Review: Star Wars: Knight Errant

I.  SETTING

Knight Errant is set 1,032 years before the Battle of Yavin (BBY).  It takes place in the Grumani Sector of the Outer Rim. Within an area of space intentionally cut off from communications and interstellar travel with the Republic.  This is ineffect the wild wild west controlled by numerous rival Sith Lords or would be Sith Lords.  The novel is also set in the midst of what is known as the Charge Matrica, what is this you ask?  Well giving that away would be giving away one of the best parts of the novel.  So read it to find out.

II. DRAMATIS PERSONAE(Unofficial)

Kerra Holt, Female Human, Jedi Knight
Jarrow Rusher, Male Human, Mercenary Artillery Brigadier and Captain of Diligence
Narsk Ka'hane, Male Bothan Spy/Saboteur
Lord Damian, Male Human, Sith Lord
Lord Odion, Male Human, Sith Lord
Beadle Lubboone, Male Duros, Member of Rusher's Brigade 
Tan Tengo, Female Sullustan
Lord Dromika, Female Human, Sith Lord
Lord Quillan, Male Human, Sith Lord
Saaj Calician, Male Krevaaki, Sith Lord
Arkadia, Female Human, Sith Lord
Vilia, Female Human, Sith Lord
Ryland Dackett, Male Human, Member of Rusher's Brigade

III. STORY

The story of Knight Errant is broken down into sections: Prologue, Part One: The Daimanate, Part Two: The Dyarchy, Part Three:  The Arkadianate. 

Its always  nice when a book suprises you with the direction its story takes, in Knight Errant I didn't entirely get what I was expecting but I found something else entirely that  I enjoyed.  There are three characters that play very large roles in this book, Kerra Holt, Jarrow Rusher, and Narsk Ka'hane.  With the comic book already out as well as from all the publicity for the book, we already knew that it was going to star Kerra Holt as our hero, a lone Jedi out in wilds of Sith space.  What I didn't know or expect, was that arguably the real star of this book is Jarrow Rusher.  The mercenary Brigadier General of a mobile artillery brigade based off of a custom built spaceship that worked as independent contractors for Sith in their internecine battles.

In Rusher we find a dedicated individual who is good at his job and cares for those under his leadership, but who ultimately lacks a real direction or cause to believe in.  Through the course of the book, through his interactions with Kerra Holt and others, Rusher undergoes a similar transformation (though for different reasons) that we see Han Solo undergo in the Star Wars movies.  This transition from scoundrel/fringe figure  to trusted ally and friend is a transformation that does not happen easily or seamlessly for Rusher, but that fits with the nature of his character and sets the stage for events to transpire after the novel. 

Rusher plays a very interesting role, almost as a mentor to Kerra Holt.  In Kerra we have a lead character, who though she often speaks with certitude and forcefulness, really is inexperienced and unprepared for what she is dealing with.  Rusher often acts as a voice of reason, testing and challenging Kerra through the novel, as they both try to do what they believe is right for those they feel responsible for. 

Kerra is an interesting choice for a leading character.  In many ways I think that  her character works better for a comic series then a stand alone novel.  We have a young Jedi Knight with a very well developed set of organizational skills from her time working with Master Vaanar Treece.  We also have a Jedi Knight attempting to act as savior for an entire sector of space.  She is a bit over her skis on this one, fortunately she realizes this even though she doesn't let that stop her.  But when we meet Kerra in the novel, as good as her intentions are, she lacks experience and that effects her judgment and the choices that she makes.  In a comic or a novel series we would get to see the evolution of her character as she matures and gains experience.  There is less opportunity for this kind of growth in a stand alone novel. 

Narsk is fun, who doesn't like a Bothan spy?  Like Rusher, Narsk is for hire to the highest  bidder.  An independent contractor who floats in and out of jobs for Sith Lords.  He also has a handy dandy stealth suit that helps him in his snooping.   The best part about Narsk is that he is the kind of character that we need more of, the non-Force user, who uses his unique skills and intellect to match up against powerful Force-users, in this case Sith Lords, and occasionally get the better of them. 

John Jackson Miller does a very good job creating unique Sith Lords and fresh perspectives on what a Star Wars Villain should be.  Without giving too much of the plot or story away, we have seven main Sith in this book, Odion, Damian, Dromika, Quillian, Calican, Arkadia, and Vilia. 

With such extreme personalities and world views as these Sith possess it would be easy for them to become caricatures instead of characters, but Miller does a fine job in the novel fleshing out the characters and the reasons that they act the way they do. 

Vilia was interesting and made me think of  Ta'a Chume the former Hapan Queen Mother that Jacen Solo, shall we say, "dealt with."  I am intrigued by this character and hope that she reappears in the comic series. 

Odion and Damian are a very odd pair.  Damian is over the top and straight up nuts, while I feel like as crazy as Odion is, he is a little more grounded in reality. 

The Dyarchy section of the book features, Dromika, Quillian, and Calican, and is at times creepy, scary and sad. 

My favorite of the new Sith Lords that we meet is Arkadia, who has a very interesting perspective on chaos.  She is a Sith that runs a well ordered society and doesn't seem superficially or wantonly evil.  Of course appearances can often be deceiving. 

IV. CONCLUSIONS

At 372 pages, Knight Errant is a good sized novel.  As a debut novel, it is a very solid effort by John Jackson Miller.  My only real criticism is that it felt like the last third of the novel was significantly better then the first two-thirds.  Not that they were bad, but the ramping up of the plot, the twists and the fiendish new female Sith Lords really made the third section a ton of fun.  If this book starts a little slowly for you, stick with it the ending is well worth it and sets up tons of story telling possibilities for the comic series or future sequel novels. 

Knight Errant, the novel gets 8 out of 10 Lightsabers.

First Impressions: Star Wars: Knight Errant (Spoiler Free)

Just picked up my copy of John Jackson Miller's new novel Knight Errant at my local bookseller, Mysterious Galaxy, a cool little bookstore here in San Diego where I attended a Karen Traviss book signing a few years ago. 

Knight Errant weighs in at 372 pages, a solid paperback novel, featuring a full color 16 page insert from the Knight Errant comic book series Knight Errant #1.  The comic insert is very well colored, but the panels are shrunk down pretty small.  Its the same size as a typical paperback page with a fairly large white border around the comic book panels.

The comic book excerpt looks to be well bound in with the rest of the novel pages, only time will tell to see whether it will fall out or not, but it looks to be a pretty solid job.

The cover of the novel itself features one of my favorite Star Wars cover arts ever by artist John Van Fleet.
(Author's note:  If this cover art is made available as a fine art print, I am all over it.)

On the cover, Kerra Holt is illuminated in green from the light of her lightsaber on a snow covered world with snow flakes blowing around her.  Star Wars is also embossed on the cover, I love embossing on covers.

It also includes an excerpt from Paul S. Kemp's forthcoming The Old Republic Novel, Deceived.  This excerpt is the first part of chapter 1 of Deceived and has been previously been released with the rest of Chapter 1 on-line. 

The book also includes an updated novel timeline, however there is nothing new here that we haven't seen.  No new novels are listed on it that haven't appeared in a recent timeline update.

One of the interesting omissions is that there is no Dramatis Personae (DP).  The DP is a staple of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU), it provides the reader with a list of characters to appear in the novel.  The DP in a Star Wars novel also typically lists, species, gender and affiliation or profession.  This is a curious choice for a stand alone (though not a typical stand alone, given the concurrent comic series) with new and unfamiliar characters.  If a reader becomes a little confused its a nice tool to be able to turn back to, too remember who is who in a book particularly if you are reading it in multiple sittings with gaps of time in between.

Edit: I received the following comments from author John Jackson Miller via Twitter

@jjmfaraway John Jackson Miller

@Pete_Morrison Decision to omit Dramatis Personae was mine; many characters' names and descriptions are necessarily secret at the beginning.

@jjmfaraway John Jackson Miller

@Pete_Morrison ...wanted to preserve the surprises. Shouldn't be any trouble keeping the cast straight, everyone's very distinct! :-)

@jjmfaraway Thanks for the info on the Dramatis personae. I will be updating my story with it tomorrow.

@Pete_Morrison No problem at all. You were the first person to notice it was missing!

The cover price is $7.99 which is typical for a Star Wars paperback at this point.

Knight Errant looks like a solidly put together book, and I can't wait to dive into the story.

Exclusive Interview: John Jackson Miller, author of Knight Errant and Lost Tribe of the Sith

Lightsaber Rattling recently had the privilege of talking with Star Wars author extraordinaire John Jackson Miller about a wide variety of topics including his new comic book series and novel Knight Errant. 

Mr. Miller is most famous for his Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics which ran from 2006 until 2010.  Currently he is working on the Knight Errant comic series, issue #4 of which will be released on January 12th.  He is also scripting the Mass Effect comic also published by Dark Horse Comics.  Ongoing is the Lost Tribe of the Sith series, which are free e-book novellas released by Del Ray/Lucas Books. The LTotS series ties into the Hardcover novel series Fate of the Jedi and the series is on its 5th of 8 books. Mr. Miller also has his debut novel coming out on January 25th, titled Knight Errant, it shares it's title and main character with the comic series, but is written as a standalone novel that doesn't require knowledge of the comic book to enjoy.

Lightsaber Rattling:  

First of all, thank you for agreeing to be Lightsaber Rattling's first interview victim.  So far your Star Wars work has been set in the Old Republic era between the years of 5,000-1,000 BBY, is there something in particular about this vast and relatively uncharted portion of the Star Wars time-line that drew your interest as a storyteller?

John Jackson Miller: 

It’s nice to be able to write in a time where there’s room to maneuver, story-wise. The Knights of the Old Republic comics series was set seven years before the first video game, which was plenty of room; fifty issues of stories took maybe a year of in-universe time. Still, there were a lot of questions about connections between that period and those nearby. With Knight Errant, we’re a full generation before the Darth Bane novels, so it’s much more of an open playing field. No one knows what the future holds for any of our characters yet.

Lightsaber Rattling:    

If you could write(novel or comic form) in any of the other Star Wars publishing eras (Rise of the Empire, Rebellion, New Republic, New Jedi Order, and Legacy) which would be most interesting for you to tell a story in? Is there a particular character or characters from a different period of time that you would love to write?

John Jackson Miller: 
 
So far, really the only work I’ve done with the movie characters (besides the cameo appearances in “Vector”) was Star Wars Empire #35, a Darth Vader story that appears in Empire Vol. 7: The Wrong Side of the War. It’s always fun to work with the movie characters, so that might be fun to do at another time. 

 
Lightsaber Rattling:  

You are someone who is deeply involved in researching and tracking comic book sales, pricing and related statistics, as can be seen on your website:  http://www.comichron.com/ .  You are also someone who is being digitally published in your Lost Tribe of the Sith e-book series. How do you think digital publication is going to affect the future of the comic industry?

John Jackson Miller: 

Digital means different things to different media, I think. In comics, digital sales are growing, but still less than 1% of annual sales. It’s possible that one day that could grow much larger, and take its place alongside trade paperback collections as another format contributing to the bottom line — but I don’t think the role will be to replace the printed comic book, which has its own unique qualities that readers like. For now, digital is really helpful as a promotional tool — later on; certainly, the hope is that it’ll help us reach readers that aren’t being reached now with current formats.

With prose it’s a little more complicated as there are a lot of formats, like short stories, that weren’t that profitable in the past because there just weren’t enough markets for them. Now, there are a lot more opportunities to tell stories in different ways, and get them out there. It’s interesting to see how things are developing.

Lightsaber Rattling:  

How do you approach storytelling differently going from the comic format (Knight Errant, Knights of the Old Republic) where the images tell the readers a lot about the setting, the characters and the action going on, as opposed to the prose fiction format (Knight Errant, Lost Tribe) where your words paint the picture?

John Jackson Miller: 

Well, just like that — I have a talented team of artists in the comics to help provide the picture, and so I’m more likely just to give some guidance on character looks and starship designs. My role there is more in staging the scenes, and saying what the characters’ expressions are, and that sort of thing. In prose, it’s all up to me. It can be challenging to describe a lot of characters fully in the short story form, so I tend to focus only on a few there; in the novel, there’s more space to show everything.

 Lightsaber Rattling:

Speaking of your short story work, the Lost Tribe of the Sith (LTotS) series is a set of 8 short stories that tie into the Fate of the Jedi series and give us the back story for a marooned group of Sith and their descendants on the planet Kesh.  How do you approach creating heroes and villains, or perhaps protagonists and antagonists, in a setting full of Sith where everyone could be considered a villain to some degree?

John Jackson Miller:   

The fun thing about the group that crashes on Kesh is they’re not necessarily Sith-Lords-in-waiting. Many have Force skills and all of whom adhere to Sith teachings — but they’re also a mix of miners and warriors sent on an assignment to procure crystals for Naga Sadow. Specialists and minions. But when we strand them away from the rest of the galaxy, we soon see that everything’s changed for them. While it might not have been possible for some of them to rule the galaxy, a single planet is another story — and of course, since they’re all thinking the same thing, that makes for a busy place.

But there are always going to be differences in approach with them; some like brute force, others, intrigue. Some play the game to their advantage; others try to flip over the table. Within that, we can usually find points of view to root for.

I’m glad there’s a lot of interest in the Lost Tribe series; as free stories, they’re a fun little point of entry into the Expanded Universe. Spread the word!

Lightsaber Rattling:

In your production notes for LTotS: Paragon, you mention that after writing from the point of view (POV) of the villain Seelah Korsin, you felt like you needed a bath. How do you feel after swimming in a sea of evil for the Knight Errant novel and comic series with all of the villains that you have created like Daiman, Odion, Quillan, Dromika, and Arkadia?

John Jackson Miller:  
 
They’re all different, and that’s what makes them enjoyable to me. If they were all clones of characters we’ve already seen, it wouldn’t be as interesting. Palpatine and Vader are characters that represent the culmination of a lot of forces and events that have gone before; you wouldn’t be able to transplant them in this early time very easily. They already know what it means to be Sith; they have Bane’s example, and lots of history before them. But Bane comes at the end of a long period in which rivals are still sorting out what Sith doctrine should be. While there are certainly many Sith in earlier eras (including the Lost Tribe and the KOTOR and TOR games), it’s clear that the convulsions of the Knight Errant time have resulted in a lot of schisms on that score.

So Daiman latches onto one part of Sith philosophy and takes it to an extreme; Odion goes in another direction. The others you mention, seen in the book, go off in some surprising directions, as well. That really keeps it fresh to me — and makes it worth the feeling sometimes gotten from sharing minds with these characters!

Lightsaber Rattling:

Wow, great answers. In closing, for fans who haven't yet read the Knight Errant comics, and without giving too much away, who is Jedi Knight Kerra Holt and what do fans have to look forward to when the Knight Errant novel is released on Jan. 25th?


John Jackson Miller: 

As the sole Jedi working a wide area of space controlled by the Sith, Kerra’s been forced to make decisions about what things she can and can’t do to help the people. It’s clear she’s not going to be able to push back the warring Sith Lords all on her own, so she’s set to work pouring sand into the war machines, slowing down the pace of internecine destruction. Because while having the Sith Lords at war with each other may sound like a good thing for the Republic, it’s clearly not good for those caught between.

She’s always faced with decisions over what she should be doing, and often, those decisions are taken away from her. The result is a journey through Sith space, in which we encounter some other, very different regimes — and chances for Kerra to potentially get her mission back on track. It really is an odyssey, in which she finds out as much about herself as the would-be Sith Lords she’s fighting.

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To Order or Pre-Order any of the Knight Errant Comic Series, please visit Things From Another World(TFAW)

 

Knight Errant Excerpt coming soon in Knight Errant #4-Aflame

Star Wars: Knight Errant #4 - Aflame part 4 is due out from Dark Horse Comics on Jan. 12, 2011.


According to Knight Errant author John Jackson Miller, the comic will contain an excerpt from the forthcoming novel by the same name.  The Knight Errant novel starring Jedi Knight Kera Holt is due to be released Jan. 25, 2011.


To Pre-Order Knight Errant #4, Go to TFAW: LINK
To Pre-Order Knight Errant the Novel, Amazon LINK