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The three stories featured in this
collection are really micro-stories, and are not long enough to give us
any plot, character, or situation depth. As a result, they don't tell us
much of anything, and are not particularly interesting.
The first story, written from the Jedi
Quest perspective, but during the Clone Wars, is Storm Fleet Warning,
and features Obi-Wan and Anakin scouting out a planet where they
encountered a small fleet of Separatist warships. The trick is that
these warships are small enough to pass as freighters. The two Jedi go
planetside for a moment, just long enough to talk with one of Qui-Gon
Jinn's old contacts and learn where the fleet is going -to coerce a
population into allowing a Separatist headquarters on that planet. When
the fleet suddenly takes off (why, so soon after landing?), Anakin
spontaneously follows, with Obi-Wan in tow. Once again, Anakin's lack of
thought nearly gets them killed, but they enter an asteroid swarm (isn't
that getting old?) and destroy a couple of ships. Anakin says the two
lost ships will slow the fleet down, maybe enough to get the Republic
navy out to the destination planet. Again, I ask why? If they had to do
paperwork, I'd say fine, but I doubt these people care. They would jump
into hyperspace and be gone, either content that they weren't being
followed, or worried that their attackers were still around. There was
no reason for them to think that the two Jedi ships had been destroyed.
In all, there just wasn't enough to this story.
The second story takes place during
Shatterpoint, which didn't enamour me to it to begin with. Equipment
is written in exactly the same tone as the novel it comes from, and set
me even further against it. Told from a "rebel without
a cause" perspective, it deals with a clone trooper who was in the
failed trip to the surface to pick up Mace Windu. The gunship he was a
gunner for was hit, and his gun bubble set free in space. He heard all the
communications, and watched all of his comrades get hit. After pondering
the "equipment" he was riding on, he was saved from falling into the
atmosphere by some rescue troopers. He fires his remaining shot at a
droid starfighter that was pursuing his nearly disabled former gunship,
and they all get picked up. After a few days in orbit, the Republic
picked them up. The beginning of this story was complicated by way too
much technical information, from the long designations of several clone
troopers, to the model of ships they were all using. Yuck. The rest was
just not very interesting. Thankfully, this story was also quite short.
The third story, Duel, is a strange
tale. A trooper, who doesn't seem to be a clone, because he actually has
a name, is waiting for death, the lone survivor of a group that had
infiltrated a Separatist camp. Apparently, the separatists wanted him
alive so that they can figure out how he got in, and fix the weakness.
Alright, whatever. It seems like a flimsy excuse, but it actually brings
Yoda out to rescue him. Yoda does another miraculous and energetic duel
with a hoop-like destroyer droid, which neither of them win, and both go
off to think about strategy. I found it amazing that Yoda could actually
fend off everything that was thrown at him, but I suppose anything is
possible with that little green guy. The droid actually knew it was
evenly-matched! Yoda brings the trooper through a
hole in the wall into a tunnel-like cavern, and sets up a trap for the
droid under an unstable stone arch. The trap was way too obvious from a
narrative standpoint, as the trooper actually thinks that he doesn't
remember seeing an arch at that location... Still, this story was the
high-point of the collection, which isn't saying much.
The cover claims that there are "three
exciting tales". I claim that none of them were actually exciting, and
only one was even mildly interesting. I sure hope the clone wars authors
can do a better job from here on. |
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