Lit Jude Watson

Hello are the Jude Watson Series any good or worth owning? Ive been recommended them and they have good reviews on amazon but i was curious about a little more detailed reviews..

 

I liked it for nostalgia value but I would probably pick it apart based on mischaricterzations granted I liked last of the Jedi

 

I have enjoyed them, easy reads and some memorable characters...

 

what series would you recommend? I think i saw about 4ish that she has writtin each with alot of books.

 

I liked Jedi Apprentice, but Jedi Quest made Anakin look like he was Sithspawn from birth so I didn't really care for it.

 

They are kind of kiddie books but I remember loving them when I was younger.

 

They're ok as long as you don't mind her portraying societes in an extremely simplistic manner and the characters fixing planetary problems every week with little or no effort. That's what bothered me out the Jedi Apprentice series at least. Maybe her other book series are better.

 

I read the Jedi Apprentice Series as a kid and thought it was pretty cool at the time. Haven't read it since then, so no idea how I would like it now. I enjoyed Xanatos...

 

Her best, or at least most interesting, book is probably the Episode I Journal for Darth Maul.

 

If you want to read about Jedi being Jedi (going around helping people, not battling the Sith or fighting in Galactic Wars every other week) then you should read them. They are aimed at a younger audience, so the writing isn't high-level, but I still rather enjoy them.

 

I thought everyone liked that idea?




I haven't read the books you're referring to, but what you described sounds kinda awesome, to me at least.

 

I want Force chokes straight out of the uterus. No, while in the uterus!

I bought the Legacy of the Jedi/Secrets of the Jedi combo because it was cheap and I didn't realize it was a young readers.

The actual stories themselves aren't bad, but yeah they're definitely written for youngsters.

I haven't read anything else of hers, and despite my jokes, I have no desire to.

 

I liked "Jedi Apprentice" with young Obi-wan. It's a pretty simplistic series but my 8 year old self loved it. It was pretty much my first foray into the EU and I really enjoyed the "fleshing out" (such as it was) of the Jedi Temple and their way of life in a stable Republic and how Padawans get chosen etc. There's also one which deals with the "jedi recruiting babies" plot which makes it clear it the parents choice and why so many people willingly gave their babies up. I have to agree there's a lot of Qui-Gon fangirling to the detriment of the other characters sometimes though.

I remember liking him I the begining but I thought the plot of his last book was pretty stupid. He starts off as someone who left the Jedi for anger/hatred over family reasons but wasn't a sith or necessarily past redemption IIRC.

Well not me, I'm fine with the idea that Vader was once an innocent boy. I haven't read the books in at least 10 years but I disliked the way it seemed Anakin and Obi Wan on the verge of breaking out into the famous duel when he was about 12, not in an "Anakin is so baddass" way "remove any poinancy, actual friendship and layers from both Obi Wan and Anakin's characterisation" way. Pretty much every little thing Anakin did was to sign post "FUTURE SITH!!", it got way boring. That and Jedi Quest seemed very recycled from the previous series in terms of characters and plots.

 

Jedi Apprentice had a lot of writing flaws (though IIRC it occasionally put out a good story), but it was a great concept and had a decent follow-through on that concept at times. Namely, Jedi actually doing what Jedi are supposed to do, instead of just being sorcerer-generals/ magic commandos. Diplomacy, crimefighting, preventing wars instead of fighting them, occasionally tackling the random dark sider, protecting the weak, etc. Basically what DarkEagle said.

I only read one or two books of Jedi Quest so I can't really speak to it.

 

Wow I sparked up a convo . I'm 26 so they might be Kiddish to me but it's ok. They seem "interesting" and I use that term loosely. So I might swing by a few stores tomorrow and see what I can find. I do have plenty to keep me busy for months to come but I like to have everything ready for when I am ready .

My gf and I are reading Star Wars books and then sending them to each other through the mail with notes about what we think of the books. (She lives in Chicago I live in Indiana.)

I think personally anakin was portrayed badly in the movies period...and the anime I haven't really watched the cgi show much yet but in everything else he is basically a Whiney little brat...but I can see how loosing his mom would devastate him and the fear of loosing his forbidden love as well. But maybe it's the actor or maybe the writing I Just thought anakin could have been more badass...and it's a shame that we could never get to see just how awesome of a jedi or sith he could have been...yea he was evil as darth Vader and a pretty good jedi but he could have been better...

 

Never been much of a fan of TCW, but I do give it credit for a heroic portrayal of Anakin (from what I remember of the first two seasons).

 

Have they ever just come clean and admitted that Alex Wheeler is her pseudonym?

 

I had the opposite reaction. Every original character felt like an interchangeable cardboard cutout to me, personally. That, along with Jude Watson's dialogue (most characters, when explaining something, do it in the most dry way possible, broken up into multiple short sentences, almost as if they're listing something).

Here's an example: say I want to explain what happened in the apocalypse.

The apocalypse started yesterday. The sky turned red. Fire fell from the sky. Earthquakes came. They toppled buildings. Creatures started crawling up through the cracks. It started to rain lightning. It was bad.

Yeah, her characters really speak like that. It's annoying. Oh great, now I'm doing it

That said, I don't think Jude Watson's output is all bad. They're very unpretentious, unapologetically lighthearted stories about Jedi doing good things. There's some decent character interaction strewn throughout. There's a kind of optimism that isn't seen in many current Star Wars works, and perhaps in no other SW work are you given a sense of what Jedi do for a living, or did before the Clone Wars. It's a nice counter balance to some of the regular novels, where Jedi are often treated with skepticism, both by the characters and the authors. In Watson's work, the Jedi are the unconditional good things (whether that's a good or bad thing is entirely up to you, but luckily the Jedi are much less arrogant in her work than in some others).

So are they worth reading? Sure, or Jedi Apprentice is, at least. Just not a high priority read.

Has Stover said he can't stand Anakin? I thought I remember, in him explaining how writing Anakin differed from some of the other characters, is that Anakin's "not afraid of his emotions", or something like that. Seemed fairly complementary, though I know his favorite Star Wars character is Obi-Wan (and Han Solo).

 

This might be the actual technique she uses, like she's re-using the same formula over and over again, like she's filling in the blanks of a template. It wouldn't surprise me, writers like Stephen King do the same thing and that's how they crank out so many books.

 

How come Jude Watson hasn't been writing any new Star Wars books lately? Spending too much time with Benedict Holmes?

 

I didn't mind the Jedi Apprentice series, and I liked how it dealt with some interesting scenarios, like the youth revolution on Melida Daan.