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Dark Disciple (Star Wars) by Christie Golden
Traditional or self-published: Traditional
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
(Edit: What an ugly cover this is! I hadn't seen it until I was making this post.)
Based on an episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars that never got made, this story was about the lengths the Jedis would go to to try to kill Count Dooku. [Edit: Correction, apparently it was supposed to be an arc, not just one episode, which makes more sense.]
The Jedi Council decided to try to assassinate Dooku, even though assassination is apparently a tactic that only the Dark Side uses. They picked their Jedi to do it (Quinlan Vos) and assigned him to track down and partner with a Sith assassin named Asajj Ventress.
Vos finds her, and through most wonderful character progression on both sides, he and Ventress learn to trust each other, become friends, and then fall in love. It's very rare that I believe relationships in stories, but I really liked how it was handled in this one.
The rest of the story followed the maze-like twists and turns as the two try to kill the big bad guy.
There was a whole lot I liked about this story, and multiple times I thought I would rate it 'Loved'.
- I really, really enjoy when a character's morals change (in this case, a good man was forced to become evil, but he did so for a morally good reason).
- I also enjoyed early on not knowing if he was good or bad (Is he a good guy pretending to be bad? Or a bad guy pretending to be a good guy pretending to be a bad guy?).
- From major to minor, I believed all of the characters as real, complete people. Even Dooku, who could be a cartoonish level bad guy, had his own motives, flaws, and all the things that made him seem human.
I had a number of issues that made me not love the story. A few of them weren't the book's fault though.
Not the book's fault:
- Where the heck are the female Jedi? Through the story we met more than a dozen Jedi, and every single one was male. (I suppose this is because the source material is 40 years old.)
- What the heck is with Jedi not permitting to have emotional attachment to people? That does not make you stronger, that does not make you more of a good person, it does the opposite. (I suppose this is also because how old the source is.)
- I find I really have issues with the whole Light Side/Dark Side thing. Life is not that simple. More than that, it's boring to have everything so black/white.
Issues with the book:
- During the first quarter of the book, I thought it would be a crime if this had been a 20 minute episode instead of a 7 hour book. I loved how detailed and slow-moving it was, how there was so much time to give character background and cover motives and all that. But by the halfway point, it was feeling overly long and padded. The fight scenes especially were boring, and I started skimming those. (I know light saber fights are a big part of the canon though, so that's probably more of a me-issue.)
- I like not knowing what side someone is on. "Is he a good guy? bad?" I like it when someone is undercover. I was even okay with him being a double agent. But by the end of the book I think the main character was a quadruple agent and that was just too much. I had no idea what he really was. (And it turned out HE had no idea, either...)
- I don't know if this is a canon issue or story issue, but man I do not like Jedis. They seem like sticks in the mud, no fun, righteous, holier than thou, and through this whole story they didn't even stick to their own moral codes.
- Minor issue: As far as I remember, Vos was never described in the book. In the last few pages it was mentioned he had dark skin, which made me blink in surprise. I guess that since this was based on the cartoon, the author just assumed everyone knew what he looked like. (Not a bad assumption, I just fell through the cracks.)
- The ending of the book was very, very, very unsatisfying.Through the whole book, Vos was back-and-forth between the Light Side and Dark Side, and the whole point the love of his life had been tying to teach him was that it's better to be part of both sides, be balanced, but in the end he became a Jedi again. It made the whole story feel so completely pointless. All the changes and growth he went through were for nothing: He ended up exactly as he had started out. /end spoiler
All in all, I liked the book. I made time during the day to read it, squeezing in extra reading time when I could. I wish I could say I loved it, but I think because I liked it so much, the few flaws it had seemed to have more impact. (Also my issues with the Star Wars canon itself.)
Traditional or self-published: Traditional
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
(Edit: What an ugly cover this is! I hadn't seen it until I was making this post.)
Based on an episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars that never got made, this story was about the lengths the Jedis would go to to try to kill Count Dooku. [Edit: Correction, apparently it was supposed to be an arc, not just one episode, which makes more sense.]
The Jedi Council decided to try to assassinate Dooku, even though assassination is apparently a tactic that only the Dark Side uses. They picked their Jedi to do it (Quinlan Vos) and assigned him to track down and partner with a Sith assassin named Asajj Ventress.
Vos finds her, and through most wonderful character progression on both sides, he and Ventress learn to trust each other, become friends, and then fall in love. It's very rare that I believe relationships in stories, but I really liked how it was handled in this one.
The rest of the story followed the maze-like twists and turns as the two try to kill the big bad guy.
There was a whole lot I liked about this story, and multiple times I thought I would rate it 'Loved'.
- I really, really enjoy when a character's morals change (in this case, a good man was forced to become evil, but he did so for a morally good reason).
- I also enjoyed early on not knowing if he was good or bad (Is he a good guy pretending to be bad? Or a bad guy pretending to be a good guy pretending to be a bad guy?).
- From major to minor, I believed all of the characters as real, complete people. Even Dooku, who could be a cartoonish level bad guy, had his own motives, flaws, and all the things that made him seem human.
I had a number of issues that made me not love the story. A few of them weren't the book's fault though.
Not the book's fault:
- Where the heck are the female Jedi? Through the story we met more than a dozen Jedi, and every single one was male. (I suppose this is because the source material is 40 years old.)
- What the heck is with Jedi not permitting to have emotional attachment to people? That does not make you stronger, that does not make you more of a good person, it does the opposite. (I suppose this is also because how old the source is.)
- I find I really have issues with the whole Light Side/Dark Side thing. Life is not that simple. More than that, it's boring to have everything so black/white.
Issues with the book:
- During the first quarter of the book, I thought it would be a crime if this had been a 20 minute episode instead of a 7 hour book. I loved how detailed and slow-moving it was, how there was so much time to give character background and cover motives and all that. But by the halfway point, it was feeling overly long and padded. The fight scenes especially were boring, and I started skimming those. (I know light saber fights are a big part of the canon though, so that's probably more of a me-issue.)
- I like not knowing what side someone is on. "Is he a good guy? bad?" I like it when someone is undercover. I was even okay with him being a double agent. But by the end of the book I think the main character was a quadruple agent and that was just too much. I had no idea what he really was. (And it turned out HE had no idea, either...)
- I don't know if this is a canon issue or story issue, but man I do not like Jedis. They seem like sticks in the mud, no fun, righteous, holier than thou, and through this whole story they didn't even stick to their own moral codes.
- Minor issue: As far as I remember, Vos was never described in the book. In the last few pages it was mentioned he had dark skin, which made me blink in surprise. I guess that since this was based on the cartoon, the author just assumed everyone knew what he looked like. (Not a bad assumption, I just fell through the cracks.)
- The ending of the book was very, very, very unsatisfying.
All in all, I liked the book. I made time during the day to read it, squeezing in extra reading time when I could. I wish I could say I loved it, but I think because I liked it so much, the few flaws it had seemed to have more impact. (Also my issues with the Star Wars canon itself.)
