Awakening in an unknown ship, Jedi Knight Jaden Korr is disorientated. He quickly discovers that he is on board a Sith ship, which holds a monstrous creation. Only days before he was in pursuit of these Sith clones, a pursuit which will make Korr confront his own existence and the measure of both a man and a Jedi...

Star Wars: Riptide is the new novel from Paul S. Kemp and is a sequel to Crosscurrent. One can’t help but feel that Riptide relies too much on the reader’s awareness of the events depicted in Crosscurrent. Many of the stories central characters are never really properly explored, as Kemp expects you to have prior knowledge.

So, the introduction of Korr aboard a ship is used as one of those devices whereby the author appears to be giving the end of the novel away, only to skip the story back a few days and take you through events in such a way to confound what you thought you were reading. Here Korr’s disorientation and lack of memory should be a big clue to any observant reader. I’d figured out the twist by page seventy.

Korr travels in pursuit of clones constructed from the DNA of both Sith and Jedi, by the assassinated Thrawn. Thrawn has created clones in his Spaarti Cloning cylinders and the ones Korr is trying to catch are a defective batch, who have massacred the scientists and soldiers guarding them. Having developed an almost religious belief in a creature called mother, the clones have escaped their captivity on the almost barren moon of their birth. They make good their escape, but not before they pass through a cloud of ore which enhances their dark side abilities, which pushes them ever closer to insanity and death. Korr, however, is not the only agent looking for the clones as representatives of a lost Sith tribe want to capture both Korr and the clones.

Although Kemp writes well enough for a genre novel, the plot is pretty linear, leaving little to provide surprises. The story also contains a certain lack of wonder. It’s difficult to put your finger on what is wrong, there are no major failures, but I did find it difficult to connect with either the story or the characters. The only thing that I can think of is that Riptide does not make a great standalone novel and not having read Crosscurrent I spent a lot of time reading about characters with little or no backgrounds.

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Charles Packer