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Tempest in a Teapot Review: The Approaching Storm by Toryn Farr Published 3/30/02 Adventure ... heh! Excitement ... heh! A reader craves not these things ... um ... wrong! |
The Approaching Storm by Alan Dean Foster is set just days before the events of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, and tells the story of a seemingly insignificant world which has become a prized pawn in a galactic chess game, and the Jedi's efforts to thwart its secession from the Republic.
Spoiler-Free Review
Alan Dean Foster is perhaps best known to Star Wars fans as the author of the 1978 Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye (SotME), not to mention ghost writer for the original Star Wars novelization. Set between Star Wars (A New Hope) and the then-unreleased The Empire Strikes Back, SotME pits Luke and Leia against Darth Vader on a hostile jungle planet, and features what is now in hindsight some rather painful scenes of Luke pining romantically after the unattainable Princess. I have always been fond of SotME because it was a small draught of Star Wars in a vast, dry universe where the two years remaining until the sequel felt like two decades.
One thing that still strikes me about that book is the writing. I'm a firm believer that the writing in adventure-type novels should be transparent; whenever I notice it, the writer has pulled me out of the story and destroyed my suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately, Foster does this a lot. Foster's style is old-fashioned, with complex sentence structure and enough unfamiliar words that reading him can sometimes be more of a challenge than a pleasure. His dialogue is hit-and-miss, with the Jedi suffering from almost moribund stiffness. This book's style is less dense than SotME, but the vocabulary still calls too much attention to itself to make this a book you read for pure escape.
Not that the plot lends itself to escapism. The things that make Star Wars unique -- space battles, strange creatures, alien landscapes, and lightsaber duels -- are muted or completely missing. All that remains are Machiavellian political machinations (see, I can use big words, too) and a long, tedious trek across the grasslands of the planet Ansion in search of a nomadic tribe whose arcane land rights might become the lynchpin of planetary secession and galactic civil war. The Jedi (Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luminara Unduli with their padawans Anakin Skywalker and Barriss Offee) negotiate a bit, battle a few indigenous critters, befriend a few others, perform in a bizarre talent show, and even get to whip out their lightsabers a time or two. Trouble is, all of it seems so insignificant and, frankly, boring. The whole novel seems to be nothing but filler. Anakin's hubris is hinted at, but not explored. The other Jedi remain ciphers; they are drawn sketchily and inconsistently at best. Only the bad guys seem to have been given personalities (and far too many pages), and even they are not described in enough detail to make them live in the imagination.
To be fair, Foster was asked by Lucasfilm to accomplish a number of very specific things in his book; introduce a boatload of new characters, make sense of the political and economic factors that lead to the events of Episode II, and provide a backstory for a bit of dialogue from the upcoming movie. That left very little room, apparently, for adventure, excitement, and a lot of other things us non-Jedi crave.
As a source of information and backstory for the characters and events of Episode II, this book is valuable, though not indispensable. As a swashbuckling space opera ... it simply isn't. In any case, I think most readers are safe in waiting for the paperback, or even skipping this one altogether. I hate saying that about a book that has such a tasty picture of Master Obi-Wan on the cover.
One warning: the last page gives away perhaps too much about a character from Episode II. Those avoiding spoilers for the movie should avoid this novel until after May 16.
Overall, I'll give this
one a C. This concludes the spoiler-free
section of my review. As with my other reviews, I'll give
you a plot summary, then tell you what I liked in The
Light Side and what I didn't in The Dark Side. If you
don't want to be spoiled, move along to our message boards.
Plot Summary (spoilers)
The bad guys, a conspiracy of politicians and trade groups led by Shu Mai, the president of the Commerce Guild (who is the puppet of a mysterious figure who speaks to her only by holonet), target a seemingly insignificant planet called Ansion, sowing discord so that the planet will secede from the Republic and thus, through its various alliances, start a chain reaction that will lead to the secession of dozens of worlds. The Jedi Council, seeing the danger, send two Jedi pairs to Ansion to try to prevent its secession. A local Ansion businessman, a Hutt named Soergg, is in league with Shu Mai and tries repeatedly to stop the Jedi by any means possible, including assassination and kidnapping. Master Luminara Unduli and her padawan Barriss Offee arrive on the planet first, and are attacked by a gang of hired thugs. Just when things begin to look desperate, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and his padawan Anakin Skywalker arrive and send the bad guys packing. The Jedi talk with the local government, a group called the Unity of Community, and convince them to delay their vote until the Jedi can negotiate with the Alwari, a nomadic people who own the rights to most of Ansion's land. If the Jedi can convince the Alwari to give the urban dwellers land concessions, then the Unity Council will vote to stay in the Republic. The rest of the book follows them as they try to find the Alwari in the trackless grasslands of Ansion.
Accompanied by a pair of would-be Alwari kidnappers turned allies and guides (Barriss befriends them by healing them both of a mental defect after they gas her and carry her off), the Jedi set out looking for the overclan of the nomads, the Borokii. The guides arrange to get them all mounts -- large animals called suubatars -- rather than landspeeders "to show reverence for the old ways"; Anakin is not at all comfortable riding, though Obi-Wan makes it look easy. A little encounter with a river creature provides a bit of anxiety as Anakin tries to rescue a decidedly independent Barriss. Later, the group runs across the Yuwi clan, and must perform a talent show to impress them, earning a little information about the Borokii's whereabouts. After our heroes set off again, they are beset by a flock of millions of small bird-like kyren and must hide to survive, though they do manage to get covered in poop. After a communal bath, they again set off, this time through a mountain gap where they must hide from carnivorous tumbleweeds. Barriss goes off by herself chasing a thieving critter and again lucks out, befriending the cutesy alien named Tooqui just in time to save herself from being killed by all his little friends. Eventually our heroes run across a Qulun caravan (that's yet another tribe of nomads) and join it, only to be drugged and imprisoned. But, like the mouse who pulls the thorn from the lion's paw, little Tooqui bravely saves the day. Later while on watch, Anakin is attacked by a pack of predators and Luminara ends up having to save him. They finally find the Borokii, only to be told they have to get a bit of white fur from one of the thousands of herd animals before the nomad council will hear them. Luminara undertakes the challenge, hopping over the backs of the sleeping animals until she gets to the white one. She gets the tuft but then slips on the way back and has to be rescued by the other Jedi. Luckily the requisite tuft was stored safely in her "lower undergarment." Ick. The Borokii elders at last meet with the Jedi and agree to the land concessions ... on the condition that the Jedi help them defeat the rival overclan, the Januul. Obi-Wan agrees to help them "deal with" their traditional enemies. On the battlefield, Obi-Wan gives a speech about peace and working together, but the two clans want war too badly and attack each other, with the Jedi in the middle. The Jedi end up fighting all of them, with "no killing or maiming," until the Alwari all finally get tired and decide to do what Obi-Wan asked for in the first place. Having secured the Alwari's agreement to the city dwellers' terms, the Jedi rush back to town and battle their way through a phalanx of assassins and snipers just in the nick of time to prevent an impatient Unity Council from voting to secede.
While all this is going on, Shu Mai is trying to keep the various factions in line with her plan. They must wait until all the worlds have seceded before they can make their move, but some, like Senator Mousul and the business leader Uliss, are getting impatient. There's a subplot involving Soergg the Hutt and his majordomo who almost gets away with betraying him, but it's not worth summarizing. In the end, Shu Mai has to kill a couple of her co-conspirators that are getting a little too antsy. Her plans foiled for now, Shu Mai is nevertheless assured by her puppetmaster that this is only a temporary setback. The Republic will fall.
The Light Side (spoilers):
- Although it was juvenile and didn't really make a whole lot of sense, I got a kick out of Luminara using her "dynamic diplomacy" to dump pitchers of water over the head of an obnoxious politician.
- The moment where Anakin stops to tell a boy not to argue with his mother in the marketplace is touching.
- Although Anakin's impulsiveness and impatience are portrayed rather heavy-handedly at times, I did like how Foster showed Anakin's frustration with Republic bureaucracy. At one point he wished they would just send in a bunch of assault ships and take care of Ansion in a more straightforward way, foreshadowing his eventual turn and alliance with Palpatine's brutally efficient new order.
- The suubatar, a giant six-legged riding animal that runs like the wind, is a cool critter. It also serves as a great device to show us the differences in character by watching how well and how quickly the individual Jedi adapt to riding them.
- It's interesting to see the other character's reactions to the Jedi. Soergg the Hutt says of them, "The Jedi cannot be bribed, connived, broken, or swayed from what they believe to be the right and true course of the way. " And Shu Mai seems to have a healthy respect for them as well.
- I liked the bit where Obi-Wan is standing in the saddle, performing a series of stretching exercises while his suubatar is running. Now there's a cool picture.
- At one point Anakin says, "Come on, Barriss. Master Yoda, engaged in serious dueling outside the fencing arena? Can you actually envision such a contest?" I liked this bit of irony considering what we're likely to see in Episode II.
The Dark Side (spoilers):
- The book really needed a Cast of Characters to help us keep track of who's who, because the writing sure doesn't help. Two of the four characters in the first chapter are not even named!
- I already mentioned the writing style. It's far too distant and wordy for my liking. Here's a random sentence: "It might not be a flavor-charged bath in a top-rated hotel on Coruscant, she reflected lazily as something small, blue, and harmless skittered past her though the water, but after days spent on the back of a suubatar, lying there in the bright sunshine within the warming embrace of the pellucid stream was akin to a choice slice of paradise."
- The dialogue is by turns stilted and insipid. I can't imagine Anakin using the interjection "why" at the start of a sentence, like a character in a British cozy mystery sipping tea, as on page 21: "Why, if Master Obi-Wan and I hadn't ..." Barriss spends most of her time either lecturing Anakin or uttering non-Star-Warsey phrases such as "This situation sucks!" And Obi-Wan and Luminara spout dull aphorisms at the slightest provocation: "When people of understanding and goodwill come together, a happy ending is usually assured." Bleah. Only the bad guys seem to talk with any sort of natural rhythm, and then not consistently. The two mentally deranged kidnappers go from "Only movement Bulgan know is in bowels" to philosophizing about how most cheap invective is only in the mind (whatever that's supposed to mean). Here's another sentence from Anakin's mouth: "Are in the final analysis all relationships between sentients ultimately reduced to politics of one kind or another, Master Obi-Wan?" Ye gads!
- The characters aren't developed well, and they behave inconsistently. We very rarely get inside the heads of the Jedi, who are the only characters I really want to know better. For instance, if Luminara must dump water on a negotiator's head, at least let us inside her mind for a moment and assure us that she knows he will react favorably, and why. And what does Obi-Wan think when he sees Anakin toying with an opponent rather than finishing him cleanly? We aren't told. We are only shown him frowning a bit.
- So many of the elements seem better suited to a children's book, especially the cliched villain Soergg the Hutt and Wicket ... I mean, Tooqui. Characters take stupid risks and nothing bad happens to them, such as when Barriss runs off by herself.
- At one point Anakin loses his lightsaber fighting a predator, and doesn't even try to levitate it back to his hand -- something Luke managed to do without ten years of one-on-one training at the Jedi Temple.
- The sexlessness of the characters bugs me. In one scene, the Jedi all disrobe down to their underwear and bathe in a stream, yet there is no mention at all of whether this is common -- I assume it must be, since nobody seems to think this is unusual, and later Luminara strips down publicly again for spurious reasons. Several times, Luminara reflects on her admiration for Obi-Wan as a Jedi and as a person, and Obi-Wan does the same; they make significant and prolonged eye contact at least once ... is there any sort of romantic feeling there? I'd like to know. Are the Jedi celibate monks, or do they form attachments? If you're going to have them half naked and sleeping communally, it seems to me the subject must be addressed. Especially considering that two of them are adolescents. Unless Jedi use some sort of special neutering techniques or devices, shouldn't they feel something when looking at each other?
- The various dangers the Jedi face in this book have all the excitement and import of a series of random encounters from a Dungeons & Dragons game. Just roll the dice and consult the table: okay, first we'll hit them with a group of bandits ... next day it's a hungry amphibian in the river ... next day a massive flock of avians ... next day a windy canyon full of razor-sharp tumbleweeds ... [yawn]
- Why is it that Darth Maul can track a Jedi through the bowels of Coruscant using only the Force, but Luminara cannot sense her own padawan in a cave a few dozen meters away? The Jedi masters, especially, seem extremely ineffectual throughout most of this story. I felt like throwing the book across the room when they all succumbed to a sedative; anyone over the age of eight could see the whole Qulum setup was a trap!
- The talent show is just embarrassing. I try to imagine the actors in this scene, and even my fantasy Obi-Wan is cringing as Anakin sings his heart out. I'd hate to see the Annual Padawan Spring Fling show if this is the kind of act they put on.
- Obi-Wan lay back on his suubatar "as one to the manner born." Is this a typo or a pun?
- So, did Obi-Wan invent a lightsaber that works underwater after his unfortunate experience on Naboo? Or is it just a continuity error? Enquiring minds want to know.
Discuss this book on our message boards.
(Toryn Farr knew everything about Star Wars
back in 1977 thanks to Starlog Magazine. She's been
trying to keep her know-it-all reputation ever since.
During the few hours per day her kiddo is in school,
Toryn attempts to run an internet design business and
write fantasy fiction.)