Along the way the two Jedi will meet deception, sabotage, and secrecy.

Along the way they will meet a self-appointed ambassador (for the New Republic), a peaceful race of aliens that worship the Jedi, and a race of aliens into which Thawn (Empire's greatest taction) was born. The couple is soon asked to accompany former enemies on a mission to salvage a piece of Jedi history. Luke Skywalker has been married to his wife, Mara, for three years and they are just beginning to understand what it means to be married. I guess I'd rather my Star Wars be more serious and epic instead of just quick popcorn-type fun. In the end, I personally prefer the far superior Thrawn Trilogy, or the recent mega-epic New Jedi Order series. When they're first suspected of trying to discover a route into the Chiss' stronghold, I was sold but to have them just seeking droid technology was a bit anti-climactic. Finally, the villians' reason for engineering the entire affair is kind of lame. And while I like the 501st Stormtroopers squad, I would have preferred more menacing monichers than 'Cloud' and 'Grappler' and 'Watchman'. Next, Zahn has this annoying habit of giving names to even the most periphary characters, such that they seem like they'll be important, even though they more times than naught dissappear never to be seen again. Also, much of the 'married couple' banter was kind of trite and smug. Zahn's dialogue is also quite bad, as I had difficulty imagining the character actually speaking as they do in this novel. There is, therefore, no sense of discovery for the mystery, as the Jedi are drawing conclusions and making deductions that would be impossible for the reader. There are several moments when Luke and Mara see a set of clues and draw some wildly implausible conclusion, which then turns out to be correct. I enjoyed seeing the mystery set up, and was interested to see a SW novel written with that genre in mind, but either the Jedi have super-human deductive capabilities, or Timothy Zahn doesn't get the idea of drawing logical conclusions. My dissapointment arises because the mystery aspect of the book is so implausible. I give it 3 instead of 2 stars only because there are some interesting action sequences, and in the end, it is a moderatly fun book. Timothy Zahn hooked me with his original Thrawn Trilogy, but I was ultimatly dissapointed with this outing.

Survivor's quest audiobook audio book