Monday, March 21, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Star Wars: Queen's Hope by E.K. Johnston

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 5, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Star Wars: Queen's Hope is the third book in E.K. Johnston's trilogy of Star Wars novels featuring Padme Amidala and her handmaidens during the times of the prequels (after Queen's Shadow and Queen's Peril).  I've actually never read either of those novels, but I know a friend has raved about them, and others I trust have raved about Johnston's work in general.  And well my own prior encounter with Johnston, in her book "The Aftermath", was pretty positive, as it featured some really great character work.  So I was excited to try this novel out when I got an advance copy, even without having read the prior novels.

And boy do I now want to go back and read those prior two novels, because Queen's Hope is a terrific character-focused novel.  The story focuses on Padme and her Handmaidens, many of whom now have gone different ways, right after Attack of the Clones as Padme and her companions try to figure out who they are now with the war, Padme's secret marriage, and all they have gone through.  And it's just so easy to care for each of these characters, even the ones I didn't know from the movies, as the story jumps between them frequently - even despite how short the novel is.  And the story ends up being one that is surprisingly hopeful, especially given all we know is to come in the third movie after this one.  Just a lot to love here.  

Note:  As you can tell from this review, this novel can be read entirely stand-alone - it certainly seems like some of the handmaiden's characters developed in the prior novels, but you will not be lost if you lack that foreknowledge like I did, and you should really enjoy this novel anyway like I did.  

---------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
The Clone Wars have begun and Padmé's finds herself keeping secrets about her life from her closest companions for the first time in her life: most notably about her choice to secretly marry Anakin Skywalker.  Padmé hopes that this secret won't change anything among her closest companions, the handmaidens who had once been alongside her - whether they still work for her or not - but as she interacts with them, she feels the guilt of that secret in her heart. 

Especially as Padmé begins to need those closest companions once more as her job as a Galactic Senator, as part of the Senate's peaceful faction, requires her to take dangerous action once more.  So when a secret mission requires Padmé to once again ask her handmaiden Sabé to assume Sabé's role as her double once more, Padmé, Sabé and the others come face to face with a truth they would rather not face: that they each have changed over the years, and that they are not the people they once were....and that they can never go back to doing things the old way once more, even as they still love each.  

But as the secret mission progresses, resulting in a possible galaxy-shifting change in Galactic politics, Padmé and her companions will also discover that change may not necessarily be a bad thing, and that their new selves may be capable of fighting for justice in many different ways throughout the Galaxy....
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Queen's Hope is a story that jumps between characters' perspectives constantly, as it attempts to tell the stories of a multitude of characters in this perilous time of the Galaxy, most notably Padmé and her various former and present handmaidens.  The story also tells a couple of interstitial stories about women whose stories are those of women who have faced oppression, or seen the horrors of the Galaxy close up, and who never give up hope and strive to take action for a better future, stories of certain women the reader will recognize as those who may not have ended in good ways, but who made an impact on making the Galaxy in the end a better place.  

And those stories frame the stories of the major characters here, who are all working towards that same end, but in very different ways now that things have changed.  You have Padme of course, working as a Galactic Senator.  But you also have Dormé, Padme's main handmaiden still in charge who has to staff Padme's new handmaiden roster with a group with different talents than they used to back when she was just the Queen of a peaceful planet; you have Saché, who is now a diplomatic agent trying to help Naboo continue to have peaceful relations with its neighbor subordinate worlds, even as the war makes fearful Naboo politicians want to take more control; and you have Sabé, who has begun fighting the slave trade on Tattooine with a man she loves on a more personal level, even as Padmé asks her to help Padme fight on a much greater scope.  And there are others, some of whom get point of view chapters, and some of whom didn't, whose stories get featured, like a handmaiden candidate who uses Zhe/Zher pronouns who winds up becoming Saché's personal assistant instead, and who notes zhe wouldn't have thought of the possibility until it was recommended zhe apply and who turns out to be a trusty assistant.  

And the result, in a story that takes place in a dark place in the Galaxy, is a story that is hopeful in ways you don't often think about, to the confounding at times of Palpatine, who pops in every now and then to gloat about how things are going bendable to his whims.  So you have Padmé and Sabé (and the rest to some extent) realizing how much they've changed, and how they can't simply continue in their old roles as politician and her Shadow, with Sabé unable to think of people as abstractions as necessary for galactic politics and wanting to still help people on a personal level, while Padmé can play the more abstract game....and yet the two realize that both of their ways of making a difference still matter and can improve the Galaxy.  And their changing may push the two of them apart, but it doesn't mean that's necessarily a bad thing.  And the other plotlines are similar, with Saché for example having to deal with an old law by which Naboo could oppress and use its subordinate worlds, which Palpatine's inspired minions are thinking of using out of terror of what could happen in the Clone Wars, and finding a way to adjust the law to draw the planets closer together instead.  

Queen's Hope is very much a short novel, and it doesn't last long, but its character moments work really well and its message of hope amidst drastic change works tremendously.  Highly recommended and I'm eager to pick up the prior books in this trilogy.  



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