Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy #3 - Champions of the Force (1994) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday afternoon. I'm back with my review of the third and final book in the Jedi Academy Trilogy series by Kevin J. Anderson, Champions of the Force. I actually finished it on Wednesday, but I did groceries on Wednesday and I was at an appointment yesterday, which is why you're getting the review today. And there will be spoilers because most of what I want to talk about here I can't talk about without spoilers. So, you know what to do if you've never read the book before. Let's get into it.

Remember when I said that Dark Apprentice was the weakest book in the trilogy? Well, I was wrong. Champions of the Force is the weakest book in the trilogy. The main storyline of Luke establishing the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV, at the site of the old Rebel base seen in A New Hope, and the fight against the spirit of the ancient Sith Lord, Exar Kun, ended halfway through the book. As a result the rest of the book is stumbling through Kyp Durron's redemption, which comes way too quickly, Admiral Daala failing at her attempts to destroy the New Republic's military forces, and Han, Lando, and Mara taking Kessel for Lando's new spice mining operation. Not to mention wrapping up whatever Ambassador Furgan was trying to do with Anakin Solo.

That's not to say that I don't like The Jedi Academy Trilogy, because I do. But, I can see why alot of people don't. It's not a story that warranted an entire trilogy to tell. But, having read interviews with authors and editors, I suspect that Bantam needed to fill the 1994 schedule, and with the success of the Thrawn Trilogy from 1991 to 1993, they knew they needed another trilogy to fill the schedule since 1993 only had two books come out, the first being the final book in the Thrawn Trilogy, The Last Command, by Timothy Zahn, and the other being The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers. And with 1994 being the year that George Lucas announced he was making the Prequel Trilogy, and the Special Edition of the Original Trilogy, Bantam needed at least three more books to come out along with The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton, and The Crystal Star by Vonda N. MacIntyre. Of course, this simply speculation on my part, based on information I've gotten from various interviews, where certain books or certain trilogies of books were published simply to fill the publication schedule because another book fell through or not enough books were on the schedule in a particular year to begin with.

The thing is though is that Anderson isn't Zahn, and, as I mentioned in my review of Dark Apprentice, he had alot of projects going on in 1994. Not only was he working on The Jedi Academy Trilogy, but he was also working on his only standalone Star Wars novel, Darksaber, several Star Wars anthology novels, including Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, and the Young Jedi Knights series with his wife, Rebecca Moesta, as well as his second original novel, Climbing Olympus, AND he was working with Tom Veitch on the Tales of the Jedi comic book series for Dark Horse. And with Bantam's insanely tight publication schedule, Anderson had to crank out these three novels pretty quickly since Jedi Search came out in March, Dark Apprentice came out in July, and Champions of the Force came out in September. So I can understand why these three books aren't the best Star Wars novels from that era. 

One of the things I like about this book is that it is Anakin Solo's first full appearance in the novels, as well as his first full appearance overall as Dark Horse didn't publish Dark Empire II and Empire's End for another couple of years following the publication, and he had a brief appearance in Dark Apprentice. Kinda like how Jacen and Jaina had a brief appearance in The Last Command, but Jedi Search was their first full appearance.

I also like the interactions between Han and Lando in this book better than I did in the last one. I felt they were too antagonistic with one another in the last book, but here, they're definitely more where they were in Return of the Jedi. What I didn't like was Lando's interactions with Mara Jade. They felt too sleazy for my tastes. Lando is supposed to be charming and suave, not creepy. I dunno, Lando just felt off to me when he was interacting with Mara. Especially since he didn't trust her at all in The Last Command, and there's no story that happens between Zahn's books, and this trilogy, where Lando could've changed his mind. And there's no way he'd actively hit on her even when he wasn't actually hitting on her. 

I don't understand why Kyp Durron was chosen to appear in The New Jedi Order either. He has only two other appearances in other Bantam era novels, one of them being Darksaber by Kevin J. Anderson, and then he appears in the twelfth book of the Young Jedi Knights series prior to his appearance in 1999's Vector Prime. So he's not really a prominent character during the Bantam era. He's a character I've never really liked either.

As I mentioned earlier, his redemption came way too quickly, considering he blew up an entire star system, killing billions of people with the Sun Crusher at the beginning of this book. Yes, he was under the influence of Exar Kun, but, Kyp's targets were his own. He chose to fight the Empire, rather than to destroy the New Republic and the new group of Jedi Knights at the academy, despite Kun's plans for him. He willingly destroyed Carida. So I'd say he got off lightly.

I wish we got to spend more time at the Jedi Academy given the name of the trilogy, but I have a theory as to why we didn't spend more time there. George had never wanted the novels to do very much with the Jedi, the Sith, or the Force because if he decided to make more Star Wars movies anything the authors came up with in the novels would be overridden by what George chose to do in the movies. Especially around the time that Anderson was writing this trilogy, since George knew by then that he was going to make the Prequel Trilogy and that focused heavily on the Force, the Jedi and the Sith. Which is why he kept the novels and comics away from the Prequel era, only allowing Tales of the Jedi to exist because it was set thousands of years before the Prequel era. 

 As with the previous books in the trilogy, I first read Champions of the Force when Garrett lent it to me in 1998-1999. I eventually got my own copy sometime in the 2000s. The copy I have in my collection now is the original 1994 edition with the embossed STAR WARS logo on the front cover. The book would be re-published with the Legends banner across the top of the covers and spine in 2015 with the rest of the trilogy. 

Overall, this wasn't a great trilogy of Star Wars novels, nor was this a good Star Wars novel. I still enjoyed reading it though. Even though they aren't good books, I think I enjoyed reading them because they're familiar to me since I read them several times over the years as I've never had the biggest Star Wars collection so I tended to re-read the ones I did have over and over again. It is hard to recommend this trilogy to people though because, while it is important because it introduced alot of things that became staples of the Expanded Universe, like Luke's Jedi Academy, it's also a pretty skippable trilogy of books. But, if you really want to check them out, I recommend you do so.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for this week. It was kind of a write-off week for me because I was out on Wednesday morning and then out yesterday afternoon and I hadn't actually planned to review Champions of the Force this week for that reason. Nor did I plan other blog posts either. I'll be back next week with some cool posts. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.