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The Phantom Menace: Star Wars: Episode I Kindle Edition
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, an evil legacy long believed dead is stirring. Now the dark side of the Force threatens to overwhelm the light, and only an ancient Jedi prophecy stands between hope and doom for the entire galaxy.
On the green, unspoiled world of Naboo, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, arrive to protect the realm’s young queen as she seeks a diplomatic solution to end the siege of her planet by Trade Federation warships. At the same time, on desert-swept Tatooine, a slave boy named Anakin Skywalker, who possesses a strange ability for understanding the “rightness” of things, toils by day and dreams by night—of becoming a Jedi Knight and finding a way to win freedom for himself and his beloved mother. It will be the unexpected meeting of Jedi, Queen, and a gifted boy that will mark the start of a drama that will become legend.
Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years, plus a brand-new Darth Maul short story by New York Times bestselling author James Luceno!
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House Worlds
- Publication dateJune 28, 2011
- File size6063 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
From School Library Journal
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Breathless . . . filled with action from page one.”—New York Post
From the Inside Flap
From the Back Cover
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, an evil legacy long believed dead is stirring. Now the dark side of the Force threatens to overwhelm the light, and only an ancient Jedi prophecy stands between hope and doom for the entire galaxy.
The Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, young Obi-Wan Kenobi, are charged with the protection of Amidala, the young Queen of Naboo, as she seeks to end the siege of her planet by Trade Federation warships. This quest brings Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and one of the Queen's young handmaidens to the sand-swept streets of Tatooine and the shop where the slave boy Anakin Skywalker toils and dreams of finding a way to win freedom from enslavement for himself and his beloved mother. His only hope lies in his extraordinary instincts and his strange gift for understanding the "rightness" of things. It is this unexpected meeting that marks the beginning of the drama that will become legend . . .
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Tatooine
The suns burned down out of a cloudless blue sky, washing the vast desert wastes of the planet in brilliant white light. The resultant glare rose off the flat, sandy surface in a wet shimmer of blistering heat to fill the gaps between the massive cliff faces and solitary outcroppings of the mountains that were the planet's sole distinguishing feature. Sharply etched, the monoliths stood like sentinels keeping watch in a watery haze.
When the Podracers streaked past, engines roaring with ferocious hunger and relentless drive, the heat and the light seemed to shatter and the mountains themselves to tremble.
Anakin Skywalker leaned into the curve of the raceway that took him past the stone arch marking the entry into Beggar's Canyon on the first lap of the run, easing the thruster bars forward, giving the engines a little more juice. The wedge-shaped rockets exploded with power, the right a tad harder than the left, banking the Pod in which Anakin sat sharply left to clear the turn. Swiftly, he adjusted the steering to straighten the racer, boosted power further, and shot through the arch. Loose sand whiplashed in the wake of his passing, filling the air with a gritty sheen, whirling and dancing through the heat. He ripped into the canyon, fingers playing across the controls, hands steady on the steering.
It was all so quick, so instantaneous. One mistake, one misjudgment, and he would be out of the race and lucky if he weren't dead. That was the thrill of it. All that power, all that speed, just at his fingertips, and no margin for error. Two huge turbines dragged a fragile Pod over sandy flats, around jagged-edged mountains, down shadowed draws, and over heart-wrenching drops in a series of twisting, winding curves and jumps at the greatest speed a driver could manage. Control cables ran from the Pod to the engines, and energy binders locked the engines to each other. If any part of the three struck something solid, the whole of the assembly would collapse in a splintering of metal and a fiery wash of rocket fuel. If any part broke free, it was all over.
A grin split Anakin's young face as he injected a bit more power into the thrusters.
Ahead, the canyon narrowed and the shadows deepened. Anakin bore down on the slit of brightness that opened back onto the flats, keeping low to the ground where passage was widest. If he stayed high, he risked brushing the cliff faces on either side. That had happened to Regga in a race last month, and they were still looking for the pieces.
It would not happen to him.
He shoved the thruster bars forward and exploded through the gap onto the flats, engines screaming.
Sitting in the Pod with his hands on the controls, Anakin could feel the vibration of the engines travel up the control cables and fill him with their music. Wrapped in his rough-made jumpsuit, his racing helmet, his goggles, and his gloves, he was wedged so closely in his seat that he could feel the rush of the wind across the Pod's skin beneath him. When he raced like this, he was never simply the driver of a Podracer, never just an additional part. Rather, he was at one with the whole, and engines, Pod, and he were bound together in a way he could not entirely explain. Each shimmy, each small throb, each tug and twist of strut and tie were apparent to him, and he could sense at any given moment exactly what was happening throughout the length and breadth of his racer. It spoke to him in its own language, a mix of sounds and feelings, and though it did not use words, he could understand everything it said.
Sometimes, he thought dreamily, he could sense what it would say before it even spoke.
A flash of gleaming orange metal shot past him on his right, and he watched the distinctive split-X of Sebulba's engines flare out before him, taking away the lead he had seized through an unusually quick start. His brow wrinkled in disgust at himself for his momentary lapse of concentration and his dislike of the other racer. All gangly and crook-legged, Sebulba was as twisted inside as out, a dangerous adversary who won often and took delight in doing so at the expense of others. The Dug had caused more than a dozen crashes of other Podracers in the past year alone, and his eyes glinted with wicked pleasure when he recounted the tales to others on the dusty streets of Mos Espa. Anakin knew Sebulba well--and knew better than to take chances with him.
He rode the thruster bars forward, fed fresh power to the engines, and rocketed ahead.
It didn't help, he supposed as he watched the distance between them narrow, that he was human or, much worse, that he was the only human ever to drive in the Podraces. The ultimate test of skill and daring on Tatooine and the favorite spectator sport of the citizens of Mos Espa, it was supposed to be beyond the skill and capability of any human. Multiple arms and multihinged joints, stalk eyes, heads that swiveled 180 degrees, and bodies that twisted as if boneless gave advantages to other creatures that humans could not begin to overcome. The most famous racers, the best of a rare breed, were strangely shaped, complexly formed beings with a penchant for taking risks that bordered on insanity.
But Anakin Skywalker, while nothing like these, was so intuitive in his understanding of the skills required by his sport and so comfortable with its demands that his lack of these other attributes seemed to matter not at all. It was a source of some mystery to everyone, and a source of disgust and growing irritation to Sebulba in particular.
Last month, in another race, the wily Dug had tried to run Anakin into a cliff face. He had failed only because Anakin sensed him coming up from behind and underneath, an illegal razor saw extended to sever Anakin's right Steelton control cable, and Anakin lifted away to safety before the saw could do its damage. His escape cost him the race, but allowed him to keep his life. It was a trade he was still angry at having been forced to make.
The racers whipped through columns of ancient statuary and across the floor of the arena erected on the edge of Mos Espa. They swept under the winner's arch, past row upon row of seats crammed with spectators cheering them on, past pit droids, repair stations, and the boxes where the Hutts watched in isolated splendor above the commoners. From an overlook in a tower centered on the arch, the two-headed Troig who served as announcer would be shouting out their names and positions to the crowd. Anakin allowed himself a momentary glimpse of blurred figures that were left behind so fast they might have been nothing more than a mirage. His mother, Shmi, would be among them, worrying as she always did. She hated watching him drive in the Podraces, but she couldn't help herself. She never said so, but he thought she believed that simply by being there she could keep him from coming to harm. It had worked so far. He had crashed twice and failed to finish even once, but after more than half a dozen races he was unharmed. And he liked having her there. It gave him a strange sort of confidence in himself he didn't like to think about too closely.
Besides, what choice did they have in the matter? He raced because he was good at it, Watto knew he was good at it, and whatever Watto wanted of him he would do. That was the price you paid when you were a slave, and Anakin Skywalker had been a slave all his life.
Arch Canyon rose broad and deep before him, an expanse of rock leading into Jag Crag Gorge, a twisting channel the racers were required to navigate on their way to the high flats beyond. Sebulba was just ahead, rocketing low and tight across the ground, trying to put some distance between Anakin and himself. Behind Anakin, close now, were three other racers spread out against the horizon. A quick glance revealed Mawhonic, Gasgano, and Rimkar trailing in his strange bubble pod. All three were gaining. Anakin started to engage his thrusters, then drew back. They were too close to the gorge. Too much power there, and he would be in trouble. Response time in the channel was compacted down to almost nothing. It was better to wait.
Mawhonic and Gasgano seemed to agree, settling their Pods into place behind his as they approached the split in the rock. But Rimkar was not content to wait and roared past Anakin split seconds before they entered the cleft and disappeared into darkness.
Anakin leveled out his Pod, lifting slightly from the rock-strewn floor of the channel, letting his memory and his instincts take him down the winding cut. When he raced, everything around him slowed down rather than sped up. It was different than you'd expect. Rock and sand and shadows flew past in a wild mix of patterns and shapes, and still he could see so clearly. All the details seemed to jump out at him, as if illuminated by exactly what should make them so difficult to distinguish. He could almost close his eyes and drive, he thought. He was that much in tune with everything around him, that much aware of where he was.
He eased swiftly down the channel, catching glimpses of Rimkar's engine exhausts as they flashed crimson in the shadows. Far, far overhead, the sky was a brilliant blue streak down the center of the mountain, sending a frail streamer of light into the gap that lost brilliance with every meter it dropped so that by the time it reached Anakin and his fellow racers, it barely cut the dark. Yet Anakin was at peace, lost deep within himself as he drove his Pod, bonded with his engines, given over to the throb and hum of his racer and the soft, velvet dark that folded about.
When they emerged into the light once more, Anakin jammed the thruster bars forward and streaked after Sebulba. Mawhonic and Gasgano were right behind. Ahead, Rimkar had caught Sebulba and was trying to edge past. The lanky Dug lifted his split-X engines slightly to scrape against Rimkar's Pod. But Rimkar's rounded shell eased sm...
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B00513DGWK
- Publisher : Random House Worlds; 1st edition (June 28, 2011)
- Publication date : June 28, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 6063 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 386 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0345434110
- Best Sellers Rank: #157,389 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #63 in Star Wars Series
- #1,730 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,081 in Science Fiction Adventure
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Terry Brooks](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/6hd6h73tkfricornu66rihj7p8._SY600_.jpg)
Terry Brooks is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five books, including the Genesis of Shannara novels Armageddon's Children and The Elves of Cintra; The Sword of Shannara; the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy: Ilse Witch, Antrax, and Morgawr; the High Druid of Shannara trilogy: Jarka Ruus, Tanequil, and Straken; the nonfiction book Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life; and the novel based upon the screenplay and story by George Lucas, Star Wars(R): Episode I The Phantom Menace.(tm) His novels Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word were selected by the Rocky Mountain News as two of the best science fiction/fantasy novels of the twentieth century. The author was a practicing attorney for many years but now writes full-time. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the story competent and well-written. They also appreciate the amazing visuals. However, some find the content bland and boring.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the story competent, action-packed, and fun. They also say it follows the movie in almost every detail and makes the movie even better.
"...His prose is smooth, engaging, colorful, & insightful, giving depth to the story...." Read more
"...genuinely smiled throughout the reading of this book, enjoying the story without the cynicism that is difficult to shake when watching the dated CGI...." Read more
"...I love this book as it makes the movie even better as the book goes into more detail of the story line and plot that you just felt like there was..." Read more
"...Menace, the novel did include enough details and additional scenes to make it interesting. Author Brooks did an admiral job describing the details...." Read more
Customers find the writing style of the book very well written, descriptive, and well done.
"...His prose is smooth, engaging, colorful, & insightful, giving depth to the story...." Read more
"...Worth the read. Enjoyable. Great companion to the movie. Well written. Still don't like Jar Jar Binks unfortunately." Read more
"...The book is very well written by Terry Brooks the detail and the thoughtfulness that was put into this book is just amazing!..." Read more
"...The narration is pretty straightforward - none of the rhetorical flourishes that made Matt Stover's episode III novelization such a hit...." Read more
Customers find the visuals in the book amazing.
"...His prose is smooth, engaging, colorful, & insightful, giving depth to the story...." Read more
"Great book looked amazing" Read more
"A BEAUTIFUL book, exactly as promised! Thank you for excellant service and a great product! I look forward to buying from you again!" Read more
Customers find the book bland, boring, and cringe-worthy. They also say they are disappointed with the cover.
"...It arrived safely.Although I am disappointed with the cover; it has Jake Lloyd on it instead of Natalie Portman...." Read more
"...Read: cringeworthy (Anakin’s especially, just as in the movie)...." Read more
"I ordered the Padme Cover but got Maul Cover. Kind of disappointing. Also the top of the cover was dented" Read more
"While it is better than the movie, it's still bland and boring...." Read more
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For example, “It was quiet in the swamps as well, the perpetual twilight hushed and expectant beneath the vast canopy of limbs and vines, the surface of the mire as smooth and unbroken as glass, the reeds and rushes motionless in the windless air….” That’s what literature can do that movies cannot & it’s what I mean by giving depth.
Not just atmospherics, but nuances of meaning & intent among character interactions, which cannot be conveyed by even the most gifted actors sometimes. So the book is worth reading; you’ll see more on viewing the movie a second time, too.
The book’s strongest points are the way it helps the reader get into the heads of the characters–young Anakin and Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in particular. Episode I was ambitious in all that it tried to accomplish. Unfortunately, only so much can be achieved in the time-span of the film. The advantage of reading the story in this format is that there is much more time and page-space to work with. Brooks is able to introduce Anakin far earlier in the book, helping establish him as a main character with whom the reader should empathize. Qui-Gon receives his due in this book as well. He is firmly placed as a strong-willed Jedi who sets his own agenda, and his ideological conflict with his apprentice and the Jedi Council works to propel the drama forward.
I genuinely smiled throughout the reading of this book, enjoying the story without the cynicism that is difficult to shake when watching the dated CGI. The best part – you can give the characters new voices in your head while you read and put your imagination to work as you enjoy a story that is much better as a book. You can even play Duel of the Fates and the march of the Trade Federation while you read to spice things up if you like.
Although I am disappointed with the cover; it has Jake Lloyd on it instead of Natalie Portman. Nothing with him or Anakin Skywalker, but the picture that was advertised was Queen Amidala of the Naboo. I was hoping that maybe it was reversible, but sadly it is not. I loved the Amidala picture. Padmé is one of my favorite characters and she doesn't get much attention in the books. The Jake cover looks so plain.
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