Amazon.com Review
As Children of the Jedi opens, a crazed, drug-addled ex-smuggler named Drub McKumb lunges at Han Solo in the middle of his and Leia's state visit to Ithor. (Long after the destruction of the second Death Star, Leia is now the New Republic's work-weary head of state.) Han, Leia, and Luke soon surmise that this isn't just another of Han's drinking buddies but rather a weirdly altered man carrying a terrible secret. Piecing together clues from McKumb's glossolaliac rants, Han and Leia set off in search of the ancient hiding place of the Children of the Jedi, while Luke--using the Force and his former-pupil-and-pal-turned-droid Nichos as a random number generator--decides to head off to a set of coordinates halfway across the galaxy. They all end up finding more than they bargained for: Han and Leia's search for the Jedi ends on icy, isolated Belsavis; while Luke stumbles onto a humongous but dormant Imperial death machine- -which, not coincidentally, has stirred to life the intent to utterly annihilate Belsavis. Can he possibly stop it in time? Star Wars authors tend to be either you-love-'em-or-you-hate-'em types, but veteran writer Hambly makes a good go at falling into the former camp in this outing, along with the likes of Michael Stackpole and Kevin J. Anderson. --Paul Hughes
From Publishers Weekly
This latest entry in Bantam's successful Star Wars series is a transitional novel. Its pace may be slow enough to disappoint some of series's many loyal readers, but Hambly's (Those Who Hunt the Night) retreading of familiar ground provides a more variegated perspective than usual on several major characters. She offers several solid, well-wrought adventures as well, but they never cohere into a whole worthy of its parts. The subplots are frequently more interesting than the main story line, in which the ruling houses of the recently fallen Empire attempt to revitalize their way of life with the aid of a new type of Jedi knight. A particularly compelling subplot concerns the effort to determine whether the now machine-based consciousness of Nichos, a Jedi Apprentice whose body has died, is still human. While Hambly creates some fascinating alien life forms and plot complications (fans of Luke Skywalker will be especially delighted by a couple of the plot twists here), what she finally offers is more a promise of things to come than a realization of them. Major ad/promo; audio rights sold to BDD Audio Cassette.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Rumors of a lost Jedi stronghold draw Han Solo and Princess Leia to the distant world of Belsavis, while Luke follows the pull of the Force towards a confrontation with a sentient, planet-destroying ship intent on carrying out the deadly orders given to it just before the fall of the Empire. Hambly's talent as a storyteller lies chiefly in her skill at discovering her characters' deepest motivations. In her hands, the heroes of the New Republic take on a maturity and credibility that enhance their already engaging personalities. This latest installment in the continuing series of novels based on the Star Wars universe will make an excellent addition to sf collections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Hambly joins the circle of sf veterans taking tours of duty in the Star Wars universe and contributes an exciting adventure that rates among the best in the series. When a deranged Drub McKumb nearly assassinates his old friend Han Solo, Luke Skywalker sets off for a distant star system to find the cause of McKumb's breakdown; meanwhile, Han and Princess Leia explore a rumor about a lost enclave of Jedi children. Accompanied by See-Threepio and former Jedi pupil Nichos Cray, Luke stumbles on a massive dreadnought, left over from the war against the Empire and programmed to destroy rebel forces. When Leia and Han visit the isolated planet of Belsavis, they come closer to finding the lost children, whom the dreadnought is tracking down. Hambly brings the Star Wars cast to life, providing gratifying details about Luke's childhood, the quirks of belligerent Gamorreans, and even the human side of an Empire storm trooper. Expect heavy demand for this Star Wars saga; Bantam does, to the tune of some 300,000 copies. Arty De Thieu
Review
Princess Leia and her companions are searching for the lost children of the Jedi, and find themselves haunted by danger in this spellbinding story. Familiarity with some of the prior Star Wars episodes will provide a firm foundation for this continuing saga of new explorations and dangers from both past and present endeavors. -- Midwest Book Review
From the Publisher
One of the Empire's most devious inventions was a mammoth unmanned dreadnought, governed by a sophisticated artificial intelligence. It was deployed to crush a stronghold where many Jedi family were sheltered. Crippled during the war against the Empire, the vessel has drifted through space for years. But now it is slowly reactivating and resuming its inexorable mission--one that will draw Luke Skywalker aboard the death ship for the challenge of his life, while Han and Leia try to piece together the ancient mysteries of the ancient Jedi enclave. Here is a novel that delivers all the wonder, adventure, action, and suspense that have thrilled a legion of loyal fans. , (TM) and 1995 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
From the Inside Flap
ldren of the Jedi, Barbara Hambly introduces a new character: Callista, a brave Jedi warrior of long ago who gave her life to foil one of the Empire's darkest plans, a plot to destroy a stronghold that was sanctuary for the wives and children of the Jedi knights. Suddenly, the dreadnought is rearming itself, intent on destruction. Only Luke Skywalker can feel its evil presence as well as the mysterious influence of that powerful woman who should have died decades ago.
From the Paperback edition.
From the Back Cover
In "Children of the Jedi, Barbara Hambly introduces a new character: Callista, a brave Jedi warrior of long ago who gave her life to foil one of the Empire's darkest plans, a plot to destroy a stronghold that was sanctuary for the wives and children of the Jedi knights. Suddenly, the dreadnought is rearming itself, intent on destruction. Only Luke Skywalker can feel its evil presence as well as the mysterious influence of that powerful woman who should have died decades ago.
About the Author
Barbara Hambly is the author of Patriot Hearts and The Emancipator’s Wife, a finalist for the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. She is also the author of Fever Season, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the acclaimed historical Benjamin January series, including the novels A Free Man of Color and Sold Down the River. She lives in California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Poisoned rain speared from an acid sky. The hunter scuttled, stumbled a dozen yards before throwing himself under shelter again. A building, he thought—hoped—though for a second’s blinding terror the curved shape lifted, writhing, into a toothed maw of terror from which darkness flowed out like the vomited stench of rotting bones. Serpents—tentacles—twisting arms reached down for him with what he would have sworn were tiny cobalt-blue hands … but the burning rain was searing holes in his flesh, so he closed his eyes and flung himself among them. Then for a clear moment his mind registered that they were blue-flowered vines.
Though the stink of his own flesh charring still choked his nostrils and the fire scorched his hands, when he looked down at them his hands were whole, untouched. Realities shuffled in his mind like cards in a deck. Should those hands be stripped away to bone? Or should they sport a half dozen rings of andurite stone and a thin scrim of engine grease around the nails?
In what reality were those fingers limber, and where did he get the notion a moment later that they were twisted like blighted roots and adorned with hooked nails like a rancor’s claws?
He didn’t know. The sane times were fewer and fewer; it was hard to remember from one to the next.
Prey. Quarry. There was someone he had to find.
He had been a hunter all those years in shrieking darkness. He had killed, torn, eaten of bleeding flesh. Now he had to find … He had to find …
Why did he think the one he sought would be in this … this place that kept changing from toothed screaming rock mouths to graceful walls, curving buildings, vine-curtained towers—and then falling back again to nightmares, as all things always fell back?
He fumbled in the pocket of his coverall and found the dirty sheet of yellow-green flimsiplast on which someone—himself?—had written:
HAN SOLO
ITHOR
THE TIME OF MEETING
“Have you seen it before?”
Leaning one shoulder on the curved oval of the window, Han Solo shook his head. “I went to one of the Meetings out in deepspace, halfway from the Pits of Plooma to the Galactic Rim,” he said. “All I cared about was sneaking in under the Ithorians’ detection screens, handing off about a hundred kilos of rock ivory to Grambo the Worrt and getting out of there before the Imperials caught up with me, and it was still the most … I dunno.” He made a small gesture, slightly embarrassed, as if she’d caught him out in a sentimental deed of kindness. “ ‘Impressive’ isn’t the right word.”
No. Leia Organa Solo rose from the comm terminal to join her husband, the white silk of her tabard billowing in her wake in a single flawless line. “Impressive” to the smuggler he’d been in those days, navigationally if nothing else: She’d seen the Ithorian star herds gather, the city-huge ships maneuvering among one another’s deflector fields with the living ease of a school of shining fish. Linking without any more hesitation than the fingers of the right hand have about linking with the fingers of the left.
But this today was more than that.
Watching the Meeting here, above the green jungles of Ithor itself, the only word that came to her mind was “Force-full”: alive with, drenched in, moving to the breath of the Force.
And beautiful beyond words.
The high, thick masses of raincloud were breaking. Slanting torrents of light played on the jungle canopy only meters below the lowest-riding cities, sparkled on the stone and plaster and marble, the dozen shades of yellows and pinks and ochers of the buildings, the flashing, angled reflections of the antigrav generators and the tasseled gardens of blueleaf, tremmin, fiddleheaded bull-ferns. Bridges stretched from city to city, dozens of linked antigrav platforms on which thin streams of Ithorians could be seen moving, flowerlike in their brilliant robes. Banners of crimson and lapis fluttered like sails, and every carved balcony, every mast and stairway and stabilizer, even the wicker harvest baskets dangling like roots beneath the vast aerial islands were thick with Ithorians.
“You?” Han asked.
Leia looked up quickly at the man by her side. Here above the endless jungles of Bafforr trees the warm air was fresh, sweet with breezes and wondrous with the scents of greenness and flowers. Ithorian residences were open, like the airy skeletons of coral; she and Han stood surrounded by flowers and light.
“When I was little—five, maybe six years old—Father came to the Time of Meeting here to represent the Imperial Senate,” she said. “He thought it was something I should see.”
She was silent a moment, remembering that puppyfat child with pearls twined in her thick braids; remembering the smiling man whom she’d never ceased to think of as her father. Kindly, when it sometimes didn’t pay to be kind; wise in the days when even the greatest wisdom didn’t suffice. Bail Organa, the last Prince of the House of Alderaan.
Han put his arm around her shoulders. “And here you are.”
She smiled wryly, touched the pearls braided in her long chestnut hair. “Here I am.”
Behind her the comm terminal whistled, signaling the receipt of the daily reports from Coruscant. Leia glanced at the water clock with its bobbing amazement of glass spheres and trickling fountains, and figured she’d have time to at least see what was happening in the New Republic’s capital. Even when embarked on a diplomatic tour that was three-quarters vacation, as Chief of State she could never quite release her finger from the Republic’s pulse. From bitter experience she had learned that small anomalies could be the forerunners of disaster.
Or, she thought—scrolling through the capsule summaries of reports, items of interest, minor events—they could be small anomalies.
“So how’d the Dreadnaughts do in last night’s game?” Han went to the wardrobe to don his jacket of sober dark-green wool. It fit close, its crimson-and-white piping emphasizing the width of his shoulders, the slight ranginess of his body, suggesting power and sleekness without being military. From the corner of her eye Leia saw him pose a little in front of the mirror, and carefully tucked away her smile.
“You think Intelligence is going to put the smashball scores ahead of interplanetary crises and the latest movements of the Imperial warlords?” She was already flipping through to the end, where Intelligence usually put them.
“Sure,” said Solo cheerfully. “They don’t have any money riding on interplanetary crises.”
“The Infuriated Savages beat them nine to two.”
“The Infuriated …! The Infuriated Savages are a bunch of pantywaists!”
“Had a bet with Lando on the Dreadnaughts?” She grinned across at him, then frowned, seeing the small item directly above the scores. “Stinna Draesinge Sha was assassinated.”
“Who?”
“She used to teach at the Magrody Institute—she was one of Nasdra Magrody’s pupils. She was Cray Mingla’s teacher.”
“Luke’s student Cray?” Han came over to her side. “The blonde with the legs?”
Leia elbowed him hard in the ribs. “ ‘The blonde with the legs’ happens to be the most brilliant innovator in artificial intelligence to come along in the past decade.”
He reached down past her shoulder to key for secondary information. “Well, Cray’s still a blonde and she’s still got legs.… That’s weird.”
“That anybody would assassinate a retired theoretician in droid programming?”
“That anybody would hire Phlygas Grynne to assassinate a retired theoretician.” He’d flipped the highlight bar down to Suspected Perpetrator. “Phlygas Grynne’s one of the top assassins in the Core Worlds. He gets a hundred thousand credits a hit. Who’d hate a programmer that much?”
Leia pushed her chair away and rose, the chance words catching her like an accidental blow. “Depends on what she programmed.”
Han straightened up, but said nothing, seeing the change in her eyes.
“Her name wasn’t on any of the lists,” he said as Leia walked, with the careful appearance of casualness, to the wardrobe mirror to put on her earrings.
“She was one of Magrody’s pupils.”
“So were about a hundred and fifty other people,” Han pointed out gently. He could feel the tension radiating from her like gamma rays from a black hole. “Nasdra Magrody happened to be teaching at a time when the Emperor was building the Death Star. He and his pupils were the best around. Who else was Palpatine gonna hire?”
“They’re still saying I was behind Magrody’s disappearance, you know.” Leia turned to face him, her mouth flexed in a line of bitter irony.
“Not to my face, of course,” she added, seeing Who says? spring to her husband’s lips and hot anger to his eyes. “Don’t you think I have to make it my business to know what people whisper? Since that was back before I held any power in the Alliance they say I got my ‘smuggler friends’ to kill him and his family and hide the bodies so they were never found.”
“People always say that about rulers.” Han’s voice was rough with anger, seeing the pain behind the armor of her calm. “It was true about Palpatine.”
Leia said nothing—her eyes returned for a moment to the mirror, to readjust the hang of her tabard, the braided loops of her hair. As she moved toward the doorway Han caught her arms, turning her to face him, small and slender and beautiful and not quite thirty: the Rebel Princess who’d turned into the leader of the New Republic.
He didn’t know what he wanted to say to her, or could say to her to ease the weight of what he saw behind her eyes. So he only brought her to him and kissed her, much more gently than he had first meant to do.
“The awful thing is,” said Leia softly, “that a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about doing it.”
She half turned in his grip, her lips set in that cold expression that he knew hid pain she could not show even to him. The years of enforced self-reliance, of not giving way in front of anyone, had left their mark on her.
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