The highly anticipated Master and Apprentice novel comes out this month and a new excerpt was revealed for the Star Wars books.
Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi star in the first canon Star Wars novel set before the prequels. The novel will also shed light on Qui-Gon Jinn and Count Dooku’s relationship as Jedi. It is scheduled for release April 16.
Master and Apprentice is a canon novel by veteran writer Claudia Gray, who wrote a short story with the same name in Star Wars anthology From a Certain Point of View. They both center around Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan but are set in different time periods.
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Starwars.com has released two excerpts. One released in February focuses on Qui-Gon’s relationship to the Jedi counsel and the excerpt posted two weeks before the novels features a young padwan Qui-Gon getting rescued by Master Dooku, Jedi Knight.
The first link leads to a portion of the novel where Qui-Gon ponders whether or not he should ask that his mismatched padawan Obi-Wan should be reassigned. When offered a spot on the council, which would effectively break their master and apprentice relationship, he reconsiders his feelings towards reassigning Obi-Wan despite the honor of getting seated alongside Jedi like Yoda and Mace Windu.
The second excerpt is set further in the past. A young Qui-Gon is being held at gun point by a violent bounty hunter. Dooku saves him but uses violence that alarms the padawan Qui-Gon Jinn. This excerpt is notable because it features a period that has little to no stories in the current Star Wars canon.
Master and Apprentice is exciting because Disney has been hesitant to work in the prequel era and has instead focused on cash cow characters such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and continued to expand its post Return of the Jedi canon.
The prequel era gets a bad reputation. The ideas, the characters and period are all worthy of continued storytelling and expansion even if the films left something to be desired in execution.
Claudia Gray gets the first crack at getting to develop these personalities in novel form. Gray has written three Star Wars novels before Master and Apprentice, including the acclaimed young adult novel Lost Stars.
The audio book will be released on the same day and will be narrated by Jonathan Davis whose voice is a familiar sound to Star Wars audio book fans. Jonathan Davis will also be narrating related audio book Dooku: Jedi Lost, that will have more focus on Qui-Gon’s duplicitous former master.
Master and Apprentice comes out April 16th. Are you excited that fans are getting more prequel era stories. What else would you like to see from the Phantom Menace years and earlier?