So here is my review of this book as I have finished it. I feel that I am giving it 5 stars on the weight of me being a Star Wars Fan. I especially love the video game this book is modelled after and I kind of wish they would make a movie out of it because the story is pretty spectacular. Alas, this may not be as George Lucas probably will not be making nor allowing to make any more Star Wars films after this next installment. However, I digress....on with the review.

I feel the reader will love the story behind a new Jedi called Kyle Katarn. What I liked about the story was that there are links to better known characters such as Luke and Lea as well as Han Solo and Chewbacca. The author does a good job of keeping these contacts relatively close so the reader can feel comfortable believing in that world. However, Kyle's story holds its own. This story is full of adventure and intrique and I especially liked some of the side stories given to help explain what the video game kind of took for granted in the story.

The reason I was disappointed was that I felt the author was uncomfortable with describing battle scenes. You have to be careful because a full battle lasted the span of two sentences so if you read it quickly and did not know what it meant...you missed it! I also felt that the author's description of the characters was shallow. All with the exeception of the character Yun. It seems the author liked this character and the drama that enveloped him because he did spend quite a bit of time with Yun. I would have liked to see more time spent with the inner turmoil of Sariss. I mean, the original story brought in a female Jedi and then to make it even more interesting, she is a "Dark Jedi" to boot! The author could have really expanded descriptions here...but didn't.

The author also made a half hearted attempt to address the mysticism surrounding the force, which I thought could have been explained better. And of course, the bad guy Jerec, was all but ignored. A few scenes here and there to try to explain his presence in the story but other than the fact that you know that he is the ultimate bad guy, you do not know much about him. Maybe this was covered in the first two volumes of the story so I am cutting the author some slack here for not explaining the character better.

I recommend this book. It is a good book overall. Again, I think that the fact that I am so intimate with the story and the videogame, I expected more and didn't get it. Others may love this story and how its told entirely. ( )