) than literally anything by Karen Traviss, or Stover's epic, Vietnam-esque Shatterpoint, or even the MASH-inspired Medstar duology.
It's very clear that the writers know what they're talking about when it comes to the military and warfare, and it's nice that they make an effort to address issues that just never ever come up anywhere else in Star Wars: Armies take time and planning to put together and to coordinate and to deploy. Armies require supplies and supply lines, which also takes a lot of additional personnel working behind the scenes. Armies need information to operate, and that requires good reconnaissance. There's more to strategy than throwing masses of troops at each other. The problem is, they mostly raise these issues by pausing the action to have a character deliver a didactic monologue about it . . . like they just can't stay off this soapbox, whether anyone (either the reader or the characters in the story) is interested or not.
And speaking of the characters in the story . . . They're so, so bad. Bland, featureless, laden with wooden dialogue. And their names are even worse. Names like, I kid you not, "Makx Maganinny" and Clone Commando CT-19/39: "His own nickname for himself was Green Wizard, because of his rank as a sergeant and his skill at patrol craft." The main POV original characters are pilot Erk (named, I assume, after the noise an Imperial Admiral makes when Darth Vader Force-chokes him mid-sentence) and recon trooper Odie (named after . . . well, who knows). These two stumble from bit to bit all through the story, and about 2/3 of the way through I suddenly realized that they hadn't actually had any impact on anything that had happened. You could just chop every mention of them out of the book and it wouldn't leave a hole. I'm pretty sure we'd all be better off if this one had been left out: "Anakin leaned forward and kissed Odie lightly on the cheek. The aroma of her freshly washed hair brought back memories--Padme--and his heart raced with joy." Sweet lord, Anakin, don't be such a benighted creeper! Is Padme the only person you know who washes her hair regularly, or just the only person whose hair you regularly sniff? Wait, don't answer that. I don't actually want to know.
Oh, and about Anakin . . . Yes, he's pretty badly written in this. Though Anakin is such a poorly written character to begin with that I suppose I should at least partway forgive them that. I'm less inclined to forgive them their protrayal of Nejaa Halcyon, which is so bad Michael Stackpole should consider suing. The reason he's "disgraced" makes absolutely no sense, and the eventual payoff of all that is even worse. But the missed opportunity here is even more egregious. The one thing we know about Nejaa Halcyon (as a character who was created before the prequels dictated certain rules about the Jedi Order), it's that he had a family. And so, of course, that family is a dark secret he keeps from the rest of the Jedi, much like Anakin's own secret. And this thing they have in common actually comes up between them, which ought to be the basis for some fantastic characterization and development . . . but they just throw it away like the garbage the rest of this book is.
The one concession I'll give it (in addition to the "raising pertinent, often-ignored issues" I mentioned earlier) is that it's not a complete drag to get through. They keep things moving for most of the book, and the plot never feels like it's just marking time the way some of the worst novels do. But that's pretty far from enough. I'll leave you with this series of excerpts centered around an event that happens partway through the novel:
"Friendly fire, Anakin thought, that was what the sergeant had called the accident. He wondered who had invented such a ridiculous term. Some staff officer, no doubt, someone safe and secure in a headquarters, someone who jested at scars but who'd never felt a wound himself. There was nothing friendly about fire that caused that much injury, no matter who it came from. Anakin fought down a surge of anger at the kind of military mind that would call such a thing 'friendly fire.'"
I hope that's the last time I ever see a Star Wars novel attempt such a trite, flagrant Shakespeare rip off. It doesn't even make sense. Later, Anakin visits his friend, the victim of the aforementioned incident:
"'With a head injury like that he won't last much longer. We can't even give him a sedative, unless, of course, you want me to end his misery--'
"Anakin turned on him. 'If I ever again hear you say something like that about one of my troopers, I swear . . .' He shook his head."
HOW DARE YOU PROPOSE A HUMANE OPTION FOR A SUFFERING PATIENT, YOU MONSTER. But then, after Anakin threatens the doctor for daring to suggest such a thing and the doctor leaves ... Anakin straight up lies to his friend! He’s all, “You’re gonna be fine! We’re gonna lift you up to our best hospital ship and they’ll get you all fixed up!”
And then his friend dies and Anakin is all, “Tomorrow I lead the attack! He will be avenged!”
Anakin, bro ... HE :clap: WAS :clap: KILLED :clap: BY :clap: FRIENDLY :clap: FIRE. Of all the things going on around you, this is the one thing that is not the enemy's fault. Actually, come to think of it . . . I said earlier that those two characters could be pulled from the novel without causing a ripple. That's not quite true. This was their fault. So it's not even that things would be no different if they didn't exist. It's that things would be better.
Don't. Read. This.
D-
Background: Jedi Trial was written by [a:David Sherman|766185|David Sherman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1339448923p2/766185.jpg] and [a:Dan Cragg|20578|Dan Cragg|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. It was published in October 2004. Sherman is the author of a series of Vietnam War novels and Cragg is the author of several nonfiction books about the military. Together they have collaborated on a series of military sci-fi novels. This is their only Star Wars work.
Jedi Trial is set . . . okay, well, about that: According to the novel itself and any other sources printed around the time of its publication and for several years after, it is set 30 months after the Battle of Geonosis (about 20 years before the battle of Yavin) and depicts Anakin's ascension to the rank of Jedi Knight during the final months of the Clone Wars. Then The Clone Wars animated series came along and decided that Anakin was made a Jedi Knight about a month into the war, a good two and a half years before this. The official attempt to reconcile this was to declare that any works depicting or mentioning Anakin as a Jedi apprentice (i.e. most of the comics, novels, and YA novels, etc. published as part of the collaborative Clone Wars multimedia project during the years between the release of Episode II and Episode III) now take place in the first 6 months of the way.
This is a stupid solution, and the sheer absurdity of it finally struck me full-force as I read this novel. I wrote a bit before in my review of The Clone Wars novel about what a mess this all was from the point of view of trying to figure out the timeline in advance of reading my way through all the Clone Wars stuff. Now that I have, it ends up looking even worse. At the time I just figured it was really confusing, but that contradictions would be fairly minor. But it runs quite a bit deeper than that. The problem is twofold:
First, the inconsistencies and contradictions are significant, not in what the older material states, but in what it leaves out. It simply isn't possible to imagine the events of The Clone Wars animated series happening in-between or around the events of the Clone Wars multimedia project that came before it. Too many important things happen, and they would come up. Ahsoka Tano alone leaves a gaping vacuum that can't be plausibly filled.
Second, if you're trying to construct some sort of combined Legends timeline, as difficult as that is, the majority of the animated series stuff falls together right in the middle of the multimedia project stuff. But the multimedia project was written as a coherent whole to tell the story of the Clone Wars, and it's pretty disruptive to the narrative flow for it to be interrupted by a completely different story of the Clone Wars halfway through.
When it was announced in 2014 that the Star Wars Expanded Universe was no longer canon and would be rebranded as "Legends," splitting it off into its own closed alternate timeline, it was a big deal. At the time, I'd read little or none of the Clone Wars multimedia project, and hadn't seen any of the Clone Wars animated series beyond the pilot movie, so what I didn't realize then was that the timeline had already split. Disney may have formalized it, but the animated series had already broken ranks with all previous Star Wars media by totally disregarding and even outright contradicting previously established material. I've already noted at least one instance where this totally derailed an ongoing storyline in the EU. Namely, that it resulted in Karen Traviss bowing out of completing her "Republic Commando" series because the animated series completely scrapped all of the lore she had painstakingly established about Mandalore.
And don't get me wrong: The animated series is a wonderful gift to Star Wars fans. It's great, and it has fed directly into the even-better Rebels animated series. It's not perfect, but it is consistently better than much of the EU covering the same period. I didn't know how I'd ever get through reading The Cestus Deception and Jedi Trial is (spoiler for the rest of this review) utter crap. But I don't like the way the series showed such total disregard for others playing in the same sandbox, often in ways that weren't really necessary.
What's weird, then, is that when the EU split happened, everything up to that point remains part of the Legends timeline, but the animated series was basically the only thing outside of the films to also make the transition into the new canon. In my opinion, this means the obvious solution to the timeline weirdness is to consider the animated series tie-in stuff to be part of the new canon only, where it actually makes sense and actually fits, and if I were beginning this project again, I'd cut all of it out of the Legends timeline entirely.
Summary: Praesitlyn is a planet that houses the beating heart of the entire Republic communications network, and a Muun admiral named Pors Tonith has just swept in to take it with an overwhelming force. With resources already stretched too thin, but forced to act, the Jedi Council assembles a small army of clone troopers to be led by the only two Jedi available: the disgraced master Nejaa Halcyon of Coruscant and Anakin Skywalker. Both are hungry for an opportunity to prove themselves, but the odds are stacked against them and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Review: On paper, this had to have sounded like a brilliant idea: Get two authors with military and combat backgrounds and experience writing about the military who have collaborated on military sci-fi to write you a Star Wars war novel. But then it turns out that they're terrible writers and the book is terrible. Somehow Jedi Trial manages to be orders of magnitude crappier and less gritty and less visceral and authentic (for lack of a better word) than literally anything by Karen Traviss, or Stover's epic, Vietnam-esque Shatterpoint, or even the MASH-inspired Medstar duology.
It's very clear that the writers know what they're talking about when it comes to the military and warfare, and it's nice that they make an effort to address issues that just never ever come up anywhere else in Star Wars: Armies take time and planning to put together and to coordinate and to deploy. Armies require supplies and supply lines, which also takes a lot of additional personnel working behind the scenes. Armies need information to operate, and that requires good reconnaissance. There's more to strategy than throwing masses of troops at each other. The problem is, they mostly raise these issues by pausing the action to have a character deliver a didactic monologue about it . . . like they just can't stay off this soapbox, whether anyone (either the reader or the characters in the story) is interested or not.
And speaking of the characters in the story . . . They're so, so bad. Bland, featureless, laden with wooden dialogue. And their names are even worse. Names like, I kid you not, "Makx Maganinny" and Clone Commando CT-19/39: "His own nickname for himself was Green Wizard, because of his rank as a sergeant and his skill at patrol craft." The main POV original characters are pilot Erk (named, I assume, after the noise an Imperial Admiral makes when Darth Vader Force-chokes him mid-sentence) and recon trooper Odie (named after . . . well, who knows). These two stumble from bit to bit all through the story, and about 2/3 of the way through I suddenly realized that they hadn't actually had any impact on anything that had happened. You could just chop every mention of them out of the book and it wouldn't leave a hole. I'm pretty sure we'd all be better off if this one had been left out: "Anakin leaned forward and kissed Odie lightly on the cheek. The aroma of her freshly washed hair brought back memories--Padme--and his heart raced with joy." Sweet lord, Anakin, don't be such a benighted creeper! Is Padme the only person you know who washes her hair regularly, or just the only person whose hair you regularly sniff? Wait, don't answer that. I don't actually want to know.
Oh, and about Anakin . . . Yes, he's pretty badly written in this. Though Anakin is such a poorly written character to begin with that I suppose I should at least partway forgive them that. I'm less inclined to forgive them their protrayal of Nejaa Halcyon, which is so bad Michael Stackpole should consider suing. The reason he's "disgraced" makes absolutely no sense, and the eventual payoff of all that is even worse. But the missed opportunity here is even more egregious. The one thing we know about Nejaa Halcyon (as a character who was created before the prequels dictated certain rules about the Jedi Order), it's that he had a family. And so, of course, that family is a dark secret he keeps from the rest of the Jedi, much like Anakin's own secret. And this thing they have in common actually comes up between them, which ought to be the basis for some fantastic characterization and development . . . but they just throw it away like the garbage the rest of this book is.
The one concession I'll give it (in addition to the "raising pertinent, often-ignored issues" I mentioned earlier) is that it's not a complete drag to get through. They keep things moving for most of the book, and the plot never feels like it's just marking time the way some of the worst novels do. But that's pretty far from enough. I'll leave you with this series of excerpts centered around an event that happens partway through the novel:
"Friendly fire, Anakin thought, that was what the sergeant had called the accident. He wondered who had invented such a ridiculous term. Some staff officer, no doubt, someone safe and secure in a headquarters, someone who jested at scars but who'd never felt a wound himself. There was nothing friendly about fire that caused that much injury, no matter who it came from. Anakin fought down a surge of anger at the kind of military mind that would call such a thing 'friendly fire.'"
I hope that's the last time I ever see a Star Wars novel attempt such a trite, flagrant Shakespeare rip off. It doesn't even make sense. Later, Anakin visits his friend, the victim of the aforementioned incident:
"'With a head injury like that he won't last much longer. We can't even give him a sedative, unless, of course, you want me to end his misery--'
"Anakin turned on him. 'If I ever again hear you say something like that about one of my troopers, I swear . . .' He shook his head."
HOW DARE YOU PROPOSE A HUMANE OPTION FOR A SUFFERING PATIENT, YOU MONSTER. But then, after Anakin threatens the doctor for daring to suggest such a thing and the doctor leaves ... Anakin straight up lies to his friend! He’s all, “You’re gonna be fine! We’re gonna lift you up to our best hospital ship and they’ll get you all fixed up!”
And then his friend dies and Anakin is all, “Tomorrow I lead the attack! He will be avenged!”
Anakin, bro ... HE :clap: WAS :clap: KILLED :clap: BY :clap: FRIENDLY :clap: FIRE. Of all the things going on around you, this is the one thing that is not the enemy's fault. Actually, come to think of it . . . I said earlier that those two characters could be pulled from the novel without causing a ripple. That's not quite true. This was their fault. So it's not even that things would be no different if they didn't exist. It's that things would be better.
Don't. Read. This.
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hstapp's review against another edition
3.0
I was unsure of this book at first. The whole that's good that's bad routine really threw me off for a bit. But overall I think the book was quite well done. It was fun and adventurous, the military stuff didn't get too bogged down. They had some weird characters and strange descriptive aside moments, but I had a really good time with it.
The romance in this book is ridiculous though, as most are. But this ones really fast and weird.
The romance in this book is ridiculous though, as most are. But this ones really fast and weird.
hstapp's review
3.0
I was unsure of this book at first. The whole that's good that's bad routine really threw me off for a bit. But overall I think the book was quite well done. It was fun and adventurous, the military stuff didn't get too bogged down. They had some weird characters and strange descriptive aside moments, but I had a really good time with it.
The romance in this book is ridiculous though, as most are. But this ones really fast and weird.
The romance in this book is ridiculous though, as most are. But this ones really fast and weird.
divyareadssister's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
nymeria1090's review against another edition
3.0
I appreciated the heavy focus on the logistics aspect of the battle since that's a fairly unique perspective, especially for Star Wars content. The writing style, however, was quite awkward and difficult to parse at times. All the characters were kind of cliched (a Rodian named Grudo, seriously?) but they weren't *too* bad. Overall kind of mediocre and really only noteworthy because it details how Anakin achieved Knighthood.