Book Review: Mace Windu: The Glass Abyss

I’m not 100% sure what I expected when I heard there was going to be a Mace Windu-centric Prequel era novel. I know there have been books about him in Legends before, and he’s popped up in other stories, but he’s not the sort of character where, upon hearing he’s getting a novel focused solely on one of his adventures, I could make an educated guess about where it’s going.

It’s a good thing I didn’t even try, because Steven Barnes’ Mace Windu: The Glass Abyss absolutely surprised me in a big way.

The book follows Mace, sometime after the events of The Phantom Menace, as he heads out on a mission left to him by the late Qui-Gon Jinn. At the request of his late friend, he heads to the world of Metagos, where the inhabitants live underground, and also live at the mercy of crime lords fighting for control of their glass-coated planet.

I know I keep comparing everything to Jedi Apprentice — indeed, this is the second time in less than a month that I’ve made that comparison — but that’s my frame of reference for this certain flavour of adventure, the sort that is low-stakes, relatively speaking, and confined to one location, and largely concerned with the plight of the locals, such as it is. In that respect, The Glass Abyss felt very in line with the Jedi Apprentice style of adventure, though obviously aged up in content with the adult audience in mind.

It was also thrilling to get some insight into Mace Windu himself, and the way he perceives the Force and those around him. I hadn’t ever really felt like I knew him all that well, and I certainly feel like I know him better now. That said, this book also sheds some light on certain aspects of his life that ought to have made him a good mentor to Anakin down the line. Ah well, chalk that up to the Jedi just not talking about their feelings.

Star Wars: The Glass Abyss is out on October 15. Special thank you to Random House Worlds for the advance copy for review purposes.