Star Wars Review: Dawn of the Jedi: Prisoner of Bogan

The second volume of Dawn of the Jedi builds on both the first volume and short story and book that came before it. Is this a good thing? Or is my lack of faith disturbing?

I always like to start a review a different way, so when a series essentially gift-wraps itself for new comments, I’m thankful. Both the comic Force Storm and the novel Into the Void kicked off Dawn of the Jedi, and I was delighted when Prisoner of Bogan expanded off of both of them. I was actually pretty concerned that Into the Void would turn out to be a waste. After all, it had a different author, and focused on different characters going through different events. Instead, it turned out to be a sort of beta, allowing me to familiarize myself with the setting so that I could go into Prisoner of Bogan with some semblance of knowledge about where the characters were. Unfortunately, Dawn of the Jedi is probably going to be over in the amount of time it would take to write another novel, but hopefully there’s something more in store for this series along the same lines.

I have never been so glad to read optional tangential material in the order that I did with Dawn of the Jedi . Of course, this seems to be fairly intentional. Despite the fact Force Storm actually starts around the same time as Into the Void and ends several days later (not counting the novel’s epilogue), Into the Void was released later and appears on most accounts of the metaseries after Force Storm . This could be for the very simple reason that the comic was the progenitor of the series, but the benefit to it all is that almost all of the background ideas in Prisoner of Bogan are introduced in Into the Void . Read the relationship between Dawn of the Jedi media here.

Unfortunately, this concept is as far as this story goes. Unlike most modern comic collections, Prisoner of Bogan does not tell a story. It tells a middle chapter. There is really no beginning or end here, despite the fact that Force Storm clearly functions as a self-contained event and there is no reason to give Force Wars extra baggage when it’s got, you know, a war to tell. Read the review here.