The Clone Wars: The Way of the Warrior

The Way of the Warrior

Author: Jonathan Green

Illustrator: Uncredited

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: October 2010

Timeline Placement: 21 BBY

 

Tonight's Star Wars book is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. "The Way of the Warrior," as you may recognize, is the first episode from the fourth season of the American syndicated science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, counting as the 73rd and the 74th episodes overall as it is a double-length episode. Michael Dorn joins the cast of Deep Space Nine as Worf, a character originating on the preceding series, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But also, The Way of the Warrior is a Star Wars picture book from the UK where you could customize the story with your child's name and likeness. Additionally, you could select if you wanted your character to be on the light side or the dark side. At the completion of your order, your character would then be entered into the pre-written narrative, with good characters substituted for Anakin Skywalker and evil characters for Asajj Ventress. So to get the canon version of this story, we have to assume a default narrative featuring Anakin and Asajj.

Yoda has a premonition that an ancient prophecy made by the Followers of Palawa, an order of Force-sensitive practitioners of the martial art of Teräs Käsi, is about to come to pass. The prophecy, known as the Way of the Warrior, foretells that during a great conflict, a champion of light and a champion of darkness will compete for a valuable prize. Yoda selects Anakin Skywalker to be the Jedi's champion and sends him to the planet Bunduki to retrieve the prize, hoping it will help the Republic win the Clone Wars. Count Dooku somehow hears about the prophecy as well and sends Ventress as his representative.

 

The two champions seek out Derek Jeter Snahl, the local prophecy expert. They arrive at the same time and start fighting each other, so neither notices when Jeter is captured by Duros bounty hunter Cad Bane. Anakin and Ventress pursue Bane independently, chasing him from planet to planet and peril to peril, round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom and round perdition's flames. At last it turns out that the real prize was the friends they made along the way. Cad Bane is like "wtf, I can't sell that" and he jets. Despite not winning anything, Anakin and Asajj have both won the day, because they can each be replaced by the person who ordered the book. Having wasted way too much time on this nonsense, it's time to return to the business of the real war...

There's not much to this book but the Followers of Palawa are a surprising EU deep cut that I was glad to see. Can't recommend the book based on that alone, especially since this is one of the rarest Star Wars children's books, and any used copies you might happen to find in the wild will have some random kid as one of the main characters. Kind of interesting and worth reading for the uniqueness of it, but the only money I'd pay to own it is whatever it costs to self-publish the canon version of the story.

"You dick! I'm Jeter Snahl! You shot me!"