TRIOCULUS HAS ASSUMED POWER.
THE EMPIRE HAS BEEN REBORN.
AND A YOUNG JEDI IS ABOUT TO BE DISCOVERED.
Enter, our Jedi Prince!
Wouldn’t Palpatine be proud of his grandson?
Not exactly the Prince I expected, but okay then. On with the show!
Our story starts with Luke visiting Han and Chewbacca in their new cloud house in Cloud City. Luke is impressed, and Han asks about Leia. Luke teases Han about filling up his sky house with a wife and kids. Han acts nonchalant. This is where I want to reach through the page and grab Luke and say “HE’S TALKING ABOUT YOUR SISTER. SLAP HIM AROUND. USE THE FORCE. THREATEN HIM. BE A BROTHER!” Ugh, Luke, seriously, you should be disgusted with Han. And Han – stop being such a jerk! (This is also where I want to ask the authors if they watched Return of the Jedi. Han shouldn’t have a problem with wanting to settle down. He shouldn’t be ditching Leia to go live with Chewie in a sky house. If anything, they should be figuring out their relationship, together. Instead, Leia is pushed aside to be a damsel in distress and wait for Han to come around and want to marry her. Nice.)
Aaaaaanyway. There’s a bomb in Luke’s cloud car, but I guess Han isn’t that bad because he saves Luke’s life, again. (So much for Luke sensing things through the Force.) Luke’s hand is messed up and he can’t fly, so Han gives him a lift back to Yavin Four on the Millennium Falcon. Which gives him an excuse to see Leia again! How nice. While recovering, Luke has a dream about the Lost City of the Jedi, which is this supposedly mythical place on Yavin Four, and Obi-Wan gives him the dumbest code ever. Are you ready for it? Here it is:
JE-99-DI-88-FOR-00-CE.
I realize that this is a book for children, but come on. Even Mara the dog is embarrassed.
Now we’re introduced to Ken! Yay! It’s only taken an entire horrid book, but we finally get to meet our Jedi Prince, who lives in the supposedly-mythical Lost City of the Jedi underneath Yavin Four, where the Jedi Knights stored all the knowledge of the galaxy. (Wow, it’s a good thing that Yavin Four didn’t get blown up in A New Hope.) Because Ken lives there, with a ton of droids to take care of him, he must be really special. But Ken is also annoyed because his pet mooka is waking him up by licking his face. (This is why the aforementioned dog sleeps in a crate instead of my bed.) He’s also annoyed because the caretaker droids at the Lost City of the Jedi, where he lives, treat him like a child and grade his homework before it’s ready. All Ken wants to do is go Topworld, but Dee-Jay, the main droid, says he’s not old enough. Poor Ken; nobody understands him!
Le sigh.
(This is where I must point out that Ken lives on 12 South Jedi Lane. I’m serious. There’s a picture of it.
See?)
To prove how mature he is, Ken decides to sneak away and go Topworld! That’ll teach ’em, Ken!
To our Imperials, who are still being dastardly. They’re on their way to the Null Zone of space, specifically to Space Station Scardia to get the dark blessing of Kadann, the Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side. Trioculus is annoyed that other Imperials like COMPNOR (short for Commission for the Preservation of the New Order) (acronym time!) won’t lend him support until Kadann does, too. Poor Trioculus; I bet Palpatine never needed anyone’s dark blessings for him to be accepted as the leader of the galaxy!
Meanwhile, Luke is obsessed with finding the Lost City of the Jedi. Han and Leia think he’s a little nutty, which is kind of unfair, because Luke’s hunches have saved their skins plenty of times! And, you know, Leia can use the Force, too. But whatever. He meets a Ho’din healer named Baji, who speaks in really annoying rhyme. Then he sees something made of metal, and gets irrationally paranoid that someone is spying on him. (Come on, Luke, can’t you use the Force to sense danger by now?) But it’s okay, it’s only Ken and his droid, Chip, who have gotten lost! Before Luke can find out more about the Lost City, Dee-Jay arrives and whisks Ken back to the Lost City of the Jedi. But he’s left his computer notebook behind, so at least Luke knows it’s not a dream!
Good ole Trioculus gets to Space Station Scardia and the Chamber of Dark Blessings. (I seriously cannot make this shit up.) He finally receives Kadann’s dark blessing, but Kadann says that he knows Trioculus isn’t the real son of Palpatine, but rather an impostor. They discuss Palpatine’s son, another three-eyed mutant named Triclops (groan), who’s been held in an insane asylum for being a pacifist. That’s why the grand moffs put Trioculus in charge. Background information, blah blah blah, Kadann says that Trioculus must find the Jedi Prince from the Lost City of the Jedi or ELSE!
(Okay, if everyone knew where this supposed Lost City of the Jedi was, why didn’t anyone try to find it sooner??? Seriously??? Wouldn’t Palpatine want this? I’m sure he had enough resources to mount a successful search.)
Trioculus goes to Yavin Four, threatens SPIN (no, not SPIN!), falls in love with Leia, and sets the rainforests on fire with Treaded Neutron Torches (or TNTs!) in order to find the Lost City. (Yay, it’s our environmental subplot of the book!) Of course, right about now is when Ken decides to sneak Topworld again to find his lost computer notebook. Thankfully, Baji has it, but the fires are getting close! And Imperial stormtroopers capture Baji! What’s a Jedi Prince to do? Well, not rush in and save the day, that’s for sure.
You see, Trioculus is going blind because of the implants placed in the Glove of Darth Vader to make it look like he was using the Force. If he doesn’t take off the glove, he’ll die! Thankfully, there’s a cure to the blindness – but the seeds are in Baji’s hut, which is about to go up in flames! How ironic. Trioculus rushes through the wall of flame to get the seeds, burning himself in the process. Oh, what a world, what a world.
Luke, Han, and Chewie are out in the Millennium Falcon, trying to stop the fires. They run into Ken and the droids. They all go to the Lost City to escape the fires (Han even exclaims “My Corellian buddies will never believe this!”), and there Luke learns the importance of Obi-Wan’s code. You see, the Lost City of the Jedi also controls the weather on Yavin Four! Luke puts in the code and it starts to rain. The rainforests are saved! Hooray!
Trioculus escapes the planet, of course, and starts to wear a fake glove of Darth Vader. Ken leaves the Lost City of the Jedi and Luke becomes his guardian. Because that makes sense – he wasn’t even allowed to leave the city a few days ago, and now the droids are entrusting him to Luke Skywalker. Well, I guess he’s a pretty trustworthy guy.
But seriously, what’s the point of having this huge Lost City filled with nothing but droids? Ken’s the only Jedi kid you could keep there? And why would you have it on Yavin Four of all places? Sigh. What a lost, and stupid, opportunity.
In our next installment, Zorba the Hutt searches for his revenge. A-HAW-HAW-HAW!
