Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice: The Rising Force (Wolverton)

Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice: The Rising Force , Dave Wolverton (1999)

Not really a review, just reminding myself about some of the details of what I read ...

As soon as I saw the first two books in this series sitting on a shelf in the Teacher Room at the high school I'm currently assigned to, I knew I had to borrow them. The fact that the apprentice was Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the Jedi was Qui-Gon Jinn just made it better. The fact that Scholastic had labeled it RL 4 was less attractive, but it didn't deter me. Actually, that meant that I should be able to read both and return them before anyone notice they were gone. (Or if I was suddenly reassigned, I wouldn't have someone else's property!)

The first book in the series opens about a month before Kenobi's 14th birthday when he'll be asked to leave the Jedi Temple that he's known his whole life if he isn't selected to be a Jedi's padawan before then. He'll be "condemned" to a life as a farmer, a fate he hopes to avoid. His problem is that he is easy to anger, which isn't a good trait for a Jedi Knight.

His main rival at the temple sabotages his chances of meeting with -- and battling in front of -- Qui-Gon, who has been without a padawan for some time now since he lost his last one.

Despite his performance, and the reveal that he'd been set-up, Qui-Gon does not choose to train him, even over prodding from Yoda. Kenobi is to be sent off to a farming world now because there a ship ready to go, and it can't wait for his birthday. As the Force would have it, Qui-Gon is sent on a mission to the same planet and travels on the same ship. And that's where the trouble begins. There are two separate groups of miners on board, one of which is run by the Hutts. They aren't happy with Jedi being on board.

When the ship is attacked by pirates, Qui-Gon battles the boarding party while Obi-Wan steers the ship out of danger, but has to set it down on a planet with dragon-like creatures. (Oddly, these creatures sleep in the air and rest on mountain tops, but there's no other life on land. All other life seems to be water-based. This doesn't make much sense, but we're only getting a snapshot of the world.)

I enjoyed the book, and, geek confession, I still haven't seen Episode 1 in its entirety in one sitting, but this is still a fun read. In some ways, it's like Clone Wars (or a prequel to it), in that Obi Wan is dealing with Anakin's anger issues as well as his impatience, even as Anakin has his own padawan (who is actually better than the other two at this point).

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