Books Master and Apprentice, a Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan novel by Claudia Gray

Cost. It won't be cheap, certainly way outside the ability of landspeeding peasants.... But for trusted Imperial servants? Easily justifiable. Everyone else is expendable.

 

We haven't seen the comic or CW episode yet where Cad Bane plummets to his death when the ankle boosters malfunction..

 

Who got the council seat that Qui-Gon passed on?
I have it narrowed down to Ki-Adi-Mundi, Plo Koon, Yarael Poof, Oppo Rancisis and Adi Gallia
(None of them are mentioned in the book)

 

Poli Dapatian is seen in the Fallen Order: Dark Temple comic, and he's sat next to Yarael Poof; that's Adi Gallia's seat in TPM.

 

My personal head canon is the seat went to Sifo Dyas before ending up with Adi Galia after he was removed from the council.

 

I read this recently, and as a Gray fan, loved it. I didn't there'd be so much Dooku too and really enjoyed that as well. The supporting characters like Rael were compelling as well and seeing the early relationship with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan was awesome.

10/10

 

Go and read / listen to Dooku - Jedi Lost, it makes for a great synergy.

 

You know what, since I have a bit of free time on hand (wonder why?) I'll take you up on the suggestions. So first this book and then Jedi Lost or the other way around?

 

Yep, order doesn't matter too much, it'll work either way

 

I think Master & Apprentice first. Some of Rael's lines in Dooku: Jedi Lost don't mean much if you haven't read Master & Apprentice.

 

I agree, both are excellent but Dooku: Jedi Lost kind of assumes you have read Master and Apprentice at a couple points.

 

True, there is that, although the same was said of the SQ / OF combo.

 

Well, that's kind of it, you tend to go with the order you experienced, but it'd work as well the other way differently.

 

Off the top of my head...​

Spoiler

There is Rael's role on Pijal, he makes reference to his deceased Padawan and Dooku speaking up for him in front of the Council though no context is given precisely what happened or why it is significant.
Nor do they go into depths about his mentor role to Quigon, aside from his slight mocking of "I was born ready" in the one scene they don't interact much.
Rael's character as a whole is explained a lot better in Master and Apprentice, as it describes his background, relationship with Dooku, Quigon, and why he is the way he is.

And Dooku's whole use of lightning and leaving the order is given context, though that might actually work better the other way around interestingly enough.

Nothing particularly glaring I should say, just the occasional references that might go over your head if you don't read M&A first.

 

So I’ve literally just finished this all I can say is what a brilliant book. I honestly thought Jin would be a lot more confident that fact that he wasn’t was kinda cool. Also really grew to appreciate Rael, hopefully we get to see him again.

 

Dp

 

I just finished this novel and while I enjoyed it, I found it slightly underwhelming after reading all the praise it received. I enjoyed the secondary characters and the plot twist genuinely took me by surprise, but the book doesn’t explore the Force—despite being in large part about Force prophecies, it has little of interest to say about them, or about how the Jedi’s philosophy and relationship to the Force shapes their lives more broadly—and while the psychological drama between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon is supposed to be central to the plot, it’s muted and its resolution is anticlimactic.

Spoiler: Discussion of the book ending

There’s no sense of the two of them baring their vulnerabilities to each other, confronting their issues head-on and becoming closer throughout the novel. In other words, things don’t come to a boil, emotionally speaking, even though the entire premise and Rael’s presence should serve as catalysts for a trial of their bond. In the end, Qui-Gon suddenly changes his mind about joining the Council for reasons that are unrelated to Obi-Wan and, thinking that Obi-Wan is better at anticipating his moves in the field now, decides he might as well keep training him while waiting for another Force vision. They’re both casually glad they’ll stay together and don’t discuss the matter further. Conflict resolved!

I get that the point of the story is in large part to explain Qui-Gon’s determination to train Anakin in TPM, which it does successfully, but it didn’t have to sacrifice emotional depth and complexity in its depiction of his relationship with Obi-Wan for that.

I think my expectations were also a factor, since I was a huge fan of the Jedi Apprentice series back in the day and was hoping for a book that would be more faithful to it.

This brings me to my question for other readers who are more familiar with the current state of canon: is Master and Apprentice meant to overwrite the history of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s partnership as it is laid out in the Jedi Apprentice novels, or to supplement it, or is Disney being deliberately vague about the canonical status of information introduced in JA?

I ask because as far as I could tell, M&A does not explicitly contradict any major biographical information introduced in the JA novels, but it doesn’t acknowledge it either, and it sketches out a different character arc for Obi-Wan and paints him as having both less life experience and less training in the Force than he does at the same age in JA. This means that Obi-Wan’s characterisation is different from how he’s portrayed in the JA novels, and so is his dynamic with Qui-Gon.

For example, one of the major sources of tension between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in M&A is the fact that Obi-Wan is too rigid and rule-abiding to understand Qui-Gon’s way of doing things. While this characterisation rings broadly true with respect to both TPM and JA, the way Obi-Wan is written here is hard to reconcile with the fact that in JA he has defied both Qui-Gon and the Council on multiple occasions and even almost left the Jedi Order by the time he is seventeen. In JA, he’s portrayed as rigid, true, but also as headstrong and confident in his own judgement and connection to the Force in a way that’s markedly absent from M&A. Also, by the time he’s seventeen in JA, he and Qui-Gon understand each other pretty well despite their differences and their relationship is much deeper than it is in M&A.

So my question is, are we meant to attribute the differences in characterisation between M&A and JA to the fact they’re written by different authors with different takes on the same character (which is totally fine by me!) or do they indicate that stuff like Obi-Wan’s exploits on Melida/Daan, the AgriCorps assignment, Qui-Gon’s friendship with Tahl and his ill-fated relationship with Xanatos, etc. never happened for the purposes of canon and we can look forward to future stories filling in those gaps differently? Or does it simply mean the brief Disney gave Gray asked her not to commit them to anything either way so they can decide in the future if they want to revisit all or some of those elements?

I know the canon reboot happened a long time ago and questions like this have probably been discussed ad infinitum, so I apologise if there’s a better place to post this. I thought I’d comment here because I wanted to put my thoughts about M&A in writing as well.

 

Jedi Apprentice is deemed Legends, so nope.

 

@tractata I like to think part of JA is still canon, in the way some parts of the old Legendsverse are coming back. Until something in JA is specifically contracted, I'm going to assume it's on the table of "possibly happened". As you say, M&A actually fits perfectly with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's strained relationship throughout most of JA.

Interestingly, they just brought Siri-Tachi back in a book last year (Certain POV: ESB). In a context that fit with JA (Obi-Wan remembering her at the temple, holding hands, etc), so not just some random person with the same name. I think the authors are perfectly fine with including elements from the old books like that. It doesn't mean the old stories are 100% canon, but at least they're around in some form.

 

Let's hope Ben Solo has a redheaded friend at the academy that is half-hapan, half dathomiri-human and mentions her one day too then. How she maybe left the academy and him after a tragic lightsaber mishap involving lightsaber crossguards malfunctioning?

 

Thank you, this is exactly what I was asking about! Whether there are indications that JA is being treated as Schrödinger's canon, with Disney leaving open the possibility of JA plot points and characters being brought back/re-canonised/referenced in the future, since that's the impression M&A left me with.

So I'm very happy to hear we've got a new reference to Siri Tachi. I think JA provides a rich cast of characters and many events/stories that could be worth retelling or incorporating, so I'm glad it's still around in some form, as you say.

Anyway, I'm moving away from M&A at this point, so I'll stop here. Thanks for answering my question!

 

I also really liked JA. I would love to see Xanatos pop back up in some form, I mean he had such a hot end!

How do you find M&M compares to the early JA books?