Three years into Anakin Skywalker's training as a Jedi, he and his master Obi-Wan Kenobi are sent to the mysterious and distant planet Zonama Sekot, partly to investigate another Jedi going missing there, but also to help quell the young boy's ever-growing restlessness.
However, other forces hear of the planet, and the unusual starships it produces, and have their own plans for it.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Bordering on downer. Zonama takes off into the unknown, causing all the cool living starships to slowly die off, while Tarkin gets off scott-free.
- But Now I Must Go: In the epilogue, it's mentioned Master Cho Leem just randomly took off one day, never to be seen or heard from for the rest of the Legends continuity.
- The City Narrows: Coruscant likes to paint itself as the great shining hub of the galaxy, but even then there are bits that are considerably rough. And someone from a planet like Tatooine such as Anakin, even at the age of twelve, is very good at finding these places.
- Cool Old Guy: Master Thracia Cho Leem is a lot more relaxed and laid back than... well, any other Jedi. She casually breezes into a chewing-out session, chews Windu out for being harsh on Anakin, suggests that he be given a project, and breezes back out again.
- Dead All Along: The Magistrate of Sekot died when the Far Outsiders/Yuuzhan Vong attacked. Zonama's been using her powers to make it look like he's been alive since then.
- Dramatic Irony:
- In exasperation with Anakin, Obi-Wan idly muses about going off to some desert planet for a year once Anakin's stopped being his Padawan.
- Obi-Wan thinks he's being contacted by the voice of Qui-Gon, but dismisses this because he knows Qui-Gon's very much dead. Yoda will eventually prove that he was wrong to dismiss such a possibility come Revenge of the Sith.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The book was released between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, so a few details hadn't entirely been nailed down about the Jedi Order.
- Instead of the Jedi Order, they're exclusively referred to as the Jedi Temple throughout.
- Anakin doesn't have a lightsaber at all, despite having been with the Jedi for three years now.
- The proto-typical Death Star is Tarkin's baby, when Attack of the Clones establishes it as a Geonosian weapon.
- Mace Windu of all people is described as being an occasional prankster. There are many words one could use to describe Mace, but "prankster" definitely isn't among them. He's also not as down on Anakin as he will be later.
- The rule about Jedi having no attachments hadn't shown up, so Thracia Cho Leem can casually mention she's been married and has kids, and tells Mace he should go do so in a You Need to Get Laid fashion, and this is treated as a mild jibe rather than a massive breach of Jedi orthodoxy.
- Fantastic Racism: Tarkin is a human supremacist and dreams of the day, which he feels is coming soon, when humans take over the Republic and install a humanocentric government.
- Faux Affably Evil: Tarkin tries to act polite towards Anakin, but he can barely keep it up before his nastiness shines through.
- Foreshadowing: The mysterious and highly aggressive "Far Outsiders" who found and ravaged Zonama some years before the story, using weapons unknown to the galaxy. If this description reminds you of a certain race of Scary Dogmatic Aliens, that's not a coincidence.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Zonama projects herself using images of people she knows, such as the Magistrate or Vergere, to interact with others.
- Futureshadowing:
- Early on, Tarkin shows Sienar his idea for a weapon of mass destruction, which is more or less the size of a small moon. He thinks it needs a bit of fine tuning. At the book's end, he gets to present it to the new Supreme Chancellor.
- Anakin is horrified when he realizes the voice he keeps hearing, which is tempting him towards the Dark Side, is himself albeit older.
- General Ripper: Tarkin wants to conquer Zonama Sekot by force, and engineers the situation so he can get his way.
- Genius Loci: Zonama Sekot is revealed to be a living planet.
- Innocuously Important Episode: An apparent one-off story detailing the early years of Anakin and Obi-Wan's time together, but which has important consequences for the New Jedi Order.
- Jerkass Ball: It's only momentary and internalized, but at one point, Obi-Wan has to stop himself from hitting Anakin just for making a flippant remark, while thinking he never wanted to be the kid's master (even though he insisted on training Anakin to Yoda).
- The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Zonama Sekot is this applied to a whole planet. It's quickly getting a galaxy-wide reputation for mysterious, custom-made starships, but curiously enough when the Jedi look at the records of the star system it's in, there shouldn't be a planet there.
- No One Sees the Boss: The Magistrate of Sekot keeps to himself in a big isolated palace, and no one ever gets to see him. Because he's been dead for several years, and Zonama's been replacing him with a hologram.
- No Social Skills: Anakin has no Jedi friends. He gets on more with droids he finds and repairs than actual people. Obi-Wan figures meeting a girl and talking to her might help with that.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The "Far Outsiders", who Vergere disappeared with. Nobody was quite certain who they were or where they came from or even what set them off, but Vergere thought they were outside the Force. They never put in a physical appearance in the novel, but the damage from their attack on Zonama lingers. They're the earliest scouts of the Yuuzhan Vong.
- Real After All: Early on in the book, Obi-Wan thinks he hears Qui-Gon's voice while in the Temple, which is of course impossible because he's been dead for three years. Later on, while on Sekot, he continues hearing voices but figures it's actually just his own mind. The novel leaves it ambiguous as to whether it was the real Qui-Gon, or Obi-Wan being right, or Sekot already reaching out to a Jedi she didn't know across the galaxy. Revenge of the Sith would see Yoda actually make contact with Qui-Gon from beyond the grave.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: The Way of the Potentum, a group of Jedi who tried applying moral relativism to the Force about a hundred years ago, which got them kicked out of the Order as heretics, though fortunately they never seemed to become as big a problem as the Sith. Some of them eventually wound up on Sekot.
- These Hands Have Killed:
- Anakin kills Ke Daiv the Blood Carver by unwillingly tapping into the Dark Side at the age of twelve. He's understandably horrified afterwards.
- Zonama took the lives of several of the Vong who attacked her. While the Magistrate insisted moral relativism made it okay, she disagrees.
- The Stoic: Obi-Wan isn't terribly great at expressing his emotions, which might not be the greatest combination with someone just about to hit the terrible teens like Anakin.
- Totally Radical: In addition to Anakin's already-established "wizard", he has a habit of proclaiming things "rugged".
- Uncertain Doom: The story ends with Zonama taking off into the unknown with her entire population. Anakin and Obi-Wan aren't certain if they've survived. They'll never learn that they not only did, but would go on to play a crucial role in saving the galaxy from the Yuuzhan Vong.
