Star Wars: A New Dawn - a Novel by John Jackson Miller

 ** Warning Spoilers Below **

A NEW DAWN ushers in a new era of publishing for the Sci-Fi franchise being the first novel to be "officially" included in Disney's canon for its Star Wars Universe and serves as an introduction to the animated series Star Wars: Rebels.  This book is a decent romp of an adventure for the teen and young adult audience that the Star Wars: Rebels television show is being developed for and marketed to.  The tie-in to the Disney XD tv series and Star Wars universe is a great hook to get a young audience, that probably doesn't read literature as much as they should, to pick up and enjoy a book.  While the novel isn't designated as a Young Adult (YA) book [The Young Adult Library Service of the American Library Association defines the young adult genre as for ages twelve to eighteen although many publishers and authors market materials as either Teen Fiction for ten to fifteen year olds or Young Adult for sixteen to twenty-five year olds] that should be its key audience as it really is a flop when it comes to providing an enjoyable read for more mature adult Star Wars fans who may be more discerning readers. 

The story begins with a young fourteen year old Jedi in training (known as a Padawan) named Caleb Dume who escapes the Empire's purge of the Jedi Order and goes into hiding.  Ten years pass and Caleb has changed his ways and his identity to avoid detection from the bounty out on the heads of any remaining Jedi.  Hiding out in a backworld mining community far away from the heart of the Empire, he enjoys a lifestyle of drinking and carousing with the ladies when not performing menial labor to get by.  Caleb never uses the force or his real name to avoid any chance of being associated as a Jedi which would undoubtedly lead to his death at the hands of Imperial authorities.  The problem becomes that the mineral being exclusively mined where he is hiding out suddenly becomes a hot commodity being used to build the Empire's Star Destroyers (and probably the Death Star too) bringing with it the novel's villain and a lot of attention to the planet that Caleb, now known as Kannan Jarrus, doesn't want.

Kannan Jarrus is one of the primary characters of the Star Wars: Rebels animated series described as a Jedi in hiding from the Empire.  So anyone who has looked into the show in advance or watches any of its episodes will quickly pickup that Kannan Jarrus is Caleb Dume.  I suspected this about a page into when the Kannan Jarrus character was introduced but the author tries to spin this angle into a huge plot twist for the story.  Younger audiences may not connect the dots and appreciate this story angle but more sophisticated readers will find this angle overplayed and a rather boring element of the story that drags on way too long. 

John Jackson Miller originally became associated with the Star Wars universe by scripting  some pretty good stories for Dark Horse Comic Books which he parlayed into a gig as an author for Star Wars novels.  I've read all of his Star Wars books so far because their descriptions always sound interesting and I enjoy  Star Wars stories. A New Dawn though just really finally cemented for me that I'm not a fan of John Jackson Miller's novels which I find to be very simplistic and uninspiring.  I give him credit for having great story ideas but beyond delivering a decent outline for a novel's premise he just can't deliver a quality final product in my opinion.  Yet, I will say his work is probably good enough to amuse and entertain a younger reader so I would recommend A New Dawn to that demographic; but John Jackson Miller's writing just doesn't cut it for me when it comes to wanting to devote my valuable time towards enjoying a good book.  To be honest, if I wasn't reading A New Dawn for this review I probably would have stopped reading it halfway through the story. 

A New Dawn also introduces another major character from Star Wars: Rebels known as Hera Syndulla, but beyond introducing this mysterious Twi'lek as being "mysterious" that is about all we get about her.  We find out that she owns a space ship called the Ghost which is a big part of Rebels but don't learn anything about her past or present that really connects her to the television show.  I thought the book was supposed to be setting up the television series but telling the story of how Kannan and Hera meet before Rebels is about all the novel accomplishes.  Hera seems to have a lot of information and intel about the story's main villain and other Imperial activities but the story doesn't delve into how she acquired it, how she funds her secret agent type activities, who, if anyone, she is associated with, what is she actually doing traveling around the galaxy piloting an expensive starship, and so on.  The story actually goes out of its way to say there isn't a Rebellion yet...so what is Hera up to and what brought her to mingle in the Empire's affairs.  None of these issues is brought up and it just leaves you scratching your head.

Miller doesn't even do a nice job of creating a reason for Kannan and Hera to team up.  Essentially the author has Kannan lusting after Hera and offering to follow her and help her in whatever she wants him to do because he's fallen for this mysterious beauty? Really! that just seems a little naive and uncreative. Fortunately for readers incidents beyond the two of them bring Kannan and Hera together for a more rational reason to join forces rather than her being an attractive female that caught his eye.  In the end, the two of them fly off together into the sunset to do who knows what because John Jackson Miller doesn't elaborate anything about Hera other than she is a good fighter and pilot who hates the Empire.

The best part of the story is probably the villain who is sort of a parallel Darth Vader.  While Darth Vader went from being a healthy and powerful person that was crippled into a robotic cyborg form, Count Vidian was a sickly and weak individual that became physically and professionally powerful when he transformed his body into a mechanical cyborg.  Count Vidian was a worthwhile adversary and featured the best plot elements and twists in the story.  I appreciated how he demonstrates the corruption and abuses of the Empire from a business perspective versus the military viewpoint that is the normal perspective in Star Wars novels.  Unfortunately in the end, the reader isn't invested enough within the story and its characters to really care if County Vidian succeeds with his villainous scheme or not but rather is just curious to find out how the story will wrap up.

For this being the first book to be included in the canon for the overall Star Wars storyline and the introduction to the highly anticipated Rebels, I have to say it was disappointing that the novel didn't contribute anything memorable to either. 

BOOK REVIEW: KENOBI

Have you ever wondered what happened between Star Wars Episode III and Episode IV during the period in which the Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi lived on the far off planet of Tatooine keeping a watchful eye over " the new hope" as the crazy hermit Ben Kenobi?  Not much has been addressed over the years about that time period in the Star Wars mythos where this key character transitions in life from middle age warrior to elderly wizard. That is the focus though of a new novel by John Jackson Miller titled: STAR WARS: KENOBI.

In Miller's book, a few weeks have passed since Obi Wan battled Anakin on the lava planet of Mustafar.  Kenobi believes Anakin to be dead, not knowing of Darth Vader, and has taken Luke to live with Anakin's step-brother, Lars Owen, on the desert planet of Tatooine.  Obi Wan plans on laying low and keeping a quiet watchful protective eye over Luke but the locals don't make that as easy as that might seem as Kenobi is entangled in a series of adventures despite his best efforts to avoid them.

The story is an entertaining bed time or vacation read that doesn't take a lot of time to devote to finishing. I  read the whole book over the Labor Day weekend.  It takes an interesting angle by portraying the story with a Western theme, with a few gangsters thrown into the mix because you can't be on Tatooine without including Jabba the Hutt's gang.  The focus of the story is on the battle between the settlers of an oasis near where Kenobi sets up his hermit camp, and the Tusken Raiders (Sand People) who don't want humans encroaching on their territory.  The characters fit into the theme of cowboys from the American Western movies and the Native Americans they battled within that genre.  It was an interesting approach to tell a tale from this famous space opera as a Western and the author did an admirable job of replicating a Wild West theme on a distant planet from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.  Miller develops interesting characters on both sides of the conflict and Kenobi essentially becomes a secondary character until the last few chapters of the book.  You don't mind that Kenobi is essentially a second-tier character in a book with his title on the cover though because the author does a nice job of developing the primary characters and plots of the book to hook you in so you want to know their stories and outcomes. I believe that not having the book entirely focus on Kenobi was actually a nice approach for the novel to take and gives readers a look at the Star Wars Universe from a different perspective which gave the novel a refreshing viewpoint to fans who already know a lot about the central characters from the movies.  Yet the words in print still portrayed to the reader a feeling as if you were watching one of the Star Wars films.

For the most part I enjoyed reading KENOBI, but there were some things I found disappointing.  The biggest disappointment in the book was that a mystery so many die hard Star Wars fans have, how does Kenobi learn to vaporize himself during the Death Star duel with Darth Vader and subsequently communicate with Luke from the dead, isn't answered. Kenobi meditates throughout the book in lengthy passages trying to communicate with his dead Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin, from Episode I, and the reader is waiting for an eventual response.  We never get one it essentially is Kenobi just rambling to himself throughout the book. He is caught doing this by the settlers and gets the name "Crazy Ben" for talking to himself.  We know from the movies and also this story that Kenobi doesn't have these skills at this point in his life that he has later on in the original trilogy movies. So the question remains unanswered.

Also I always pictured the Sand People as might warriors from the first time I was startled as a kid as they ambushed Luke Skywalker and made me jump out of my seat in surprise, they are portrayed that way in all the movies, but Miller takes the approach of presenting them as a dying race in a similar scenario as unfortunately the American Indians faced in our United States history.  While that is an accurate historical portrayal of how unfortunately things were for native Americans in the Wild West it really diminishes the image of Tusken Raiders for fans.  I can understand why the author did this to develop the story and character for the Sand People's leader but he could have had just that one tribe be down and out rather than the whole race of beings on the verge of extinction.

Additionally the whole story only involves the first few months of Kenobi being a "hermit" on Tatooine and his dealings with a select group of settlers and Tusken Raiders.  It would have been nice to have had a broader story detailing more about Kenobi's more than a decade watching over Luke Skywalker as the child grows up.  I guess though writing it this way open up more possibilities for sequel books for the author.  Plus you probably don't want to read a war and peace length novel on this topic so breaking this time period into short stories is most likely the best approach.  I have to say though I had such high hopes and looked really forward to reading this book and afterward it just seemed to be lacking.  The story was just a little too simplistic for me in the end.

That being said, I did enjoy reading the book overall.  It was a nice distraction from the stress of everyday life taking me away to a fantasy world for a few hours during my Labor Day weekend.  If you are looking for a book that you can just sit back and  just enjoy the adventure, I would recommend picking up STAR WARS: KENOBI.  This book will keep your attention and amuse you during a long plane ride or while sitting by a pool and when it comes to a paperback that is my primary objective for picking out a fantasy novel...will it take me away ... and KENOBI does complete that mission.

Check out this book profile from the publisher for more info about this new Star Wars story:

The Republic has fallen.
Sith Lords rule the galaxy.
Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi has lost everything . . . 
Everything but hope.
 
Tatooine—a harsh desert world where farmers toil in the heat of two suns while trying to protect themselves and their loved ones from the marauding Tusken Raiders. A backwater planet on the edge of civilized space. And an unlikely place to find a Jedi Master in hiding, or an orphaned infant boy on whose tiny shoulders rests the future of a galaxy.
 
Known to locals only as “Ben,” the bearded and robed offworlder is an enigmatic stranger who keeps to himself, shares nothing of his past, and goes to great pains to remain an outsider. But as tensions escalate between the farmers and a tribe of Sand People led by a ruthless war chief, Ben finds himself drawn into the fight, endangering the very mission that brought him to Tatooine.
 
Ben—Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, hero of the Clone Wars, traitor to the Empire, and protector of the galaxy’s last hope—can no more turn his back on evil than he can reject his Jedi training. And when blood is unjustly spilled, innocent lives threatened, and a ruthless opponent unmasked, Ben has no choice but to call on the wisdom of the Jedi—and the formidable power of the Force—in his never-ending fight for justice.

DISCLAIMER:  I received an advance reviewer digital pdf copy of Kenobi from the publisher.  The thoughts and opinions in this post are my own.