Review of
Jedi Trial
Published:
October 2004
Reviewer Rating:
Avg User Rating:
(2.60)
This was a truly awful book.
The writing was worse than most fan fiction I've read. There is absolutely no characterization to be had at all. Characters we know act in ways they wouldn't, and new characters are so incredibly bland and boring that I was hoping they'd all get blown up.
Once again, Obi-Wan and Anakin are separated for no reason except to give Anakin someone different to confide his secret with for a single paragraph half way through the book.
Anakin sparring with Halcyon gave me hopes that things might improve, but it went downhill really fast.
Starting with one of the first chapters, we are spirited away to a world that I know nothing about (apparently it was referenced in a book that takes place post RotJ, but I haven't heard about it yet) and meet new characters that could very well be cardboard cutouts. Odie and Erk were so awfully written that I kept wanting to kick Odie off the table and ship Erk off to Abu Dhabi. They are completely incompetent, and I have no idea how they managed to live so long. They constantly make stupid mistakes but end up in love because of it. Why did we have to have a romance in this book? I'm guessing the author felt we'd had enough talk about supplying armies so had to spice things up more.
That leads me to the quartermaster. How much time do we really need to spend with a guy whose sole job it is to make sure the fleet has the supplies they need. I couldn't care less about how many tons of equipment is needed to run a campaign, but we got this guy (who's name I thankfully already forgot) over and over again. This is taking the concept that most of war is boring (which I was told was the point of Saving Private Ryan which I thought was a very dull movie) to an absurd level.
There was also a lot of time spent talking about things as if we can see them and know what the characters are looking at. If it was a movie, it might make more sense, but since it's a book the author just looks like an idiot. Anakin explaining his route to the enemy base: "I'll... head in this direction and fly about a hundred kilometers north, to this point, and then dogleg back in this direction, dogleg again and come in from behind." What the hell does that tell us? Hell if I know...
So much time is spent in discussing and building plans, but when something happens that could be important, it is over in a paragraph or two.
It seems to me that the author of this book has never read another book in his life.
The writing was worse than most fan fiction I've read. There is absolutely no characterization to be had at all. Characters we know act in ways they wouldn't, and new characters are so incredibly bland and boring that I was hoping they'd all get blown up.
Once again, Obi-Wan and Anakin are separated for no reason except to give Anakin someone different to confide his secret with for a single paragraph half way through the book.
Anakin sparring with Halcyon gave me hopes that things might improve, but it went downhill really fast.
Starting with one of the first chapters, we are spirited away to a world that I know nothing about (apparently it was referenced in a book that takes place post RotJ, but I haven't heard about it yet) and meet new characters that could very well be cardboard cutouts. Odie and Erk were so awfully written that I kept wanting to kick Odie off the table and ship Erk off to Abu Dhabi. They are completely incompetent, and I have no idea how they managed to live so long. They constantly make stupid mistakes but end up in love because of it. Why did we have to have a romance in this book? I'm guessing the author felt we'd had enough talk about supplying armies so had to spice things up more.
That leads me to the quartermaster. How much time do we really need to spend with a guy whose sole job it is to make sure the fleet has the supplies they need. I couldn't care less about how many tons of equipment is needed to run a campaign, but we got this guy (who's name I thankfully already forgot) over and over again. This is taking the concept that most of war is boring (which I was told was the point of Saving Private Ryan which I thought was a very dull movie) to an absurd level.
There was also a lot of time spent talking about things as if we can see them and know what the characters are looking at. If it was a movie, it might make more sense, but since it's a book the author just looks like an idiot. Anakin explaining his route to the enemy base: "I'll... head in this direction and fly about a hundred kilometers north, to this point, and then dogleg back in this direction, dogleg again and come in from behind." What the hell does that tell us? Hell if I know...
So much time is spent in discussing and building plans, but when something happens that could be important, it is over in a paragraph or two.
It seems to me that the author of this book has never read another book in his life.
