Lit Reading 'Young Jedi Knights' and 'Junior Jedi Knights'

Looking back at it with the knowledge I have now do it feel like YKJ played fast-and-lose with what age the characters should be at if we actually follow dates.

 

Well we can rest that with Kids in Media can do a hell lot normal kids can't.... drink, fight, fly, pilot, kill...

Just look at Stranger Things and every Kids adventure from the 80s since Goonies!

Add to that that authors tend to forget character ages when immersing themselves in writing, like Mara Jade being 20 for 2 decades, some characters aging not at all and then suddendly add 40 years to them in an instant.

Then when writing from the parental pov you got the old guys treating adults in their 30s-40s like little kids and teenagers (LOTF/FOTJ)

 

Yeah, Luke's early class wasn't exactly what I'd call... outstanding. Stackpole even had a novel that pointed out the many ridiculous flaws of the Jedi Academy trilogy (not that Stackpole's writing was perfect either). It was kind of a crash course for both the teacher and students, but kidnapping and lax security aside, I did like how it set up the basis of a Jedi Order, with them seeming like monks training on a natural moon and then going out into the galaxy to do good deeds. JAT did introduce several characters who would be recurring for years after that. That was before the prequels and before all other eras started copying almost all the structures of the flawed prequel era Jedi.

Though just to mention, while it was crazy that Kyp stole a superweapon and used it (and they just had to dump it nearby Yavin IV), he blew up Imperial systems so that was actually a popular idea with some New Republic leaders, which is probably partially why he got off so lightly. I'm a bit more annoyed at how NJO made him into the maverick hothead, but guess they needed a "rival" for Luke, and Kyp was just a convenient powerful Jedi to use.

I wish Luke and Leia and Han could have had happily ever after. Even up until The Unifying Force it still felt more like a net positive, then LotF and FotJ destroyed all the progress from the NJO series, with no improvements to speak of either. With how the Old Republic (post-Ruusan) had lasted a "thousand generations", guarded by the Jedi, I was hoping the New Republic would have a few centuries of peace at least. It was contrived that an intergalactic invasion just had to start less than a decade after the Galactic Civil War wrapped up, then FotJ added even more contrivances just to provide villains for the Jedi to fight. At least the Legacy comics had a time jump of about a century which was implied to be mostly quiet (until the novels got started on wrecking that time period too).

KJA and his wife Moesta sure produced a lot with the YJK (and JJK) series. At the time, it felt very exciting to have YJK referencing things from Courtship (Dathomir, Nightsisters, Hapes), New Rebellion (Brakiss) as well as KJA's own works. Back then the Bantam books usually didn't really reference each other much, since there wasn't much planning and the EU was still growing.

 

Even the Black Fleet Crisis got a namedrop in the later YJK books. Lusa's from The Crystal Star. The Krytos plague from X-Wing is referenced in the Diversity Alliance books. And so forth. It's fair to say that KJA was the Luceno of the Bantam era, in the sense of making heavy use of namedrops and continuity references.

 

Well in Crucible its sold as a Happy End for the big three. Which really makes me wonder if they ever cared about the Solo boys at all. Though to be fair the books make it clear both Han and Leia see Jaina as their favourite child.

 

There is also the possibility, since SW is a space fantasy 'verse, that "being possession by evil spirit" as a very lenient circumstance.

Same here.

Brakiss appearance in YJK was not actually a reference to New Rebellion, it was his first appearance, with New Rebellion being written later.

 

Maybe people from Hapes colonized Wisconsin. There, its legal for minors to drink with their parents present.

A few years back there were cops called at a county fair because two kids were seen drinking beer... the kids were aged 6 and 4. The cops arrived, but they said they couldn't do anything because they were with their dad who bought them the beers.

Crazy I know, but true!

 

Nearly everywhere on Earth, there is no actual drinking age. What it is is the alcohol purchasing age, which is not the same thing.


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At least here in New York State, the drinking age laws refer both to purchasing and "possession with intent to consume."

There are actually a surprising variety of "exemptions" to underage drinking laws, which vary from state to state. Plenty of states allow for underage drinking with parental consent, for educational or religious purposes, and so on. The "parental consent" exemption is more common than many realize.

 

First of all, I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of attention this thread has been getting...I was pretty sure I was just going to end up talking to myself! It's also really fun to read the nitpicking of continuity issues and ages. I thought Tenel Ka was the same age as the twins...if she was 1.5 years younger it doesn't really make sense why Anakin, who is also 1.5 years younger than the twins, wouldn't be adventuring with them.

Definitely, which is why it's so entertaining to read kids' books as an adult. I remember being 13 and thinking that it would totally be fine if someone my age was leading an army! No wonder YA books are so fond of orphans-none of the adventures could happen if you had sane, pesky parents getting in the way of young heroes pursuing their glorious destinies!

Heheheh. What do you mean a 15-year-old can't become ruler of a star system or command a fleet? *eyeroll* I DID always wonder at the whole thing with Padme Amidala being 14 in TPM tho...there IS historical precedent for child-monarchs, but in those cases it was usually a regent doing most of the actual administration, or else the child-monarch just became the ceremonial mouthpiece for the will of a council of powerful nobles or something similar. There ARE child geniuses, but usually those geniuses just excel in something like math or physics...ruling a whole world, even as a child genius, seems a bit far-fetched.

Oh boy. That is one area in which post-NJO really failed. I mean, you put these kids on the front-lines when they were like 16, but suddenly they need to be ordered around like bratty teenagers when they're 30. In my opinion, NJO was supposed to function as a "changing of the guard" or "passing of the torch" and subsequently the younger generation would take over, but apparently the Big Three just had to stay in control. *eyeroll*

While the fact that Carida was home to an Imperial Academy means that one could make an argument that certain areas of the planet could possibly be legitimate military targets, there is the small problem of the fact that Carida also had a massive civilian population...and the civilian population far outnumbered the military personnel on the planet, I believe. And even if we put the fact that Carida turned out lots of Imperial officers at the forefront of the argument, is blowing up planets something the New Republic would really want to condone? One of the strongest arguments against the Empire has always been that their destruction of Alderaan was unconscionable...how is the New Republic any better if they start doing the same thing? I am reminded of something a good friend said once, "We cannot become what we despise simply because it's expedient." The 'how' can be as important as the 'what'. If the New Republic started using or condoning superweapons too, it wouldn't be too long before they became the Empire 2.0. Needless to say, I still think Kyp's war crimes were wand-waved far too easily.

I quite agree with you...the non-stop wars were just too much. The state of the galaxy after the Yuuzhan Vong War was actually one ripe for political thrillers instead of intergalactic wars/space battles, but the authors decided not to go that route, and by the time FoTJ rolled around, it seemed like they were painted into a corner narrative-wise. I actually have read a bunch of the Legacy comics and I quite liked them...even if Cade Skywalker is rather hard to like.

That's definitely true--kudos to him for trying to keep all those different details from so many series straight!

A Happy End...except of course, for the fact that Han and Leia have buried both their sons and Luke is a widower. Maybe I'm a bit of a romantic, but to me a happy ending includes as many of your loved ones being alive and well as possible. But that's just me. At least the EU treated Han, Leia, and Luke better than that Force-forsaken thing Disney Made That I Shall Not Name.

I'm not going to touch the "who was Han and Leia's favorite child?" question with a ten-foot pole , but I will say that I firmly believe the Solo brothers were massively screwed over by the EU. One gets killed off during a shockingly stupid mission because we couldn't have too many Anakins', and the destruction of Jacen Solo was nothing short of an absolute travesty. It would seem that quite a few of the authors (Denning?) did not like Jacen Solo, and that may have played a role in the decision to crash him off a cliff posthaste. It was, in my opinion, unnecessary to repeat the Vader story, but what's done is done. Thankfully, fanfiction exists.

In my opinion, the problem with that line of reasoning is that Kyp asked Exar Kun to teach him (if I recall correctly?), so one could still make a convincing argument that the possession was Kyp's fault.

 

Whaaaaa???? A 6-year-old and a 4-year-old drinking BEER? Somebody call Child Protection Services!

Or maybe the kids were Vulcan...I remember that apparently ethyl alcohol doesn't do anything to Vulcan physiology...but interestingly enough, chocolate can get them drunk!

 

So, The Golden Globe. Naturally, I spent a lot of my time while I was reading this book either groan-laughing or rolling my eyes, but that was to be expected. The writing style is extremely simplistic because it’s aimed at 8-10 year olds, although you occasionally get some rather large SAT vocabulary words dropped in because Anakin Solo is a Very Smart Child.

Again, one has to wonder at the wisdom of sending an 11-year-old to school in a place where his older siblings have been kidnapped not once but twice. It’s also interesting that a lot of the traits that would end up being associated with Anakin Skywalker (mechanical aptitude, for example) are attributed to and fleshed out in his grandson before Anakin Skywalker was developed as a character…this book was published in 1995 but TPM didn’t come out until 1999.

It’s really quite heart-wrenching to read about Leia’s hopes and dreams for her son…and her faith in her brother to take care of him—considering the fact that Anakin would die at the tender age of seventeen. I think this has been mentioned somewhere before, but it almost seems sometimes like NJO pulled a bit of a switcheroo with Anakin and Jacen’s personalities…in this book, Anakin is the introvert who likes to go off and think, even saying that he “likes to think, to figure out the choices.” Peoples’ personalities do evolve as they grow older, and teenaged males do have a reputation for recklessness…needless to say, the doomed Myrkr mission might have ended differently if Anakin Solo had thought a bit more like his younger self.

In any case, Anakin’s the introvert of the family, and one can’t help but sympathize with his frustration that “the entire family is almost too much to live up to.” In addition to the target that’s painted on the back of each of Han and Leia’s kids, there’s a whole bunch of expectations of talent and heroism, and that can’t be easy to deal with. I will concede that the kid does have an unusually mature outlook that’s rather charming.

I found myself more annoyed by Tahiri than I thought I would be…the non-stop chatterbox thing has its charm, but it wore thin for me after like one chapter. The fact that she grew up on Tatooine with the Sand People also really makes me wonder if the Jedi Praexum also teaches ‘regular’ classes like math, languages, history, science, etc…because unless the Tuskens have a writing system we aren’t aware of, I’m pretty sure Tahiri is illiterate. She also can’t swim…the Praexum really should have swimming lessons, considering she nearly drowns at one point in this book.

Plot-wise this book is quite simple…Anakin and Tahiri have a dream of rafting on a river, they sneak out of the Academy to do it because no Solo kid ever looked at a rule and thought, “Hmm, yes, it’s a good idea to obey this”, they find the Palace of Woolamander…in which is a Very Special crystal ball and the Jedi Easter Bunny. More on that later. There is an important plotline with Anakin hearing a voice in his head…the voice of a supposed Jedi Master that warns him not to tell his Uncle Luke about their little communiques. Which makes me wonder if Luke has passed along the story of Gantoris and Kyp, because if he had, I imagine that Anakin would have had the good sense to know that hearing a voice in your head in the Jedi Praexum of Yavin 4 is…Not a Good Thing. After all, the last time a student at Luke’s academy listened to a voice in his head, he blew up a sun. Seriously, there should be some kind of alert system for disembodied voices at the Praexum…Tahiri rightly points out that listening to voices in your head is really pretty dumb when Anakin tells her about his little telepathic message-sessions.

The voice in Anakin’s head turns out to be the Jedi Master Ikrit…who is, according to the Star Wars wiki…a Kushiban, but I prefer to refer to him as the Jedi Easter Bunny. The scene where Anakin and Tahiri meet Ikrit nearly had me banging my head into the wall because of how ridiculous it was…few things in this book drive home the fact that it’s a kid’s book more the fact that it features a talking rabbit. Did Disney have a hand in the drafting of this book? Anyway, Jedi Master Easter Bunny tells Anakin and Tahiri they need to free the souls of the Massassi children, which are trapped in a big crystal ball of golden glitter (there are many pages dedicated to the description and usage of the glitter)…hence the name of the book. **big sigh** Seriously, who came up with this idea? It is possible to write kids’ books that aren’t…this…insulting to the intellect.

Despite the talking Eastern bunnies and golden glitter balls, this book does have a few things going for it. It made some surprisingly astute points about destiny—as Anakin says, “Following our destiny is a pretty romantic notion. It’s important, but we have to take other things into consideration.” Pretty profound remark from an 11-year-old who’s no doubt weary of all the destiny nonsense that accompanies being both a Solo and a Skywalker…and the not-unreasonable fear that accompanies being named after Darth Vader. Personally I’ve always thought that Leia naming her younger son after her father (even if it was very poetic in regards to what it says about forgiveness and hope) was not her brightest idea…after all, it kind of was being named “Anakin” that resulted in him being thrown on the chopping block in NJO. Needless to say, his cynical outlook on destiny appears rather prescient…since his destiny was to die after he and his uncle apparently took leave of their common sense in Star by Star. Tahiri makes a good point about the destiny thing, “You are your own person, and you can make your own choices.” Ultimately, it’s your choices that make your fate, not who your parents are…as the Mandalorian saying goes, “Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you’ll be.” If only Tahiri had had the good sense to listen to her own advice several years later when her dead boyfriend’s older brother approached her to take her time-walking…*eyeroll*

So…in conclusion, I imagine I would have enjoyed this book…if I was seven.

‘Nuff said.

 

Now I image him looking a bit like this

 

I think you would be surprised how many States in the US have an actual drinking age then.

Here in Minnesota, not only is there an actual drinking age of 21, but if you purchase alcohol and provide it to a minor, it is a MINIMUM $10,000 fine and up to 1yr in prison for first offense.

Also, minors here have a lowered blood alcohol level for driving than adults since they shouldn't be getting alcohol in any significant amounts to have such an affect... .05 is the limit for a minor.

Hell, even in Wisconsin they will bust up minors drinking parties, because parents aren't there for all the kids drinking to make it legal for them to drink....

I am aware that other States also have parental exception laws, I just don't think they are as broad as Wisconsin has, which not only doesn't provide a limit on the age of the minor, but also allows the minor to drink in public.

Most parental exception laws will still define a lower age, and restrict the drinking to the privacy of their own home etc.

As I mentioned, even some Wisconsin residents were surprised how broad the exception is there, flat out allowing a parent to buy beer for his 6 and 4 year old sons at a fair.

 

JJK came before YJK.

 

Between Jaxxon, the Hoojibs, and Ikrit, Star Wars had its share of talking rabbits long before Disney ever came along...

 

Why do you consider it a guilty pleasure? YJK is generally well liked as far as I understand it.

 

In my opinion YJK is often much more mature than a lot of other SW media.

 

I only got that feeling in LotF...and after, I guess. (Didn't bother reading FotJ onwards) Before, I always got feeling that Jaina and Jacen were Han's and Leia's favorites respectively.

As someone who really got to like Tahiri in NJO, I will admit to also being annoyed by the constant chatter and the constant lack of shoes. A couple of mentions is cute...but become a crutch. Just like Tenel Ka's 'buffness'. And I'm not sure any actual 'teaching' was ever done at the Academy.

I always like what Leia did in naming her youngest child after her father. It was her way of saying that no one's destiny is preordained. Which, of course, is in line with what Tahiri said. Besides, except for the few in the Skywalker clan, who would actually know what happened to Anakin Skywalker? Most would have assumed he died with the rest of the Jedi. If the Skywalker's

The reason I've never read JJK! I was much too old for the demographic when they were released!

But if you're reading by 'published dates' YJK started first.

 

Maybe he was in YJK, but isn´t like the opening of NJO Leia musing about how much she adores Jaina and admires her and how much she wishes she would have a relationship with her as close as Mara has?

Also Leia is the one brushing away any notion of Jacen´s redemption as "wishfull thinking" Han at least thinks Jacen might get redeemed in purgatory.

 

Wait, did the galaxy ever actually discover that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were the same person? In the nu-canon book Tarkin, the Grand Moff deduces that Anakin and Vader are the same person, but there was probably almost no one else who was aware of that fact. For that matter, I don't know if people ever put two and two together and realized that Luke Skywalker was the son of Anakin Skywalker. According to Mara Jade in the "Hand of Judgment" duology, "Skywalker" is actually not an entirely uncommon name, so it's unclear if many people outside the Jedi Order are actually aware of the connection.

 

So…Lightsabers. I feel like this is probably the most well-known installment of the “Young Jedi Knights” series, because of The Accident that occurs in this book. Despite some plot holes that I will later critique, I did enjoy this book quite a lot.

The book opens with Luke exercising and acknowledging that the Jedi and the New Republic are in danger because of the rise of the Second Imperium and the Shadow Academy. I still do not understand why he doesn’t take any steps to fortify the Jedi Academy or at, at the very least, devise an escape plan. While asking the New Republic for money to fortify the Academy could make some people nervous about the Jedi ‘militarizing’, especially since the Academy has produced dangerous dark-siders before, I feel like his status as ‘Hero of the Rebellion’ would mean that his request would be looked upon more favorably than one might otherwise expect. Barring defenses, I would have liked to see Luke ensure that the Academy has enough shuttles (that have weapons) to transport the students away and flee in case of an attack.

I really enjoyed reading about how the young Jedi (Jacen, Jaina, Lowie, and Tenel Ka) went through the process of building their lightsabers and what each’s weapon revealed about them. In the scene where they actually start sparring, though—I did wonder if Luke took the time to teach them katas and different fencing techniques. I’m a world-building nerd and would have rather appreciated some mention of the different lightsaber forms—not to mention that nothing what lightsaber form a student develops an affinity for can be a great way to provide character insights.

So of course the Infamous Accident happens…and I immediately felt frustrated with Luke Skywalker…again. There’s no mention in the book of Luke or any of the other Masters examining the new lightsabers before the young Jedi students are allowed to begin sparring with them…and that seems to me to be the height of folly. Lightsabers are very dangerous weapons—I cannot understand why Luke didn’t perform some kind of “quality assurance” check on the weapons before allowing the students to spar with them. Furthermore, I don’t understand why he didn’t provide at least some supervision during the construction process…at the very least he should have checked the crystals (because none of them were using the perfect (?) Ilum/Adegan/kyber crystals) and ensured that the lightsabers were constructed properly. After all, if the components aren’t put together right, the lightsaber can easily explode (as Tenel Ka’s did). I’m also irritated that Luke apparently doesn’t check the lightsabers of the other students after Tenel Ka’s accident…it would seem to me that a thorough “quality assurance” check would have been in order after the ill-fated sparring session.

All that being said, the way Tenel Ka has to learn to deal with the loss of her arm makes for quite a compelling story. I felt awful for both Jacen and Tenel Ka after the accident, and the authors do a good job of realistically addressing how the two feel after the incident. There were also a lot of cute Jacen/Tenel Ka moments in this book…like when Jacen comes to the med center and insists that he needs to see Tenel Ka to apologize, and to “tell her jokes and hold her hand.” I couldn’t help going “awwww” when Jacen confesses, “I’ve been trying to get you to laugh ever since I’ve known you.” It’s too cute! And when she finally bursts out laughing at something he says, and calls him “Jacen, my friend” it’s really quite endearing.

Zekk’s journey at the Shadow Academy is also fairly engaging…the poor child really didn’t know what he was getting himself into. As an aside, I have gotten tired of the endless descriptions of how perfect, beautiful, gorgeous, and handsome Brakiss is. He’s a very pretty Dark Jedi, we get it. *eyeroll* It’s quite horrifying when Zekk duels Vilas to the death…definitely got more than he bargained for.

The “disability narrative” in this book was quite well executed, for a kid’s book. Disabilities (at least as far as losing limbs goes) aren’t quite as devastating as they are in our world due to advanced cybernetics, but there’s definitely some complicated feelings that come along with having parts of yourself replaced by a machine (Ton Phanan’s character arc in the X-Wing novels addressed this quite well). Tenel Ka doesn’t want “to become dependent on a machine that masqueraded as part of herself”…even with an arm gone, she’s still determined to rely on her body, which is an interesting perspective…I think she also refuses the mechanical arm to remind her of the lesson she learned. After a couple of battles, she regains her confidence in herself and her abilities and moves on—which was great to see.

We also get to see a bit of Hapes in this book…albeit only the politicking and assassination…Hapes unfortunately gets a bad rep for being a place of nothing more than pretty backstabbers, but it’s definitely more than just that. Needless to say, it was fun to see Tenel Ka in the “princess role”…the scene where she tells her grandmother she doesn’t really want political training but then turns around to astutely deal with a political situation between two aquatic species was pretty cool. Of course, such experiences would later serve her well when she becomes queen at the age of eighteen(?). I also find it ironic that Ta’a Chume actually saves Teneniel’s life in this book by maneuvering to have her sent away from Hapes when she uncovers a plot against the royal family…but she would later end up murdering her daughter-in-law. Ta’a Chume remains a despicable character…truly a fairy-tale evil grandmother.

Having Tenel Ka build a lightsaber that blended the two sides of her heritage was a nice resolution to the book…”I have learned that differences can be positive, that they can be blended together to form a stronger whole”, as she says. Quite a profound lesson. It was also a nice touch that Tenel Ka and Jacen spar again at the end…nice way to bring things full-circle…and her line “Jacen, my friend, I know of no better way to show you that I trust you…that I do not blame you for what happened” was pretty inspired. The trust and friendship between Jacen and Tenel Ka is really heartwarming…

Now onto Darkest Knight…

 

Leia and Luke being siblings is well known fairly early. And as of the Black Fleet Crisis era it's fairly well known that Leia is Vader's daughter. I think it was Planet of Twilight in which Leia made the decision to be fairly public about her heritage. Presumably that meant revealing Vader's identity as Anakin, as well.