Star Wars: Queen's Peril - Review

Title: Star Wars: Queen’s Peril

Author: E.K. Johnston

Series: Star Wars

Synopsis:  “When fourteen-year-old Padmé Naberrie wins the election for Queen of Naboo, she adopts the name Amidala and leaves her family to rule from the royal palace.  To keep her safe and secure, she’ll need a group of skilled handmaidens who can be her assistants, confidantes, defenders, and decoys.  Each girl is selected for her particular talents, but it will be up to Padmé to unite them as a group. When Naboo is invaded by forces of the Trade Federation, Queen Amidala and her handmaidens will face the greatest test – of themselves, and of each other.”

Review:  I wanted to love this book.  The cover is absolutely beautiful, and I loved the idea of how Queen Amidala built her network of handmaidens.  The first two thirds of the novel are strong and interesting, however then we are caught up to the same time period as The Phantom Menace (TPM) and this is when the whole thing falls apart.

     The final third of the novel is very disjointed as it jumps around from character to character whose scenes do nothing to forward the actual plot of the novel.  It relies heavily on the reader already having a fresh, and vast, amount of knowledge regarding events from The Phantom Menace.  Anyone who hasn’t seen TPM within the last few weeks will be extremely confused as the story seems to be missing whole chunks of storytelling when it involves anything that happens in the movie.  Even if you have the fresh knowledge of what happens in the movie, the missing chunks of storytelling totally pull you out of the story as you have to then think about the movie, and what happened during the missing scenes.  I honestly feel that this must not be entirely the authors fault, because I loved Ahsoka and Queen’s Shadow.  But something here went terribly wrong. 

     I was so very disappointed by this novel.  I wanted a strong female lead Star Wars story, and while it started out that way, Queen’s Peril falls profoundly short.

     I also have to mention that the Kindle copy I was provided was full of typos and formatting errors that I hope are fixed before publication.

***I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review***

Publisher: Disney Lucasfilm Press

I recommend passing on this one and reading one of these instead:

Star Wars: Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston

Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow by E.K. Johnston

Star Wars: A Crash of Fate (Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge #1) by Zoraida Córdova