WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS Star Wars Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade tells the story of young Jedi Padawan Iskat Akaris, who is thrust into Knighthood at the beginning of the Clone Wars after the death of her Master. Iskat has always felt different from every ideal she is supposed to live up to, left emotionally cut off by the unyielding restrictions of the Jedi Order. But soon, a new opportunity arises. A chance for Iskat to explore the depths of the power she has always felt inside of her, to take what she has always wanted without having to ask for permission. With every choice she makes, Iskat drifts further away from the morals she has been taught to hold on to all her life, and darkness takes its root. OverviewI always love a good descent into villainhood story, and such stories set in the Star Wars universe are pretty much the best kind. Just reading the synopsis of this book, there are the obvious Anakin Skywalker parallels right off the bat, and it does turn out to be a similar story. What was interesting about how this story was told, is that it overall feels very much on the side of our main character embracing the dark and freeing herself from the oppressive hold of the Jedi Order, thus finding her true self in the process. While it is most certainly not on the side of the path she ultimately takes with the Inquisitors, it’s still very much not on the side of the Jedi. I enjoyed that aspect a lot, since there are endless faults with the Jedi Order that helped lead to their ultimate downfall. This was a dark, tragic story that explored some new and classic themes of Star Wars that were interesting to consider in the context of this world. I enjoyed it a lot overall, particularly the last half where the atmosphere and suspense were at their thickest. Iskat AkarisIskat Akaris is an interesting character to follow because of just how unhinged she is, but also with a lot of relatable aspects. Her species is unknown, and the Jedi of course have no interest in discovering or explaining to her the answers she seeks, because Jedi are supposed to forgo where they came from and embrace only the Order as their home and family. The main theme with Iskat’s character is that she wants to be allowed to be curious. She wants to explore where she came from, who she is, and why her power in the Force feels different from what she is told it’s supposed to be. A big thing is the calling she feels towards violence and killing, which is where she feels that her power is at its strongest and she is at her happiest. Obviously, a Jedi is not supposed to feel this way about physical combat, so this deepens her already shaky trust in them. While Iskat’s story is intriguing to follow along, this is mostly where her character stops. She has desires that the Jedi are holding her back from and this ends up driving her into the hands of the Dark Side. Throughout the story, it can get repetitive when we’re constantly being told all these facts about her (like that she enjoys killing and has two hearts, which are the facts repeated the most throughout the book) but she is still intriguing to follow just to get another person’s perspective during the fall of the Jedi Order and how Anakin was not at all an isolated case, proving the multiple levels of the Jedi Order’s failure to do the one thing they allegedly hold most important: protect people from harm. She is very different from Anakin though in the fact that it seems she was very violent from the start. There isn’t a time she ever really wants to be a great Jedi or follow their moral code. She just thinks she has no other choice, since she was ripped from her home, has no one else that she knows of like her, and would essentially be entirely lost if she left the Order. I thought that was pretty fun, since we essentially spend the first half of the book waiting for her to let loose and go crazy, and you sort of root for it in a way because of how we see her fellow Jedi through her perspective. A descent into madness While starting off a bit slow, I think the story had enough going on to keep it interesting, and it really took off in the second half. Most of the journey is internal, seeing Iskat get pushed further and further until she finally snaps. Iskat’s growing bloodlust throughout the story was incredibly fun to follow, first as she envisions violent things happening to people in her head, making her guilt grow, and then when she begins to take revenge on everyone who has wronged her once she is adopted into the Inquisitorious after the war. Star Wars books can famously be a lot more violent than the films, and I was pleased with how dark and gory this got at times. And the revenge was both parts tragic and satisfying, as any good revenge story should be. One point that becomes extremely important is her romantic feelings for a fellow Jedi named Tualon, who also frustrates her because of how perfectly he is able to exemplify the Jedi Code. You all know by now that I love a good romance. I am always pleased whenever we get a romance subplot in a Star Wars book, and a villain romance? Even better. I loved how this was sort of an enemies to lovers tale, with Tualon and Iskat at first being rather cold and distant with each other because they cannot understand how the other’s mind and morals work, to then actually hating each other when they’ve both been tortured and abused after the war, until finding some violently flirtatious, Natural Born Killers type of relationship. It’s definitely more in the background of the story, but it is yet another element that relates to Anakin’s story, where repressing feelings of attraction only end things in violence. Another part of the story I enjoyed was Iskat’s journey to discovering her home world and where she came from. I found that to be the most emotional part of the book, and really makes you almost hate the Jedi just as much as Iskat grows to. Especially when you find out how loving and peaceful her people are when Iskat finally finds her home planet. How they act is further proof of how cold and almost unfeeling the Jedi are, which is the opposite of what they should be if they claim to walk in the Light Side of the Force. I loved how this was done so that we could mourn along with Iskat for what could have been had she been left alone to grow up in her culture with her own people and language and lifestyle. However, because of the violence and darkness that has always existed inside of her, it is suggested that this path would probably not have made her ultimately happy either. But she was never given the chance. My only gripes with the story were some pacing issues here and there. There were times when things suddenly felt really rushed, and Iskat would make a very dark decision completely out of the blue when she had been worrying so much about what other people would think before. This feels especially prevalent when she just decides to leave Tualon to die during Order 66 when everything is happening so fast and she doesn’t even seem to question the decision at all. Another thing that confused me was the timeline at two points. The first was in the beginning when the Jedi are all preparing to head to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padmé from being executed in the arena. It’s explained in this book that the clones are the ones flying the Jedi over in their transport ships. But wasn’t Yoda the one who brought the clones to Geonosis? Hence how they were saved at the last minute when it looked like they were all going to be wiped out by the droids? It even talks about in the book how dire it looks with the number of Jedi growing smaller and smaller in the fight, but according to this story, they have a bunch of clones just waiting in the background who brought them all here in the first place. Why didn’t they step in to help earlier? Or you know, like, right at the beginning? Another weird moment is just before Order 66, when Iskat and Tualon are sent on a mission to a planet called Frong in order to supposedly capture General Grievous. If this scene is supposed to take place just before Order 66, the Jedi knew long before this that Grievous was on Utapau. Not only that, but they would have already sent Obi-Wan to go after him. So unless it took Iskat and Tualon weeks to get to this planet and this was supposed to be a point on how the Jedi Council is just really bad at communicating, this timeline made no sense. Both of these things could be just me missing something entirely, but I was confused nonetheless. The light and the darkOne thing that I have noticed with pretty much every Star Wars novel I’ve read, is that there is always tension within the Master and Apprentice relationship. Iskat’s relationship with her Master, Sember Vey, very much mirrors the tension between Obi-Wan and Anakin, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, Yoda and Dooku, etc. Again, this is showing just how emotionally stunted the Jedi are dooming their Padawans to be throughout their lives. There are concerns, but no one is allowed to address them. A Padawan is encouraged to turn to their Master with any questions or troubles they have, and yet serious questions and troubles are encouraged to be ignored and discussed as little as possible. This is one of the main faults of the Jedi: trying to force unanimity in a galaxy filled to the brim with all different kinds of beings. The nature of the Force is meant to be something that encompasses all living things in all of their different ways. The Jedi Order skews this to decree that there is only one way to live purely with the Force. A lot of this ties in with themes of religion, especially the question of using the Force for violence during war times. There are big themes of guilt and shame as there often are with any stories concerning the Jedi Order from this era. Any single feeling of darkness or questioning is met with immediate shame, and ironically, fear. Iskat doesn’t want to ask for help from the Jedi because she is afraid of what they’ll do, and any small bit of help she does ask for is immediately shut down, showing she is pretty much perfectly justified in her fear of her Jedi superiors. You also get a lot of in depth exploration of the isolation and depression that follows such treatment. Iskat is made to feel “other” her entire life, not only because of her personal feelings, but also because of the fact that she is the only one of her species that she knows and no one will tell her or care at all to understand what she is feeling. These are themes that can be incredibly relatable in real life which is what makes Iskat easy to sympathize with. It can almost get too real at times with these tragic realities of mental health and how they can completely derail someone’s life. Despite how much this book makes you sort of despise the Jedi Order, Iskat’s journey to the Dark Side is not seen as completely good either. Essentially, the message seems to be that spending her entire life being brainwashed by the Order led her to more easily being brainwashed and controlled by the Inquisitorious. This was very much a theme with Anakin as well, showing how forcing someone to conform to a set of beliefs they don’t understand or identify with only leads to them being more isolated and more vulnerable to other forms of brainwashing. There is a section of the book where Palpatine throws Iskat into a cell for possibly months, which forces her to now fully believe she can not trust anyone but herself, but the metaphorical cage the Jedi had built around her for her entire life already did most of that work for Palpatine. He only finished her off. The same was done with Anakin, though not as simply as that, and I imagine the same was done with many of the other Inquisitors. The Jedi pretty much do all the work for Palpatine and he swoops in at the perfect time. Ultimately, the Sith and the Jedi use the same tactics to control those they want to manipulate, even if it may be unintentional on the Jedi’s side. Both use fear and hatred to otherize anything that is different or goes against their moral code, making their disciples believe there is only one path to living a life that is “right”. They entrap those who are vulnerable and mold them into thinking the way they do and that there are no other options where they will find their true purpose, creating a fear of any outside desires or questions. Of course, this leads to the Jedi Order and the Sith’s ultimate downfall. A dark fateThe story concludes with Iskat and Tualon trying to break away from the Inquisitorious in order to finally find the freedom they have been yearning for their entire lives. This ultimately results in them trying to kill Darth Vader and escape to find new lives. I think we can all predict how that ended up going down. While I thought it felt a bit rushed, I really enjoyed this ending. We get Iskat embracing her evil side and officially going full dark before she tries to break away from her new oppressors with the man she loves and with whom she has formed a connection she never could have predicted, since they are essentially now on the same level within the Inquisitorious. I think this was honestly the best ending Iskat could get, because after all she’s done, she can’t really have a happy ending. But at the same time, the happiest ending she could have gotten, the only way for her to truly be free and at peace, is in death along with Tualon. And Vader forcing them to stab one another on each other’s lightsabers is even more fitting, since they ultimately were each other’s downfall at the very end and throughout the story. I really loved the entire tone with the final act of the story, with the various Inquisitors and their brutal revenge tactics. We know there is no way Iskat is going to escape once we get into this side of the story. She had a chance before, but the fear and guilt about turning away from the only home she’s ever known was too overwhelming, until eventually, she waited until it was too late to ever escape. Final thoughtsThis was an incredibly dark and tragic story, as it should have been. This is probably one of the darkest stories I’ve read in the Star Wars universe, because there really are such few moments of levity or hope. But I really enjoyed the themes explored here and the point of view from Iskat, who was an interesting character to follow along and sympathize with.
Aside from some pacing and timeline confusions, I really enjoyed this story a lot. As I’ve said before, I’m hard-pressed to find a Star Wars book I don’t like. The universe is just too rich. It was fantastic to once again get a little piece of a different point of view within this grandiose space epic. I hope everyone had a terrific Star Wars weekend!
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AuthorCertified non-professional who just enjoys giving her random thoughts on movies and books. Archives
June 2024
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