Star Wars: The Clone Wars
by Tracey West

Published by Grosset & Dunlap

Adrick's Rating:   1.5 out of 4

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“NOBATA BARGON! EECHUTA ROTTA ME PEEDUNKEE MUFKIN WAJEEKEE!” --Jabba the Hutt

War has spread chaos across the galaxy, and Jedi Generals Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker find themselves leading a massive clone army into battle against Count Dooku and his Separatist Alliance. On the planet of Tatooine, deep in the Outer Rim of the galaxy, crime lord Jabba the Hutt’s son has been kidnapped. To gain the Hutt’s allegiance, an advantage over Dooku, the Jedi have agreed to find and rescue Jabba’s son.

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Adrick:

    I really like the way this book is put together. You can flip through it easily, it stays open without too much trouble, the pages are smooth, and the font is pleasant to read. It’s a nice change from the stiff spines and ugly fonts characteristic of Scholastic’s novelizations.

Also, this novelization contains a scene in which Anakin and Asajj Ventress duel atop a rancor in the dungeons of Teth castle. Scuttlebutt has it that this scene, stills from which can be found in The Clone Wars Visual Guide, was deleted from the final version of the movie. I don’t know if this is true or not—I’ll be seeing the movie tonight—but it would be one reason to pick this adaptation up, since the scene isn’t in Karen Traviss’s adult novelization.

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Adrick:

    Ok, so I don’t have a lot of good things to say about this book. It’s really just a pretty straightforward novelization—it’s not bad, but I’ve seen better. I would have preferred to have seen James Luceno or Ryder Windham adapt The Clone Wars for kids—I think they’re more familiar with the Star Wars universe and could have slipped in some interesting details while still keeping the book kid-oriented.

Finally, Tracey West can be annoyingly unspecific at times. At one point, Ahsoka is attacked by “retail droids”. What the heck are “retail droids”? Traviss’s novel calls them “sentry droids”, which makes more sense. If they’re called “retail droids”, I want to know why they’re standing sentry instead of greeting customers at the local TaggeMart. Later, Anakin’s ship leaves hyperspace and then emerges from a tunnel. What tunnel? West undoubtedly meant “the tunnel of hyperspace”, but it doesn’t pay to spread your metaphors out over two sentences.

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Adrick:

    Why can’t Asajj fight with her skirt on?

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