After spending the last two books in Timothy Zahn's Chiss Ascendancy galaxy, I was happy to return to the traditional Star Wars galaxy with its familiar planets and characters. Dark Disciple takes place towards the end of the Clone Wars, and focuses on a plan the Jedi come up with to end the war. The Clone Wars era is my favorite time period of Star Wars. After watching the animated series, I was introduced to so many new characters and additional context was given to better explain the events of the War. A lot of the characters in the Clone Wars play huge roles in the Star Wars story, and many of them were not even mentioned in the movies. Two such characters were the main stars in this book - Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress.
Quinlan Vos is a Jedi Knight, a bit of a renegade who played by his own rules. His biggest storyline prior to this book was a mission he went on with Obi-Wan to capture the escaped prisoner Ziro the Hutt, which failed by the way.
Asajj Ventress has a more complicated story. I won't go into details, but briefly she is a Force-sensitive human who was raised as an orphan and trained as a Jedi Padawan. After her master died, she was picked up by the Sith Lord Count Dooku and learned the dark side of the Force. Afraid she was growing too strong in the dark side of the Force, Dooku tried to eliminate her. After Asajj unsuccessfully attempted to kill him, he murdered her family the Nightsisters on Dathomir, so she obviously is not a fan of Dooku. After her relationship with the Count ended, she spent her time as an assassin and bounty hunter.
As the war continues, the Jedi decide that the only way to stop the war is to assassinate Dooku. Dooku is in charge of the separatist military and responsible for many of the conflicts. The true Sith leader is Palpatine, but the Jedi are not yet aware of this. I have a major issue with this idea, because the Jedi are not assassins and generally try to avoid conflict. I can't think of a single other time in the Star Wars Canon where they've went out of their way to specifically kill someone. Their idea to send Jedi Knight Quinlan Vos undercover to team up with Ventress is fine enough. The Jedi don't think they can eliminate Dooku on their own and figure Asajj knows him better than anyone and thus will be able to help them accomplish their goal. Vos commonly works undercover and Ventress surely has enough motivation to kill Dooku. All of this is fine and dandy. However, what comes next is difficult to swallow. During the process of working together, Vos and Asajj fall in love. This is a major problem for two reasons. The first is that Jedi aren't allowed to fall in love. Anakin is the best example of when this was allowed to happen, and we all know how that worked out. Obi-Wan had "feelings" for Duchess Satine, but nothing more. Then there is Asajj's side of the story. Every part of her story revolves around the fact that she is a strong, independent character who works alone. So the likelihood of this happening seems so small and unrealistic that I honestly couldn't get into the story. I was willing to accept the plot to kill Dooku, but the love story was too much. During the process their relationship grew, then the typical event happened where they broke up, but who cares? Add to the fact that Vos, I think, briefly joined the dark side and teamed up with Dooku, but then was allowed to stay with the Jedi seems like a far stretch as well. He maybe joined Dooku to help infiltrate the Sith and learn Sidious' identity, though he may have also joined because he was tempted by the dark side. It was kind of hard to tell. Either way, he returned to the Jedi after a probation period. Again, seems like a stretch.
The book ends with Asajj being killed by Dooku's force lightening after throwing herself in front of Vos to save him. I would have rather seen Vos take the force lightening. While Asajj has been on the wrong side of the force at times, generally I like her character and she has worked with the Jedi in positive ways in the past. I don't have much attachment to Vos, and after his actions in this book, I actually kind of don't like his character. Dooku got away, by the way, so this whole story was for nothing.
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