Legendary Adventures: Clone Wars Gambit: Siege

After being betrayed to the Separatists, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi are on a desperate mission to destroy a Separatist bioweapon – all while the fleet struggles to root out a mole and unjam their entire communications system. Join the Legendary Adventures to see how Anakin and Obi-Wan manage to escape this time!

“I am a Jedi. I have the power to help them and so I must help them. I cannot—I will not—stand by and watch them suffer. I won’t prove our critics right!” – Obi-Wan Kenobi

It’s very rare in Legends that we get a truly two-part story. Sure, in a continuity known for 3-, 9-, and 19-part series, you’d imagine there would be a few duologies, but they’re not generally direct continuations like Clone Wars Gambit: Siege is. While rare, this direct follow up method would definitely have benefited a few more series. Too many Legends novels felt entirely too cramped, fitting 700 pages worth of material into 300-some pages. Honestly, though, the Clone Wars Gambit series didn’t really necessitate this two-novel approach. The second novel, while necessary to finish the story, feels both like the first was dragged out to necessitate a sequel while adding too many brand new elements into the second half to justify its existence.

The book opens to a halt. Yeah, I know – that description doesn’t totally work. I would compare the opening of the novel with the first few seconds of a light turning green and you lift your foot off the brake, but haven’t hit the gas yet. Yeah, you’re technically moving a little, but not very quickly at all. We move from scenes where Bail Organa talks to Padmé, to scenes talking with Mon Mothma to scenes of Obi-Wan and Anakin walking. Yeah…not exactly thrilling. This contributes to a lot of my feeling that this story did not really need to be split between novels. If it was entirely imperative that this novel be split, then at least the editing/pacing was off and this fluffy material should’ve been injected into the first book, somehow. It doesn’t do for a duology to have a strong opening and falter on the second and final part of the novel, does it?

Anakin and Obi-Wan’s desperate escape from Lok Durd’s droid army has pushed them into the deserts of Lanteeb. Upon a final push to escape, they crash-land, losing their ship and marooning them far from civilization. They trek to a small mining city called Trebol, where they meet some natives. As the Jedi approach Trebol, they take up disguises to hide the fact that they are Jedi. Unsure of the reception they would receive, they figured it was best to simply act as injured travelers. The danger, they thought, was either that they wouldn’t be received kindly as Jedi and turned over to the Separatists, or that their mere presence would draw the droid’s attention to the city, putting far more people into danger than just the two of them. As their guises are uncovered, they are met with the hostility that they feared initially. Some townspeople, including their guide, Teeba Jaklin, reject their help and view them as dangers to the society.

The two Jedi have to balance their own ability to help them in their injured states, the native’s autonomy in defending themselves, and how far people are pushed in the name of self-defense. In this struggle, Obi-Wan and Anakin are personally challenged to rethink their role in the war. Here, Karen Miller really shines: where her plots become somewhat redundant or even a bit basic, she writes the characters with a beautiful sort of familiarity. Where the book grinds back into a halting stop as Anakin and Obi-Wan take a look around town, we are mercifully given some material to work with when she explores their inner struggles. She writes the characters as if she has spent a lifetime with them, which makes this novel worth it when the drawn out plot doesn’t necessarily draw too many in. Anakin still deals with anger from being enslaved, which affects the way that he interacts with the natives. Because his mother was left behind as a slave on Tatooine, Anakin does not want to leave these people helpless. Unfortunately, this pushes him to override the wishes of the natives, putting them in danger by suggesting, and strong arming their acceptance of, a reckless plan. This plan may leave them without power, shutting down their mining operation, but Anakin doesn’t see any way to avoid that possible danger – and he pushes the people into trying it.

Obi-Wan is challenged similarly: are the Jedi inept to help people? The Republic is unable to aid Lanteeb in time, so the defense of the planet is left to the two of them. Remember the last novel when Obi-Wan almost had shore leave? The war is pushing him to his absolute limit again and again, but Obi-Wan shoulders this burden all on his own. Bail Organa had previously accused the Jedi of mostly being self-serving, looking out for their own interests only. (See? Reading these in order does pay off!) As he and Bail grew closer, he realized that Bail probably did have something of a point. But instead of trying to reform the Order, Obi-Wan takes it upon himself to prove Bail’s assertion wrong and change the direction of the Order. But between trying to be more altruistic and look out for others while caring for himself, Obi-Wan is torn between two duties he can’t seem to reconcile at all. It’s almost enough to start feeling bad for him. Almost.

This payoff of the climax of Obi-Wan and Bail Organa’s relationship, which began in Clone Wars: Wild Space is some of my favorite character work in the novels. This is a Bail I could get behind. He meets with his colleagues, but he also realizes that he has his own resources to tap. He asks biochemist Tryn Netzl to help develop an antidote to the virus that Lok Durd is trying to concoct with the help of imprisoned Bant’ena, who obliges for the opportunity to work on something new. Here’s where Bail gets entirely relatable: his anxiety pushes him to bug Netzl constantly about how the antidote is coming. Netzl explodes on him, asking if Bail realizes how much pressure he is already under, and does Bail really think that needling him like this is going to help him move any faster? No. Most Star Wars characters always seem to have everything under control always, so this duo was a nice addition to see how war really affects people who aren’t even fighting on the front lines.

Unfortunately, the book struggles again to make us care entirely for the new characters that Miller creates. No matter how well she writes the characters we’re familiar with, it is hard to connect fully with her new characters. A few that I’ve mentioned previously, Teeba Jaklin and Tryn Netzl, have one character trait that Miller describes well enough, but they never reach well-rounded status. This problem is exacerbated by Jedi Taria Damsin, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s love interest. Yeah, love interest. On a previous mission, she ate a poisoned mollusk that brought about an incurable disease. She and Obi-Wan maintained their friendship, though they were frequently separated. Despite her terminal illness, she tried to push forward and accept more and more missions, but her body simply could not keep up with them. She was relegated mostly to being a teacher in the temple, which was still asking her to exert a lot of energy. Obi-Wan was worried about her, but she simply waved it all away.

Taria then takes part in the highly coincidental, perfectly handled, no problems at all conclusion to the duology. Everything happens perfectly, everybody arrives right on time, and everything proceeds exactly as you would expect them to. As Anakin and Obi-Wan try to maintain the city’s shielding to protect them from the droids, Taria races to the planet to break through the Separatist blockade above. She does, arriving in the capital city to destroy the lab. As she successfully completes this mission, she runs to catch up with Obi-Wan when she is blasted by a droid. This blast is not what ends up killing her, but you almost hoped she would just to add any sort of emotional depth to the battle. Instead, a Force sensitive child from the village is able to save her and help her finish the mission. I won’t give too many details about this finale because Miller doesn’t either. Instead of a satisfying conclusion, based upon an entire duology, the finale fizzles with a not very descriptive fight based on events mostly found in the second novel.

That the finale is mostly based on book two is a damning criticism, but I stand by it. Do you remember when I said earlier that the first book was the better one while this one plodded along? The sad part is that you could probably skip the better first book and jump into this one and not be entirely too confused. For those keeping track at home: the first book was a lot better but didn’t play as much into the ending of the duology; the second half was the inferior of the two, but didn’t rely much on the good one, making the slow and middling book the necessary one. A sad state of affairs indeed. I don’t hate this duology, as I really like Miller’s writing for the most part and her character work. This duology simply does not represent her best, and I wonder if she felt the need to split the novels or was handed that directive from above. Fans of Obi-Wan and Anakin may find some fun material here, and if you read Wild Space with us, its worth following up with the remainder of the series.

As a sort of post script, have you noticed how much longer this review is than book one, despite the fact that I haven’t really talked about Bant’ena or the virus ravaging Republic computers? Well, it’s not that I ran out of space, but Siege is not really that concerned with wrapping up those loose ends, so I needn’t worry myself either.

You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor!

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