Les enfants du Jedi

Amazon.com Review As Children of the Jedi opens, a crazed, drug-addled ex-smuggler named Drub McKumb lunges at Han Solo in the middle of his and Leia's state visit to Ithor. (Long after the destruction of the second Death Star, Leia is now the New Republic's work-weary head of state.) Han, Leia, and Luke soon surmise that this isn't just another of Han's drinking buddies but rather a weirdly altered man carrying a terrible secret. Piecing together clues from McKumb's glossolaliac rants, Han and Leia set off in search of the ancient hiding place of the Children of the Jedi, while Luke--using the Force and his former-pupil-and-pal-turned-droid Nichos as a random number generator--decides to head off to a set of coordinates halfway across the galaxy. They all end up finding more than they bargained for: Han and Leia's search for the Jedi ends on icy, isolated Belsavis; while Luke stumbles onto a humongous but dormant Imperial death machine- -which, not coincidentally, has stirred to life the intent to utterly annihilate Belsavis. Can he possibly stop it in time? Star Wars authors tend to be either you-love-'em-or-you-hate-'em types, but veteran writer Hambly makes a good go at falling into the former camp in this outing, along with the likes of --Paul Hughes From Publishers Weekly This latest entry in Bantam's successful Star Wars series is a transitional novel. Its pace may be slow enough to disappoint some of series's many loyal readers, but Hambly's (Those Who Hunt the Night) retreading of familiar ground provides a more variegated perspective than usual on several major characters. She offers several solid, well-wrought adventures as well, but they never cohere into a whole worthy of its parts. The subplots are frequently more interesting than the main story line, in which the ruling houses of the recently fallen Empire attempt to revitalize their way of life with the aid of a new type of Jedi knight. A particularly compelling subplot concerns the effort to determine whether the now machine-based consciousness of Nichos, a Jedi Apprentice whose body has died, is still human. While Hambly creates some fascinating alien life forms and plot complications (fans of Luke Skywalker will be especially delighted by a couple of the plot twists here), what she finally offers is more a promise of things to come than a realization of them. Major ad/promo; audio rights sold to BDD Audio Cassette. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.