Books Jedi Academy Trilogy

Stay on topic, chaps. JAT, not Zahn.

 

No you are right. So lets get back to the Otters, whoops, sorry, wrong topic again

 

plus Luke looks pretty flawed in the book. Over all it was good, but i like "I'Jedi" better

 

I liked them (and I have re-read some of them) but they were my first SW books so I have possibly a nostalgic filter regarding them.

They are for young adults and each book work with the premise that you have possibly not read the earlier ones, so each book re-introduce the characters and the important part of the plot form earlier books. This was good for me when I started reading YJK since I begun with Lightsabres but become a bit irritating if you are reading the series one book directly after another.

 

Just finished a Darksaber plow-through. And you know, if you go into it expecting the style and the absurdity, it's quite fun. Also, the connection of the Imperial Remnant stories into that book was actually pretty cool. I remember that again from Ye Old Days reading it, seeing what at the time was trying hard, for the first time, to be a consistent world where everyone's stories mattered. KJA really was the first one to go through major effort in doing that story-wise. Hambly used some nice details from others' works, but hers were very much stand-alone stories (this isn't a complaint). KJA really intended all of his books to be massive narrative pushes and leaps and mythbuilding. When a KJA book was done, he wanted the Game to have been Changed for future storytellers.

I have lots of respect for his ambition and energy. It also doesn't hurt that his books make really quick skims. You get everything out them that's there, and it doesn't take too much time. And for someone trying to plow through the Bantam era as a re-read just so I can be refreshed for a first-time read of the NJO - this is appreciated.

 

The thing about Darksaber... it's been a long time since I read it, but one of the most bizarre things about that book was the juxtaposition of the goofy "Hutts building a non-functional Death Star" plot with the kind of really sick multiple deaths of Bevel Lemelisk. I mean, even within those flashback scenes, it's almost played for laughs. It's quite disturbing, in a way.

 

And the most bizarre thing is that the multiple executions of Bevel Lemelisk is an element that's managed to survive the EU purge! And I find that surprisingly satisfying.

 

I have never heard of other people "trashing" on the Jedi Academy trilogy novels. Maybe the topic creator is thinking of the young junior novels of the young Jedi novels that involve the jedi kids and a crash landed TIE fighter pilot. Those young Jedi knight novels were ok but not the best.

Anywayz back to the Jedi Academy trilogy, its a great series. I love Kyp going psycho or whatever and stealing the Sun Crusher ship thing. Then Han gets involved yada yada.

 

When I first read IJedi and Vision of the Future, I always thought that Stackpole and Zahn (who had collaborated on those books) were doing some not so subtle trashing on JAT in both books.

 

I always loved Stackpole's work, but I always thought the entire premise of I, Jedi was a little unfair and indelicate.

 

It was always very noticeable, particularly as the first half of the book and the second part don't really connect at all and seem like (because they essentially are) 2 different stories with no connection to each other aside from Corran being in both.

 

Let the hate flow through you

 

The premise, I thought, was "show Corran being trained as a Jedi". KJA specifically didn't detail all of the students in the initial class, so that other authors could come in later and insert additional characters like Corran as needed. How is that "unfair and indelicate"?

 

It's practically an attempt at rewriting the JAT with Corran Horn as the hero.

 

Corran does have his achievements in that - but he also gets spectacularly kicked around by Exar Kun as well. A case could be made that it takes away from possessed-Jacen's achievement, in having Corran take out another bunch of Sith hydras before they can get to Jacen and Luke, I suppose - as well as having him come up with the "give Kun more light side than he can handle" plan - but the actual defeating of Kun is still accomplished without Corran being present.

 

Your Sugar coating it a bit there. It was all deliberate and part of Corrans master plan to distract Kun and beat him. You also had Mara show up and then psychologicaly devastate poor Exar (nice nod to his buddy) with some Quips. Before that you had him brush off Kyp/Kun attack, which would take out Luke later in JAT. You also have the fight between him and Luke in which Corran is clearly portrayed as the better man.
All in all it was pure ego stroking of himself by Stackpole.

 

Once again, I'd like to stress that I absolutely love what Stackpole did with his Star Wars books in general. But... if you didn't like something a colleague of yours wrote, then you should just ignore it. Rewriting (or what you think is "fixing") it* to better suit your vision is indelicate. I, for one, would never do it even if I were asked by the publisher.

* I'm not starting a debate as to whether the JAT needed fixing or not; everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. It's the very notion of fix fic that I find distasteful, especially under the cover of paying tribute.

 

Toward the end, it's made clear that Corran isn't a better lightsaber duelist than Luke - and even, that Corran has been immensely arrogant at times - he gets knocked down a peg.

"Pure ego stroking" seems to me an overly narrow description of I, Jedi - and as we already know, Stackpole and Anderson are on good terms - it's unlikely that the book was just an attempt to take shots at Anderson's writing.

 

Taken a step further, I'm pretty certain they had a pretty collaborative relationship and that Stackpole consulted with Anderson often.

There was no intended slight there. It's a different perspective, is all. Don't forget it was first person, so everything is filtered through Corran's POV.

 

Well, I don't actually think that Stackpole was intently and actively malicious. I suppose that's only how it read like in my eyes.

 

I hated I, Jedi's retcon of the defeat of Exar Kun. Since I'm lazy I'm just going to quote myself from the 181st thread on Champions of the Force:

~~~~~~~~~

Over the past two months, everyone has mentioned how Stackpole's take on this trilogy was a vast improvement over KJA's. One aspect of I, Jedi, however, that really irked me, was the retcon that it was actually Corran who came up with the idea of how to defeat Exar Kun. In Champions of the Force, the Jedi students all put their heads together and figure out how to defeat Kun without Luke's help. As poorly as the trilogy did overall in depicting Jedi training, the students' defeat of Kun was, at least conceptually, a nice moment of trilogy's-end-growth for them. For I, Jedi to retcon it into nothing more than ten clueless students executing an idea hatched by their brilliant, shining-star classmate... ugh.

 

What felt unfair to me about I Jedi's coverage of the JAT section is it drew on quite a bit of info from the Illustrated Star Wars universe, written by KJA (with McQuarrie art no less - it's worth buying for that alone), then seemed to use that info to do over JAT! It looks more than a little crooked and this was around the same time or just after VOTF, which was infamous for not too subtly slagging off other works.

If you go by JAT, Luke is unknowing reviving an ancient Jedi tradition of training students on a world with a dark side aspect to it, with a fixed geographic location. As far as anyone knows Yavin was last featured in a conflict millennia ago, rationally speaking, nothing could remain that's dangerous. Except, IJ lays out that Luke should have looked at this history and then concluded, by the most cautious risk assessment of all time, there could still be danger 4000 years later.

It's true that Corran later on, with much reluctance, accepts he doesn't know it all, after nearly losing his soul to the dark side and then nearly being killed by three Jensaurri. Does that make up sufficiently for the amount of arrogant crap he pulled? Well, that is the question, isn't it?

Being charitable, it could be said that IJ is the story of Corran moving from a strictly materialist perspective to one wider and more spiritual. The problem is that Stackpole has Corran as the most irritating narrator you'll ever come across.

 

How dare you besmirch the greatness that is I, Jedi.

Corran is just inherently awesome. He just looks retrospectively less awesome because only Stackpole could write him well.

 

I have to wonder why I, Jedi had to involve the events of JAT at all, or why it was better that it did. Corran could have come to Yavin after, and not much would change. And you could still add some element of crisis, some conflict, if you wanted. You can still have Corran mad that Kyp was still a Jedi. You could still have Mara show up and become best friends with Corran for no reason. You can still have Corran form a relationship with Tionne. And Corran could still decide that Jedi training was a waste of time, and do it in less than 200 pages of obnoxious arrogance.

The X-Wing stuff was way better than the JAT stuff, anyway. And you'd have more pages to flesh out Mirax's rescue, which was rushed.

Or just cut some crappy pages.

 

Memory is hazy but I think it came out between the Hand of Thrawn books. With Spectre of the Past coming out first then IJedi, then Vision. Stackpole and Zahn did them together as a trilogy. Now this is speculation on my part but I think at the time, it was them putting there view on the state of the Starwars EU at the time and Force powers used. It's also why Corran and Mara become besties, even though the 2 characters are polar opposites and should have nothing in common.

It doesn't completely work because in Spectre, Corran's Jedi powers are hushed up and secret which no one but Karrade knows about (why or how he knows is a mystery) yet in IJedi everyone seems to know.

Iron_lord Go back and read the Luke/Corran duel again. The way it was set up and written and the use of Language (Luke and his feral grin) to even how it ended. All though technically a draw, Corran was clearly shown as the better man in that fight. Later he would deflect a Kyp/Khaun attack and Kyp would stomp off in a huff because he just isn't as good as Corran