I’ve seen the ads for the show The Mandalorian on Disney+ (which we don’t have) and didn’t really know anything about it, except that it is somehow related to Star Wars. Fast forward to just a few days ago, and I learned that there is an entire backstory that precedes the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. A small bit of research (thanks, Google!) sent me to a comic series called “Knights of the Old Republic” (KOTR) and subsequent searching showed most of these to be long out of print, and expensive on the secondary market. There is also a KOTR video game, or maybe several.
Fortunately, one of my local libraries came through, and I put several books in the series on hold. I devoured the first one today.
Wait a second. I thought we were talking about Mandalorians. We will get there, I promise.
This story opens 4000 years before Luke Skywalker (everybody knows who he is. Right?). Right there on the first page is this quote “…the Mandalorian Wars have strained the Old Republic’s resources to the breaking point”. Without giving away the story, Commencement deals with the Jedi Knight training of our protagonist, Zayne Carrick, as he improves his skills from Padawan level (a junior Jedi) to a full blown Jedi Knight where he will be recognized in a commencement ceremony. Along the way we learn more about Jedi Knights, Mandalorians, the Sith, and the traders that we also encountered in A New Hope.
This book is only the introduction to the KOTR story arc and it’s only the first 7 issues out of the 50 that were published. Later on there was a 5 issue miniseries published, so 55 issues in total. My library book is called a Trade Paperback, and there are 10 trade paperbacks in the series, so I have lots of reading ahead of me.
Here’s Squint (A Padawan) talking to Zane Carrick early in the story
“Sometimes you have to enter the darkness to see the light”.
What a great quote!