Book Review: Star Wars: Ahsoka

Disclaimer:  I did not actually read Star Wars: Ahsoka, I had acquired the audio book version a while back and over the course of a couple of months listened to it a few chapters at a time.  

As is the case with most things Star Wars related, I am out of touch with both the Expanded Universe (aka Legends) and the official Star Wars / Disney canon, so do not go expecting an in depth analysis of E.K. Johnston's treatment of the Star Wars universe in relation to timelines, canon character motivations, and the like.  

My only critique on timelines and whatnot, is that Jason P. Wojtowicz's depiction of Ahsoka Tano for the cover seems to have used her likeness and age from her character in Star Wars: Rebels rather than from Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series.  This bit of a visual disconnect bothered me only a little bit since the novel is supposed to take place only a year after Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which in turn .  I guess I kind of understand the possible reasoning behind having a more adult Ahsoka on the cover, but it still did not really jive with me.

Non-Star Wars universe related, it became noticeable early on in the book that this was a young adult novel, something I suspected, but did not bother to look up, or particularly care about.  I do not know if it is a style that E.K. Johnston writes in, not having read anything by them, but there were a few times when I cringed at how often the dialogue would end with "Ahoska said," or "Miara said," or "Kaeden said," all within the same conversation.  Sure it is good to know, especially when a book is being read by a single person who is talking, but the frequency with which "said" was thrown around during conversations seemed like it could have been written better.  This is of course coming from someone who isn't a particularly great writer and falls into a lot more writing errors than I would possibly care to admit.

As was the case with the other canon book that I have read, Ahsoka felt like the reader/listener was at least somewhat versed in the Star Wars universe, with few descriptions of specifics such as types of droids (maybe simply mentioning that it was an R2 unit is not enough if you have not seen a Star Wars film)

I think that wraps it up for issues I had with Star Wars: Ahsoka.

Now on to what I really enjoyed about the story.

I admit that the two main reasons why I even started this book was because it focused on Ahsoka Tano's time shortly after (a year apparently) she left the Jedi Order.  And because the voice of Ahsoka Tano from The Clone Wars animated series, Ashley Eckstein, was reading the book.  I probably would have eventually bought the book for the first reason, but because of the second, I opted for the audio book version that was available through Amazon's Audible book service.

Something else that I was not initially expecting was the level of production put into this audio book.  Throughout the entire book, there was background ambient music and sound effects, but never so loud that it was either distracting or drowned out Ashley Eckstein's narration.  The music seemed to be pulled from both the prequels and the original trilogy, which offered a nice aural bridge between the two franchises; I cannot tell if any of the music was either from Star Wars: Rebels or Star Wars: The Clone Wars though.  I do not think this level of production was because Ahsoka is a young adult novel, but more because it was a Star Wars book as licensed by Disney.  

The story itself, I felt, fit very well within the established universe, and the characterization of Ahsoka was well handled by Johnston; additionally being narrated by Ashley Eckstein probably helped with the believability of the character as well.  And like all good Star Wars stories, this one too had a few storylines going that followed both our protagonist, a shadowy antagonist, and the oppressing Empire.  Planets and moons once again are treated as if there was only one settlement and traveling via hyperdrive only takes a few hours.

There were a few characters, the Fardi's in particular that I felt I was supposed to know who they were upon being mentioned, which might mean that I need to rewatch The Clone Wars animated series (oh poor me).  For the most part though, it was a well told story in the Star Wars universe.

Would I recommend Star Wars: Ahsoka?  Sure, especially if you happen to be a fan of The Clone Wars animated series, otherwise you might be wondering why the audience should care about this Ahsoka Tano person.  E.K. Johnston told this story well enough that I would be very interested to see how they could write another story in the Star Wars universe that was not specifically written as a young adult novel, even if it did not focus on Ahsoka; but it would be pretty awesome if it did.

And that concludes my book report on Star Wars: Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston.  Published by Disney / Lucasfilm Press in 2016.  Thank you.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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