“In the old Republic, Jedi Knights were the protectors and guardians of all. For a thousand generations the Jedi used the powers of the Force to guide, defend, and provide support for the rightful government of worlds –before the dark days of the Empire came, and the Jedi Knights were killed… Now we have a New Republic. The Empire appears to be defeated. We have founded a new government based upon the old, but let us hope we learn from our mistakes. Before, an entire order of Jedi watched over the Republic, offering strength. Now I am the only Jedi Master who remains. Without that order of protectors to provide a backbone of strength for the new Republic, can we survive?” -Luke
It has been seven years since the Battle of Endor, and in that time, much has happened across the galaxy. There has been a war against the alien Ssi-ruuk Imperium (as featured in The Truce at Bakura), the resurgence of Grand Admiral Thrawn (as featured in the Thrawn Trilogy), as well as a resurrected clone Emperor with his gigantic World Devastator Machines (as featured in the Dark Empire comic series). Now, an uneasy peace exists across the scattered factions of the New Republic, and the nascent regime is struggling to win over support from independent planets.
Jedi Search (Part I of Kevin J. Anderson’s “Jedi Academy Trilogy”) follows several different narrative arcs. Far and away the best of these arcs concerns Han Solo and Chewbacca who return to the planet Kessel (where Han once completed the “Kessel run in under twelve parsecs” when he worked as a smuggler), only now Han is serving in a more official capacity as a New Republic ambassador on a diplomatic mission to win over Kessel to the New Republic. The planet Kessel is described as “potato-shaped and maned with tendrils of escaping atmosphere, orbited by a large moon that once housed a garrison of Imperial troops.” Kessel is a dangerous planet to visit due to a nearby black hole cluster, a maelstrom known as the Maw (“one of the wonders of the galaxy”). On Kessel’s surface, there are immense factories which emit gaseous fumes (oxygen tanks are required), and notably Kessel is home to a heavy spice mining business and considerable smuggling activities (it also is the site of one of the toughest prisons in the galaxy). Why exactly does the New Republic hope to ally itself with such a dangerous place like Kessel in the first place? Answers are never really given in the book unfortunately. At any rate, upon arrival Han and Chewie are suddenly attacked by a wave of TIE fighters and X-wings as well as a motley band of other ships emerging from Kessel’s moon, which forces the Millennium Falcon to crash-land on Kessel. Han is then confronted by shadowy figures from his past –a lanky scarecrow-esque figure named Skynxnex (a former prisoner in an Imperial facility) and Moruth Doole, a large-eyed, frog-like Rybet creature with a mechanical device over his eye. Moruth Doole is currently running the spice-mines on Kessel and he manages the business like a slave labor camp. He is irate with Han over a failed spice mission for Jabba the Hutt which evidently cost Doole his eye (details around the events leading up to A New Hope). Doole then maliciously sends Han and Chewie down into the fearsome spice mines to work as slaves because “no one will ever find you down there.” In the mines, Doole likens his workers to larval slaves, working in harrowing silence. This haunting imagery adds further context to fear Threepio’s fears expressed in A New Hope over being “sent to the spice mines of Kessel.”
Meanwhile, Leia –now serving as Minister of State– patiently waits on Coruscant for news from Han on his Kessel mission while their children are carefully guarded by Winter (Leia’s assistant) on a secret planet known as Anoth, a place which was selected by Luke Skywalker and Admiral Ackbar. Leia only sees her children a few times per year for their own safety. Interestingly enough, in addition to the twins, Jacen and Jaina who were born during the Thrawn Trilogy, Han and Leia now also have an infant child named Anakin (apparently, this was detailed in the Dark Empire series). The children serve as little more than fussing toddlers for much of the background of this novel. And in addition to Leia’s New Republic role as Minister of State, she is joined by fellow leaders: Mon Mothma (Chief of State), General Jan Dodonna (who led the Battle of Yavin against the first Death Star), Carlist Rieekan (former commander of Echo Base on the ice planet Hoth), General Crix Madine (an Imperial defector who was instrumental in helping destroy the second Death Star), Admiral Ackbar (who led the rebel fleet in the Battle of Endor), and Senator Garm Bel Iblis (who marshaled his Dreadnaught ships against Grand Admiral Thrawn in the original “Thrawn Trilogy”).
The other narrative arc, much clumsier in my view, concerns Luke’s vision of rebuilding the Jedi Order. He has been training Leia to use the force, but he realizes that he needs a pipeline of more students to build a new school of potential force-users. He formally requests sanction from the New Republic in order to rebuild a Jedi Academy: “Under my direction we can help these students discover their abilities, to focus and strengthen their power. Ultimately, this academy would provide a core group that could allow us to restore the Jedi Knights as protectors of the New Republic” (21). While this premise is incredibly enticing, sadly the outcome is wildly anti-climactic. Using information gleaned from the Imperial City’s data banks, Luke heads to Bespin but first he makes a stop at the remote outpost of Eol Sha where one lost Jedi descendant may be residing. Eol Sha is a harsh place filled with earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, and lava. Within a hundred years, a nearby moon will come crashing into the settlement, rendering it doomed. The commercial activity on Eol Sha has fallen apart and records of the planet are now a mess. At present, Luke is chasing a man named Gantoris who is said to have once miraculously escaped injury (he is a descendant of Ta’ania who was herself the daughter of a Jedi). When the two finally connect, Gantoris requires proof that Luke is actually a Jedi –and so Luke walks over scalding lava and leaps upward with superhuman strength out of a flaming canyon populated by a “fireworm.” And Gantoris confesses that he has strange visions of a dark man bearing a foreboding prophecy (why would Luke continue to a pursue a student like Gantoris who is quite obviously clouded by the dark side?) This is all a bit silly, but Luke manages to persuade Gantoris to join him anyway and together they head to Tibannopolis, the second largest city on Bespin next to Cloud City, where they meet Streen, an aging leathery-skinned, hermetic gas prospector with a grey beard. Streen is largely skeptical of other people and prefers to live a quiet life mining tibanna gas, but after Streen passes a test with a cohort of flying Rawwk creatures around Bespin, Streen agrees to join Luke: “I know I’m not coming back. That old life is over.”
“The Emperor hunted down and killed all the Jedi Knights his assassins could find, but I don’t believe he could have traced every descendant, every bloodline. Now the Empire has fallen and the New Republic needs to reestablish the Jedi Knights” (102).
During this time, Lando has also ventured out to help Luke with a hilariously ridiculous side-quest to the planet Umgul. Flanked by Threepio and Artoo, Lando tracks down a man named Tymmo (a rumored force-user) who is a successful gambler in Umgullian blob races –in these extended scenes, we are treated to detailed passages about slimy, sluggish blob creatures racing through “blobstacle” courses. At any rate, it turns out this misadventure to be a waste of time. Tymmo (whose real name is Dack) is actually the escaped consort of Duchess Mistal of Dargul –he apparently fled from her overbearing clinginess and now has a reward out for his name. Realizing this man is unfit for Luke’s academy, Lando turns Tymmo/Dack over to the authority on Umgul and returns to Coruscant (what was the point of this strange misadventure aside from eliciting a few laughs from the silly blob-racing scenes?)
At any rate, back on Corsucant Luke and Lando grow concerned about Han’s disappearance so they hatch a plan to pose as investors on Kessel and fly aboard Lando’s ship –The Lady Luck—to discover what has become of their friend. Meanwhile trapped in the spice mines, Han and Chewie befriend a wiry man named Kyp Durron. Kyp has worked in the mines since the age of eight, his parents are both dead, and his brother Zeth was conscripted away to become an Imperial stormtrooper –Kyp has since learned to be a survivalist. Also on Kessel, we learn about a strange blend of spice called “glitterstim” which is photoactive and thus must be mined in total darkness. However, something else has been lurking deep in these mines killing workers and causing havoc. It turns out to be “a huge spider made of blown glass, all sharp edges, with a hundred legs and a thousand eyes” (189). It has blue arcs up its body and spins a web of glitterstim. When Skynxnex is sent to assassinate Han and Chewie, it leads to a wild, rollicking chase through the mines (cue the Indiana Jones imagery) which only ends with the humongous spice-spider impaling Skynxnex. Han, Chewie, and Kyp then flee on a shuttle froom Kessel but they are quickly tailed by Moruth Doole’s ragtag band of security forces, so they decide to make a risky decision –to flee directly into the nearby Maw, a swirling cloud of gas with a bottomless pit of swirling black holes. Why make such a dangerous maneuver? As it turns out, Kyp is a force-capable person. In the same way that Kyp was able to guide them through Kessel’s pitch-black spice tunnels, he is now able to close his eyes and lead this humble shuttle through the Maw. How is this possible? Apparently, an elderly woman named Vima-Da-Boda once worked in the mines and notedd that Kyp had tremendous force-potential (Han remembers how he and Leia once found a fallen Jedi named Vima-Da-Boda on Nal Hutta). However, there is little time to celebrate their successful voyage through the Maw as they quickly find something long forgotten hidden inside…
Han, Chewie, and Kyp –after dodging lethal black holes—discover a secure area of space in the middle of the Maw where four giant Star Destroyers are stationed. Greeted by an armada of TIE fighters, they fail to pass Imperial security protocols and are then brought before an Imperial leader named Admiral Daala, a tall, slender woman in an olive gray jumpsuit donning black gloves, with hair of “hot copper” and green eyes. A graduate of the rigid Carida Academy, she was once the first woman to reach the rank of Admiral in the Empire. Daala and her secret Imperial fleet had been tasked with guarding the Maw Installation during the reign of the Empire, and ever since, she and her forces have been living in complete isolation for more than a decade aboard these four Star Destroyers called the Gorgon, Manticore, Basilisk, and Hydra –each Star Destroyer houses 37,000 crew and 9,700 troops, all of them people without families or connections, recruited from worlds devastated by early battles of the Empire. Apparently, Tarkin once personally took Daala to the Kuat Drive Yards to observe the construction of her Star Destroyers. But now, operating in a vacuum with an increasingly restless crew, Daala has not received any word from the outside world in many years –for example, she is unaware that the first and second Death Stars’ have been destroyed, nor is she aware of the deaths of Tarkin, Vader, and the Emperor, and she is shocked to learn that the Empire has been defeated by the rebellion. Upon the strange arrival of this trio of foreigners on her Star Destroyer (the Gorgon), Daala decides to torture Han in order to extract information. In this, we learn an important fact about Admiral Daala –she is the former lover of Grand Moff Tarkin. We also learn about the importance of the Maw Installation and its use of scientists and engineers who were designers of most of the original Death Star (like Bevel Leminsk and Qwi Xux), Admiral Daala’s fleet is guarding a nearly completed apocalyptic device called the “Sun Crusher,” a small single-freighter ship with the power to destroy an entire solar system (it has the power to launch a modulated resonance projectile into a star which triggers a supernova).
However, when a leading good-natured scientist named Qwi Xux (from the planet Omwat) realizes what her inventions were actually used for by the Empire (like the Death Star, World Devastators, and Sun Crusher), she decides to secretly rescue Han, Chewbacca, and Kyp from captivity, and they all narrowly escape aboard the Sun Crusher while being chased by TIE fighters and Star Destroyers back through the Maw (they manage to annihilate one of the Star Destroyers, the Hydra, using the Sun Crusher). But on the other side, they surprisingly find the retrofitted Millennium Falcon (helmed by Luke and Lando, whose ploy as investors on Kessel led to a tour of Moruth Doole’s shipyard where they managed to recapture the Falcon). The Falcon is being attacked by Doole’s security forces, but the arrival of Star Destroyers quickly causes confusion and suspicion that this has all been a New Republic trap, so Doole’s ships begin engaging in a fierce space battle against Daala’s armada, unknowingly allowing Lando and Luke (aboard the Falcon) and Han, Chewie, Kyp, and Qwi (aboard the Sun Crusher) just enough space to escape back to Coruscant.
The novel concludes as Han and Leia are reunited with their children inside the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. Lando is granted a reward of a million credits for returning Dack to Duchess Mistal (with assistance by the authority on Umgul, Slish Fondine, who also becomes the recipient of an amusingly named blobstacle track called the “Dack Track” courtesy of the Duchess). Lando, who lost his molten metal mines on Nkllon and abandoned his Tibanna gas mines on Bespin, now decides to actually invest his wealth in automated mining on Kessel (in contrast to the slave labor enforced by Moruth Doole). The refugees on Eol Sha are then ushered to Dantooine, a planet graced with a mild climate, plenty of water, purplish hills, tribes and herds, two moons (lavender and greenish), and the site of one of the first rebel bases. In a brief epilogue, Luke Skywalker returns to the Great Temple ruins on the fourth moon of Yavin (the ruins are relics left behind by the Massassi race) where Luke begins plans for his new Jedi Academy, where he will train the likes of Gantoris, Steen, Kyp Durron, Mara Jade, a few of the Witches of Dathomir, Kam Solusar, and others. The future of the academy is shrouded in uncertainty, especially with a student like Gantoris, who is “intense” with fiery eyes that frighten Leia and plagued by dark ominous dreams. Luke ponders the age-old Socratic question of how to properly teach his students –What does it mean to be a good teacher? Is it possible to ensure future trained Jedi won’t fall to the dark side? Considering the failures of Joruus C’baoth or Anakin, will the New Republic be safer with or without a Jedi Academy?
Part I of Kevin J. Anderson’s “Jedi Academy Trilogy” has received a somewhat mixed reputation among Star Wars fans, however I thought it was still a fun little adventure, especially for Han Solo who travels to Kessel deep into the pitch-black spice mines filled with giant spiders and then into the black hole Maw where he finds a long-dormant Imperial cell just waiting to activate its genocidal Sun Crusher solar-system-killer. Despite featuring a well-trod doomsday device motif, Jedi Search is still compelling in a few respects, especially with the first appearance of Admiral Daala who will reappear throughout the Expanded Universe –and at least the Sun Crusher is vastly superior to the Starkiller Base as featured in the Disney sequel trilogy. At any rate, there are a few other interesting points of note in the novel –especially Luke’s discovery of a new “forehead test” for probing other force-sensitive beings’ minds in order to see if they can naturally reject external intrusion. However, the Luke Skywalker narrative was a real swing and a miss for me in this novel –here was an extraordinary chance to portray Luke traveling throughout the galaxy, tracking down potential Jedi to build his academy, but instead we are given a pair of fairly forgettable characters (the inclusion of Gantoris in Luke’s academy seems to defy all sense of reason). Lastly, a few other classic characters make appearances in this novel, such as a brief appearance by Wedge Antilles at the beginning and end of the book (he handles reconstruction efforts on Coruscant –which accidentally uncovers a secret Imperial facility used to measure a person’s force sensitivity– and Wedge leads relocation of Eol Sha refugees to Dantooine). Interestingly enough, Mara Jade is entirely absent from this book (apparently, she is still working on unifying the various smugglers’ outfits with Talon Karrde building on their efforts which began two years prior). Note that Jedi Search heavily alludes to events portrayed in the “Dark Empire” comic book series, and this fact was a bit confusing for me having never read the comic books, but it shouldn’t be too much of a barrier for Star Wars fans. In short, the high points of Jedi Search include the spice mines on Kessel and the Sun Crusher inside the Maw, while the low points include Luke’s lackluster start to his Jedi Academy and Lando’s ridiculous misadventure to the blob-races on Umgul. In all, this was a mixed bag of a Star Wars novel, however I still plan to finish the trilogy.
Anderson, Kevin J. Jedi Search – The Jedi Academy Trilogy: Book I. Del Ray, New York, NY, 1994 (republished in 2015).
Kevin J. Anderson (1962-present) has written a variety of science fiction spin-off novels for the likes of Star Wars, Predator, the Dune prequels (with Brian Herbert), and The X-Files. He is a professor at Western Colorado University. For the Star Wars Expanded Universe he wrote: Jedi Academy Trilogy (1994), Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina (1995), Tales from Jabba’s Palace (1996), Tales of the Bounty Hunters (1996), Darksaber (1996), The Young Jedi Knights series (1995-1998), as well as several comic series (Dark Lords of the Sith, The Sith War, Golden Age of the Sith, The Fall of the Sith Empire, and Redemption).
Thank you for this book review. It may seem inevitable how any continuation for Star Wars, either sequel or prequel after Return Of The Jedi, can get mixed responses. For Star Wars lovers who may naturally enough want more Star Wars, they may find something naturally enjoyable enough. This certainly keeps Star Trek, Doctor Who and X-Files on the map as well. So learning more about how some of the earlier endeavors like these novels could work out is always interesting.