|
"The
first book in the Jedi Apprentice series
holds in its premise much excitement: the origins of the
relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master, Qui-Gon Jinn.
"As the story begins, we see a young Obi-Wan training at the
Jedi Temple, filled with childish ambition and determination and the
inevitable frustration that can come with failure. He is filled with
a need to please and a desire to become a Jedi Knight – at all
costs. He is more similar to Anakin will eventually be than he would
himself later want to admit. Qui-Gon is quite detached and
dismissive and very unlike Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon in The
Phantom Menace, who is quietly rebellious and filled with
conviction.
"The plot is relatively uninspired and serves only as a vessel
to carry the fledgling bond between the two Jedi. There are some
decidedly strange sets of dialogue and decisions made that serve
only to manoeuvre the two into situations that will advance their
interactions. Still, you definitely get a sense of Obi-Wan being a
boy with big dreams on the cusp of adolescence with that wide-eyed
sense of fear and wonder as he comes to realise that the universe is
not exactly as he’d always envisioned it. The use of the Arcona
is interesting but not always consistent and the Hutts are not quite
the villains you might anticipate, mainly, one would imagine,
because this is a young reader’s story.
"Dave Wolverton’s only contribution to the series is uneven,
but nevertheless entertaining as he catalogues one of the landmark
meetings in the Expanded Universe."
|