“Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine” (2004) is one of the more maligned “Star Wars” novels, but it doesn’t commit any huge sins: It’s well-written in a young-adult novel kind of way, and it portrays the GFFA accurately. It’s quite readable, with a likeable main character and fun cameos, but it’s ultimately rather shallow.
Although “Ruins of Dantooine” tells a self-contained story of Imperial-bioengineer-turned-Rebel Dusque Mistflier and Rebel agent Finn Darktrin, it seems like authors Voronica Whitney-Robinson and Haden Blackman had in mind a larger saga based on the “Star Wars Galaxies” MMORPG. For one thing, like too many “Star Wars” novels and comics, it gives the origin story of characters who are never heard from in subsequent yarns. More notably, it introduces Inquisitor Loam Redge in the prologue, but he’s never mentioned again the rest of the book! Readers looking for insight into Inquisitors (Force-users whom Emperor Palpatine commissions to hunt down scattered Jedi Knights) as “Rebels” nears will have better luck with the “Dark Forces” trilogy and Patricia A. Jackson’s short stories in “Tales from the Empire” and “Tales from the New Republic.”
“Ruins of Dantooine” attempts to give us an Everyperson hero. Two other notable series that attempted this were coincidentally also based on video games: the “X-wing” series featuring Wedge and the “Republic Commando” series featuring Etain. But Wedge was the best non-Jedi pilot in the galaxy and Etain, while having a low midichlorian count, was still a Jedi. Dusque is just a run-of-the-mill bioengineer, but as the story goes on, Whitney-Robinson and Blackman can’t resist describing her as being attractive – it seems that every male who meets her lets their gaze linger — and having her rapidly soak up firearms knowledge from Finn. Plus, she’s immediately assigned to a crucial Rebel Alliance mission: She must track down a holocron containing names of key Rebel cell leaders before it falls into the hands of the Empire.
I guess it’s a difficult line to walk when you want your character to be both an Everyperson and a hero. “Ruins of Dantooine” provides a standard example of how someone who considers themselves uninterested in politics would switch from the Empire to the Rebellion: Dusque is betrayed by the Empire. She’s certainly sympathetic, but we saw a similar thing happen to Kyle Katarn in “Dark Forces,” to name just one of many examples.
The aforementioned holocron, basically the Rebels’ answer to the Imperials’ Death Star plans, is a maguffin if there ever was one. While it makes sense why Death Star plans would have to exist, one wonders why the Rebels put so much important information in one holocron.
The entirety of “Ruins of Dantooine” takes this type of simplistic approach, something you might expect from a game-based novel (although the two most layered EU series, “Republic Commando” and “X-wing” are also based on games). The romance between Dusque and Finn flows naturally, but it’s as standard as they come, and the authors telegraph the big twist at the end – you’ll probably figure it out at the first of the many hints they drop. Adding to the simplicity, the book entirely follows Dusque and Finn with the exception of the out-of-place prologue. Cameos by main characters are peppered in nicely and logically, though.
Readers might be let down by another presumed hook: While other stories, including “Star Wars 3-D” Issue 3 and the “Jedi Academy Trilogy,” had briefly visited Dantooine – a planet referenced in “A New Hope” as having an old Rebel base – the title of this novel suggests it’ll explore the planet in-depth. But Dusque and Finn don’t arrive there until page 194 of this 286-page novel.
As with their previous adventures on Naboo, Naboo’s moon of Rori, Lok, Talus and Corellia, our heroes face various predatory animals in the forest and caves of Dantooine as they search for the holocron with a convenient scanner. These feel sort of like video-game scenes, although they are more readable than the fight scenes in the “Force Unleashed” books, as the authors at least have some fun describing the creatures. They encounter the Rebel base, and it’s nothing more than a bunch of abandoned buildings.
I could’ve grown to like Dusque if she had been featured in more stories by authors who could give her more depth as she went on various Rebel Alliance missions. As it stands, “The Ruins of Dantooine” is a mildly engaging path-not-taken. As video-game-based novels go, it’s better than some, but not in the same league as “X-wing” or “Republic Commando.”