Legendary Adventures: The Clone Wars: Wild Space

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa do not a funny buddy cop movie make, but when a shady informant leaks word of a Sith holocron in Wild Space, the duo are forced to team up to make sure the Sith don’t get their hands on a new, dangerous weapon!

If there’s one thing that everybody knows about Anakin, it is that he hassubtlety of a hand grenade. After the Battle of Geonosis, but before his marriage, Yoda and Obi-Wan caught wind of Anakin’s attraction for Padmé Amidala. Rather than talking to Anakin about his attraction, Obi-Wan is sent to Padmé to ask her to back off from Anakin. The Jedi see her as a danger to his Jedi training, but don’t address Anakin as a danger to himself. Padmé shrewdly maneuvers with Obi-Wan, promising to back off. We all know that they don’t; instead, Anakin and Padmé secretly wed on Naboo shortly after being told to separate from one another.

Remember how the previous Legendary Adventures had to look at a severely truncated Clone Wars timeline? You can blame this book for that! This book explicitly dates the first attack on Coruscant to seven weeks after Geonosis, meaning the previous Clone Wars novels took place within that not even two month gap. The book jumps a few weeks to the immediate aftermath of the battle of Christophsis and the arrest of Ziro the Hutt. Obi-Wan tracks down secret information about General Grievous’s upcoming attack on the listening station at Bothuwai. After gaining this information, Obi-Wan is injured by a Separatist attack on Coruscant. This is the first attack on Coruscant, a bold move by the Separatists who recently lost control of a listening post on Praesetlyn.

Anakin, still unable to deal with recent traumas, is forced to take an attack force to Bothuwai to defend the listening post. As Anakin ships out, Bail Organa gets a message about the presence of a Sith holocron on the planet Zigoola. Bail is reticent to trust Obi-Wan, recently injured and antagonistic toward Senators, but feels like he needs to deal with the Holocron before it becomes a danger to the Republic. He reveals the information, but not the source, to Padmé and Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan cannot stand Senators. He tolerates Padmé , but based on his interactions with Anakin, and the supposed danger she poses to him, he is even wary of her. It takes Bail a while to warm up to Obi-Wan, and the two bicker while on route to Zigoola. It was a bit interesting to see this antagonism as Obi-Wan recently ran a Separatist blockade to rescue Bail from a Separatist attack on Christophsis. For as close as the Jedi are cozying up to the Republic, there is still distance, and mistrust, between them.

The Sith holocron becomes an unfortunately boring MacGuffin. As Obi-Wan and Bail move closer to Zigoola, the holocron’s dark energy starts to affect Obi-Wan. He feels ill, causing him to crash his starship too far from the Sith Temple. The closer the pair come to the temple, the worse Obi-Wan feels. He is stricken with paranoia and hallucinations, making it even harder for him and Bail to come together. Unfortunately, these don’t do anything like bring out Obi-Wan’s deepest and darkest fears, nor do they bring terrifying visions of the future. They just…make him sick and hallucinate. I wish they had done a bit more to make this holocron unique. Fans of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. may remember an early MacGuffin during the Thor: Dark World tie-in, a staff which brought out the inner darkness of the wielder. Star Wars Annual #4 features Darth Atrius’s lightsabers, so imbued with his wrath that the wielder is also consumed by wrath. I cite these not as examples of what it should have been, but good examples of other MacGuffins with a bit deeper of a backstory. Obi-Wan, at this point in Legends, needs to be challenged and re-examined, and this book is one of the best ways it could have challenged him.

In a lot of ways, Obi-Wan was challenged. Separating Obi-Wan from Anakin was a bold move, and it mostly pays off. Despite the boring MacGuffin, Obi-Wan’s real challenge comes in the form of relationships. His intense dislike of Senators, and his superiority complex stemming from being a Jedi (evident in his view of Jar Jar) causes him to be aloof and somewhat standoffish from Bail. The two butt heads as they both think they know the best way to go forward rather than coming together to listen. The writing in this book is almost too well done: I’ve never been more irritated with characters than I have in this novel. Bail and Obi-Wan are stubborn, rude, and confrontational.

On the side, Anakin and Ahsoka are defending Bothuwai against an impending attack from General Grievous. This novel takes place concurrently with the Downfall of a Droid arc in which Anakin loses track of R2-D2 and must work with a different astromech. This astromech, Goldie, turns out to be a Separatist spy. Following the disasters on Praesetlyn (where Anakin loses a mother figure) and Teth/Tatooine (where Anakin is forced to work with Hutts), it is no wonder he struggles with the loss of R2. He never has a chance to deal with his trauma, and worse, he almost loses Obi-Wan in the events of this novel during the attack on Coruscant. It becomes easier and easier to see how Anakin fell to the darkness…

The novel ends with the revelation that Palpatine knew that Bail and Obi-Wan were chasing the holocron and knew of Zigoola. Sheev had hoped that the dark power of the holocron would take care of Obi-Wan, so he is surprised that Obi-Wan survived. He is given a dark vision, though: soon, all power would be his and the Jedi would be no more.

Legendary Travel Tips:
-This novel is preceded by Clone Wars: Secret Mission #4: Guardians of the Chiss Key and followed by Boba Fett: Hunted.
–Somehow, Bail first learns about the Sith in this novel. This is surprising, as I would expect any educated Senator to know most of the Republic’s early wars were fought against the Sith armies.
-This book will be contradicted in a major way when Heroes on Both Sides will claim that no one has attacked Coruscant in thousands of years.
-Anakin is given control of Resolute in this novel, which he had already commanded on both Christophsis and against the Malevolence, episodes preceding the events of this novel.

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Movie Reviews:
The Last Jedi