Set three years after the events of The Phantom Menace, Rogue Planet sees Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker sent to the mysterious world of Zonama Sekot to discover the truth about the planet and the disappearance two years before of the Jedi Knight Vergere.(view spoiler)[This is Anakin's first novel appearance since TPM, and he is now 12 years old with 3 years of Jedi training under his belt. Bear's characterization of him was almost perfect--he's adventurous, affectionate, bold, impetuous, instinctively aware of his deep connection to the Force and how it makes him different from other Jedi, both proud and wary of that, and overwhelmed by his power, love and longing for his mother, and his upbringing as a slave. There are glimmers of the impatience, sullenness, and lack of control that will haunt Anakin and eventually help him down the path to the dark side in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, but here, he's a typical 12-year-old and one who strongly resembles the cheerful, good-natured boy from TPM.I didn't love everything about Anakin's portrayal, though. Both he and Obi-Wan sense that he will face a trial on Zonama Sekot, and when Anakin is taken hostage, we have these lines from Obi-Wan's POV:His sense of the future was as clouded as the sky. Anakin's fate was pushed up against a knot, a fistula in the pathways to different futures. What struck Obi-Wan most was the terrifying connections between so many futures that bunched up in these next few hours. So many events whirled around his Padawan, so many interconnected lives.Even as a child, Anakin can never escape the pressure and responsibility of being the chosen one. Every decision he makes has the potential to be galaxy-changing, and judging by this passage, his choices might not even matter:The seeds were afraid but did not move under their burden of embers and flame. Theirs was courage, and also an awareness of fate or destiny.The seeds were not nearly as intelligent as a human--they did not really think for themselves--but inside of each was the potential for awareness and intelligence. The fire was bringing that awareness to the fore.This will happen to you.Anakin gasped. He wasn't dreaming.This is your destiny, your fate.That's clearly referring to the duel on Mustafar, when Obi-Wan maims Anakin and leaves him to burn to death, something that won't happen for another 11 years. If it's Anakin's destiny to fall the dark side and become Darth Vader no matter, everything that happens to him and every choice he makes is a farce. It also flies in the face of "always in motion, the future is," not to mention Obi-Wan's thoughts in the very same book (see above), and I don't like it.I also wasn't crazy about Anakin's first kill. Besides being somewhat ambiguous (he Force-crushed Ke Daiv's internal organs?) , he's tapping into the dark side at an awfully young age. Not that that's impossible, of course, but it contradicts the idea that his slaughter of the Tusken Raiders in AotC was the first time that Anakin gave in to the dark side and set him on his path to becoming Darth Vader. He's obviously arrogant and troubled in AotC, but he's also an immature 19-year-old prodigy, and he doesn't do anything dark until he kills the Tuskens. Unless you count Rogue Planet, when he kills with the dark side at 12. At least it was clear that Anakin couldn't control himself and was frightened and was consciously trying to stop himself. He just wasn't emotionally equipped to handle his situation and the abilities given to him by his connection to the Force.The depiction of Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship is fascinating. Their bond and affection for each other is obvious, but Obi-Wan is clearly strained by the responsibility of training the chosen one. His background is vastly different from Anakin's, and he doesn't have Anakin's open, affectionate manner or the same level of sensitivity and intuitive connection to the Force. He doesn't understand Anakin, in many ways can't really connect with him, and ultimately fails him. (I'm not blaming Anakin's fall on Obi-Wan, at least not completely; though the Jedi failed him and Sidious carefully groomed and manipulated him for 13 years, Anakin ultimately made his own choices. But I digress.) While on Zonama Sekot, both Anakin and Obi-Wan hear Qui-Gon speaking to them. Anakin accepts this at face value, while Obi-Wan convinces himself that it's just his own subconscious speaking to him in Qui-Gon's voice. The following passage highlights the difference between Anakin and Obi-Wan, and how ill-equipped Obi-Wan is to be Anakin's Master:At last you know the spirit of adventure!Obi-Wan closed his eyes tightly, as if to ward off the voice. He missed his Master intensely, but he would not let a vagrant fantasy besmirch Qui-Gon's memory."Adventure," Anakin said. The boy rode beside Obi-Wan on a carapod. Vagno was taking them across the valley, around several of the tall, river-carved pillars, toward a narrower and darker cleft on the southern side. "Is adventure the same as danger?""Yes," Obi-Wan said, a little too sharply. "Adventure is lack of planning, failure of training.""Qui-Gon didn't think so. He said adventure is growth, surprise is the gift of awareness of limits."For an instant, Obi-Wan wanted to lash out at the boy, strike him across the face for his blasphemy. That would have been the end of their relationship as Master and apprentice. He wanted it to end. He did not want the responsibility, or in truth to be so near one so sensitive, so capable of blithely echoing what lay deepest inside him.Qui-Gon had once told Obi-Wan these very things, and he had since forgotten them.Obi-Wan loves Anakin, and he does his best, but his best isn't good enough. The biggest tragedy of TPM is Qui-Gon's death, because Qui-Gon is the only Jedi who would have been capable of truly understanding and training Anakin. (hide spoiler)]
In short:Few years after the Naboo Incident, Obi Wan struggles with mentoring his young but promising apprentice, who has better ideas, than to spent his time learning. After some unnecessary imaginative trash-gliding-race on Corruscant, the temple sends master and apprentice on a adventure: To go to a strange planet and procure a strange vessel and to learn more about a missing Jedi. In the meantime militant conspirators attempt the same. In review:The Good - The movie characters dialogue is mostly written alright... While reading I could mostly imagine the actors reading these lines... but that is all that is good here.The Bad - The first problem is this books structure, I like it when the author uses chapters as a tool, knows how long they should be and how they should end. Here we get a 330 pages book with 67 chapters... some not longer than 30% of a page, others (especially the first, very tedious chapter) more than twenty pages. Now this would not be that bad if the writing, or the plotting, or anything else would be interesting. But honestly it is not.Which brings me to the second problem, the plotting... honestly... if you take my plot summary from above and add to it "and then there was a battle..." than this is the whole story. It also does not help, that the author either chose or was forced to use some very strange elements... like Golden-skinned aliens (sounds simply campy)... or organic spaceships... or a worm creature captain, whose crew is honored to be his food... The author made the growing of a spaceship practically the most important part of the book, but besides it being just strange... it was mostly just boring. All this strangeness on top of almost a lack of interesting plot... and a mystery about the missing Jedi... and than add to it Tarkins subplot... and what you get as result is a book, that tries to say something, but does not know what it can say, while at the same time trying to be all mysterious... which brings us to problem Number three:The Foreboding - The author had clearly no idea what would happen in episode 2, but by the time this book was written, there should be enough knowledge among the employees of Lucas as to were the story would go. So someone should have told Mr. Bear what he can write, and what he cannot... or maybe the author ignored this possibility...One such scene is early on in a discussion between Sienar and Tarkin regarding THE BIG PLAN... which was conveniently cut out... we get only the lead in to this dialogue, as well as the lead out... but we do not get the dialogue itself. It is as if a movie showed you only the preparation for a major battle scene, and its aftermath, but not the fight itself... Zahns book THE OUTBOUND FLIGHT was written years later, and it had the luxury to show this kind of dialogue, and it was awesome... the lack of it in this book is understandable, but handled very bad.Then we have that thing with trade federations vessels being integrated into republic defense forces... I am sure SOMEONE retconned this to fit the established timeline... but it all just reads like early post episode 1 fan fiction of a botanist.Bottom line: I read more than thirty Star Wars books. I am not saying I am an authority in this field, I am just saying I am no rookie to these books and I enjoyed the majority.In my opinion this book is bad. The writing is mostly bad and the plotting is horrible. All that it offers the reader for the overreaching Star Wars plot is handled way better in THE OUTBOUND FLIGHT. As a standalone adventure it is a tedious, long, confusing and simply strange read.I think this is the worst Star Wars book I have read to date.
What do You think about Rogue Planet (2001)?
This is an interesting Star Wars novel in that it is primarily a prequel to the "New Jedi Order" series of novels. Set two years after the Phantom Menace (the Episode I Star Wars movie) and 54 years before the New Jedi Order storyline, the main story is somewhat inconsequential, but there is an off-stage story about a missing Jedi that will become pivotal in the New Jedi Order. This novel is also interesting because it features Anakin Skwyalker, who will become Darth Vader, before the Episode II movie was released. It is unlikely that the author, Greg Bear (a successful SF author in his own right), had access to any of the details of Episode II, so he had to craft a story that would have no lasting repercussions that might be contradicted by the next movie. The story is heavy on foreshadowing the struggles Anakin will have with the Dark Side without going into specifics. Considering how little information Bear likely had, the story does a good job of maintaining the flavour of Star Wars without having the intricate detail of much later novels.
—Mike Smith
One of my favourite concepts in science fiction literature is that of the sentient planet - a planet that has evolved a global consciousness and even a personality. It's a great concept partially because, like the idea of time travel, it makes perfect sense if you accept it at face value, but the more you think about the details, the more mind-boggling and convoluted it gets.The Star Wars EU has a sentient planet - Zonama Sekot, which we first met during the New Jedi Order series. This series, however, takes place 40 years or so earlier, and marks the first time that the Jedi encounter Sekot, and has lots of foreshadowing about Vegere and the Yuuzhan Vong, which was pretty cool. If anything, I would have liked more of that - ditch the Anakin and Obi-Wan stuff and focus entirely on Vegere and Sekot. That would have been cool.
—Ryan
"They love their secrets"Obi-Wan and Anakin are in the rocky part of their relationship, trying to figure out the Master and Apprentice thing when Mace Windu sends both on a mission to find the missing Jedi Knight, Vergere. Vergere had left for the "rogue planet" Zonoma Sekot over a year ago and hasn't made contact since then. Meanwhile, Tarkin and Raith Sienar have plans to advance their station and secure a niche for the future.NOTE: Based on audibook and novel.I Liked:Greg Bear really does a fine job penetrating the minds of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is perhaps the absolute best part of the novel: the exploration of who both is and how they behave to each other. At the beginning, Anakin has a thirst for thrills and a yearning to eradicate the pain and dreams he experiences. Obi-Wan frets about how he treats his Padawan. Is he too harsh? Too lenient? Anakin is so talented...but why then does he act so immature? We also have hints about Qui-Gon speaking to them, something revisited in later movies/materials, which is always neat.The second great thing about this book is how it really ties in with NJO. I enjoyed reading about Vergere, the beginnings of the Farsiders (the Yuuzhan Vong) and the mind planet (which was a weird concept, but it makes sense with the Yuuzhan Vong). Greg Bear did a superb job with intertwining it, so kudos to him.Lastly, Bear did me a great favor and put our favorite Imperial, Tarkin, in the spotlight. I love how weasley he is and how, even at this time, he is big into driving people to fear him. And then, how Raith Sienar contrasted with him. Very nicely done.I Didn't Like:Anakin doesn't act anywhere near twelve. He acts probably about 18. I didn't like how at this age he started having all these uber creepy, demonic dreams. Honestly, it really lessens the blow when we hear it in Attack of the Clones. I mean, if Anakin has been having bad dreams since 12, when Anakin reveals it in Clones, Obi-Wan's response would be like, "So?" All in all, I am not a big fan of every novelist going, "Ooh, Anakin becomes Darth Vader, let's throw in some darkness randomly so people can see it as foreshadowing!" Lame.Some people really liked the beginning action sequence. For me, it felt out of place. Anakin randomly decides to garbage pit race, a race barely described and highly confusing, just for the thrill. And then Obi-Wan follows him because...? Can we say, "Out of character"? And excuse me, but where did Anakin get the money for the wings? Jedi give allowances now?Every single alien is brand new from Charza to the Blood Carver. This isn't a bad thing, but couldn't we have at least one tie-in that isn't a stereotyped alien (e.g. Twi'Lek slave girl, Rodian bounty hunter, Hutt crimelord, Wookie soldier, etc.)?I also felt that Bear spent way too much time on the minor subplot of creating the seedship and not enough on the real reason that Anakin and Obi-Wan were on Zonoma Sekot in the first place (to find Vergere, remember?). They don't do any real investigating, even after their hosts realize they are Jedi. Instead, they are all "wizard" over making a super-fast ship that is going to be destroyed by the end of the book anyway. And when they do learn what happened to Vergere, it is basically handed to them on a silver platter, no investigating necessary. Geesh, what a let down!Speaking of endings, this had to be the oddest one, with the coda portion. It felt out of place and non-Star Wars.In fact, much of the novel felt decidedly non-Star Wars. I mean, there were good parts (the shipbuilding WAS interesting, even if it served no purpose to the main plot, the planet WAS interesting, etc.).I loathed the character of Thracia. I mean, she can leave the Jedi Order, marry, have kids, return, and then jibe Mace Windu, calling him an idiot and becoming the 13th member of the Jedi Council? Can we say...Mary Sue? (Thank God she's not in the book too much.)And what was the deal with the Blood Carver trying to kill Anakin? Did I miss it or forget?Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:None.None.A Blood Carver tries to kill Anakin. There is a big end battle sequence.Overall:Greg Bear is noteworthy for his hard scifi. This fact makes it extremely odd that he would have written Star Wars, one of the softest of soft scifi franchises. Bear writes some memorable scenes with Anakin and Obi-Wan, explores their relationship, and truly has some intriguing ideas, but I think he just is writing outside his area of expertise. The novel just doesn't feel like Star Wars. Good author, but not the best book I've ever read.
—Crystal Starr Light
