Books Jedi Academy Trilogy

I often hear on here people saying how the JAT was not well received by the fandom. And I hear people trash this trilogy all the time. I read it when I was 17 and was relatively new to the EU. I had only read the Han Solo Trilogy and the TTT at the time. I absolutely loved the trilogy, and I was so excited to finally see the Academy on Yavin. I thought it was exciting, and loved how it tied in with TOTJ. I then read I,Jedi, and loved how that tied in as well.

So, four years later, I've heard how much people didn't like the trilogy. My brother (who is also new to the EU having only read TTT and the HST) asks me if should read it. I said yes of course.

But I wonder why so many other people didn't like it?

 

It's a fun trilogy. I think most of the hate comes from people who take the franchise too seriously.

 

Weak prose, strange plot and character decisions (likely influenced by Anderson's take on the Force), odd tonal shifts.

It actually reminds me a lot of the prequels in some ways. Like Lucas, KJA is a strong ideas man with a talent for vivid imagery, but isn't great at translating it into a story on his own.

I do think the series is underrated, though. It's overall much more fun and pulpy than some other EU I can think of.

 

I have great memories of reading this trilogy, it got me back into the EU after a falling out for a year or two in the early '00s.

Most importantly, it enhances the experience of I, Jedi!

 

No matter how much I try, I remain unable to criticize the Jedi Academy Trilogy, because it's one of my first EU memories. And yes, it's pulpy, but I like that side of Star Wars--which also explains my unabashed love for some of the EU's most bizarres experiments. Additionally, those books had a vivid imagery, which is a thing I'm very fond of, and linked the post-movie era with the ancient times.

 

One of my main problems with the SWEU is the ripple effect a bad story has. One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel; subsequent writers had to incorporate the terrible ideas of others into everything else. For example, the unpunished genocidal tendencies of one Kyp Durron, the childishly written tales of Exar **** and his contemporaries, etc.

JAT was one of the first SWEU books I read as a teenager, shortly after finishing the Thrawn trilogy. My nerdy friends and I would each buy a SW book and lend them to each other to read at a rapid pace, and it was fun for a while. KJA's offerings killed that buzz (along with Mcintyre and a few others). Characters like Leia would never truly recover from the treatment established in those early EU books, and subsequent books had to incorporate KJA's crap into what could otherwise have been half acceptable stories).

Some specific reasons to hate JAT:
Superweapon of the week
Exar ****
Insane, ineffective and unlikely military commander of the week
Genocide is fine if Luke's your friend
Mothers don't have personalities
No credible threats
Terrible writing
Terrible ideas
Lack of pace/urgency (in the narrative and prose, that is. KJA was clearly writing with pace and urgency in order to meet the deadline and receive his cheque).

 

I loved it when it first came out and I was in junior high. Also, like the OP, loved the tie-ins to TOTJ and thevother stories then out.

I just revisited it, and understood a bit of the ... unkindness towards it. Especially coming off of TTT, the prose definitely appears a bit less... refined. There is some absurdist humor that seems tonally strange following TTT (but would have fit in nively with the earlier Marvels), Mara Jade seems like a totally different person, and lots of things just happen at breakneck pace.

Again, as an early teen, I ate it up, and loved it. KJA did a lot to try to make a connected modern EU work, and he arguably made on of the most important contributions in jumpstarting and orchestrating key elements of mythogy and tying together the tapistry of new storytelling.

His style may not be up everone's alley, but he did important work making further stories that people DO still like possible.

 

I think this is what I like about the trilogy the most. That along with the vivid images and bold happenings.

 

I think the books have an unfair bad wrap. I really enjoyed them. I read and liked the Thrawn Trilogy (duh!), but it was this series that triggered my EU addiction...if that makes sense.

I'm at a loss as to how it any less pulpy than most (all?) SW books.

 

Some of the scenes are written as intentionally, joyfully over the top absurd. I don't see this as a flaw in Anderson's writing, as much a stylist choice that now, in the present, seems out of synch. Like, for example, the crew in the Maw fighting over red-tape minutae literally as they are being blown to bits by an invading force. It's played as clear comedy of absurdity. It DOES fit the Star Wars films, and the Marvels if those works were set alone to set tone. Zahn, and many other authors, however, played the narrative a lot more 'straight'. They took their time, and built characters who were a bit more fleshed out. Anderson didn't take time to develop characters - he had a lot he needed to happen, and it all happens. It was constantly, "And then this happens. And then this happens. And then HOLY CRAP THAT HAPPENED, and now THIS HAPPENS." - and I think it's a perfectly valid take on Star Wars. And at the time, there was't too much to compare it with. But the EU generally went in a different, more grounded direction.

It IS very pulpy and fairy tale. And frankly, it probably is more in line with how Star Wars was originally intended to be. But other authors contributed in ways that have since resonated more with me, and fit better the approach to Star Wars I like as I've gotten older.

I'm happy for his contributions, and his run on Tales of the Jedi is still one of my most fondly remembered series. His aesthetic in his novels just doesn't work for me as much anymore as they used to. And that's fine.

 

I read the first book over Thanksgiving of my freshman year of college, my initial foray into the EU, and it turned me off the EU for at least a decade.

 

The JAT is one of the few Bantam things I don't have, and I don't feel the need to get it, the Callista Trilogy, the Corellian Trilogy, the Bounty Hunter Wars, or the three OT Tales anthologies, especially since I already have I, Jedi. I enjoyed it well enough when I originally read it, but being set after Dark Empire confused me, because I never really got into the comics, and I found I, Jedi to be far superior.

 

I feel like "pulpy" gets used as an excuse for bad writing a lot on this forum. The flaws of the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the Corellian Trilogy are often forgiven because they're "pulpy." Aaron Allston pumps out terrible Fate of the Jedi novels and his resident apologists grasp at straws by defending them as being "pulpy." We're often sorely in need of the Inigo Montoya meme image.

I've always felt like I would have enjoyed that scene if it hadn't been the climax of the entire trilogy. Exar Kun's already been taken out, Ambassador Furrgan's attack on the Solo kids has failed, and Tol Sivron and his slapstick bureaucrats end up being the trilogy-ending villains. What could be an intense and gripping trilogy-closing space battle is ruined by ridiculous hijinks that ruin most of the stakes and the suspense. Daala shows up in an attempt to rescue the farce but it's already too late, and her Gorgon isn't the real threat anyway --- the Death Star prototype is, but its threat level is diminished by the absurd comedy going on. There's a time and a place for that kind of comedy, and it wasn't the Battle of the Maw.

Edit: Kenobi1138, if you're interested, a few years ago we discussed each book of the trilogy in a bit of depth, if you're interested in checking it out:

Jedi Search
Dark Apprentice
Champions of the Force

 

I hadn't thought of it as comedy before. I didn't find KJA's offerings funny and I hadn't even considered that they were intended to be.

Are his awful comics supposed to be funny too? Did any of the other writers know they weren't supposed to take his content seriously?

 

I think his TOTJ runs are clearly more in the tragedy department. There was a lot more weight of myth and intention of an epic nature in those. I still like 'em, even though I can chuckle at some of the choices. JAT wasn't a comedy, but there were scenes clearly played AS comedy. Some of the Durga stuff in Darksaber as well. Of course, George put some random slapstick absurdist comedy in his flicks, too...

 

I had a fun time reading the books when I was a middle-teenager. I was a little put off by references to the Dark Empire story, which was not easily accessible to me at the time. A friend of mine and I felt that Han and Lando playing for the Falcon over and over again took away from the off-screen original game that Lando lost the Falcon in. I will say that the opening scene of the first book which showed the Falcon crashing was an eye opener, and made me wonder about what kind of pounding the Falcon could take! That book, and some of the original Marvel comic stories prepared me for accepting how tough the Falcon is shown to be in TFA.

I've never understood the extreme derision towards the series, but sure, it's derivative and over-the-top. I like how it shows the characters being able to make progress in the galaxy; after TTT shows that they've established a new Republic, JKA shows Luke starting to train new Jedi.

I recently read I, Jedi and it was fun to return to that setting from inside a different perspective. I had fun with that book in a different way. As long as I have fun reading them and they feel like SW, then I'm not too picky.

 

Will be reading the trilogy again soon. Been several years since I've read it.
This was my first foray into books as well. Always will have a soft spot for it.

 

I wish there were unabridged audiobooks of the series. I'd buy them in a second.

One of my biggest beefs with the Disney buyout:

Del Rey started going back into older books and giving them the unabridged audiobook treatment. They had done several before the buyout. And then that effort was discontinued.

Bring Back the Legends Unabridged Audiobook Treatment.

I'd join that "movement."

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I never really understood the Kyp hate when it's hammered in that his actions weren't his own.

The only KJA story I hated was the IG88 short story. That's just a whole level of cringe.

 

Thing is... Therefore I Am is a highly problematic story if you take it at face value (i.e. if you admit it "actually happened"). Think of it as a tale propagated by members of the Droid Revolution!

 

Well, the extent to which they are is pretty confusing and not made very clear by the narrative. (To a large extent, I blame it on KJA subscribing to the view that the dark side is an external force that takes over people).

However, the scene where Kyp is about to blow Han away in a fit of rage - and then Kun's spirit is destroyed and he's just... not angry anymore - should make it pretty obvious that yes, he's at least sort of possessed.

 

One of the reasons I like this trilogy is, it has a very good companion piece in The Jedi Academy Sourcebook. It's a great book, and really enhances the trilogy, just as DESB does for the Dark Empire comics.

 

Supplementary material that enhances a work is great, for sure, but a work should also be able to stand on its own without the supplementary material.

 

Considering what we know about the Jedi now, I tend to forget this series. Then again after Legacy of the Force brought back Daala, I tend to look on this series with disdain. Then again, I ignore everything post-NJO now and just skip to Legacy (Cade's series only). I use the Dragonball GT maneuver when it comes to post-NJO novels: Just because it exists doesn't mean it actually happened.

 

My own take is that KJA had some good ideas, it's just his execution (and prose) was terrible. Remember this was 93 or 94 when they first came out so a lot of ideas were pretty unique for the time.
He was actually developing things, with Luke becoming a Jedi Master and setting up the Academy and the responsibility of that.
You had a female villain.
An evil Sith Force ghost.
The first real author to go yeah Han was a drug runner and look at his past.
First look at Kessell and the Mcquarrie concept Space Spiders
The Maw, there was great stuff
You even had Wedge as a general rather than simply a fighter pilot.

But then you had the truly awful execution of those ideas. The female villain was basically Phasma but with more screen time. The Sith Ghost and his power levels and motivations seemed to change from page to page.
Kyps been done on here but You also had a scientist who developed weapons but didn't know she was developing weapons then has a chat with Han and is suddenly ok.
He missed out big time on Han reflecting on his past now he is a Rebel hero. It was just an escape the bad guy thing and nothing more.

So yeah he had some good ideas but that was it. Also I found it strange reading all the Dark Empire references when I hadn't read Dark Empire !