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Jedi Trial

Authors: David Sherman and Dan Cragg
Artist: Steven D. Anderson
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication Date: October 2004

Reviewed by Nathan “Valin Kenobi” O’Keefe

Summary: As a prelude to a strike at the Core, the Confederacy takes over a vital communications center on Praesitlyn. The Republic must retake the planet from the evildoers. Our heroes include Nejaa Halcyon, Anakin Skywalker, a Rodian named Grudo, and a paramilitary loyalist group known as Freedom’s Sons and Daughters. The Separatist invaders take the base personnel hostage, all heck breaks loose, things blow up, and such.

Introductory Comments: To begin with, the title itself is extremely lame. But to be fair, the titles in the entire Del Rey line (’99 - present) have gone way downhill compared to the Bantam days, so I guess I can’t hold that against this book specifically.

The cover illustration is fantastic -- easily one of the best of any SW novel so far -- but misleading inasmuch as Asajj Ventress barely appears in the book. It’s still a pretty picture, though.

Once you open the cover, the font size is much larger than in Shatterpoint and The Cestus Deception, and the lines are nearly double-spaced, resulting in about half as many words per page as those other two hardcovers. Not to mention the page count itself is shorter.

What Worked: Major SPOILERS are freely discussed below, so don’t say I didn’t warn you!

One of the coolest aspects of the book is that Anakin comes into his own as a military leader and tactical commander, no longer just a sidekick to older Jedi. This bridges the gap between the brilliant yet headstrong and intermittently bratty adolescent we’ve seen thus far, and the confident field marshal that Darth Vader is during the Galactic Civil War.

I like the integration of diverse EU content (Freedom’s Sons, Carrack Cruisers, Sate Pestage, Armand Isard) as well as some old-school material that hasn’t seen the light of day for a while. I believe this is the first time IFF transponders have surfaced in quite some time.

Plus there’s a number of hints towards Episode III, such as the inclusion of the Confederacy tri-droids and foreshadowings of a couple characters later being on the Jedi High Council.

Longtime fan favorite Nejaa Halcyon appears for only the third time in the prequel era--the first two being HoloNet News and the short story “Elusion Illusion”. That he appears at all is a good thing. And he’s a likable enough character as described in Jedi Trial. But on the other hand, he wasn’t fully connected with the Nejaa that Mike Stackpole originated and described. For instance, there was no mention of Nejaa’s close friends Rostek Horn and Ylenic It’kla, no mention of the hereditary Halcyon ability to absorb raw energy but lack of skill at telekinesis, not even an offhand mention of his black-and-green robes and distinctive silver lightsaber. All of these things were “back-referenced” in the primary sources about Halcyon (mainly I, Jedi and “Elusion Illusion” but also a couple of the X-Wing books) so it’s not like they were later tacked onto the Nejaa mythos in some obscure reference guide. From this, I get the impression that Sherman and Cragg didn’t actually read either of the primary sources and just got their Nejaa knowledge from a character summary.

I enjoyed the part near the end where Anakin lets loose and opens up a galactic-size can of whoop-ass on the enemy. We see him easily cut down droid after droid, and the clone troopers just follow after him and try not to trip over the debris. However, I was hoping he’d get pissed and unleash some truly spectacular displays of Force power -- knocking over walls, tossing around droid tanks like Matchbox cars, and so on. I guess this kind of thing is being saved for Episode III.

Additionally, during this sequence, Qui-Gon Jinn reappears as a voice in Anakin’s head, like during the Tusken Slaughter in Episode II and like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode IV. I was both pleased and surprised, since I hadn’t expected to see anything like this until Episode III (if then).

What Didn't Work: I got the impression that the authors were most comfortable when describing the military aspects of the tale, and less so with the dialogue and character development.

The dialogue was really a mixed bag. Half of it was good, although somewhat lacking in depth (more on that below), while the other half was canned banter (“Nejaa, we’re now between a rock and a very hard place.”) and uninspired declarative remarks (“General, we have to get you out of here!” and things in this vein).

There were some good insights and quips, though. Example:

Private Vick: “Oh, we’re dead, dead, dead!”

Corporal Raiders: “Stop whining! What do you think they pay us for?”

But in particular, most of Pors Tonith’s dialogue was almost laughably bad. When he’s explaining maneuvers and tactics he’s all right, but the rest is in the style of some cheesy B-movie villain. Additionally, I do understand and appreciate the motivation behind giving him the tea-drinking habit--they were trying to give the comparatively depthless character a trademark mannerism. They get points for effort, but something about the way it was handled made it seem like lame shtick.

Anyway, in general there wasn’t a lot of profundity to the dialogue. The majority of it was plain explanatory conversation revolving around things that were happening or had happened or were about to happen. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this; in fact in moderation it’s necessary to any novel. But after the psychoanalysis in MedStar and Cestus Deception, and the very deep metaphysical debates (occasionally bordering on impenetrable psychobabble) in Shatterpoint, I distinctly felt the lack of that philosophical perspective in Jedi Trial.

Because of their military backgrounds, Sherman and Cragg were naturally able to ground Jedi Trial in real-world combat experience. I did like the mentions and explanations of logistical concerns such as maintenance, consumables, and water--something that isn’t often touched on in sci-fi, let alone Star Wars.

But I have to admit that I sometimes began to tune out during the detailed descriptions of tactics and maneuvers. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the effort because it’s the first time we’ve seen that level of military detail in a SW novel, but it didn’t engage my interest the same way it will for other readers who are more tech-minded and less character-oriented.

One big “howler” of storytelling logic arises when Pors Tonith has Reija Momen read a prepared plea to the Republic rescuers over a holographic transmission and Reija inserts her own “contribution” at the end. How dumb does Tonith have to be to put this on a live feed like he did? Hasn’t he heard of tape delay? In the rest of the book he seemed quite clever (cartoonish dialogue notwithstanding) so it’s all the more puzzling that he would make a blunder like this.

It also stretches credibility that Erk and Odie would have gotten married so quickly after first meeting. I’m not sure of the timespan covered by the novel, but I guess it’s a few weeks at most.

Overall: It’s not the best of the EU or Clone Wars, but it’s far from the worst.

Lest my “Con” section seem to overpower the “Pros”, I’ll admit that my expectations were too high. Knowing about this book since January 2003, I had a really long time to anticipate it and theorize about what would be in it. It turned out to be a decent entry in the Clone Wars saga, but not quite the be-all-and-end-all, mother-of-all-prequel-novels epic that many of us in the fan community were hoping for and expecting.

Rating: 7.5/10

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