Star Wars: Jedi Academy: Return of the Padawan

This was my best find at the PTA used book table at my school's Back to School Bash in September.

Title: Star Wars: Jedi Academy: Return of the Padawan
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2014
Writer: Jeffrey Brown
Artist: Jeffrey Brown

Jedi Padawan Roan Novachez is back for his second year at Coruscant's Jedi Academy. He's excited to get back together with friends, and he's eager to start his star pilot flight training, confident that this in one class he's sure to ace.

But as the year goes on, his friendships start to sour over a series of mishaps and misunderstandings, and he finds new friends in the two biggest bullies in the Academy. Roan doesn't mean to cause harm, but once he's in with the wrong crowd, he finds it's hard to make things right again.

This book did a nice job of taking the very likeable main character from the first book, and showing, well, his dark side. I read this with the Kiddo, and he was clearly getting fed up with Roan's behavior as the climax neared.

Some of the situations are fairly typical school-drama scenarios that could be solved easily enough if people would just talk to each other, but a lot of Roan's choices through the story, even his bad choices, made a lot of sense.

This was not as much fun as the first book, but it did add a decent amount of depth to the story and to the character of Roan.

Rating: 7/10