Book Review: The Unseen Queen by Troy Denning

Since George Lucas has indicated that he has no plans to make another Star Wars film (although he's had a somewhat contradictory history regarding the possibility of a "sequel trilogy"), fans of the films have to comfort themselves with the massive amount of additional Star Wars-related merchandise, from books to games. Just like Star Trek spawned a whole universe of books exporing the "continuing adventures" of the various crews, there is an impressive, if not downright dizzying, array of titles associated with Star Wars as well.

While I consider myself something of a Star Wars fan, my appreciation for the films has waned somewhat over the years. In truth, the pathetic dialogue and wooden acting in the first two prequel films did little to fan the embers of my passion, although Revenge of the Sith was at least a relatively decent finale. Admittedly, I've played a couple of Star Wars games, including Knights of the Old Republic. And I even read a couple of Star Wars books, most notably Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn Trilogy." But while all of this undoubtedly puts me out there on the geek scale, I've never worn a Chewbacca costume. Not even once.

Anyway, I recently picked up a copy of Troy Denning's new Star Wars book, The Unseen Queen. It is the second book in his "Dark Nest" triology and features the heroes of the "New Jedi Order." I figured that while I hadn't read the first book, it couldn't hurt to see whether I could pick it up in the middle. And like any good soap opera, the Star Wars books seem designed for exactly that eventuality. You can turn on virtually any soap opera known to man and in five minutes you know basically everything you need to know, even if you haven't watched it in twenty years (you may wonder how I know this; suffice it to say that I could tell you, but you know how the rest of that phrase goes). And so it goes with Star Wars books. It's not so much that they're interchangeable, as it is that they are basically operating along the lines of the same template as soap operas and comic books: take some popular characters, put them in peril, make everything look ugly, but don't for heaven's sake change too much of anything because you'll muck it up for the next writer coming in.

Article Author: Bill Wallo

Bill Wallo is a book and movie junkie.

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