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Aug 16, 2018isaachar rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
My favorite Star Wars novel, published almost 20 years ago. 'I, Jedi' was written in the 'legacy' time, before SW was purchased by disney and all prior novels were de-cannonized. I remember enjoying it because it stuck out from every other Star Wars novel of that era. The main focus wasn't a Skywalker or a Solo and the overall plot didn't involve a threat to all life in the galaxy. The story was about Corran Horn, a grizzled Corellian detective who finds out he inherited force sensitivity from his deceased Jedi grandfather. After the fall of the Empire, Horn is reluctantly recruited by Luke Skywalker to join his fledgling Jedi Academy. It turns out he is not great at being a Jedi. Not for falling to the darkside, but for a bunch of other mundane issues. He's older than most other students and doesn't socialize well, his strength in the force is minimal, his skill with a lightsaber is nonexistant and his moral code of 'operating on instinct' clashes with the 'remain objective' ideals of the Jedi. When his wife disappears, he commits the big Star Wars 'no-no' and leaves the academy with incomplete training to find her. What I liked most about this story was the fact that Corran Horn was just a normal guy who falls into an abnormal situation. His 'non-space wizard' life before training as a Jedi proves of more use than the gifts the force grants him. He wasn't fated to save the universe, he's not thrust upon a leadership position and he isn't seeking fame or glory. He's just a guy who finds out he has a gift, that he's terrible with that gift, and it leads him to appreciate what he had before all along. 'I, Jedi' sticks out among the old 'Legacy' novels in that sense. It wasn't a traditional Star Wars or even science fiction-detective story.