Throwback Thursday Review | Star Wars: Jedi Quest 3 – The Dangerous Games
Share the Force:
Max Nocerino 
Experience a trip down memory lane with Star Wars: Jedi Quest 3: The Dangerous Games. Relive the captivating adventures from this classic Jedi Quest Young Reader novel.
For this week’s Throwback Thursday, it’s time to walk down memory lane with STAR WARS: JEDI QUEST 3: THE DANGEROUS GAMES. I felt nostalgic for my childhood Star Wars lit days and ordered a copy of an old Star Wars: Jedi Quest Young Reader novel from the early 2000’s. The Dangerous Games was the one I selected as I remembered it very fondly but had next to no memory of the various delicious lore that I love to feed on. Google Books strangely has no readable content for it, and no library has a copy of it. By buying and keeping my eBay copy, I may have one of the last of these books in existence in 20 years!
A BLAST FROM THE PAST
I love Jedi Quest, its predecessor, Jedi Apprentice, and its successor, The Last of the Jedi. All 3 were excellent young reader series by the incredibly talented Jude Watson, who is very much the GOAT of Star Wars young children’s novels literature. Her writing skill truly shocked me, unlike the newer writers of Star Wars canon, to which I’ve become so accustomed. Watson writes should I say- differently. The modern Star Wars borrows from the times and forces certain things onto the audience.
Reading Jedi Quest was like a time capsule back to the aughts. I enjoy this style of writing better. I’m not saying that we are bereft of good writers in 2024, but this style is more “homey” regarding the Star Wars universe I grew up with.
OBI-WAN AND ANAKIN
Jedi Quest deals with the (Legends) missions and adventures of Anakin Skywalker (between the ages of 12-18) under his apprenticeship with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Dangerous Games is the third in the series, so Anakin is about 13 or 14 years old, still a young teen, and not yet the young man we will see in Attack of the Clones. He has anger within him but does try to help others, and his anger is usually over mistreated beings. This is good. But a Jedi must be in control of his emotions at all times and Anakin is reminded to stand down, at least a few times during this course of this story.
Obi-Wan, Anakin, and fellow Masters Siri Tachi and Ry-Gaul (along with padawans Tru Treevan and Ferus Olin) are called upon by the Republic to supervise the Galactic Games on Euceron. The Galactic Games are the Star Wars version of the Olympics and occur on a different planet every seven years. All the worlds of the Republic jokey for this honor, and this time, a very non-descript and basic world is chosen. The events of the games are all scripted. Still, there is also an illegal podrace on the outskirts of the capital city, and Anakin, of course, finds himself sucked into the action as he was an avid Podracer, winning his very freedom from the Boonta Eve when he was only nine years old.
SEBULBA RETURNS
Anakin reunites with his old enemy Sebulba, who is up to his rotten tricks again. he has enslaved the deceased racer Ratt’s Tyrell’s daughter and hyped up his son to cheat his way to the top of this race. Ratt’s two sons are racing; if they win, they can free their sister. Anakin feels he needs help and tries to mentor the brothers in their Podracing maintenance. Meanwhile, something else is not right with the other games, as things also seem to be fixed (besides the Podrace), and Obi-Wan needs to get to the bottom of it.
I love the characters and the plot. Obi-Wan is very dry and robotic, and his foil against his ridiculous and shady friend, Didi Odddo, is quite hilarious. We have an Eagle Scout/Stick in the Mud Kenobi dealing with a very annoying and unscrupulous gambler who gets himself in trouble left and right and steals and gambles things away that are not his.
The entire web the adventure draws us into is well-thought-out and hard to predict fully. I must say I am very impressed by that. As a 30-plus man with years of experience reading fiction, I often guess the plot points before they happen. But Dangerous Games threw me for a loop a few times. While I remembered the basic plot, there were twists and turns that I had forgotten, and I didn’t “re-guess” as I was reading. That, I feel, is the mark of a good story.
LEGENDS OF ANAKIN SKYWALKER
I also was refreshed by the (Legends) rivalry between Anakin Skywalker and Ferus Olin. Ferus Olin is slightly older than Anakin and does NOT like Skywalker at all. He is a goody-two-shoes Eagle Scout-like apprentice, probably second in raw Jedi skill after Anakin. Yet he is far more reserved and mature than Anakin. The two often clash as Anakin is very headstrong and doesn’t follow the rules or control his emotions. Their rivalry will come to a head in the last book of this series when Anakin’s anger causes the death of a fellow student. Ferus then resigns from the Order. But not before telling Obi-Wan that Anakin is a ticking time bomb.
The Last of the Jedi shows an adult Ferus hiding from the Empire and coming up against his former rival-now enemy-Darth Vader. It is an explosive series, and I recommend all 3 of the series. In this book, Anakin and Ferus know they don’t like each other. But Tru Treevan is Anakin’s one true Jedi friend (for now) and tries to cut the tension with his kindness. I like Tru and would like to see him re-integrated into Canon as Anakin’s friend (and perhaps even an Order 66 survivor who duels his former friend or something).
VERDICT
The book was an old-school detective mystery in which things evolved in real-time, and you didn’t always know who was responsible or what the threads would lead to. It is worth the time, even beyond nostalgia purposes. Give this book a read. Order it on eBay for a few bucks, and you will not be disappointed. As I read it, I felt my childhood reaching me with wave echoes from the Force.
Star Wars: Jedi Quest 3 – The Dangerous Games is now available to buy from Amazon. Will you be adding this to your Throwback Thursday reading list? Let us know in the comments section below.
FORCE FACTS
Get ready for an adventure through Force Facts. Here, we will uncover all the fun facts, juicy trivia, and hidden Easter eggs. Buckle up and see how many of these incredible nuggets of information you spotted!
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We get a taste of how crowded planets deal with incoming space traffic. Euceron has upper atmosphere space-lane officers on high-altitude swoops to help lead the starships down to the surface (they hopefully aren’t afraid of heights and have oxygen masks). Then, the ships are guided by a directional laser so they can park in a designated starship lot. It feels like our real world, but not too much, with just the right amount of the Star Wars otherworldly feel.
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This book came out in 2003, before the Internet became a part of our lives and before Google Maps. The Jedi use a coordinate kiosk to find their way around the city, and it’s incredible that Watson (not knowing how this would play out in the real world) has them not use their datapads to get directions. Ah, how the future of technology is always clouded.
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Speaking of Google, Obi-Wan can’t search for information on an obscure being and instead has to contact the Jedi librarian, Jocasta Nu, for her help. She does a deep background trace on a character called Quentor and reveals to Obi-Wan that it is not a real person but a yellow-tailed summer bird that lives outside the Senate building on Coruscant. While libraries are still used to get obscure information that may not be accessible on the internet, they really show the retrofuturistic vibe of the early 2000s before anyone could compile research at any time with a smartphone. Also, Jocastu has stars in her eyes when the supergalactic athlete Maxo Vista is mentioned, and it seems everybody in the galaxy knows this being- except for the out-of-loop Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kenobi never really paid attention to “popular media,” as we will see in a few decades when he never heard of the Millennium Falcon! Also, seeing the stiff and stuffy Jocastu temporarily turn into a fangirl for Maxo was quite funny!
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This book refers to the Jedi mind trick as the “Jedi mind suggestion,” and I like this term better.
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One of the obstacles in Kenobi’s impromptu death match with the evil Maxo involved a bush with tentacles. This was quite awesome, and there is no mention of this fauna on the book’s Wookieepedia page, so you heard it here first at thefutureoftheforce.com!
Did you have a great time reading this week’s Throwback Thursday review? We’d love to hear from you! Please take a moment to share your thoughts with us.
Max Nocerino is a regular Staff Writer for The Future of the Force. He is a passionate Star Wars fan and loves the literature of the galaxy far, far away. Follow him on Twitter where he shares his love of the Force frequently!
