Young Jedi Knights 1: Heirs of the Force by Kevin J. Anderson AND Rebecca Moesta (1995)

 Heirs of the Force

That fringy stuff is supposed to be shiny gold. Very 90s.

I have to read 8 more of these. :(

Summary: Jacen and Jaina are at the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV. They meet Tenel Ka (Isoldore and Teneniel Djo's daughter) and Lowbacca (Chewbacca's nephew). And then they fix a TIE Fighter, get held at gun point, and don't do anything.

Introduced:

A couple of the things I already covered in Junior Jedi Knights are technically introduced here, since this book came out a few months sooner. We start to see the inner workings of the Academy. We get a bunch of new characters who are going to be important later.

Jacen and Jaina start to get fleshed out more. We're back to Jaina as the impulsive twin and Jacen as the calm one, after a brief detour in JJK.

Tenel Ka is Jacen's love interest, and stock honorable warrior woman. You can't expect the Andersons to actually introduce a new character with any personality.

Lowbacca (who is referred to as "Lowie" because of course he is) is Chewbacca's nephew, and has even less personality. 

Em Teedee is a mini translator droid (basically just a flat head) that Lowbacca keeps on his belt. He's supposed to be a comic relief character, but it mostly consists of recycled C-3PO jokes. 

Commentary:

I tried to go into this with an open mind. I read these books back in middle school, and I didn't like them. But Anderson put on a good showing with Darksaber, and maybe I was just too young to appreciate them. Nope. 13 year old me was right. 

By the end of the first chapters we've got contradictory descriptions (this is the only time Yavin 4 has ever been described as cold), groan inducing call backs (Jacen "unconsciously echoes his father" when he has a bad feeling about things) and physically impossible actions (Jacen holding the rope for Tenel Ka and climbing it at the same time). They start a food fight, in what I assume is an attempt to speed run as many boarding school novel cliches as quickly as possible. Luke finds it amusing. At no point in this book does anyone actually get any substantial Jedi instruction. Again, I could go through and nitpick all the base line terrible writing, but I'd be here all day.

But at it's heart, I don't know that even bringing in a better writer could've saved this outline. In theory, this book is here to introduce the GENERATION NEXT Jedi. Fortunately, they're just the OT characters with the names changed. Jacen is nice but kinda dumb like ANH Luke. Jaina is brash and mechanically inclined like Han. Tenel Ka is an action princess like Leia. Lowbacca is a wookie, and Em Teedee is annoying.

I'm not sure where this falls in the planning cycle for later books, but it really feels like a missed opportunity to start a new series with rehashed characters. I guess we said about The Force Awakens (which has a lamer version of Jacen/Anakin).

The second issue is that the kids don't actually get to interact with the central problem of the book in a satisfying way. Jaina's been collecting random scrap in her room for some time (the Jedi Academy appears to be insanely huge from the descriptions. Thousands of people in a room, spacious dorms, etc.) Han drops off a broken hyperdrive for her to tinker with, and brings Lowbacca to "study" at the academy. Chewie gives Lowie a Skyhopper as a going away gift. So far, so good. We've got kids with weird hobbies, adults leaving (Luke takes off shortly after), and a means of transport.

Lowbacca finds a crashed TIE Fighter, and takes the other kids to check it out. Over the following days, they keep sneaking out (no one cares, despite the fact that the book opens with some kind of giant nameless monster almost killing everyone, and the fact that there are flocks of mini King Ghidorahs flying around) and fixing it up. Apparently, Jaina has enough random spare junk lying around to fix a TIE fighter that's had an entire wing ripped off, and patch up the hyperdrive dad left her, and mod it onto there. I get that mechanics are her Force niche (stolen by Anakin, because coming up with 3 different specialties for the Solo kids was beyond Anderson), but it feels like a stretch.

Eventually the TIE pilot, who has been hiding out on Yavin 4 all this time, captures them. Well, tries to. Tenel Ka runs away (depth of character or out of character for budget Xena?), Lowbaccca climbs out, tries to save the others in the Skyhopper, and gets shot down (but still escapes). Jacen trips over a tool box and the twins are captures and forced to finish fixing up the ship.

(Lowbacca then drops Em TeeDee makes it back to the temple, and attempts to relay his story no one there speaks Shyriiwook, they apparently don't have any translator droid, and no one can figure out what to do until Lowbacca decided to call Chewie to translate. The Andersons can't write kids books since they're dumber than most kids.)

At this point, we get the TIE pilot's back story. His ship is damaged in the Battle of Yavin and he crash lands on the moon. That's... kind of iffy (it's not like the Death Star was sitting in orbit over the moon. You'd think it'd make more sense to just land at base) but minor compared to what comes next.

In the crash landing, Qorl (the pilot) is THROWN CLEAR OF THE SHIP! Let's get a visual aid here.

The TIE is specifically mentioned as having restraints, so not only does he crash hard enough to be ripped out of his space-seat belt (he's too by the book not to have worn it) but he then either flew through the front viewport or the top hatch. His injury? A broken arm.

Also, his life support apparatus on the suit is broken, so I guess Jaina also found one for the ship and bolted it on, since he successfully flies into space and hyperdrives out.

Oh yeah, that's how the conflict is resolved, he takes off tries to strafe the temple (Jaina at least manages to fake-fix the lasers), fails, and flies off to find the Imperial fleet.

Nothing like having half your cast run away and the other half do nothing in the first book.

This book is stupid.