It was alright I suppose, but not very exciting. Having two wandering planets in two weeks is a bit much...

This was a decent book in the SW universe, but really not an essential read. Overall it was an OK story, though some could have used a little more explanation; like the reason behind actually needing to buy and build a ship from the sekotans. It does, however, offer a look into Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship three years after episode 1. There is not too much that deals with this area of the SW timeline. So in that respect it is interesting.

I wanted this book to be a great bridge between Episode 1 and Episode 2. I bought it years ago, not long after Episode 1 was released, but didn't get around to reading it back then. In retrospect, I missed little.
The story itself isn't complex. It honestly feels like a pretty good first novel of a trilogy introducing the dynamics between the major players. It wasn't that however. The ideas and most of the personalities of this book end up rejected a year after this book is published in the Episode 2 movie.
Ok... about the book itself... the characters with the most character development were Anakin, Senier, and Obi Wan. They had depth and character and really showed not only actions, but great reasoning throughout. I also liked the description of Mace Windu and why he has such prominence in the Jedi order. Utterly lacking I'm development were Tarkin and pretty much any other character mentioned. The story was interesting but, as I said, felt incomplete and like it was a beginning to a longer, more complex story. Having read Greg Bear in the past, I know he works with big ideas, so this was a bit of a surprise.
All in all, because of the dismissal of the boom in later works, it is a book which could be skipped. If, however, if you are curious about another direction the saga could have taken this is a book you don't want to miss.

Star Wars Legends Project #81

Background: Rogue Planet was written by [a:Greg Bear|16024|Greg Bear|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1223822211p2/16024.jpg] and published in May of 2000. It is Bear's only foray into Star Wars, but he is well-known as a successful science fiction writer in his own right, with several best-sellers to his name and multiple prestigious awards, including the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Rogue Planet is set 29 years before the Battle of Yavin, when Anakin Skywalker is 12. He and Obi-Wan are the main characters. The Fosh Jedi Vergere also plays a significant role, along with Wilhuff Tarkin and Raith Sienar (of Sienar Systems, designer of the TIE Fighter). Most of the novel is set on the planet Zonama Sekot.

Summary: Although he has been an apprentice for nearly 3 years, Anakin still struggles to fit in among the Jedi, tinkering with droids and looking for thrills in Coruscant's illegal racing scene to counteract his boredom with temple life. Hoping to channel his energies in a more productive direction, the Council sends Anakin and Obi-Wan on a mission to a planet at the far edges of known space, supposedly inhabited by the builders of the galaxy's fastest starships. But sinister forces are also interested in these technological marvels, and they don't care what happens to anyone who gets in their way.

Review: So, let's start by acknowledging that Greg Bear is a great sci-fi writer, and a great ideas guy. Neither of those things is the problem here. And, in fact, when he gets going down the right track, Rogue Planet really has its moments. The opening sequence is quite exciting, and has some great character moments. The climax is even better.

It's just that there's this really long middle bit that is soul-crushingly dull. This is actually the 3rd time I've read it, but it's been quite awhile, and as I began I couldn't remember why I had such an unfavorable recollection . . . And then everything just kind of stopped dead for a couple hundred pages and it all came rushing back to me. There are two main kinds of boredom happening for me here:

First, there's wheel-spinning. Bear spends the whole novel hopping back and forth from Anakin and Obi-Wan's point of view, to Raith Sienar's, and he does this even though Sienar doesn't actually have much going on for most of the book. I don't know why he felt like it was really important, particularly at the beginning, to alternate dutifully every other chapter or two back to Sienar as his subplot continued to not advance. There are multiple near-identical chapters that just hit the same story beats again without moving anything forward, and it's quite dull.

Second, there is an overabundance of vague technical detail. A large percentage of the middle portion of the novel revolves around the Sekotan technology and the construction of their ships. And even though it is described in intense and exhaustive detail, I still struggled to visualize it in any meaningful way, which made it all rather tedious. Now, maybe this is my problem and not Bear's. Like I said, he's an idea guy, and a brilliant one. He clearly went out of his way to invent some cool ideas for this story, not just on Zonama Sekot itself, but also among some of the aliens that populate the story, both of which are unique and crazy and in their own way reinforce the themes and ideas of the novel. Part of me wishes he had used a few more established creatures, but I'm also glad he made the Star Wars sandbox somewhat his own.

Finally, the ending feels a bit contrived. Bear set up a situation that would be something of a game-changer, for the galaxy in general, but particularly for Anakin's character. But because it doesn't fit with a bunch of later stuff, he has to undo it all by the end. And that just makes it feel even more like nothing really happened for 330+ pages.

C

Plot’s nothing special, but this book gets characterization perfectly - Greg Bear’s versions of Anakin and Obi-Wan are fantastic. Anakin and the power inside him, how it explodes out frighteningly, and for no one more frighteningly than Anakin. There’s this one line where he says, ‘I burn like a sun inside’ and that’s the sort of dramatic foreshadowing that makes Star Wars and the prequels so special. And Obi-Wan, how clearly over his head he is and how he manages anyway, how fiercely he loves his Padawan and what a good Jedi he’s becoming as he crosses the line between a late bloomer of a Padawan to the famed Negotiator. However, the other characters are nothing special, including Tarkin as their villain, doing his villainous deeds for reasons I didn’t care enough about to remember. And while a living planet and alien biotechnology are some of the cool sci-fi ideas that makes Star Wars so fantastic, I got bored very quickly with how much time was being spent on them. The plot, as is often the case in these legends novels, took up more space than it deserved, because I guarantee you no one is reading these books for the plot.
Check updates for other thoughts I had while reading this.