Jedi Academy trilogy

[Falconer]

KJA was the first one to really integrate the Dark Empire series into the Bantam Books, either on his own initiative or by directive from above.

[finarvyn]

Another chapter or so into the book. Funny how the memory plays tricks on a person because I seem to remember a lot about fleet battles or more Death Stars or something like that, but so far nothing has touched on the Empire side of things. Of course, I'm still only a small way into the first book and there are a lot of pages still to go.

So far, of the original cast we have seen Han & Chewie, Luke, Leia, R2 & Threepio, and Lando.

Also interesting is that Kessel is tied to a black hole cluster called "the Maw" that seems a little like the thing we saw in the Solo movie. I only saw Solo once, and the book is a little sketchy on details, but there seems to be sort of a maze thing associated with a "Kessel Run."

[Yora]

I wouldn't say seems a little. It's another case of Disney Star Wars dropping things from the EU directly into their own continuity. Like DSW can include Thrawn as a major character while simultaneously making the Thrawn trilogy incompatible. From the looks, Kessel seems just like the place described in this series.

Dark Empire had been written by Tom Veitch in 1991.

Jedi Search was published in early 1994 and Anderson collaborated with Veitch on Tales of the Jedi with the 8th issue published in late 1994, which has extensive crossovers with the Jedi Academy series. Starting with the 14th issue, he wrote the series by himself, with his creation Exar Kun being all at the center.

There's probably a story going on behind the scenes.

Given the timing, I find it quite likely that it had already been decided that Jedi Academy and Tales of the Jedi would crossover while Anderson was still writing Jedi Search. Weaving in Veitch's previous work seems very unsurprising in that light.

[finarvyn]

Just finished an odd Lando chapter which could have been its own short story, sort of stuck in the middle of the book. Lando (with R2 and 3PO) goes off to investigate something and ends up solving another mystery. Then he returns. Not a bad chapter, really, but it will be interesting to see if it actually ties into the rest of the storyline a little more.

Roughly 100 pages into the trilogy (my omnibus is roughly 700 pages) and still nothing from the Empire's perspective.

[finarvyn]

I'm 200 pages into the omnibus.

(1) The Empire finally showed up around page 150, 60% of the way through book 1.

(2) Overall I'm enjoying the book, but I'm remembering the thing I disliked about it: the "superkid" syndrome. I'm not sure if there is ever a good way to portray a kid as a main character but there are many ways not to, and I feel like too many authors attribute a lot of thoughts and actions to kids that probably shouldn't be there. In the book the twins Jacen and Jainia are only two years old, yet what they do just seems more mature than that. (It's fundamentally the same issue as in Phantom Menace, where this 8-year-old somehow manages to fly a complex fighter plane and accidently blow up stuff without blowing himself up in the process.) The "superkid" thing is annoying to me.

Anyway, I continue to plow through the book. Overall, more positive than negative.

[Yora]

You could say they are magic kids, which I think is the intention here.

But I also remember some other super boy being a major character in this series and he doesn't use the Force.

[finarvyn]

Finished book one of the trilogy. The last 40% was definitely stronger than the first 60%, in my opinion, due to the presence of the Empire. I found that the part about recruiting jedi was pretty "meh" but the part with the Imperials was a lot stronger.

[Falconer]

Are the Imperials written as pretty cartoonish, or are they at all competent and/or relatable?

For me the best coolest part of the first half of I, Jedi (the half that rewrites the JAT) is the description of Yavin—very cool and D&Dish ancient temples and such. Has that really come into play yet?

[finarvyn]

Overall, the Imperials are competent. It's a little strange (and I hope not a spoiler) that they would have remained hidden and working on a secret project for around a decade. That's a long time, IMO, to be totally out of communication.

Luke has selected a few candidates and the Jedi Academy has been determined to be on Yavin, but they haven't gotten there yet. I'm pretty sure much of that will happen in book 2.

My son convinced me to read "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, so book 2 may have to wait a little.