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Author	Topic: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Heart of Fire
MistrX Registered: Jun '06	Date Posted: 9/23 5:10pm Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 4: The Master of Disguise
	blackmyron posted: Also, all I can think of with that book title: Dana Carvey IS Granta Omega - MASTER OF DISGUISE! Yeah, I can't say it's a very inspiring title. -----signature----- We are well and truly forked
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Liliedhe Registered: Feb '09	Date Posted: 9/25 12:45am Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 4: The Master of Disguise
	I found Anakin's characterization in this one rather fitting - and it certainly is 'ego' that is part of his problem, just think of AOTC. About Granta Omega, I found it quite original he wasn't a Force User, Force using enemies are quite overdone. And with all the technology in the GFFA it shouldn't be a problem to do disguises that are more than fake noses... Sure, he isn't a physical danger in a fight - he is a danger in the way Siddy is, because he is stacking the cards to his favour without any outward signs... It gives the whole thing a subtle irony because even with Omega showing them how this kind of manipulation is accomplished, they still can't see Sidious handiwork^^. Also, he is an interesting case study as a son of a force sensitive father who got no recognition from him for this, and who is now desperately trying to compensate. -----signature----- Joint Winner - PT Trivia Challenge 18+New Edition
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Rogue1-and-a-half Title: Manager: Amphitheatre Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 10/5 2:33pm Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 4: The Master of Disguise - Date Edited: 10/5 2:50pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Rogue1-and-a-half
	25 Years Before ANH: Jedi Quest #5: The School of Fear – Jude Watson So approximately a year has gone by since Granta Omega last escaped the Jedi and left Anakin, once again, sadder but no wiser. What a corny cover shot. Five characters in a vaguely pyramidic shape walking resolutely toward the viewer as a bight light flares behind them. Cue your Bill Conti music any time. Also, Christiansen’s head is too big for the body they photoshopped it onto. I actually really loved the opening sequence which involves Anakin and Obi-Wan waiting to hear the results of an Order to Reveal that they have filed against Sano Sauro in order to force him to tell the Jedi what he knows about Granta Omega. It opens with Anakin and Obi-Wan waiting in a Senate Hallway. Anakin is musing on Yaddle’s imprisonment, detailed in The One Below, which we talked about before, and thinking that even she would become impatient if forced to deal with Senate procedures. Now that’s how you do a tie in; concise, witty, unforced, totally natural. I also really like Tyro Caladian, the Senate Aide that Watson introduces here as an ally of the Jedi. Caladian? Seriously, though . . . Given Watson’s affinity for verbal tics, I suppose he’ll start saying “eh” as soon as he shows up. There’s a cameo appearance by Mas Ameda, or perhaps his clone, given that his name is rendered, repeatedly, as Mas Ameeda. No appearance by Palpatine, but Ameda gives Obi-Wan a message from him, which was a nice little nod. Get this: “He carried himself with his usual gravity, his hands clasped in front of him and his lethorns resting against the deep blue of his rich robes.” Lethorns? I just called them stalagtites. Because remember, stalagmites might* have from the ceiling, but they don’t. So, Sauro invokes a three hundred year old privilege blocking the Order to Reveal. Obi-Wan nearly loses his temper, but stifles himself for the sake of his Padawan. So, anyway, the new mission, given by Mace Windu, involves the disappearance of a Senator’s son from a very elite school. Anakin and Ferus will go undercover as students at the school (most tired cliché ever? Perhaps) while Obi-Wan investigates at the Senate and Siri travels to the Senators homeworld to investigate there. A nice moment as Obi-Wan and Anakin share a little actual banter about the fact that Obi-Wan’s been assigned to The Senate while Anakin has been partnered with Ferus; so both are living out their respective worst nightmares. I did enjoy the moment where Anakin reflects on how much he enjoys just being another anonymous student as opposed to someone known all over the Temple as the “Chosen One.” I remarked back in my Rogue Planet review about Mace Windu being so flip about calling Anakin that in what fell on my ear as rather mean-spirited sarcasm. Apparently Anakin gets that kind of stuff from everybody. A nice character moment that shows Anakin doing his best to appear an average student despite the fact that he already knows all the answers thanks to his training at the Temple. Ferus, on the other hand, keeps showing everyone else up. Obi-Wan’s investigations with Tyro turn up a serious motive for Sano Sauro to have arranged the kidnapping. As well, if Obi-Wan were to prove that Sauro had orchestrated the kidnapping his Privilege overturning the Order to Reveal would also be overturned and Obi-Wan could get on Omega’s trail again. Okay, if you didn’t figure out who the bad guy really was during that first interview with Obi-Wan and the kidnapped boy’s father, you need to go directly to any Agatha Christie novel and read it, do not pass go. You know, compared to this stuff, that whole hot chocolate thing seems pretty subtle: “Besides, if Ferus told on Reymet, he’d be a tattletale, what the students called a womp fink.” Oh . . . brother. Sauro appears briefly, baiting the missing boy’s father at a party. Obi-Wan follows him back to his office and accosts him. Great exchange: “Perhaps I should bring you up on charges.” “What charges?” “Breaking and entering for one. The Force is a weapon like any other.” “ The Force is not a weapon.” As with The Master of Disguise, Sauro only has the one appearance in this book, but his presence is felt throughout, a malevolent, frustrating villain. Sauro, frankly, is much more interesting to me than Omega is. The combination of Sauro’s past with Obi-Wan and his apparent serious power consolidation in the Senate make him a fascinating character to me. I’d say that when a B villain is more interesting than the A villain, that’s a problem. Then again, isn’t Star Wars, as an entire saga, really about discovering the hidden depths of the B villain? So, Anakin falls in with a group of students who operate as mercenaries; they are all scholarship students, as Anakin’s cover is as well. They take money to do jobs for people of all types. Impressed by Anakin’s piloting skill, and also, though it’s unspoken, his resentment toward the rich students, they ask him to join their group. In an interesting moment, one of the girls in the team reminds Anakin of Padme, though he doesn’t use her name. Hmm, is it just me or is it odd that we didn’t get any* Padme centered EU for this whole between movies period? Is it because the authors didn’t know for sure what her status was going to be when AOTC started? His initiation involves a swoop race around the school grounds without alerting the guards. At one point, Anakin hides in a tree directly above some guards and then flies away without them detecting him. Do swoops not have engines or what? Or just one hell of a muffler? So, this group Anakin falls in with would be the group on the cover, I guess. So . . . um, which one of these guys: is a Bothan. Because either this changes everything I’ve ever believed about Borsk Fey’lya or the guy on the far left did a full body shave this morning and got a nose job. Anakin ruminates on how, in committing himself to the Jedi Order, he has really only traded one form of slavery for another. Anakin and Ferus disagree about Anakin’s infiltrating of the group. In a great bit, Ferus dismisses the group’s complaints about being looked down by scholarship students as an excuse. He legitimately doesn’t see that the scholarship students are looked down, even by himself. Which is a great character moment for Ferus. Also, can I tell you how glad I am that Ferus dropped that whole “No stress with that” thing he did in the first book? Ferus believes the culprit is another student. He goes off to investigate and disappears. Anakin debates whether to blow his own cover in order to contact Obi-Wan, but decides instead to accompany the group on their next mission. Obi-Wan finally realizes that if security was so tight that the missing boy couldn’t have been taken off campus that he’s obviously just hidden somewhere on campus. This dazzling insight does not make Obi-Wan look quite as brilliant as you’d think, given that everyone reading the book actually came to the same conclusion seven chapters earlier. Obi-Wan and Siri infiltrate the school pretending to be wealthy parents who are considering sending their children to the school. This leads to the kind of ‘hilarious’ comedy we’ve come to expect from Watson over the years. Anyway, they find Ferus; he’s being held prisoner in a storage area of the school. He was investigating and discovered the missing boy hiding there. Yes, that’s right, just as we all knew as soon as the holovid of the kidnapped boy weeping and struggling against his bonds showed up, the supposedly kidnapped boy is the mastermind of the entire scheme. Ferus has also deduced that the son intends to fake his own death and frame his father for it (resentment, you know the drill). Anakin has been suckered into joining the group on their mission so that they can kill him, disfigure his corpse and leave the kidnapped boy’s ID with him, so as to pass off Anakin’s corpse as Gillam’s. Yeah, his name is Gillam. I was getting tired, at long last, of calling him ‘the kidnapped boy.’ A nice moment when Ferus, upon being rescued just apologizes for needing rescue and Obi-Wan realizes that he would miss Anakin’s wisecracks if their pairing ever broke up. A great climax as the team turns on Anakin to kill him; Obi-Wan, Siri and Ferus arrive just in time to see Anakin mop up on the team, destroy a battalion of battle droids and take out a starfighter. This passage was really great; Anakin slips into some incredibly deep place in the Force, some crazy oneness that makes everyone else move in incredibly slow motion compared to him. And then the chapter ends with this passage: Across the space, he looked at his Master. He waited for Obi-Wan to acknowledge him. The mission was over. He had been successful. He had found Gillam and thwarted an invasion. He waited, standing in the cockpit, looking down. He could feel the flush of triumph on his cheeks. Siri glanced at him, as did Ferus. He could see the astonishment on their faces. But his Master never looked up. The next chapter opens with this passage: Never had Obi-Wan seen such a great display of the Force from a Padawan. From the great Jedi Masters, yes. From Qui-Gon, near the end of his life. But from someone so young? Anakin’s power astonished him. He had glimpsed it before, but now he had seen it unfurl, and it staggered him . . . He could see that Siri and Ferus had been just as astonished at Anakin’s deep connection to the Force . . .Astonished, yes – and disturbed. Unease settled into Obi-Wan’s bones, joining his disappointment and the anger he had tried to eliminate from his heart. To have a Padawan so gifted who was capable of being so wrong – it was his gift to be able to teach him. It was his burden as well . . . He could not even look at Anakin. God, that’s brilliant. I mean, really brilliant. This book, unlike some of the others, has Anakin failing, but in the end all the blame rests on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. It is Obi-Wan’s deep dysfunctionality that comes to the fore at the climax of this book; so frightened, so disappointed, so angry with his own Padawan that he cannot even look at him . . . that, I think, says it all. More on this shortly. When Obi-Wan and Anakin are finally left alone together, Obi-Wan loses his cool and shouts at Anakin about the mistakes he made on the mission. It’s chilling to see this happen. And it stands in sharp contrast to the Obi-Wan we started the book with, an Obi-Wan who swallowed his anger so that he might continue to be a good example to his Padawan. Now, he looses that anger and, ironically and tragically, it is loosed on that very Padawan he hoped to be an example too. And then this astounding bit: ”You betrayed me and the order by your actions. And your inability to see that troubles me the worst of all.” “I am sorry, Master.” Obi-Wan shook his head. Grief rose in him. “Those are words you speak so easily, Padawan.” Anakin’s mouth closed in a line. “I don’t know what you want from me.” Honesty. Loyalty. Patience. Obedience. Obi-Wan thought these things but did not say them. Because, after all, they were only words too. “I can only show you the path,” Obi-Wan said. “You must choose to walk on it.” “I just . . .” Anakin stopped. He took a ragged breath. “I thought you would be proud of me.” I am proud of you. Obi-Wan wanted to say the words. They were true. He was proud of so much in Anakin. But now was not the time to tell him that. Or was it? Help me, Qui-Gon. But no matter how hard Obi-Wan listened, he could not hear the quiet wisdom of his master. And now it was too late. That’s really pretty painful, but it gets to the heart of the matter, which is this: the greatest tragedy in the history of the GFFA was a failure to communicate. It was the “no” at the end of Munich. This is why Obi-Wan is perhaps the most fascinating character in this universe. He is, as we see here, absolutely terrified of doing the wrong thing. So terrified, in fact, that he consistently does the wrong thing. Here, he is afraid to reinforce Anakin’s bad behavior by admitting to him that he is proud of him; so he hesitates until he is lost – it is too late to say the words, others have entered the room and intruded. And so Anakin never receives the positive reinforcement that he so desperately needs. It is, I suppose, that Obi-Wan still doesn’t think he is good enough. At connecting with Anakin, at taking responsibility for a student, at everything. He considered himself not good enough to be Qui-Gon’s apprentice, not ready to take the trials, not ready to lose his master, not ready to train the boy, not able to connect with Anakin. He dithers, he hesitates, he is unsure, always unsure. And so he is, for the modern or the post-modern reader, the most easily understandable and accessible. I at least feel that I know him; I feel that I am him some days. Who among hasn’t hesitated a moment too long out of uncertainty or fear or self-loathing and seen the day lost because of that hesitation? I’ve certainly done that; many times. It isn’t that I entirely blame Obi-Wan for Anakin’s fall. But I find the part he played the most instructive. And I’m glad to see Watson bringing it to the front in this book; this book is Obi-Wan’s failure, much more than it is Anakin’s. Underlining this is the fact that near the climax, Obi-Wan discovers that Sano Sauro is in fact innocent of any involvement in this kidnapping. Corrupt and criminal though he may be, he has nothing to do with this crime. Obi-Wan necessarily realizes that he is guilty of the same thing that he has accused Anakin of countless times: letting his personal agenda and antipathy for someone else cloud his judgment. He realizes this at the time, but it isn’t enough to stop his tirade at the climax. In fact, what Obi-Wan has done is exactly what Anakin did in The Dangerous Games, assuming Sebulba’s guilt in the race fixing simply because of their past; Obi-Wan has done exactly the same with Sauro. What this series is really doing though is making me sad, making me daydream again about the two books I know I’ll never, ever see. The first is a chronicle of the fracturing of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship, drawn out in novel form over several years; with not much narrative drive and much space to focus on the characters, we can see inside each character’s head and really understand what causes their relationship to sour. This book would be written by a talented adult, aimed at adults. Obviously, I’m asking for a sequel to Rogue Planet. RP gave us the moment when Obi-Wan and Anakin actually finally formed a relationship, when Obi-Wan finally gained the heart of a master. It showed us the love and affection that underpins them and their relationship. Maybe Bear could come back and write the book that explains how that love turns cancerous and afraid, how their relationship splinters. And, as long as I’m dreaming, the other book I’ll never see is a single volume, meandering, mostly plotless look at Obi-Wan’s twenty years on Tatooine, preferably with big time jumps and long sections with no dialogue. An old man getting older and older, sadder and sadder, wrestling to come to terms with himself, working through and maybe past the idea of blame. Odd. I prefer everything OT era: movies, EU, characters. I’d leave most of the PT and earlier era alone really. Except. Except Obi-Wan; he contradicts himself, he contains multitudes. And yet, his essential character and his essential dilemmas remain mostly untapped outside of this intriguing but ultimately low rent kid books. You say The Approaching Storm, I’ll punch you in the nose. Well, never see those books, so I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing: extrapolating from the ones I do have and occasionally linking to Obi-Wan is the Saddest Character, probably the best thread I’ve ever seen that was actually about Star Wars. This book: better, certainly, than The Master of Disguise. Not as good as The Dangerous Games, but probably more or less on a level with the second book in this series, which title I cannot remember for the fragging life of me. ½ out of ** -----signature----- Don't be a fool, don't be blind Heart of mine If you can't do the time, don't do the crime Heart of mine
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The2ndQuest Title: Manager: -Literature -LACWAC -Games Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 10/5 3:13pm Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 5: The School of Fear
	Rogue1-and-a-half posted: This one opens with Obi-Wan and Anakin, along with another master/padawan pair, arriving on the planet Haariden where civil war has been raging for ten years. Haariden. We get it. I don't- care to explain? -----signature----- "When your future self tells you to do something, YOU DO IT." K'Kruhk, 140 ABY:"Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker? Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
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Rogue1-and-a-half Title: Manager: Amphitheatre Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 10/6 2:09pm Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 5: The School of Fear
	Harridan A stretch? I doubt it. -----signature----- Don't be a fool, don't be blind Heart of mine If you can't do the time, don't do the crime Heart of mine
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The2ndQuest Title: Manager: -Literature -LACWAC -Games Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 10/6 8:45pm Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 5: The School of Fear
	Never heard of that word before, but it's probably a reference to it, yeah. -----signature----- "When your future self tells you to do something, YOU DO IT." K'Kruhk, 140 ABY:"Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker? Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
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Rogue1-and-a-half Title: Manager: Amphitheatre Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 10/10 9:10am Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 5: The School of Fear
	Jedi Quest #6: The Shadow Trap – Jude Watson This one opens as Anakin and Obi-Wan schlep around the temple between missions. An undisclosed amount of time has passed since Obi-Wan’s tirade about Anakin’s ‘failure,’ which wasn’t much of one, if you ask me, but we’re still in the same calendar year and there still exists a dark coolness between the two of them. Neither of them have really gotten over the climax of the previous book. Anakin has a vision that features Shmi; this would be her first appearance since TPM, some seven years ago. Obi-Wan and Anakin consult with Yoda and, because Anakin’s vision features a mysterious voice stating ‘The One Below will remain below,’ Yoda deduces that the Force is trying to tell him to send Obi-Wan and Anakin to accompany Yaddle on her next mission, to an utterly ungoverned planet called Mawan, a planet currently split up and constantly feuded over by three rival crime lords. Obi-Wan notes, in interior monologue, that Anakin had been wrong on Andara and so utterly wrong that it still stuns him. Okay, I’ve had enough of this. Anakin thought that if he went on the mission with the team, that they would lead him to the missing boy and to the brains behind everything. That is exactly what happened; he then defeated them all single handedly before your ass even showed up, Oafy-Wan. And it’s not like Ferus was in any danger for being left behind. All the bad guys were with Anakin getting their asses kicked. So, why don’t you let it go? Anakin made a good call and it worked perfectly. The main plot of this book is so boring, I can’t even tell you. Swanny and Rorq, two scruffy fringe elements helping the Jedi, are just so annoying that they could have very easily been plopped into any of the Jedi Apprentice books and you wouldn’t have noticed a problem. So, Yaddle does, in fact, talk exactly like Yoda. One of the three crime lords is a mysterious figure known only as Striker. I give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. There is a fairly neat sequence where Obi-Wan confronts the Mawan crimelord and essentially just talks her into joining their side out of loyalty to her home planet. Greatest sentence ever: “The band was called Swanny and the Rooters.” So, Obi-Wan and Anakin infiltrate Decca the Hutt’s lair disguised as backup singers for Swanny’s band. Apparently, Obi-Wan can’t sing. In a neat tie to The Approaching Storm, we find out that Anakin can. Or it would have been neat if that bit in Approaching Storm hadn’t been utterly risible. Decca the Hutt is described as Gardulla’s daughter. She took over Gardulla’s crime empire after Gardulla’s death. Gardulla’s dead? No way. She didn’t die at the end of Outlander, did she? Anakin is captured in an attack on Decca’s hideout by Striker’s group. He loses his lightsaber and is hauled away. And then suddenly, just when we most expect it, Striker shows up and turns out to be Granta Omega. Oh! Oh God! gasp* Oh horror! Oh what a cruel twist of fate! faints Again, Granta Omega is called the Jedi’s ‘greatest enemy.’ Which I guess means that Palpatine is a loser or something. Also, clone army? Unimportant. Okay, get this: Page 61: “Granta Omega . . . was not Force sensitive.” Page 62: “Omega . . . was what was known as a ‘void,’ a being who could neutralize his appearance and aura so completely that those who met him could not recall what he looked like.” The hell? Come on, Jude. He can manipulate his physical appearance and his ‘aura,’ whatever the hell that is, and change people’s memories of him and he’s NOT Force sensitive? Is this the White Current or what? Cause this is stupid. I mean, my understanding was that all power in the galaxy flowed from the Force. Are you saying that Omega is able to manipulate people’s minds and his physical appearance and his very soul and being by tapping into a power that is NOT the Force? What, pray tell, might that power be? And how does one neutralize one’s appearance? Take a power sander to one’s face? Now we find out that Anakin is seeing the real Omega; he is ‘not much’ older than Obi-Wan. Which means that he isn’t a student, as he was apparently, in his previous appearance and this smooths out the continuity problems with him being the villain in Deceptions. So, I think he definitely was. Anakin and Omega have the kind of intense philosophical debate one finds on only the best episodes of Sesame Street. “The dream is real because I am living it.” “I don’t want your brand of freedom.” Obi-Wan and Yaddle take back a power grid station, giving Yaddle some small chance to do something cool before she dies. Damn! I guess I’m not supposed to have known that yet. In a moment that actually made me laugh, Anakin contacts Yaddle with Omega’s demands: A face to face meeting between Yaddle and Omega. Anakin signs off with “May the Force be with you” prompting Omega to roll his eyes and say, “Oh, please.” A nice moment between Yaddle and Obi-Wan after Yaddle has forbidden Obi-Wan to come with her to the meeting. ”All right. But tell Omega that I will see him soon.” “A threat that is. And so deliver it, I will not. Unless I have to.” Best entry line ever for a Jedi: “Ah, the wee one approaches.” Anyway, Omega’s pulled a fast one (just when we most expect it . . .). He has a bioweapon poised to launch, unless Yaddle allows him to kill both herself and Anakin. Yaddle frees Anakin with a movement of incredible quickness and then she uses a nearby launch tube to catapult herself after the bioweapon. Long story short, she gives her life to keep the bioweapon from killing everyone on Mawan. Anakin realizes that Yaddle took the time to free him from his rigged cuffs because she, at least, truly believes he is the Chosen One. He is not comforted by this fact. Seriously, though, given that Yaddle was able to draw and ignite her lightsaber and cut off Anakin’s cuffs before Anakin could even see her move and before Omega could even say the word, “Launch,” why couldn’t she have just cut Omega’s head off and ended the whole sad ordeal? Anakin, in grieving for Yaddle, can’t get his mind to comprehend that a member of the Jedi Council has actually died. I guess Yareal Poof’s funeral didn’t stick with him very long. Long. Yareal Poof. I kill myself. Long. Hahaha. Yareal Poof’s funeral wasn’t long enough. DO YOU GET IT?! Obi-Wan, grieving for Yaddle, recalls his days as a youngling when “her touch on the top of his head had felt like the most comforting thing in the world.” Dude, that’s sweet and all, but how frigging short was Obi-Wan as a youngling? In a devastating flip to the climax of the previous book, where Anakin wanted positive feedback from his master and didn’t get it, here Obi-Wan gives Anakin comfort and affirmation that Yaddle’s death is not his fault. But Anakin simply believes in his heart, that Obi-Wan didn’t mean it. That’s quite painful. Yoda says, upon hearing about Yaddle’s death, “Felt the Force move, I did. Know I did that she was gone.” They were totally gettin’ it on like every night. The rest of the story isn’t much. Yoda arrives, comforts Anakin and the coalition attacks Striker’s headquarters, destroying his force. Omega flees, but not before revealing to Obi-Wan (in another of those protracted confrontations that you’d think would allow someone, somewhere, to just hit him just once with a lightsaber) that he is Xanato’s son. I always thought Xanatos was about fifteen or something in that other series. I never pictured him as old enough to have a son. Blah blah, he gets away again, but not before revealing his secret pain: Xanatos looked down on him because he wasn’t Force sensitive. Odd that the ability to alter your physical appearance, cloud the minds of others, manipulate memories and change your ‘aura’ didn’t impress the man. He must have been hard. Yoda castigates Anakin for blaming himself for Yaddle’s death. All of their faults, it was, Yoda says. Anakin refuses, in his mind, to truly accept it and the book ends with the realization that Obi-Wan and Anakin are farther apart than ever. Well, I suppose this is the first ‘big event’ book Watson got handed. She actually gets to off a movie character and a member of the Council to boot. And Yaddle’s death comes just two years or so after Yareal Poof’s death. The Council’s getting hit hard in the interim, which is what needs to be happening. The idea that this is a crueler, colder, harder galaxy is quite interesting and Watson is doing a fairly good job of getting it across. Certainly this series is much better than I’d have anticipated after her dreadful JA series. This one didn’t have a very good plot; likewise, I didn’t really feel that this got at much of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship. Certainly not after the staggering nihilism of the last book’s climax. And it didn’t have anything like the utter corruption of The Dangerous Games. This one had more comic relief, less nihilistic cynicism. Even Yaddle’s death didn’t sting nearly as bad as Sebulba’s near death in The Dangerous Games. Or Obi-Wan’s betrayal by Didi. I did get a small kick out of seeing Yaddle die, if only because I like seeing big events like that. But this book had really no emotional resonance at all. Also the big reveal about Omega’s parentage? I don’t care. Xanatos was a cardboard cutout of a character that I found totally boring every time he was on screen in JA. You may not want to send Omega down that path, Jude. * 1/2 out of **** stars. -----signature----- Don't be a fool, don't be blind Heart of mine If you can't do the time, don't do the crime Heart of mine
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Plaristes Registered: Jul '07	Date Posted: 10/10 10:29am Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 6: The Shadow Trap
	Rogue1-and-a-half posted: Decca the Hutt is described as Gardulla’s daughter. She took over Gardulla’s crime empire after Gardulla’s death. Gardulla’s dead? No way. She didn’t die at the end of Outlander, did she? Gardulla dies in Bounty Hunter*. -----signature----- "Adaption" is not an English word. Ahsoka is annoying; seeing "Ashoka" typed is even more annoying. "Begs the question" does not mean "raises the question"
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TalonCard Title: •Author: Slave Pits of Lorrd •TFN EU Staff Registered: Jan '01	Date Posted: 10/10 10:57am Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 6: The Shadow Trap
	Rogue1-and-a-half posted: *Decca the Hutt is described as Gardulla’s daughter. She took over Gardulla’s crime empire after Gardulla’s death. Gardulla’s dead? No way. She didn’t die at the end of Outlander, did she? Jango Fett killed her during the Bounty Hunter game. Gardulla also had another offspring, named Gardulla. This is important to remember when future references to Gardulla pop up. (See Tatooine Ghost.) TC -----signature----- Death in the Slave Pits: http://www.starwars.com/hyperspace/fiction/feature20090531/index.html GODV Guide: www.myuselessknowledge.com/swfa/main.html Hyperspace Blog: http://blogs.starwars.com/taloncard
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The2ndQuest Title: Manager: -Literature -LACWAC -Games Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 10/11 8:24pm Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 6: The Shadow Trap
	Plaristes posted: Rogue1-and-a-half posted: Decca the Hutt is described as Gardulla’s daughter. She took over Gardulla’s crime empire after Gardulla’s death. Gardulla’s dead? No way. She didn’t die at the end of Outlander, did she? Gardulla dies in Bounty Hunter. You can watch it happen here @ 3:09 into the video. That couldn't have tasted good, I'm sorry. Only shame is it was done with in-game graphics and not the ILM model-using cut scenes. Rogue1-and-a-half* posted: *And how does one neutralize one’s appearance? Take a power sander to one’s face? Glad I wasn't drinking anything -----signature----- "When your future self tells you to do something, YOU DO IT." K'Kruhk, 140 ABY:"Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker? Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
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Rogue1-and-a-half Title: Manager: Amphitheatre Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 11/14 8:17am Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Jedi Quest 6: The Shadow Trap - Date Edited: 11/14 8:19am (1 edits total) Edited By: Rogue1-and-a-half
	Star Crash – Doug Petrie, Randy Green, Andy Owens Well, I recently got hold of an interesting little book that I’m sure most of you are aware of, a little book called Menace Revealed. Menace Revealed is of course the latest in a fabulous and long overdue venture, a series of omnibus editions of Star Wars comics featuring lots of comics that were either never reprinted in TPB or else were reprinted long ago in long out of print and hard to find TPBs. For someone like me, a completist (or possibly just an obsessive-compulsive), these are Godsends. Rarities, reprints, one shots, even ToysRUs comics. I got ahold of Menace Revealed because I was up to the point on the timeline to read Starfighter: Crossbones, a four issue series from DH that is being reprinted for the first time in MR. And in MR I found several other stories I had skipped the first time around; some of them make a pretty good case for not being a completist, but then, you know, OCD, so here, without further ado is the first of four Flashback Reviews! Star Crash was a single issue story in the ongoing Star Wars comic, one of the only single issue stories that I’m aware of (there was also The Devaronian Version, but other than that, nothing is leaping to mind). As such, it was never published in a trade. Our timeline places it at around thirty years prior to Yavin. It takes place during the Quinlan Vos arc; after Vos’ padawan had gone missing but before he had managed to track her down and about a year before we pick back up with Obi-Wan and Anakin with the JA special editions and Rogue Planet. Frankly, having now read it, I see no reason for actually placing it here, other than the fact that this is where it falls in the ongoing comic series, between Infinity’s End and The Hunt for Aurra Sing. Given the way everyone is dressed, the odd sort of dragonfly looking ships the villains are flying and the incredibly low tech vibe here (the main villain is dispatched by being stabbed with an old fashioned metal blade) I’d think this one should actually go farther back on the timeline. You know, if it has to be on the timeline at all. I seem to recall someone saying up thread, when I skipped this one before, that it’s sort of a riff on The Legend of Zelda. I guess. Our Jedi hero (such as he is) is named Yoshi. Yuk yuk. He crashes, of course, on a small, isolated planet, after being shot down by some mysterious enemies in some very odd ships. I’ve never seen these ships before and it is never revealed who exactly those enemies are or why they shot him down. Is it revealed anywhere else? Because if its not, then I find that incredibly stupid and irritating. So, the small planet is populated by a race of elves, basically, who are under the rule of a despot who is plotting to marry their princess and keeps all citizens under a strict curfew. Yoshi’s lightsaber has been broken in the crash, so he is reduced to bashing robots with sledgehammers. He also, it should be noted, laments his lightsaber being broken and then tries to use it on a robot within, I’d estimate, half an hour at the outside. Yoshi walks in on a cheesecake shot of the princess. Is it cheesecake still if it has side boobage? Yoshi basically gets his ass handed to him on a platter by the despotic leader. It’s up to the princess to slit his gullet. Yoshi repairs his lightsaber using parts from a giant robot and then kills the giant robot, so he is at least slightly effectual. The princess sends him away with the admonition to grow up a little and then return to her. I heartily echo the former sentiment, but not the latter. What exactly is the point of this? This is sort of the definitive filler. The story is nothing new; the story, worse yet, isn’t even really a Star Wars story as much as it’s a fantasy story that involves a guy that uses a lightsaber one time (he doesn’t even ever use the Force!). Well, he uses the Force to try to center himself and regain control of his ship in the opening sequence. Then he crashes. Yeah, like that. As well, the story opens with a nonsensical event; Yoshi is essentially randomly shot down. For no purpose, near as we can tell. Yeah, Menace Revealed. Whatever. The menace of a deadline, apparently. What a disaster. 0 out of *** stars. -----signature----- Don't be a fool, don't be blind Heart of mine If you can't do the time, don't do the crime Heart of mine
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The2ndQuest Title: Manager: -Literature -LACWAC -Games Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 11/14 9:00pm Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Star Crash
	Rogue1-and-a-half posted: *Star Crash was a single issue story in the ongoing Star Wars comic, one of the only single issue stories that I’m aware of (there was also The Devaronian Version, but other than that, nothing is leaping to mind). The Devaronian Version was actually two issues. -----signature----- "When your future self tells you to do something, YOU DO IT." K'Kruhk, 140 ABY:"Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker? Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
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Jmacq1 Registered: May '05	Date Posted: 11/17 6:14am Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Star Crash
	I always had a soft spot for Star Crash. Maybe because I'm a Legend of Zelda fan, or whatever. I know it was out of place and bordered on complete nonsense, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. I do think it works great if you treat it as some kind of in-universe adventure-comedy "b-movie" holo, though of course it's not presented as such. Odd bit of trivia: Yoshi Raph-Elan (the Jedi from this story) was originally selected as one of General Grievous' victims for one of those lists they did of all the Jedi he killed, but his name was removed by Lucasfilm prior to the publication of said list. I suspect because they simply didn't want to reference Star Crash anywhere else (as opposed to "because they had plans for using Yoshi somewhere else"). Anyway, I admit I wouldn't mind finding out what happened to Yoshi. Even if it was just "he was gunned down by his clone troopers in Order 66" or "He died in the arena at Geonosis." Again, assuming the story is still considered in-continuity and in the timeframe it's presented.
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Rogue1-and-a-half Title: Manager: Amphitheatre Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 11/21 8:40am Subject: Journey Through the EU: Disc. Star Crash
	Heart of Fire – John Ostrander, Jan Duursema This was a Dark Horse Extra meant to provide a brief breathing space in the Quinlan Vos arc. It comes directly after The Hunt for Aurra Sing and directly before Darkness, the story where Quinlan finally finds his lost padawan. As such, it’s only three pages of material. It tells of an encounter between Quinlan and a young Twi’lek Padawan in the Temple’s Meditation Garden. The padawan shares her memories of Aayla with Quinlan, since she knows that he has no real memories of her. She then gives him a small stone, called the Heart of Fire, that Aayla gave her when she first arrived at the temple, a gift from Aayla to this young girl, who, at that time, was the only other Twi’lek girl at the Temple. Quinlan rather reluctantly takes the stone and feels a rush of emotion and a flood of memories of Aayla return. He is reawakened in his quest and swears anew to find his missing apprentice. Against all odds (take a look at me now!), I actually kind of liked this little story. It’s unpretentious, brief but a touching character moment. Also, this young padawan girl is the young padawan who appears in The Hunt for Aurra Sing, just prior to this story; she sees her master murdered in front of her. Oddly, Menace Revealed flips the order; The Hunt for Aurra Sing (not that such a crappy story needed a reprint) appears after* Heart of Fire, rather than before, which seems an odd error to make. Regardless, this story is less about a beatific little child angelically visiting a troubled soul than it is about two incredibly damaged souls finding a moment to bond over their shared losses. And I find that quite moving. * ½ out of **** stars. -----signature----- Don't be a fool, don't be blind Heart of mine If you can't do the time, don't do the crime Heart of mine
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