Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy #2 - Dark Apprentice (1994) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? Did you all have good weekends? Mine was pretty quiet. I'm back with my review of the second novel in The Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson, Dark Apprentice. I honestly don't have a whole lot to say about this book, because despite some important events happening in the book, the majority of it is more setup for the third book, Champions of the Force. As usual, there will be some spoilers for this 30 year old book, so be aware of that. Let's get into it.

Originally published on June 1st, 1994, Dark Apprentice is the weakest book in this trilogy. It introduces a few characters who will be long lasting characters in the Expanded Universe novels, but, otherwise it does little else in terms of story or character development. 

Han and Lando spend the entire book playing Sabacc for ownership of the Millennium Falcon. Which is the least interesting part of the book. Leia barely has anything to do too. In fact, despite Luke having the most to do, between dealing with the death of Gantoris and the fall of Kyp Durron to the Dark Side, it's not that interesting. I think it's because they abandoned the whole Kessel subplot from Jedi Search entirely, but failed to replace it with anything interesting.

As I mentioned in my review of Jedi Search, Admiral Daala is a bit disappointing as a villain. But I think part of the problem is that she came after Thrawn, the resurrected Palpatine, the Ssi-ruuk from The Truce at Bakura, and Warlord Zsinj from The Courtship of Princess Leia. She didn't do much in Jedi Search, since she wasn't introduced until pretty late in that book. And even here she doesn't really do anything to differentiate herself from other Bantam era EU villains. Even the ones to come after her like Ysanne Isard. 

The stuff with Admiral Ackbar was pretty interesting, but we didn't get enough of it in this book. I've liked Ackbar as a character ever since I read the X-Wing series. Of all of the supporting characters from the Original Trilogy, Ackbar is the most prominent during the Bantam era. He's in just about every book from 1991 to 1999, even if it's just a quick appearance for a mission briefing, with the exception of a few of the standalone novels, the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, and The Han Solo Trilogy. So to have him have a character arc in this trilogy is great, but, like I said, Anderson didn't do enough with it.

I'm going to talk about this in my review of Champions of the Force, but I think The Jedi Academy Trilogy suffers from Kevin J. Anderson not having enough time to flesh things out. At the time this trilogy was coming out, and likely when Anderson was writing it, he was working on Tales of the Jedi with Tom Veitch, editing the Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Tales from Jabba's Palace, and Tales of the Bounty Hunters anthology books, AND writing the Young Jedi Knights series with his wife, Rebecca Moesta at the same time. While the comics had started coming out in 1994, the books wouldn't start coming out until 1995, so he was still working on a bunch of projects at once, all with deadlines that were pretty close to one another given Bantam's publication strategy for the novels coming out at the time.

On top of that he tried to include alot of story into only three books. As a result, alot of them feel less interesting and less developed than they would've been otherwise. Like the Han and Lando stuff. That could've been extremely interesting, given their history, which would originally be fleshed out in the Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin, and then be realized onscreen in Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. But because Anderson has so much going on in these books, it doesn't work quite as well as it should've.

Same thing goes with everything going on at the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV. That should've been way more captivating than it was, given that the trilogy is called the Jedi Academy Trilogy. But, because Anderson pulls off in every direction rather than focusing on one or two storylines, it ends up not working because not enough time is devoted to any one storyline. Which is something that Anderson is much better at than this book makes him seem like he is. 

Don't get me wrong, this book is well written and Anderson does a great job at introducing the various storylines that make up this book, he just doesn't seem to be able to finish any of them. I've already started reading Champions of the Force and so far the book seems to be focusing on Kyp Durron and his fight against the remnants of the Empire and what's happening on Yavin IV with the other characters, including Luke's Jedi students, and Luke himself. I just wish that Dark Apprentice could've done that better.

Dark Apprentice was republished in 2015, most likely at the same time as Jedi Search and Champions of the Force as Del Rey seems to have re-published each book in each Bantam era book trilogy togetrher, so all three Thrawn Trilogy books together, all three Jedi Academy Trilogy books together etc. The Wookieepedia page for Dark Apprentice specifies when this book was republished with the Legends banner, under the cover image for the Legends banner edition in the cover gallery. Even before seeing that though, I figured it had been re-released with the rest of the trilogy in 2015, since the copyright info in the Legends banner edition of Jedi Search says 2015 in it.

I actually have a copy of the original 1994 paperback release for the book in my collection. When I was younger I had the reprint from the late '90s or early 2000s, whenever Bantam re-released it without the embossed lettering for the Star Wars title at the top, but now I have the original edition from 1994 with the embossed lettering, which is pretty cool. 

Like with the rest of the trilogy, I read Dark Apprentice in early 1999, when Garrett lent it to me when I was in grade 6 and he was in grade 5. I honestly don't remember what I thought of the book when I first read it. Not entirely anyway. I remember not liking it as much as I did Jedi Search, but that's it.

Overall, it's an okay book. I would only recommend reading it if you're reading the entire trilogy, not as a standalone book as you won't get much out of it. And, like I said, none of the storylines feel very interesting given how much Anderson tries to tell in this one book.

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more reviews and other blog posts. I'm not sure what else I'll be writing about this week, but I have some ideas. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.