Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I really wanted to love this book. I've read dozens of Star Wars books and many of them have been quite good. This one is meant to be the opening chapter in a new Star Wars universe. I couldn't wait to read it. There is an endless parade of new characters. The problem is, they are flat. The only character who has any real personality is the starship captain in the first chapter who dies when her ship gets destroyed. Many of the Jedi characters come off sounding arrogant and self-important. They jump out of spaceships to land in heroic poses - hands on hips, chests puffed out - dressed in their gold and white "temple attire" robes. They sound like a cadre of plastic, Disney-esque super heroes eager to launch their shining beacon of self-importance. None of them seem to be much likable. I found myself not really caring about what happens to any of them. And I have never empathized more with the Sith desire to wipe out the Jedi or at least take a red light saber to some of them than I did while reading this book. I also don't like the way the book was written. For one thing, through out the book, the author repeatedly injects into dialogue the characters' full names, titles, and ranks. On the one hand, he has to do this because there are too many characters to keep track of, and because we never really get to meet any of these characters in a meaningful way. The result is distracting and wooden: "'Don't worry, citizen. I am Jedi Knight Loden Greatstorm. I will save the day', said Jedi Knight Loden Greatstorm". The whole book is an exercise in tell, don't show. It's all exposition and that makes it sound less like a good story and more like someone who feels like they are in a rush to introduce an entire universe in one book. It feels like either the author is throwing all these characters against a wall to see what sticks, or they are rushed to send all these characters into merchandise production lines. I grew up idolizing Luke Skywalker because he began as a simple kid on a desert moisture farm who was eager to assert his independence and explore the universe. I could really identify with that. Of course, he gets swept up into confrontations with evil and questions of galactic politics. But we readers and movie watchers got to explore the universe right along with him. It was this sense of wonder and romance that I loved about the early movies. I really wanted to recapture that here, but you won't find it in this book. Everything is explained by the writer. Sometimes, he seems to babble on about details that are intended to be deep and meaningful, but miss the mark. I love books. I love keeping and collecting them. But I might just donate this one to a library, somewhere.