Junior Jedi Knights 6: Kenobi's Blade (1997) by Rebecca Moesta

Kenobi's Blade 

Did Anakin just kill a guy?

He doesn't, he just cuts off the wizard remotes on his robe.

End of the line for this series. After kind of imitating Richardson's style in the fourth book, she's more in her own in these last two. That means more plot, but tons of the painfully awkward description we're used to from her and her husband. Anakin is largely free of his Dark side concerns, but has also seemingly regressed several years here. In Richardson's books, he reads rather mature for his age, but now he sounds like a five year old, over explaining everything (presumably for the reader's benefit, but it just makes him annoying and everyone else seem like an idiot.) I could easily fill this whole entry with things like carbon dating radar?, mix ups between Dagobah and Dathomir, and questionably designed emergency docking bays, but I'd probably wind up with a blog almost as long as the book itself. I do appreciate that she keeps fuzzy dice hanging from the ceiling of Tionne's ship.

This is as good a place as any to point out an issue I've had all throughout the series. Ikrit is supposed to be about a meter tall when he's standing on his hind legs. On the covers, I don't think he ever looks much above a foot, and he's constantly perching on Anakin or riding R2. R2's total height is just over a meter, so it sounds awkward at best (R2 can probably handle the weight, but is he Jedi balancing on there the whole time?). Then he rides him into a lightsaber fight, and just gets dumb. I don't think we get a set height for Anakin, but he's probably just under 5'. Is he really carrying something over half his height on his shoulders? That's not even accounting for the tail.

In theory, this is Uldir's character development book (after 3 and 4 are Anakin and Tahiri's respectively, I guess), but Moesta has never been able to handle him well. He goes from slightly a jerk in the other books to stealing a Holocron (a "Holocron object" even!), lightsaber, and starship to give to Orloc. But we all forgive him in the end, since it's a junior readers novel. Again, Animorphs it ain't, but even by the standards of the genre the handling seems like a stretch. Can you imagine a Judy Blume book where a kid steals a gun, dictionary?, and a car to give to a scammer and everyone is over it in a couple pages at the end? This also has the classic YA issue of being a violet book without any actual violence. The Richardsen trilogy isn't a bloodbath, but stuff dies and gets hurt in a reasonable manner. Moesta spends a lot of time disarming people and pretending that they're not gonna get killed when a crate falls on their heads.

Really concerned about dipping into the Young Jedi Knights series next. I read them as a kid, and remember them being an absolute slog (I think I made it through three before I gave up). Andersen netted himself a second chance with Darksaber, but Moesta's novels aren't doing her any favors. It's the one series that I gave myself a guilt free tap out on before I even started, but I'm going to do my best.