On Second Thought: Rereading HEIR TO THE JEDI
Sometimes, when you reread a Star Wars book, you learn just as much about the story as you do about yourself.
This is an excerpt from Now This Is Lit Season 2, Episode 4. “On Second Thought: Rereading HEIR TO THE JEDI.” The episode is live now for your listening pleasure.
It became a joke between my friends and I back then—a mostly harmless one, but still one I’d rather put behind me. I’ve since adopted the belief that it’s okay if a book isn’t for you; it’s not okay to say a book shouldn’t be for anyone.
According to Goodreads, I finished reading Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne on July 31, 2019. This is important. It has less to do with the book itself and more to do with me, or rather, the external factors that may have pushed me not only to heavily dislike a good book but also to openly and unfairly criticize it on a public forum. Now, I review books with careful consideration and put the reader at the center. Then, I made it about me, and how I didn’t like it, and how no one else should either.
To grow as a person, you must first acknowledge that you were still young when you were in your late 20s, and you said and did dumb things, and you turned your inside pain to the outside, and that was probably bad. You shouldn’t have done that. You do not do it anymore.
Heir to the Jedi was published on March 3, 2015 as a standalone Star Wars novel — but it wasn’t supposed to happen that way. The story, told entirely from Luke Skywalker’s perspective, was originally intended as the third installment in the Empire and Rebellion series. The first two books, Razor’s Edge (about Leia Organa) and Honor Among Thieves (about Han Solo) are now part of Legends. Heir to the Jedi is Canon.
It is also one of very few published Star Wars stories to be told in first-person, which was perhaps one of the reasons I struggled with it the first time around. We’re offered a story that gives us a clear view of what’s going on inside Luke’s head. It’s personal, sometimes uncomfortably so — the kind of uncomfortable stories make you when they’re working, which people often mistake to be some iteration of “not good.”
I did not want to feel uncomfortable or vulnerable on any level when I read Heir to the Jedi in 2019. My heart hurt. I was lost. I was alone — all these emotions Luke felt in that book, I had been desperately trying not to feel. The book made me feel them, so I rejected it. Angrily.
Heir to the Jedi is different. But that’s what makes it a treasure. When we analyze Star Wars books, we often hunt for connecting themes, comparing them to other stories. So much of Star Wars is about grief, and how war does not allow its central figures to properly experience trauma. This is such an integral part of this book, and yet the first time, I missed it entirely.
This is Luke Skywalker: Lonely, even if he isn’t technically alone. The only family he ever knew is gone. He has new friends, but he doesn’t know them well. He gained a mentor, then he lost him. The entire fate of the galaxy rested on his shoulders, and he knows, even as the dust of the fallen Death Star settles, that the galaxy will ask him to carry its weight again, and again, and again.
Luke Skywalker knows many things, but the most front-and-center in his mind is this: He wants to be a Jedi. Not much is known about the Jedi. To figure out who he is, who he might become, he must dive deep into what the Jedi were, what it means to call himself a student of the Force. Luke searches for meaning in a sort of religion, seeking to discover whether or not he belongs to it.
I knew my relationship was over in the middle of a North Carolina church service, miles away from home, trapped in my quest to make someone else happy. I, too, searched for purpose in teachings I struggled to understand. I did not find it. Luke’s story made me bitter.
This book, at long last, lets Luke break down in grief. It’s tragic, and yet, it’s beautiful. Star Wars movies are wonderful, but they don’t always allow their characters time to sit with their losses. Luke, essentially, has nothing left. He deserves to be sad. The book lets him show emotion — something a Jedi of old may not have done, but Luke Skywalker always will.
I was supposed to say yes when he asked me to marry him but I left instead, I drowned myself in books, surrounded myself with projects. Sickness entered my home, I could not cure it. I wrote thousands of words a day to escape how sad it made me to think about how I might be alone when I get old and sick and sad, and who would take care of me then?
When we sit down to read a book, we are not always able to escape the things that hurt us. I didn’t understand then what I do now — that I didn’t hate Heir to the Jedi because the book was flawed. I hated it because I hated myself, and every page reminded me of that. The book was not written for me specifically, but a reader brings to a book what they carry within them. I needed to listen to what this book was telling me, but I wasn’t ready.
There is a reason I am an advocate for rereading books, especially books you didn’t love the first time you read them. We discover new things about books we have read before. We remember, sitting with them again, what we may have been going through as we begrudgingly held them in our hands.
I’ve changed my rating of this book, and perhaps this can serve as my new review for it, to make up for the original. We need more books about Star Wars characters who are lost. Because so many of us are lost. We need more stories about heroes searching for roots, because so many of us can’t find ours.
I’m so glad that, as I read Heir to the Jedi again this summer — nearly four years later to the day — the aches that clouded my judgment of the book have all but mended. Time has a way of changing us through grief. I mourn now only for the person I was then, how she didn’t have an anchor, how a single book was enough to turn her venomous.
Me of four years ago would not have dared recommend Heir to the Jedi to anyone. But I stand before you now with a plea I’ve presented here many times before: At the very least, listen to the audiobook, because it will not disappoint you.
And remember: A book cannot hurt you. A book simply draws out the hurt already inside you, and forces you to acknowledge it. Reading is, among many things, a time for reflecting, accepting, and healing. Whether you’re ready or not, a book will force you to face your demons, it’s what many stories exist for, to tell us we cannot run from our sorrows forever.
For the record, I think the noodle scene is delightful, and if I ever joke about it again, it’s out of love, respect, and my eternal devotion to space carbs.
Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi is available wherever you get your Star Wars books.
Now This Is Lit is a podcast (and newsletter!) about Star Wars books, the people who make them, and the readers who just can’t get enough of them. You can find the show wherever you get your podcast, and subscribe to the Substack for more deep dives, guides, interview transcripts, and book love.