3/5 Rancors - With Scourge Jeff Grubb delivers a briskly-paced look into some aspects of the Star Wars Expanded Universe that have not been overly delineated in prior works. The story is set in the days of Luke Skywalker's efforts to rebuild the Jedi Order and right after the peace treaty between the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant. The intriguing part of using this setting is that Mr. Grubb does not spend time with the familiar main characters of the films and most other books: instead we meet a brand-new and rather atypical Jedi, Mander Zuma, who is happier delving for secrets in musty archives than he is wielding a lightsaber. Mander's apprentice has died in mysterious circumstances and Mander is reluctantly thrown into the investigation. The track leads into the shadowy Hutt underworld to an extent not previously seen in Star Wars books. There are more Hutt lead characters in Scourge than there are humans.
The book starts off with a bang as we experience Mander's apprentice's final moments. Toro Irana is acting extremely strangely for a Jedi, filled with anger and lashing out at the locals on the planet of Makem Te. It's a gripping start to kick off the primary mystery of Scourge, which centers on a new substance named Tempest. The mystery is not particularly deep and it's not difficult to unravel where it's headed for the most part: the biggest question mark is around who is heading up the distribution of Tempest and what their motives were for interfering with a Jedi.
As Mander's investigation proceeds, he picks up several allies, including his apprentice's sister Reen and the entertaining Bothan Eddey Be'ray. Mander is not the Jedi they expect him to be and his penchant for talking rather than throwing down with a lightsaber provides more than a few fun moments. There is a sense of freedom around Mander taking on this mission with non-Jedi allies and not once reporting back to Luke or any other Jedi Masters on his progress or to solicit advice. Occasionally the various novels mention that there are a couple hundred or so Jedi running around under Luke's leadership, so it's quite refreshing to actually spend time with one who acts autonomously.
With Scourge, Mr. Grubb gives us a truly standalone story set in a time of giant series (this is just prior to the New Jedi Order) and highlights brand-new characters in a side story that has a true Star Wars vibe about it. I found his writing very straightforward, down to the extremely literal chapter titles, but certainly solid enough. Beyond Mika and Mander, I don't think these characters will stick with me for very long, but they are easy to differentiate and follow while reading the book (unlike a few Star Wars books where the garbled consonant-filled names for minor characters tend to blur together). I enjoyed reading an independently-minded book set in this part of the time line and hope for more one-offs like it in the future.










