cover art by Dave Seeley
Oh man, this one was fun.
I almost didn’t read it now. It’s a much more recent book, published in 2008, long after the post-Jedi EU had moved beyond even the New Jedi Order and three years after the last of the prequels had been released. As such, the events of this book couldn’t have a narrative effect on the mid-1990s stories that are set immediately after it chronologically. So I went back and forth over whether or not to jump right into the X-Wing novels instead.
Boy, am I glad I decided to read Shadows of Mindor instead.
Simply put, Matthew Stover’s novel was a blast. I would have finished it days ago if the realities of daily life hadn’t continually interrupted my reading sessions. While Truce at Bakura – good though it was – sometimes felt like a chore to read, Mindor never did. I’m sure this is due in no small part to the fact that the whole book is about one battle.
That’s right. This book is structured as if Return of the Jedi began with the briefing on the Death Star attack, and the two hours afterward were all spent on the battle itself. It moves at a breakneck pace and never really slows down. If one were to adapt it into a film, Michael Bay would actually be a reasonable choice to direct it. Not that Stover’s novel would be easy to adapt, but more on that later.
While constant action is all well and good, that’s really not why it’s such a good read. That is entirely down to Stover’s smooth-as-butter writing style. He writes with long, almost stream-of-consciousness sentences that burst with barely-contained energy. It’s as though Stover is so excited to tell you this awesome story that he can barely contain it in mere sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. It doesn’t feel like writing, it feels like telling. You can almost hear Stover excitedly relating this story to you, barely able to restrain his glee. It’s all very natural and fluid, and most of the time it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
But that doesn’t mean Mindor is all surface fluff and action. Honestly, I wouldn’t have any problem with it if it was, because it’d still be so much fun to read, but there’s certainly more to it than that.
I’m talking about the Dark.
Without going into too much spoiler territory, the villain in this story – Lord Shadowspawn – doesn’t use the Force exactly. He’s a servant of the Dark. To his mind, the Force is a tiny piece of the Dark that the Jedi restrict themselves to, limiting themselves in the process. The Dark is the void at the end of everything. The Dark entropy. The Dark is destruction for destruction’s sake.
When Luke finally gets a taste of the Dark, the novel’s themes begin to come to the surface. Luke begins to doubt himself. The Dark will consume everything in time. Why does it matter, then? What’s the point of fighting when the lives of every single person he’s ever known or will know are nothing but a speck in time, eventually to be lost forever to the Dark at the end of the universe?
To me, the lengthy philosophical musings in Stover’s novel serve as a Star Wars-y metaphor for depression. Nothing matters. Everything ends. Why bother? It’s a gutsy choice of theme for a novel that’s otherwise just a fun, pulpy action story. But it’s what transforms Mindor from a fun book into a great book.
To have Luke Skywalker, paragon of all that is good (in Stover’s novel, there are even “holo-thrillers” about the hero’s adventures – Luke Skywalker and the Jedi’s Revenge being one that particularly upsets Luke), sink so deep into depression and doubt is a brave decision that pays off. It allows Stover to delve deep into Luke’s character, deconstructing his status as a hero both in-universe and in the minds of Star Wars fans. Even before arriving at Mindor, before he learns of the Dark, Luke questions his ability to lead, to know what’s the right thing to do in any given situation. Throwing such existential doubts as why does anything matter? into the mind of someone who’s already unsure of himself is a great way to get some internal conflict going with a character who exudes confidence to all the characters around him.
As I said earlier, Mindor, despite its action-oriented nature, would be difficult to adapt to a visual medium, and this internal conflict is why. In fact, many pivotal turning points in the story happen inside a character’s head (usually Luke’s). And I don’t mean things like Shadowspawn’s history being explained by Shadowspawn himself thinking about it, though that does happen. No, I’m talking about things like Luke first experiencing the Dark in an abstract void, or communicating with a truly unique alien intelligence using similar abstract imagery, or the way Shadowspawn himself controls his subjects. All very abstract and difficult to visualize, let alone adapt into something visual. And I have no problem with this – Stover is merely using the strengths of the medium at hand. He’s not writing a movie, or a comic book – he’s writing a novel. I suspect if one were to adapt this with a full cast, an audio drama would be the ideal way to go. (Now I want Big Finish to get a Star Wars license…)
Another aspect of Shadows of Mindor that intrigued me was the way prequel-era stuff is handled. As I said, this book was written in 2008, so Stover had the benefit of already knowing what the Clone Wars were (in fact, Stover himself wrote the novelization of Revenge of the Sith). One of the characters featured in the novel is, as a matter of fact, a clone that fought in the Wars themselves. The clone (called Klick) refers to himself as one of the “original Fetts,” reminisces about the Jedi Padawan that gave him his nickname, and refers to the cloning facilities on Kamino several times. He was chosen by Shadowspawn due to his innately obedient nature – the clones were, after all, bred to be obedient. This comes into play more directly in the endgame of the novel. Sure, the same story could have been written in 1996 without the clone character and still turned out essentially the same, but it’s a nice way to tie post-Jedi material to prequel-era material, regardless of your views on the prequels.
Stover also does something I don’t recall encountering in my (admittedly limited) experience with Star Wars novels – he tells large sections (though not entire chapters) of the story from the point of view of either Chewbacca or R2-D2. I found the Artoo sections particularly interesting, as, apparently, did Stover, since they outnumber the Chewie sections considerably. Stover also tends to write out Chewie or Artoo’s dialogue – in “Rrrwargh”s and “Dwoop-theep-oop”s rather than actual dialogue, of course – instead of simply writing “Chewie growled” or “Artoo whistled.” There’s some of that, sure, but it’s neat to see them treated as characters as much as anyone else, even though we can’t understand what they’re saying.
Speaking of characters, Stover did an excellent job of capturing them. Han feels and sounds like Han (even more than in Return of the Jedi), Leia feels and sounds like Leia, and Luke feels and sounds like Luke, even when he’s sinking into the depths of what’s the point of it all? depression. Even Lando – sent away during Kathy Tyers’ Truce at Bakura – feels like Lando, especially when he’s dealing with C-3PO, who oddly enough gets the short end of Stover’s stick. Threepio is the only character that doesn’t feel much like himself, even though I can’t put my finger on why. He also spends almost all of the book with Lando, separate from the rest of the characters. In other words, he doesn’t get too much to do this time around.
Which brings me to Stover’s flaws. As great as Shadows of Mindor is, it isn’t perfect. Stover seems to have a preoccupation with “in-universe” analogies and similes that gets a little tiring after a while, and his fluid, energetic, conversational style occasionally gets bogged down with overly-technical description that could easily be condensed from three paragraphs down to one with a bit more focus and a bit less “thirty turbolaser turrets aimed in a parabolic arc at the event horizons of the gravity wells” (not an actual quote, but you get the idea). But these happen infrequently enough that it’s forgivable, and most of his description of the action going on is simply breathtaking. There I go again, throwing out praise when I’m trying to point out flaws…
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is easily one of the best Star Wars books I’ve ever read. There, I said it. Sure, it’s a standalone, and its story doesn’t really affect the books that take place after it, but that’s okay. Stover isn’t concerned with setting up the future, he’s concerned with reveling in the past. Free of the baggage of the dozens of post-Jedi books released before it, Stover can tell a Luke Skywalker story that examines his character without having to worry about the changes Luke would go through as the EU went on. The story is tons of fun balanced out by some surprisingly dark existential philosophy, and as the battle rages on, things get so crazy and desperate that, even though you know the story continues on after, you start to think … maybe it doesn’t. Maybe this is where everyone ends up. Maybe Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Artoo, Threepio, and Lando don’t make it out of this alive….
And that is something special. How Stover was able to make me fear for the lives of characters I knew would survive, I don’t know. But he did. And it was glorious.
As I said, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is a standalone, and as such can be read by anyone who’s seen the films without having to pick up another Star Wars book. There are a couple of returning EU-only characters (I won’t spoil them here), but I haven’t read the books or comics they originate from, and I wasn’t confused in the slightest. Mindor is readily accessible to any and all Star Wars fans, whether you’ve dipped your toes into the expanded universe or not.
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor: EXCELLENT – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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