Star Wars: Wild Space

Star Wars Wild Space is a Clone Wars tie-in novel that was written by Karen Miller and came out in 2008. It's situated during the missing R2-D2 arc in Clone Wars, and follows what Obi-Wan Kenobi was doing during that span of time. It's also one of my favorite works of fiction, right behind Ready Player One and right before Pendragon Book 6: The Rivers of Zadaa. I'll get to Pendragon someday, and I'll do Sakura Samurai soon, but today's May The Fourth so I figured I'd review this book. I'm not a major Star Wars fan by any means, I haven't watched the movies in years and I've only ever seen one episode of The Clone Wars. I was a fan of the books for a while, but the New Republic era's writing quality spiraled further and further downwards the more I read of it to the point where I stopped reading it. Plus I couldn't figure out which books when where in the timeline since they're not numbered in any way aside from the timeline which is either in the books or isn't. Anyways, the book is three-hundred and forty-two pages long and I listened to the audiobook version myself. The first thing I have to mention is that the audiobook version is amazing. It adds a lot of emotion to the journey and it makes for an entertaining experience. The book starts off after the first battle of Geonosis, and shortly before the end of Attack of the Clones, and provides for a great deal of character development between Obi-Wan and Anakin despite the short length of the scene. It also provides expanded development on the part of the Jedi, making them seem less heartless and allowing for them to seem like actual people. It then skips ahead a bit to after the events of Star Wars: Clone Wars, where Obi-Wan has received information regarding an attack by General Grievous. The following scenes provide for a great deal of interesting character development for everyone involved. Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Mace Windu, and Padme. It also makes fleshes out the whole universe of Star Wars so that it becomes more three-dimensional, and it's done in such a way that it's relatable to real life, in a way that I felt like I knew what the characters were feeling. This book does a lot to make Revenge of the Sith a better movie, although it also does a lot to make Anakin's face-heel turn towards the end of the movie (And that's not a spoiler because Star Wars Episode V has been out for almost thirty-five years now and everyone pretty much knows Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.) a lot more perplexing.
While he would do anything to protect a certain someone, he also has a lot more reasons to hate and distrust the Sith and everything they want to do then he does to be annoyed by the Jedi, and that was moot by that point in time. This book pretty much just piles on to the reasons as to why Anakin wouldn't trust the Sith, and features absolutely amazing storytelling.
Seriously, a lot of the book is spent with two characters on a planet with nothing else there except local wildlife and it's absolutely astounding how it's written to be riveting. It helps build Obi-Wan up as a character and it also builds up another important character who was barely mentioned in either trilogy, yet who died a tragic death at the hands of the Empire.
It's absolutely beautiful how well this book is written. Everything, from beginning to climax is perfectly paced, and by the time the book ends it seems like you spent a horrible, wonderful and exhausting eternity with the characters from start to finish. The struggle of a man to overcome his obstacles is portrayed so perfectly and so entertainingly that it will leave you wondering why this didn't have a movie all to itself. They could get Ewan Mcgregor and the rest of the original trilogy cast back just to make a movie or maybe even a miniseries out of this and it would be amazing.
From start to finish this book is paced so perfectly and everything is described in a way that left me with a picture of the scenes in my head that was as clear as seeing it in pictures. It's a great book that not enough people have read, and all in all I'd say it deserves a 10.0* rating. I'll see you all next week with another review.