As the title “Dark Apprentice” indicates, the promising start of the first story in the trilogy is about to meet some dark challenges. Admiral Daala, loosed from the Maw cluster with her Star Destroyers is out seeking vengeance. Leia finds a tragic diplomatic crisis rocks the New Republic, as she struggles to manage family with work. Luke’s students unleash something long dormant. And Han…well Han could find trouble anywhere! The story does repeat briefly some of the original events as a refresher for the reader, and continues with excellent world building.
In the interest of not giving away drastic spoilers, I’ll try not to name the foe. No guarantees though, there may be minor ones.
In Dark Apprentice, I find Leia’s juggling her children’s needs with those of a government in constant crisis to be very powerful. She wants them to have the peaceful galaxy to grow up in, and they need that for the New Republic. But the demands of the one keep tearing her away from them and her husband. This is unfortunate as I feel Han and Leia are often at their best together. But it does create for tension when one is in danger and the other isn’t there and finds out.
Luke of course is training new student’s on Yavin 4. He is struggling a lot, as he’s using older Jedi teachings and starting with several older students, rather than one student and one master. There are good reasons for this, but the students come with baggage attached and he is only one man and it’s challenging enough to teach the skills, without dealing with the baggage too. He isn’t really trained for the latter, himself.
The strongpoints of the story in Dark Apprentice is the emotional, the danger, and the sheer planet building. It’s the emotional scars that can lead to drastic choices. It doesn’t matter if it’s a New Republic military officer, a famous hero, or a Jedi in training, they can influence events to disaster when the galaxy is in such an unstable state. The planet building makes me feel like I can imagine swimming through the depths of Mon Calamari (aka Dak) – and I can’t do more than dog paddle! Of course, some people don’t use (or can’t) all their senses when reading. That’s fine too.
Dark Apprentice doesn’t give you fine details of things like, say, the methods Luke uses to teach his students. It doesn’t even give all the student’s names. But this just gave more room to allow further exploration. It also gives more flexibility should events (like say the prequels) suggest things that we might not have thought of.
One thing that got me originally was that our ‘foe’ appears to Luke first in the form of his father. While it’s clear this enemy can somehow see what is going on in the galaxy, it seemed unlikely that he could get into Luke’s head like he could the student’s to discover this. The mental shields of a Jedi were strong, and given his previous battles with the Emperor, certainly not often down. I’d be surprised if it was even down when sleeping, in fact, in Jedi Search he wasn’t sure he could even lower them enough to let Leia all the way in.
I have to wonder now if it had to do with the fact that he recognized something of Luke….more on that in the continuity section. That said his tale of ‘how’ Anakin fell had nothing to do with Anakin and was really a description of his own descent to darkness, meant to deceive.
Dark Apprentice uses the twins, along with Chewie and Threepio, to lighten the load and I enjoyed that. It’s hard to tell if Han’s role – involving, he, the Falcon, Lando and sabaac is meant to be humorous or high stakes for him. To be honest I found that part a bit frustrating and silly.
The two main new characters from Jedi Search really advance here. In Dark Apprentice, Admiral Daala seeks revenge and is a total loose cannon. Kyp Durron, who may start with the best of intentions but is vulnerable as he doesn’t quite register that defending the Republic and attacking the Empire are not the same thing.
Kyp, on this reread of Dark Apprentice, has some interesting similarities to Anakin. The angsty teenage thing with legitimate reasons for anger in particular. Anakin however was far closer to Obi-Wan in spite of his frustrations, whereas Kyp does not have any such background with Luke. Luke therefore has less ability to hold him close and guide when he discovers things he isn’t ready to handle.
Dark Apprentice ends on a particularly shocking cliffhanger with a major character near death.
Dark Apprentice Continuity
*Side note: for those of us who envision the characters, which Anakin you see is obviously up to you. When the book was released we only had ‘old’ Anakin as a force spirit.
Spoiler debating an issue
Minor quibble: Given that Luke gave Anakin Skywalker the same traditional burial by burning as Qui-Gon Jinn and other Jedi of that era, it’s debatable if the site of that would be a site linked to the Dark Side as our ‘Dark Apprentice’ found it here. It was long debated if he was even IN the armor, given Yoda & Obi-Wan vanished, and we had no idea it wasn’t a common Jedi thing at the time. It is certainly true Vader’s armor may have reeked of his slavery to the dark side though, and there may even have been dark side techniques used to keep him alive and strong.
The Jedi Academy story, and in particular Dark Apprentice came out concurrently with the Tales of the Jedi, which was leading into Dark Lords of the Sith and the Great Sith War. The ending of that story, though set millennia before, has direct impact on this one. It was in fact, George Lucas who said the enemy should be a Sith spirit. See here.
Dark Apprentice mentions the previous attack on Mon Calamari AKA Dak occured in Dark Empire comics.
Mara Jade of Thrawn trilogy (by Timothy Zahn) makes an appearance in this story, and my one quibble is that her hair is supposed to be red gold and this book keeps calling it red brown. I wondered if that was some weird way to differentiate her from Daala’s hair (which I envision as copper.) But Mara had red gold first and I think they should’ve stuck with it.
Carida, the military academy planet Furgan is in charge of is also where both Kyle Katarn (Dark Forces Soldier for the Empire by William Deitz) and Han Solo (Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispen) graduated from.
Illustrated Guide to the Star Wars Universe (again, same author) is richly describing Yavin 4 as it is here, but also adds in Ralph McQarrie’s artwork as well as other concept art to fill out the ecosystem.
Dantooine is a world that is mentioned in various other works, including Star Wars the Old Republic. At various times including up to the Clone Wars it did have civilians and farms, as well as the nomadic tribes. I’ve found nothing to explain why it’s abandoned by all but the tribes by the time the Rebels had used it as a base, although it is possible the battles of the Clone Wars may have something to do with it. It’s known that Mace Windu fought a battle here (Clone Wars 2003 microseries).
Also tying in is Jedi Outcast and the Jedi Academy video games. These are set later but both on the basis that Luke’s new Jedi Academy is on Yavin 4. By that time a full training course is in operation, including droids, and force operated obstacle courses. Jedi Outcast’s antagonist, Desanne, was once a student there. In Jedi Academy‘s game it directly pairs up the new students with masters, and those masters include characters from these novels. (The main player is paired with Kyle Katarn.)
I,Jedi by Michael Stackpole was written to interweave with this story, suggesting Corran Horn aka Keiran Halcyon was one of the ‘unnamed’ students. The story meshes though it gives details which tended to be inaccurate assumptions on the prequels. Fortunately, as it’s told from Corran’s point of view, its something one can overlook as him being mistaken. It is possible he had Luke tell the other students about his father to explain how our resident ‘dark man’ knew of it. I do have another theory that may connect however.
The Clone Wars 2003 Microseries actually has a scene where Padawan and Commander Anakin Skywalker pursues Asaaj Ventress to Yavin 4 and battles her on one of the Temples. Given the location, it’s possible the ‘Dark Man’ had witnessed this event (maybe even cheered it on, under the circumstances!) If he got in even a chink while Luke slept, or if you tie that with I,Jedi saying he confessed it to the others, the enemy might well have had enough to figure out the rest.
Kevin J. Anderson along with Rebecca Moesta was also involved with the Young Jedi Knights and Junior Jedi Knights, where the Academy was moving back to offering classes for younger students. Tionne for instance, and some of the other original students are mentioned as instructors.
