I've made many comments about the various books I've read in threads in the BC&T forum, and it has only just occurred to me that it could be worth collecting these thoughts into overviews in this blog...

I'll have a single directory to the reviews in time, but in this one I will start with the Jedi Apprentice series, the first book by Dave Wolverton and the rest by Jude Watson, which is discussed in this thread in BC&T.

The books relate to Obi-Wan's apprenticeship with Qui-Gon, from before being chosen to be his Padawan through to only a few years before Ep I. More details of the actual titles and their blurbs can be found here.

From my first post in the thread:

I've just finished the first book, The Rising Force and was pleasantly surprised. It's not a great book, but its a decent enough story and apart from the big print I wouldn't have picked it as being specifically targetted at kids.

I was surprised to read that Obi-wan was meant to have had such a problem with anger - this is not really something I would have expected from the OT era Obi-Wan, but everyone has skeletons in the closet I suppose.

As I have not read much of the early clone wars material I will be interested to see, when I get to that, if this is a theme that is drawn on in Obi-wan's teaching of Anakin...

Then my second post:

Well, we've [my son and I] finished the first 9 books, and I have been pleasantly surprised. I accept that because the series is aimed at children that the plots are meant to be realtively simple so the relatively two-dimensional presentation is understandable.

I thought that a lot of the stuff with Xanatos was a bit lame, though, and frankly was relieved when he was finally bumped off.

My favourite so far is actually the one that seems to be the only standalone to date: Book 9 The fight for truth. I thought that development of the story with Obi-wan and Siri in particular was well presented.

On we go to the second half of the series...

And then my next posts:

I didn't mention that in relation to Book 9 another reason that I liked it so much was that it managed to subtly foresahdow what was going to happen in Ep III - Ep IV: it was so subtle that at first I did not pick it up and then as the story went on I realised that the leaders' visions/issues with the Jedi were of Vader and Sidious. It was very well done.

I enjoyed the remaining stories in the series.

The story arc in books 11-12-13 was well done although I thought some of the detail was a bit much for the target 9-12 year olds (dead bodies drained of blood would have given me nightmares at that age).

I found the whole situation with Tahl a little odd. As these stories were published in late 2001-early 2002 they obviously could not discuss what would be in AOTC, but I would have thought that to have a Jedi romance when that was about to be made taboo in Ep II was a bit of a problem (Lucas Licensing would have been well aware of what was in AOTC by then, surely?). I suppose that it could be said that the Jedi were not specifically aware of the relationship (apart from Obi-Wan) but to have that storyline there without any recognition of the issue was a bit weird.

Now on to the special editions...

And then my final post:

I've just finished the two special editions and they really capped off the series well.

I now have the first 5 Jedi Quest books on request at the library.


And now onto the overview of the Jedi Quest series...


Links to all of my reviews/overview blogs can be found in this blog.