I, Nerd: I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole

 A lot of stuff has been going on since I last posted. I was laid off from my job and found a new one that take me into the office every day, and a good friend of mine had a wedding that took up a lot of my time. During that whole thing, I  will admit to neglecting the blog a bit. A lot of that is down to mood and the book. This is not a job; this is for fun, and if the mood is not in it, the reading is a lot harder. I had expected it to be just a fun little book, but I found reading it to be a lot more of a slog than I expected.

I find this cover really strange because I can't tell if the person in the background is supposed to be Luke Skywalker or Mirax. I feel it could really go either way. 

The book in question is I, Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole. I know a lot more about how I got this book than many others because I bought it. I picked it up from Goodwill for $4.99, the sticker is still on the back dust cover. Goodwill is a pretty good place to pick up books if you are looking for cookbooks, bestsellers, less popular genre novels, movie tie-ins, and politicians' memoirs. For a decent price as well. It is not really someplace I would recommend if you have something specific in mind, but it is a great place to get a book to take with you camping, or if you just want to see what your eye lands on, and that can be really fun. 

I didn't pick up I, Jedi to take it camping, I picked it up because I loved the X-Wing series as a kid, specifically the first four books, those written by Michael Stackpole. The series continued after that, but I never found them in Goodwill so I never picked them up. I believe the series still holds up, for the most part. They focus entirely on space fighter combat and are basically the space combat bits of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi as a book, with both new and returning characters. Stackpole was a great choice to write these. He has a lot of experience in writing military sci-fi tie-in novels, writing for Star Wars and BattleTech, and the space combat scenes he writes are a lot of fun. I, Jedi has some of that, and those scenes are a treat, but they are not the main focus of the book, and it suffers from that, and from other issues.

The main problem with this book is that there is a large section of the book has a completely different focus from the main plot. At the start of the novel we are reintroduced to Corran Horn, the main character of X-Wing series, and quickly get into the central plot. Horn's wife is missing and it is related to the force and the pirates in the opening action scene, and Corran needs to become a Jedi and track her down. It is a pretty good hook, and the opening was very nostalgic for me, full of familiar characters and a real sense of urgency. And then the problems starts because Corran has to go to Luke Skywalkers Jedi Acadamy to become a Jedi Knight. 

At this point I, Jedi starts working on what I think are the plot points and characters from different novels in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Some of them are good. Mara Jade is great when she shows up. There is a scene where she is spending time with Lando Calrissian, and Corran says something like "it seems like she wants to buy him for what she thinks he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he is worth" and that is a great burn. Mara Jade is also wearing Lando's clothes at the time because he "lost" her luggage and has been buying clothes for her that he wants her to wear and she is having none of it. That I loved, it is a very funny and characterful interaction. 

The part I didn't love is the main plot at the academy. The training really needed to be a montage, and too much depth goes into it without being interesting. There is also the evil Sith lord part which I think is a plot from a couple of other Extended Universe novels, and it does not transition well here. From what is here I don't think it was very good in the original either. I would love to know if its inclusion was some editorial mandate or something that was required only because of when this book was set in the Expanded Universe timeline because it does not work. It seems small and distracting when what the reader and the main character want is to go and deal with the original plot. There is a hint that it was not originally wanted because Corran talks about how he had lost himself by going to the academy. When the novel returns to the main plot, it seems to rush it a bit. A trope I love is the main character bringing down an organization from the inside, but in this case, it is not given enough room to breathe.

So would I recommend anyone pick up I, Jedi? No, but don't think that reflects on the author or the Star Wars Expanded Universe as a whole. They can be a lot of fun, but I don't think that this one was really that good. Go read the X-Wing series, or the Thrawn trilogy, which are a fun collection of novels, and maybe leave this one alone. Alright, now to roll up the next book. 

I find it funny that I basically rolled 19 twice.

It is a small little book.

And I rolled up Books in World History A guide for Teachers and Students  by W. Warren Wagar. This is going to one of the stranger books I read, and it is another one for the books read in a way they were not the intended genre common here on Eric's Bookshelves. This is an annotated bibliography, a relatively rare style of academic writing. Essentially a book of book reviews. Maybe it will help make the blog better. At 174 pages it should not take long to read.