Young Jedi Knights 2: Shadow Academy by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta (1995)

Shadow Academy 

It's late, so I'm gonna mini post part of my critique now and fill the rest in later. As I talked about on the other blog a few times, I have an on again off again relationship with Magic: The Gathering, and modestly strong feelings about flavor text. There's one Magic card in particular with famously bad flavor text: Ancient Grudge

Actually the second flavor text. The Time Spiral "preview" edition isn't great, but it's not this bad.

If there’s anything a werewolf hates, it’s a collar—especially Avacyn’s Collar, the symbol of her church.

Now, I'll start by saying that I don't think this flavor text is quite as bad as people make it out to be. It's not good by any means, but people act like it killed their dog or something. The basic complaint is that it's overly long, poorly paced, and has to explain itself.

"If there's anything a werewolf hates, it's a collar." Okay, kind of weird, but not too bad.

"Especially Avacyn's collar." Starting to get a little wordy, but ties it into the setting.

"The symbol of her church." At this point, the punchline was buried in the middle, and this is just over explaining.

Like I said, it's not as bad as reddit or whoever tries to make it, but there it is. 

So I was amused when (a decade and a half earlier) my favorite trash Star Wars kids book authors channeled the same structure.

Then, as if a curtain had suddenly been drawn aside, they saw it: a space station. A Shadow Academy, Tenel Ka reminded herself. A spiked torus spinning in space, protected by exterior gun emplacements and crowned with several tall observation towers.

Thanks for reexplaining what the Shadow Academy looks like, and reminding us of its name. I'm kind of surprised they didn't go all the way to, "A dark place of learning" or something, Anderson loves to describe things by saying what they are. Maybe Moesta reined him in here.