Authors of Star Wars book, “more to say, have you”, on the Clone Wars? Seems hard to believe, seeing how much material has already been created focusing on the era. Specifically, seven seasons of a TV show, a handful of comic mini-series, and the beginning and end of the second Prequel films, and plenty more have explored the Clone Wars. My first reaction to hearing that Del Rey was going to be producing yet another Clone Wars story was met with more “…huh, okay” from me than an enthusiastic welcome. And, unfortunately, the nature of From a Certain Point of View stories meant that I couldn’t remember Mike Chen’s entry in the anthology well. Thankfully, my trepidation and forgetfulness was negated by what turned out to be a well-written, engaging novel: Star Wars Brotherhood!
There are a few ways that Mike Chen is able to bring a sort of fresh energy into the Clone War. First, he focuses really well on the characters’ relationships with one another, usually at extremely formative times, and that helps bring a lot of depth to the story. Second, he is able to ask good questions using outside points of view that make explicit questions other stories had left mostly under the surface. And finally, Chen uses some real-world elements well, which gets this book back to the heart of George Lucas’s visions for the Prequels. In reality, Brotherhood feels more like it belongs in the Prequel era than the Clone Wars animated series did: it’s relational, it’s political, it has a few structural warts, but it’s all charm and all heart the whole way down.
We’ll look at these in turn.
First, the relational aspect. The most important relationship in the novel is Obi-Wan’s relationship with Anakin Skywalker. After the events of Geonosis, Obi-Wan and Anakin are no longer operating as Master and Apprentice. Instead, they are peers: both acting as full Jedi Knights, both acting on their own autonomy of sorts. This brings a new dimension to Obi-Wan, who had been training Anakin out of an obligation to Qui-Gon Jinn. This new relationship forces Obi-Wan to reckon with what kind of teacher he is and what kind of man Anakin has become. This sort of retrospection is actually pretty uncommon in the era, as prose novels seem to populate this era the least. Instead, we’re used to cartoons and comics merely showing us this relationship. It was a really great touch to see this introspection from Obi-Wan, a character that I’ve never really come around to liking. Both are put into new situations, and both are forced to grow on their own. Obi-Wan is forced to learn again how to be a Jedi on his own, while Anakin…we’ll revisit him.
Obi-Wan is also challenged by the relationship of a pair of Neimoidian Guards, Ruug and Ketar. After a bombing on Cato Neimoidia destroys most of the planet’s capital, Obi-Wan is dispatched by the Jedi Council, alone, to figure out who caused the bombing and regain the trust of the Neimoidians. He also hopes that this trip will be a chance to undermine the Trade Federation a little, bringing them from their close, almost one-sidedness toward the Separatists and bring them closer to the Republic. But the bombing seems to have been orchestrated by the Republic, and evidence, both physical and mental, starts to sway the Neimoidians against the Republic. This leads him into communication with Ruug and Ketar, who are a sort of mentor and apprentice relationship that looks suspiciously like one Obi-Wan used to share.
Ruug, as it turns out, is one of the more interesting characters to come out of the novel (which is saying a lot, as it features some great cameos and some great new characters!) as one who is interested only in the truth, whatever it costs her. She is also able to poke Obi-Wan and force him to ask questions of himself that he wouldn’t on his own, serving as a great foil to him. Chen attributes this character to a Deep Space 9 influence, a show that I’ve never seen, but I think she fits well into the Star Wars galaxy. She is competent, but not a blind follower. She is deft and clever and looks at the bigger picture; a lot of things Obi-Wan isn’t. He blindly follows the Council and rarely thinks that his point of view is wrong, which is very paradigmatic of the Jedi at the time. Ruug, though, from the outside, shows what Obi-Wan could be if he stopped for a moment and critically evaluated his surroundings.
Anakin is also fleshed out really well against two characters: his new wife, Padmé, and young Jedi initiate Mill Alibeth. Both force Anakin to slow down and look at the galaxy from new perspectives. Padmé and Anakin’s marriage, and the immediate week after it, were covered in EK Johnston’s latest novel, Queen’s Hope, so this book takes place probably a few days later. The couple has separated to fight the war in their own ways, but both are set in their way of looking at it. Thankfully, some time with Padmé gives Anakin the chance to see the war not as an ideological battle, but a battle for the souls of the galaxy and for their material benefit. In the end, this relationship doesn’t play out as much as the one between Anakin and Obi-Wan, but Chen writes Padmé in a really refreshing way. I found her dialogue to be quite wooden in the animated series, and she skews very young in the Queen’s trilogy, but this one felt more like Natalie Portman to me.
What turns out to be a more stretching relationship for Anakin is his new mentorship of young Zabrak Mill Alibeth. Mill, without giving too much away, has a power that would fit well into the High Republic era: she is extremely empathetic and can sense pain. This forces her to withdraw from the Force, as she can’t control this power and it hurts her. (Yes, there are some extreme parallels with Vernestra Rwoh’s Padawan Imri Cantaros, but I won’t get in those here…as much as I’d like to!) Anakin, who wants to jump straight into danger and doesn’t think about the cost it bears on people, is forced in really interesting ways to consider his approach to war. I would really love to get into this relationship more, but the unfortunate part (for this review, not for the novel) is that it doesn’t develop until later in the novel, which would be getting too far into spoilery material for a day-of-release review. But needless to say: Mill is a fantastic foil for Anakin and challenges him in ways that Ahsoka couldn’t, as both serve as different sorts of learners for Anakin.
The second strength is that this book feels like a true sequel to Attack of the Clones. The events in that movie mattered more to the characters than anything, I think, we’ve seen before led us to believe. I really appreciated seeing the way that Geonosis was such a turning point for Obi-Wan, and seeing what his life looks like after such a traumatic battle and after making so many sacrifices. And I really appreciated that this book allowed Obi-Wan time to really ask: what happened on Tatooine? Queen’s Hope touched on it for a moment, explicitly dealing with the murder of the Tuskens…and it moved on. Obi-Wan doesn’t have quite the same interaction with that moment, but it feels more weighty and it feels like it takes the moment more seriously than Queen’s Hope did.
The final strength I’ll mention here is that the book deals with real world issues well, without being heavy-handed. A lot of Americans have been dealing with the issues of mis-information and the ability to trust the media, and this book plays on that well. When a whole civilization’s capital is rocked, who or what do you believe? When two major ideological factions are giving two disparate pieces of news, what’s the truth? And how is the average person supposed to work through this? Again, this comes to a head in the novel late-game, so I can’t get into a ton of it, but this aspect brings in quite a bit of Lucas’s heart into the novel.
So, I did mention warts before, and I feel it’s time to bring those up again here, sadly. You might have picked up on one already, if you’ve been reading carefully: it’s a slow burn. A lot of the meat of the book happens in the second half, which is pretty typical, but I think a lot could’ve been brought a little more closely to the front of the novel. There’s a distinct point, almost literally half-way through, where I felt the pace pick up and zip toward the end. You might’ve also noticed that I didn’t talk about the plot much. The plot serves as an engaging point to begin the novel, but it is resolved, in my opinion, unsatisfactorily. As I spoke with someone else, I asked him if certain elements had been resolved, and he didn’t think so. Despite the fact that the book is focused primarily on relationships, I felt like it was a bit disappointing to leave the plot hanging like this. With the strength of the relational writing, some may not even notice! And to that end, since the plot served as a backdrop for the relationships, it didn’t need, I don’t think, a masterful resolution…but one was needed.
Investigating the era through the lens of relationships, Brotherhood proves that there is still good material to be mined from the seemingly over-explored mine of the Clone Wars. By bringing the timeline to it’s immediate beginning, and more importantly, focusing on the beginnings of relationships, Mike Chen brings an enjoyable and powerful read to our bookshelves.
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DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this book, through NetGalley, from the publisher at no charge in order to provide an early review. However, this did not affect the overall review content. All opinions are my own.
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“Disturbance” – From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back (novel)