Book Review: 'Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi'
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| Cover art by Larry Rostant (C) 2015 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) |
Originally planned - in 2012 - as the third and final volume in an Expanded Universe (EU) trilogy titled Empire and Rebellion, it became a standalone canonical novel (one of four such works) after The Walt Disney Company-owned Lucasfilm and its Story Group declared that the EU was being relegated to "Legends" status and that all of the post-2014 novels would be part of the Star Wars canon. This means that Heir to the Jedi (the title is a tip of the hat to Timothy Zahn's Star Wars: Heir to the Empire) is as valid. from a continuity point of view, as the films and television series produced by Lucasfilm.
HEIR TO THE JEDI
The destruction of the Death Star brought new hope to the be-
leaguered Rebel Alliance. But the relentless pursuit by Darth
Vader and the Imperial fleet is taking its toll on Alliance re-
sources. Now the rebels hide in an Outer Rim orbit from which
they can search for a more permanent base and for new allies
to supply much-needed weapons and materials.
Luke Skywalker, hero of the Battle of Yavin, has cast his lot
with the rebels, lending his formidable piloting skills to what-
ever missions his leaders assign him. But he is haunted by
his all-too-brief lessons with Obi-Wan Kenobi and the growing
certainty that mastery of the Force will be his path to victory
over the Empire.
Adrift without Old Ben's mentorship, determined to serve
the Rebellion any way he can, Luke searches for ways to improve his skills in the Force.... - "Title Crawl" from Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi
In Heir to the Jedi, Kevin Hearne takes us to a period that is not explored often in the official Star Wars canon outside of Marvel Comics' various post-2014 comic book series: the interim between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Here, the Rebel Alliance has been forced to evacuate from Base One on Yavin IV and is searching for a more secure base of operations. At the same time, the Rebels are evading the mighty Imperial fleet and the evil Lord Darth Vader, who has been commissioned by Emperor Palpatine to seek and destroy the "terrorists" that destroyed the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin.
With Han Solo and Chewbacca off on their ill-fated quest to pay off Jabba the Hutt, the Rebellion's leaders need a skilled pilot and combat veteran to carry out a daring rescue mission. Princess Leia Organa and Rebel Fleet commander Admiral Ackbar know just the right candidate: Lieutenant Luke Skywalker, lately assigned to Red Squadron, the X-wing unit that was decimated at the Battle of Yavin. The object of the mission: to rescue Drusil Bephorin, a gifted Givin polymath whose vast talents and mathematical knowledge have been exploited by the Galactic Empire for nefarious purposes. Drusil has sent word to the Alliance that she's willing to defect, but since she is under Imperial supervision, someone needs to extract her from under the Empire's very nose.
That someone, of course, is Luke Skywalker. But since he can't go flying to the rescue with his trusty astromech droid, Artoo Detoo, aboard his X-wing fighter, he is teamed with the beautiful Nakari Kelen, the daughter of Fayet Kelen, a wealthy biotech industrialist who is sympathetic to the Rebellion but has to keep his allegiances secret lest the Empire confiscate his company, Kelen Biolabs. Using the space yacht called Desert Jewel, Nakari has traveled extensively throughout the galaxy to seek new markets for Kelen Biolabs as well as to carry out missions for the Rebel Alliance.
Beautiful, intelligent, and skilled with a slugthrower, Nakari agrees to accompany Luke and Artoo on their perilous mission to rescue Drusil.
But it will not be easy: the Empire wants to keep the Givin in its custody, and a wide array of other challenges, including deadly creatures and tenacious bounty hunters, awaits the trio.
My Take
As a Star Wars fan of the 1977 Generation who loves the entire Saga - including the Prequel and Sequel Trilogies - I tend to gravitate to stories set in between the movies, especially novels that "fill in the blanks" and add more depth and nuance to the characters and situations we see on the screen.
For me, the most intriguing period of the Galactic Civil War is the three-year gap between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Marvel Comics in the late '70s and the Nelvana animated segment in The Star Wars Holiday Special covered this period, but most of those stories are not canon, and in any case, I only read one or two issues of the post-movie adaptation comics issues and I was not impressed.
Naturally, when I learned that Kevin Hearne had written Heir to the Jedi, I was intrigued. Here was a rare opportunity to read about the adventures of Luke Skywalker before his promotion to Commander and the various missions he flew with Rogue Squadron before the Battle of Hoth.
Interestingly, not only does Hearne tread into "untold stories" territory, but he does so by using two unusual (for Star Wars novels) writing techniques.
First, he tells the story exclusively from Luke Skywalker's point of view, which is something no novel had done before. Other writers, especially Tim Zahn, describe events from a detached third-person perspective that occasionally gives readers an insight into the character's psyche but still puts a lot of emotional "space" between the reader and the subject.
Second, Hearne writes Heir to the Jedi in the first-person voice, a style that has only used once before in a Star Wars novel (Michael A. Stackpole's I, Jedi, which was published by Bantam Spectra in the mid-1990s).
Initially, I had a tough time reading Heir to the Jedi. Not because it's badly-written or dull; far from it. Hearne is a good writer and knows how to tell a story well. But I kept on hoping that Luke would tell us more about how he felt about being an unlikely hero, if he felt any regrets about blowing up the Death Star, or how strong his crush on Leia was at this point on the Star Wars timeline.
Eventually, though, I decided that seeking bits that were related to what we already know from countless viewings of the Original Trilogy was the wrong approach. This is, after all, a brand-new adventure, and even though I know it has to fall in line with canon, I had to treat it as such and stop looking for clues about Vader's motives at this time or whether Darth Sidious knows that Luke blew up the Death Star.
Hearne does a good job of taking us into the thoughts and feelings of the Classic Trilogy's main protagonist at an early stage of his "Hero's Journey." In fact, he is so adept at this that when I read Heir to the Jedi now, I swear that I can hear the voice of Mark Hamill performing the narration. It's an intriguing and exciting story, to be sure, and it fleshes out one of the Saga's most beloved characters in an interesting way.
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