Heir To The Jedi by Kevin Hearne, used with permission from Random House Publishing
Because I write fiction, I don’t write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as ‘I’ – you are inhabiting that ‘I.’
-Kate Atkinson
To date, only one other Star Wars novel (I, Jedi) has portrayed the galaxy far, far away in first person. First person narratives can be some of the trickiest to accomplish, as it requires the author to become a character on such an intimate level. They can also, if executed correctly, give the most rewarding experience to the reader. Kevin Hearne masterfully achieved this goal in Heir to the Jedi, providing the galaxy with the most insightful and profound chronicle inside the head of Luke Skywalker to date.
Almost forty years has passed since we were first introduced to the farm boy destined for greatness. Over that time period, countless books and comics have attempted to capture a true representation of Luke Skywalker, to varying degrees of success. I for one, was somewhat cautious when I read the publisher’s summary for Heir to the Jedi, as I felt it was something that had been covered ad nauseam.