A Haiatus from my Book Cycle and a Book Review of Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void- by Tim Lebbon

Into the Void: Star Wars by Tim Lebbon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So as Episode VII looms and as Lucasfilm has mostly abandoned the prior set of Expanded Universe material under the "Legacy" label I felt it was finally time to go back and read the ones I have avoided the last few years as I waited for series to be completed [I no longer voluntarily read a series until all planned titles in the series have been published (excepting series I have already started)] and as I stuck to my cycle and avoided a lot of Star Wars books. I will also be re-reading a LOT of books as I have read many of them over and over again going back to junior high when I had limited access to EU titles and to audiobooks and listened to many of them on a cassette walkman while delivering newspapers or going to sleep. As I re-read these I will be reading in the in-universe order [the only other reasonable way to read them would be by publication date, but this breaks up a lot of series and is more difficult to retrace and follow]- there are some downsides to both methods of reading them through, but I figured since I originally listened to a lot of them in publication order it might be nice to have the new perspective of in-Universe chronological order. I will probably review series as a group rather than individually, but we will see. Anyway, on to this book.

Chronologically this is the first book in the Star Wars Universe, it takes place about 20,000 years before any other story and almost 26,000 years total before the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars Episode IV. It tells the story of Je'daii travelling around systems local to the Tython planet where the order started. Having not read the comic books I was not connected to the characters in the same way that I was in other series. At times the technology seems too well developed and futuristic- this is the downside of a complex sci-fi Universe it is difficult to keep advancing the tech in a realistic way without compromising much of what the fans love. None-the-less, this was an alright read. The drama between the protagonist and her brother, the antagonist, was a very predictable throughout the book. In the end other than pre-Jedi using swords and not really knowing the balance between dark side and light side I can't say that this book added a lot to the overall Universe.

View all my reviews