Rebecca Moesta

The Jedi trainees are ready to make their lightsabers, but Tenel Ka is impatient with herself. She rushes the delicate process, and her lightsaber gives out during a training duel with Jacen--and his lightsaber promptly cuts off her arm. Stricken, Tenel Ka returns to her homeworld. She has always defined herself as a warrior, and now she thinks herself useless. But her grandmother's tough love, and her friends' good sense, convince her that she can still be a warrior, and she returns to the show more Academy to complete her training.

I loved this book. Tenel Ka shines, and the friendships feel real and specific. There's a scene where the twins teach her to braid her hair with only one hand that I remember to this day. And the book doesn't pull back in its portrayal of her grief and feelings of worthlessness. In this book, the characterization IS the plot. show less

Jaina and Jacen return to Coruscant for a vacation and see an old friend, Zekk. But though the twins have had plenty of adventures, they've never experienced the problems Zekk has. Orphaned, destitute, without any support, Zekk has been making a living in the underworld of the city. He feels humiliated by his old friends' success and obvious privilege. They try to include him, but after he eats the centerpiece at a feast (thinking it to be a salad), he refuses to have anything to do with show more them. Instead, he is recruited by the Shadow Academy, where the witches twist and train him to be a dark Jedi.

It's fascinating to me that there are still serious class issues and poverty in the New Republic, but it makes sense--Lucas's universe is based on the ideal of elitism. For a young adult book, there is a great deal of tension here. show less

A decent YA altenate world adventure, easy to read and fairly pacey. The worldbuilding is relatively novel. You can see the twist coming miles off, but that's partly because it's being flagged up well.

A slight reservation is the handling of the other worlds. I found something a little odd about the other offworld characters and the presentation of their home worlds. You have a proud sultan's son with a djinn riding a magic carpet, and a tough spear-wielding dark-skinned girl from the wilds show more of Afirik. On the one hand, yay diversity and I quite liked the actual characters. On the other, there's something a little weird about this because despite being from different worlds, they are so fundamentally a mythical Persian and an African tribal warrior (thus also honestly pretty clichéd).

I think the reason it jars is because it's taking Earth people and their cultural background, but saying they're aliens. I mean, is Afirik basically a whole world that's one specific perception of Africa but with some magic? Is Irrakesh a whole world that's the Arabian Nights? They sound that way in the book. Earth isn't so limited. And if magic carpets and djinni are (in this storyline) tied to another world, then what about actual Arabian mythology?

It just feels strange because these could just as easily be other people sucked in from Earth, and by making them from other worlds that are (apparently) restricted to those concepts, it seems to restrict both the characters and the worldbuilding, while also putting an odd distance between the middle-class white Americans and the two non-white kids who are literally from other worlds despite being so obviously based on Earth ideas. I do wonder how non-white kids would find this. show less

I finally got around to reading this Next Generation graphic novel, published by Wildstorm way back in the day. To say that I'm not a fan of Kevin J. Anderson would be putting it mildly, but I think that this is the first time that I've dipped into his comic book work. The story itself is decent: a little cliche, in that it involves the Enterprise crew convincing a violent race that there are better ways to do things (yay peaceful cooperation!), but it's executed surprisingly well. My show more favorite part, however, was the subplot with Commander Riker and a crew of dishonored Klingons scrabbling to build an outpost and defend against the Gorn. I was a little disappointed to see the Gorn in this section defeated with the old cold-blooded lifeform standby-- turning the heat down-- though. What really makes the story work, however, is Igor Kordey's glorious painted artwork. His likenesses of the crew are good, not necessarily precisely accurate, but they work well. What truly excels is his depiction of the Gorn: they are definitely fearsome, aggressive warriors here, not to be trifled with. It is clear from his artwork and from Kordey's "dossier" on the Gorn in the backmatter that he put a lot of thought and work into the depiction of this then-one-episode Star Trek race, and that the so-so story works as well as it does is a testament to him far more than it is to the writers. show less