Jedi Readers: Episode I: Anakin's Fate

Anakin's Fate

Author: Marc Cerasini

Illustrator: John Alvin

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: April 1999

Timeline Placement: 32 BBY

This is the story of how Anakin Skywalker "smashed up [Watto's] Pod in the last race." A Step 4 Jedi Reader book in comparison to Queen in Disguise's Step 2, Anakin's Fate boasts slightly longer sentences and more words per page, as well as individually titled sub-sections that break up the narrative. It's recommended for Grades 2–4, which means it takes just long enough to read to be slightly aggravating while also being short enough to embarrass you for being aggravated by it.

This book is kind of a bridge in Anakin's pre-TPM backstory between the events of the Episode I Adventures RPG books and his introduction in the opening chapter of the Episode I novelization. The final act of Anakin's Fate, comprised of the big Podrace where Sebulba forces Anakin to crash his Pod and Anakin's meeting with an inspiring old spacer, is essentially the abbreviated picture-book version of those TPM chapters.

Prior to that, however, we get an original story where Watto dispatches Anakin to trade some junk with a visiting Jawa sandcrawler for some salvaged Podracer thrusters. Anakin brings his home-made protocol droid, C-3PO, along for the ride, while pondering the dream he recently had of finally winning a Podrace and meeting a wiseman and an angel. When Anakin first retrieves C-3PO from the scrap pile behind his house, the droid only has one eye, as he does when he's introduced in The Phantom Menace. However, when they go to visit the Jawas he's drawn as having both eyes. The book remarks that Anakin has to disguise his projects as garbage so Watto won't confiscate them, so maybe when C-3PO is turned off Anakin also partially disassembles him. That could explain why Threepio also appears with both eyes in the pre-TPM 3D comic Duel of the Fates!

 

Anakin has an inkling that an old vaporator cylinder he salvaged could come in handy, so he brings it along on his float sled with the rest of Watto's garbage. The Jawas are unwilling to trade their Podracer parts for the junk, but they're very interested in the vaporator component. Anakin discovers that the sandcrawler's own vaporator has broken down, leaving the Jawas in desperate need of water. In exchange for all the Podracer parts they have, he gives them the cylinder and modifies it to work with their technology. The Jawas are saved, and Anakin has procured not only the thrusters that Watto wanted, but also the engine he needed to complete his own Podracer that he's been building in secret. Comically, when Watto's Pod is shown it just looks identical to Anakin's Pod as it appeared in The Phantom Menace. John Alvin's illustrations in these Jedi Reader books have been pretty good but I guess they didn't pay him enough to come up with an original design.

Then they have the race and Anakin crashes and the book ends with him resolving to not give up on his dreams. Maybe he'll meet that angel one day soon!

"My goodness, you've grown!"

Fine book for kids learning to read at a slightly advanced level, but, as an Expanded Universe entry, not quite as noteworthy as Queen in Disguise due to not being a completely original story. There are so many tie-ins and side stories connected to The Phantom Menace, every minute we have to spend retreading ground we've already covered just feels like a huge waste of time.