Queen's Hope

Main Review:

Practically from the moment I finished Queen’s Peril, I was quietly excited for the next offering from E.K Johnston’s Padmé Amidala trilogy. You can imagine my distress then at discovering that the latest instalment, the cheerier sounding Queen’s Hope, was going to be delayed. Having finally snapped up my copy as soon as it was released, I managed to breeze through the whole thing in a long afternoon and having done so; I can’t lie. I was very disappointed.

At the time, I enjoyed the first two books immensely. But I realised reading Hope that I, much like Anakin Skywalker himself, had been blinded by love. I was so caught up in the joy of having more stories about Padmé that I’d been willing to accept even the tiniest morsel of narrative to sustain myself. The common trend in my posts about the other books in the series is my excitement for possible sequels and where the story could go. There’s considerably less attention on what actually takes place within the book itself. I realise now, having finished the third, fairly tepid instalment; it’s because there’s actually nothing much to write home about in these stories.

Giving more time to Padmé and her handmaidens is completely deserved, but it feels like the potential keeps being squandered. It’s like lifting a cloche on an elegantly set dining table to find nothing beneath except a plain cheese sandwich. What is particularly galling is that, as with Queen’s Peril, this book takes frequent detours to give other Star Wars characters (such as Chancellor Palpatine) a moment in the spotlight, meaning that an already short story feels increasingly lacking in screentime for its alleged protagonist.

Right from the get-go with Hope, there’s an palpable sense that this book has been churned out. By this point, the Amidala series is like the Princess Switch movies on Netflix. Every year there’s a new instalment for both, featuring increasingly ludicrous reasons for characters to swap places with each other. Going into Queen’s Hope, it’s less of a question of if Sabé, Padmé’s loyal right hand woman, will have to cover for her friend by imitating her in public, and more a question of when. It doesn’t help matters that the majority of the other handmaidens are largely forgettable, better thought of by their unique skill set (dress making, ‘slicing’, organising) rather than by name.

Despite, or perhaps because of its brevity, Queen’s Hope feels less like a coherent story and more like a series of small narratives loosely bound together. The end result, sadly, is much less than the sum of its parts. Whilst Padmé is swooning over Anakin, there’s a whole B plot where we discover that Shmi Skywalker was the brains behind a device which could de-activate the compliance chips implanted in slaves. In this endeavour, she’s supported by a radical group including Aunt Beru and Clieg Lars. By rights, this should be a massive addition to the overall Star Wars canon and so it’s a shame to see it effectively tucked away in a small corner of this story. Similarly, Captain Panaka continues to hover just out of frame, constantly on the cusp of becoming an antagonist, but never quite getting there. It’s all gotten a little Waiting for Godot really.

The first hundred pages of the story involve Anakin and Padmé going on a top secret mission on literally the day of their wedding, just like the opening of The Incredibles. Whilst on this ‘romantic’ sojourn, Johnston decides to throw in a discussion about the health benefits of medical ‘spice’; with a chronically ill artist having fled Naboo to a planet with more lax restrictions on narcotics. Between this, The Book of Boba Fett and even The Rise of Skywalker, it seems like no-one in the House of Mouse™ can decide exactly what ‘spice’ is supposed to be considered as a proxy for – making it all drugs to all people. Having made the point, the story tootles on as if it never happened, raising the question of why it’s there at all.

I’m sure there will be some fans who say I’m being unduly mean about Queen’s Hope, and that it’s unfair to ‘nit-pick’ at a YA novel, particularly one focussed on a character so constrained by the limits of canon. But it’s precisely because I’m so emotionally invested in Padmé and Sabé and their side-lining in the films that I will continue to fight for them to get the recognition they deserve until I too am struck down in my prime with a horrible case of ‘Not-in-the-original-trilogy-itus’.

Until the next time, happy reading!