Star Wars: Kenobi (2013) Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Monday. I hope you all had a good weekend. As you saw from the review I posted yesterday I had a pretty great weekend. Today I'm here to take a look at Star Wars: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller. I ended up finishing it last night before bed though I had originally planned on waiting to review it until after I'd finished watching season 2 of Stargirl since I really need to get that review done. But, here we are, so let's get into it. Oh, and there won't be too many spoilers, if any, because I'm planning a Star Wars books thing for the near future. Which means that at some point I'll be revisiting this book in more detail. This is just to get my initial thoughts on the book as it's my first time reading it. Let's get into it.

Published on August 27th, 2013, Kenobi was one of the last novels published in the Star Wars Expanded Universe before the entire EU was moved into Legends and Disney began publishing new novels in the new canon set up by Star Wars Rebels in 2014. In fact the paperback includes an excerpt from the first adult novel in the new Expanded Universe, A New Dawn, also by John Jackson Miller.

For years now I've heard about how good Kenobi is and how it's one of the best Legends novels out there, but I never really knew anything about the story or characters in it. There aren't even previews for the book in the paperbacks for the novels I have that were published in 2012 and early 2013. So I knew nothing going in. And I was surprised. I was expecting some contrived plot to either get Kenobi off of Tatooine or to put Luke in danger. But what I got was not that at all. In fact Obi-Wan is hardly in the book at all. The focus is on Orrin Gault and Annileen Calwell, ordinary settlers trying to make a living on Tatooine, while dealing with the Sand People and their own children, Jabe and Kallie, Annileen's son and daughter, and Mullen and Veeka, Orrin's son and daughter. Because the novel was hyped up for me, I was expecting an epic novel full of Stormtroopers, kidnapping plots by the Imperials. Instead I got a traditional space western. 

I really enjoyed this book. As I said, I was expecting a plot heavy novel. Instead I got a much smaller character piece. While we do get Obi-Wan's feelings on the events that happened in Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith (2005), they're confined to meditations where Obi-Wan talks to Qui-Gon Jinn through the Force, though, like in the Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ series, Qui-Gon doesn't answer.

Speaking of Obi-Wan Kenobi, according to Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki, not only did Ewan MacGregor read this book after he'd finished filming the series, but series showrunner, Deborah Chow, said that she had used the book as a guide to where Obi-Wan would be in his life during the ten years between Episode III and the series, as well as let the book influence the tone of the series, even if none of the plot was used. Honestly though, some of the plot of the book reminds me of what was going on in The Book of Boba Fett with the Tusken Raiders, Boba, the Pike Syndicate and the Hutts. 

I don't really have a favourite character in this book because, aside from Orrin and his kids, they're all pretty great so it's hard to pick one. But, having said that I do like Annileen quite a bit. Well, besides the fact that she put up with the Gault family a little too long, simply because Orrin was her late husband, Dannar's best friend. Yeah, I don't care if a person is my late partner's best friend, if they're a slimy businessman or just an overall bad influence, I'm not keeping them around, no matter what the personal cost to me would be. That's just me though.

I'm not a big fan of the Sand People, but I really enjoyed what they did here. It's better than what they tried to do with it in The Book of Boba Fett. I also like how it tied into the Sharad Hett stuff from the Star Wars: Republic comic book series that Dark Horse published from 1998 until 2006 before it became the Dark Times series, which then ran until 2013, when this book was published. For those of you who don't know who Sharad Hett is, he was a Jedi Knight from a world whose name was lost to history for some reason. Anyways, once his world and family were destroyed, he left the Jedi Order and exiled himself to Tatooine where he joined the Tusken Raiders and had a son, who would eventually become Darth Krayt in the Star Wars: Legacy comic book series. I think that, aside from the Junior Jedi Knights young readers book series by Rebecca Moesta and Nancy Richardson and the Republic comics, we don't get much with the Sand People in Legends. We don't get anything in the adult novels line until this book despite the fact that we go back to Tatooine quite a bit in Legends. So it's nice to get something here, even though A'Yark doesn't interact with the rest of the main characters until the final act. It's interesting to get the thought process of a Tusken Raider though.

As mentioned earlier, Kenobi was published in paperback around the time that Legends was wrapping up and the first new canon novel, A New Dawn, was going to come out. Which makes it one of the first books to come out with the Legends banner. However I don't know for sure because Wookieepedia doesn't have a record of the release date for the books being released with the Legends banner that had previously been published without it, like the Bantam era books, the books like Splinter of the Mind's Eye that were published during the time when the Original Trilogy movies were being made, and the books that came out between 2000 and early 2013 where the books that initially came out in hardcover, came out in paperback before the Legends banner was added to the covers. But, I think I'll do a post about the Legends banner reprints at a different time, because they are worth talking about. This is the edition that I have in my collection as I asked for it for my birthday, along with Honor Among Thieves by James S.A. Corey, the last Legends book to be published.

Included in the back of the book, along with an excerpt from the canon novel, A New Dawn, was a short story called "Incognito" also by Miller. It was originally published in Star Wars Insider #143, which came out in 2013 for the 30th anniversary of the original theatrical release of Return of the Jedi. The story is good. It's basically Obi-Wan taking a transport to Tatooine, with baby Luke Skywalker following Revenge of the Sith. It's fine.

On April 5th, 2022, Kenobi was re-released, this time as a trade paperback in the Essential Legends Collection. I actually considered getting this edition rather than the regular paperback, but decided that I just wanted the regular paperback edition to keep my Legends novels consistent as the Essential Legends Collection editions are bigger than the regular paperback editions. I might actually do a post on this series too just because it fascinates me as a fan of Star Wars Legends novels. 

Overall I really enjoyed reading Kenobi. I think I'll need to read it again in the very near future though. Just to give myself time to sit with it a bit more because it's not something I was expecting from a Legends novel. Especially not one that was written in the early 2010s. Most of those books were more action oriented with some character stuff going on. If you've never read this book then I recommend you do so because it's definitely worth the read. Just be aware that the entire book takes place on Tatooine. So if you don't like sand because it's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere, then you might not enjoy this book, but definitely give it a try as it's well written with a good pace, and it's probably the best way they could've told Obi-Wan's early days on Tatooine. And yes, I used Anakin's line about sand from Attack of the Clones.

That's going to be it for me for today. But I'll be back soon for more reviews. I originally planned to review the season 2 premiere of How I Met Your Father tomorrow, but then it dawned on me that it's only dropping on Hulu tomorrow, not on Disney+ internationally. So that probably won't be happening until February or March. Which means I'll end up doing a comic book review this week afterall. But we'll see. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.