The Weirdest Star Wars Book Is Sort of Amazing

this video is sponsored by squarespace the year was 1997. second grader austin mcconnell had just finished watching the special edition of return of the jedi in theaters and was eager to continue the star wars saga searching deep within the heart of his elementary school library for continued adventures he discovered a book that would alter the course of his destiny forever a thin paperback book the first in a series intended for young readers bearing the ominous title the glove of darth vader this is that story it's a doozy [Music] mere months after the fateful events of return of the jedi the galactic empire has disbanded and former imperial warlords have begun fighting for power amongst themselves each faction controlled by different interests with no one quite sure who will end up on top to seize total control of the empire's remnants all of this infighting soon comes to a halt when a mysterious council called the prophets of the dark side broadcast a message across the galaxy for telling that a new emperor will soon rise after palpatine's fiery death another leader soon comes to command the empire and on his right hand he does on the fourth moon of the planet yavin in a small robot repair shop protocol droid c-3po and his astromech counterpart r2d2 prep for an undercover mission both droids are being outfitted with disguises new head covers and new paint jobs in order to blend in on the target planet of kessel 3po is naturally uneasy about the new look r2 is like whatever and luke skywalker our hero looks on with a big cheesy grin the trio head to a briefing room in the new senate palace and they walk in to find mon mothma princess leia han solo lando calrissian admiral akbar and chewie is there too we learned that the senate's planetary intelligence network or spin a secret organization within the new galactic government has confirmed that a huge number of former grand moffs warlords stormtroopers imperial droids and enemy officers of the old empire are convening on kessel's capital city to sort out what this new prophecy means a massive database of imperial officers is uploaded to artoo's memory bank the plan is to drop the two droids down to the planet in a small ship disguised as a meteor once on the surface there to eavesdrop on the meeting and figure out what the baddies are up to if they can identify this supposed successor to the emperor all the better after they get the intel they're to head back to the ship and make a quick getaway everyone puts their hands in and says good luck we get a little side scene of han and leia loving each other up family friendly style and with that say goodbye to most of these characters because for the most part you won't be seeing them again 3po and r2 are dropped off on kessel and despite a rather rough landing managed to find their way through an underground tunnel and into the imperial conference there are tons and tons and tons of officers there and they're all bickering about who should replace the emperor and become the new leader cue grand moff hyssa a bald dude with beady eyes and sharp spear-like teeth who stands up and brings the assembly to order to my fellow grand mops and to the grand admirals other officers stormtroopers bounty hunters slave lords and slaves i bid you all dark greetings [Applause] we have gathered here today to mark a new beginning the destruction of our latest death star was but a temporary setback the rebels have yet to see the full fury of our power and might we are developing even more advanced weapons and when we're done we shall rule the entire galaxy and crush the rebel alliance the central committee of grand moffs has summoned you all here for this meeting to announce our new leader even though emperor palpatine is dead his line continues for many years you've heard rumors that the emperor had a son but our departed emperor and the central committee of grand moffs always denied these rumors for reasons of imperial security however today i am authorized to inform you that the emperor did indeed have a son a son who shall be our new chosen one the audience gasps and demands are shouted for the emperor's son to reveal himself a huge black door opens and outsteps a tall figure dressed in black the emperor's son is none other than wait wait a minute who is this the book describes an almost handsome three-eyed man named trioculus the supreme slave lord of kessel who because why not trioculus stands before the massive crowd proclaiming himself as the new emperor and the response is mixed to say the least a royal guard member protests reasoning that on another planet a former grand admiral with a fleet of 30 star destroyers has also proclaimed himself as leader chatter ripples through the audience another man stands up reminding the assembly that the prophecy foretold the new emperor would bear the glove of darth vader on his hand but the glove is nowhere to be seen trioculus thunders back as the emperor's son it is through my blood that i rule not with some glove only i know the destiny of the empire and only i have the power of my father and more including the lightning power of the dark side in a flash bolts of hot lightning shoot from trioculus's fingertips striking the two men who dared to question him and with that the matter of his leadership is settled more than unsettled 3po and r2 decide to bounce but as soon as they approach the exit they see a group of stormtroopers bolting it shut and locking them in behind enemy lines trioculus surrounded by his stormtrooper bodyguards departs from the meeting with grand moff hyssa and heads to a large black metal palace where the supreme slave lord has lived for many years once there a big banquet is arranged where the distinguished guests are served trays filled with waladon meat willowdons the book helpfully explains are huge whale-like creatures mammals that live only in the oceans of the watery planet calamari that's the place admiral akbar is from several paragraphs are then spent describing whaladons as highly intelligent and wise creatures living thinking feeling sentient beings so much so that it is against calamari law to kill them yet a sizeable illegal whaladon hunting operation exists on the planet's black market led by a man named captain dunwell who supplies the meat for trioculus's kitchen this all seems like a very random aside when you're first reading the book but it becomes important later as the meal draws to its conclusion trioculus turns to his officers and says seven simple words find me the glove of darth vader trioculus realizes that without the glove many in the empire will be resistant to his rule and worse if someone else manages to discover the glove and wear it it could present a legitimate challenge to his throne after a bit of coercion from grand moff hyssa the imperial agents at the table all set out to find the lost glove meanwhile 3po and r2 managed to find their way out of the tunnels and onto the streets of kessel's capital city slowly yet surely they head to the outskirts but just as they lay eyes on their getaway ship [Music] a nearby imperial land speeder fires blowing it to pieces about that time luke shows up to rescue them and a few paragraphs later the group rendezvouses with admiral akbar there's a brief sky skirmish and soon we're off to space but the trip is cut short when our heroes run smack dab into the middle of a group of probe droids all of which are combing through space hoping to locate the glove of darth vader [Music] while waiting for the probe droids to send back a report trioculus decides to blow off some steam by hunting giant mutant beetles in the mountains of kessel he kills three but remains unsatisfied musing out loud that he ought to journey to the steaming ammonia-filled jungles of the planet kona to hunt star dragons whatever those are if you haven't figured it out yet the big theme of this book is hunting endangered species is bad a new shipment of waylodon meat arrives at trioculus's palace and along with it the delivery agent brings a message for him from captain dunwell greetings lord trioculus here beneath the oceans of calamari i've made an astounding discovery as you may know i have always been a loyal friend i urge you to come see me on calamari at once at the wiladon processing center your lordship will not be disappointed so the scene shifts to the planet calamari just outside of the wellidon processing center where a massive sea creature called leviathar the leader of the whaleodons swims along a makeshift graveyard and mourns the loss of his fellow whales adons whaleodons they're different it's space out of nowhere a huge hunting submarine appears and a massive whirlpool whips up threatening to suck leviathor into the vessel he swims as hard and as fast as possible and narrowly escapes the hunters with no time to waste he makes his way toward the domed city of aquarius the undersea center of civilization on calamari in an effort to find help luke akbar and the droids slip past imperial detection and decide to head to the planet calamari to regroup what a winky dink our heroes arrive on aquarius and as soon as they're settling into their new digs admiral akbar listens closely to the sounds of the sea he hears in the distance the song of the welodon as a being from mon calamari akbar understands the whaleodons as if they were any other species cool soon leviathore appears and pleads with akbar for help against the poachers trioculus and his crew arrive at captain dunwell's whaladon processing center dunwell greets them enthusiastically and shows them around the facility we note that the immense welodon hunting submarine from earlier is stationed in a nearby docking bay grand moff hyssa explains to trioculus and helpfully reminds readers that it's equipped with whirlpool generators for sucking the whalens right out of the ocean and into the big storage chambers the villains arrive at captain dunwell's office and there dunwell explains that during his last journey to a place called the valley of the giant oysters he happened upon debris that had fallen from space his engineers identified that the debris originated from the second death star even though the battle station had exploded millions of miles away grand moff hyssa ever the expert in exposition clarifies to trioculus and readers that the intense gravity of black holes and other interstellar forces cause warps folds and buckles in space asteroids and spaceships have tumbled into these space warps and have suddenly reappeared millions of miles away the same thing must have happened to the imperial death star dunwell used his portable x-ray scanner to examine the debris with great pride the captain produces a large negative to show trioculus for those of you who didn't grow up in the 90s a negative is what an old school film camera produces some of this book's tech is dated the negative reveals the outline of what appears to be a glove trioculus is overjoyed he tells the captain to take them to the valley of the giant oysters and a few moments later they board the welodon hunting submarine and set off luke and akbar give a report to spin while 3po and r2 have their disguises removed after their report is finished akbar determines to help leviathar so he takes the group to a mini sub and they set off for where else but captain dunwell's processing center along the way akbar monologues to the droids about how terrible captain dunwell's poachers are how they're killing the innocent whaledons which causes an imbalance in plankton in the oceans and destroys the planet's ecology again environment good poacher's bad while he's speaking the mini sub sonar picks up a massive vessel akbar realizes this must be dunwell's hunting sub and decides to spy on him they soon witness the hunting sub giving chase to leviathor who has arrived to rescue many of his whaladon friends one by one each of the huelodon are sucked into the captain's craft and the massive whirlpool eventually captures leviathar as well akbar and company follow the sub to the debris field and luke has r2 scanned the area they soon realize the debris is from death star numero dos and luke sees trioculus exit the sub and recover something small from the crash site a giant squid shows up out of nowhere captain dunwell's ship sucks it up and our heroes find themselves caught in the whirlpool triumphant trioculus returns to the ship and once out of his expedition gear gingerly slips the glove of darth vader onto his hand an image of the dark lord flashes through his mind and in an instant the evil of vader pours through him like a sudden surge of power grand moth hyssa is overjoyed and they make their way toward the captain's cabin the path is blocked by a few rather rude aqualish workers and trioculus attempts to use the power of darth vader by choking them with the glove but to his surprise nothing happens incensed trioculus raises his other hand and shoots lightning bolts from his fingertips sending one of the poor workers to the floor in a charred heap once in the captain's quarters trioculus demands to be left alone with hissa and the two begin to bicker trioculus is upset that the glove doesn't allow him to choke people like darth vader did rendering it essentially useless the grand moff attempts to reassure him reminding trioculus that the glove is a symbol more than anything meant to get the rest of the scattered empire in line with his rule trioculus grows more frustrated i'm not interested in symbols i want the same power as darth vader shouts back at trioculus that the power of darth vader won't be learned easily and perhaps like the emperor's lightning power might be impossible to learn altogether and here the story takes a wild turn the book reveals that trioculus doesn't actually have the natural ability to shoot lightning from his fingertips instead hyssa implanted a cybernetic device inside trioculus's body that would generate lightning for him because trioculus isn't actually palpatine's sun it's all a ruse we've been bamboozled it turns out that the grand moffs are orchestrating a government conspiracy trioculus is a nobody a random slave trader pretending to be palpatine's offspring in order to bring the empire into unity under the moths and at that point you're like okay that makes more sense the whole three-eyed sun thing was kind of dumb but no twist number two always two there are it turns out that emperor palpatine did have a three-eyed son but he was insane so the grand moffs hired trioculus to stand in for him which makes sense because i mean come on trioculus clearly a made-up name but then you find out that the emperor's real three-eyed son is named triclops triclops are you kidding me so long story short trioculus is bogus he doesn't have any powers at all but now that he has the glove the moths controlling him hope everybody from the old empire will fall in line tensions escalate between hissa and trioculus and admittedly it is an interesting twist while it seemed at first as if the grand moff was just an overbearing lackey it turns out he's the one in charge orchestrating everything and trioculus is just an unremarkable figurehead meant to do his bidding so moving on three-eyed guy is still mad that he can't choke people and grand moff hyssa agrees to design another device to fit inside the fingertips of darth vader's glove this device will emit a piercing high frequency sound and explode the eardrums of whoever it's pointed at which ought to make them gasp and fall to their knees thus giving the appearance that trioculus does indeed have the dark lord's choking power hissel warns trioculus that the lightning implant is incredibly unstable and if he keeps using it like he has been it could backfire foreshadowing as for our heroes the mini suck goes completely undetected by the hunting crafts scanners and with a little elbow grease luke and company find themselves inside the enemy sub trying to find a way to free the captured whaladons luke stumbles across captain dunwell who is deeply disturbed turns out dunwell had bugged his private chambers and was listening in on the entire conversation between hissa and trioculus he knows the truth with knowledge of the conspiracy dunwell is stunned and unsure what to do next as he turns to leave the area he catches sight of luke and pulls his blaster luke cuts the weapon down and demands that captain dunwell unlock the master control system to the ship a few jedi mine tricks later and r2 is logged into the ship's system and programs the sub to self-destruct in 10 minutes time trioculus peaks his head out to see what all the commotion is about and seeing luke levels his glove to attack dunwell is caught in the fray and he crumples to the floor as his eardrums are hit by the sonic attack luke readies his lightsaber trioculus raises his other hand and shoots lightning out but our hero expertly deflects the attack and the slave lord soon realizes that he runs the risk of being killed by his own cybernetic implant ever the dastardly villain trioculus throws caution to the wind and cranks the device up to 11 and luke is eventually overpowered but not before r2 manages to unlock the submarine's storage chambers and the welodons are freed with the ship set to self-destruct in mere minutes trioculus tells hissa to power up an escape sub and the battle ends with all parties involved fleeing the facility as it's blown to pieces trioculus and hissa head off to parts unknown and the book concludes with our heroes reconvening at the domed city of aquarius where a special concert is arranged by the welodons to express their gratitude in the closing words of the book the program of willowdon's songs is spectacular it includes a water ballet wiladon folk melodies classic whaladon songs and an opera leviathar composed that tells the legendary story of how he became the whaladon leader many years ago by helping the whaledon survive an undersea volcanic eruption luke skywalker closes his eyes and leans back listening to the beautiful singing and attempts to calm his mind knowing that soon the hunt for emperor trioculus will begin so that was really weird okay so obviously we shouldn't be too critical of this story because it isn't trying to be the next big epic star wars installment rather the objective of these books was to get young kids interested in reading it wraps the simple story around a franchise that will catch an elementary student's attention i'm assuming the idea was hey if the kids see luke skywalker on the cover they will crack it open and once they finish they might give other books a try and believe me seven-year-old austin really flipped out for this however now that grown-up austin has reread it there are a few things that stick out first things first this book is super short when you take out the character illustrations at the beginning the story so far section which basically explains the events of the movies and the weird glossary in the back they included for confused readers you're looking at something that barely breaks like 20 pages i think i finished the book in half an hour which i mean makes sense it is a book that is written for early readers anything longer than this would probably be too intimidating having said that i think this retailed for like 5.99 you couldn't have thrown in one side story for us i also found the writing style kind of grading i mean i understand the need to keep sentence structure in a book like this simple for first time readers but the book is very heavy-handed on exposition entire paragraphs are just long information dumps that aren't woven into any kind of coherent narrative the banquet scene is a really great example of this the story basically grinds to a halt so the book can explain where the whaladon meat comes from it's totally out of left field it has nothing to do with the story up to that point in the book it's just like shoved in there so they can set up a later plot point the action scenes are also very over reliant on like stilted subject predicate sentences luke takes out his lightsaber he swings it very hard the blaster is cut in two it's all very rigid and it lacks any kind of real prose a lot of this feels like they started with a really basic outline and then they just hired a writer to fill in each story beat with like a two or three sentence paragraph even the dialogue is heavy-handed like it's so unnatural conversations in this book are not conversations they're just like poorly disguised information dumps like when the big twist is revealed it's not through some clever discovery it is literally a conversation between grand moff hyssa and trioculus where hissa is like don't forget that lightning you shoot isn't actually dark side power but a cybernetic implant i gave you we're fooling the empire the trioculus is like don't you forget when i agreed to this scheme we said we'd split the profits 50 50. there's actually a term for when books do this it's called maid and butler dialogue it's when one character explains something out loud to another character that they both already know but the audience hasn't yet been made aware of they're just having the conversation so the audience is brought up to speed there are ways of doing this that are not awkward but in this particular sequence in the book yeah not so much and while we're on the subject of awkward dialogue boy oh boy do these authors love their onomatopoeias i don't know if like in older books for kids they thought this was more fun for them to read but it is amazing how many z's they managed to fit into one sound effect this book is really big on sound effects you're going to find a lot of boobs beeps zaps and buzzes i'll tell you this aspiring writers it's a great way to increase your page count let's talk about the characters real quick because the glove of darth vader makes some interesting choices in a book this size most of the characters are going to be one-dimensional there's just like you know not enough space for any kind of nuance for the most part that rings true the villains are just over-the-top villains the droids are caricatures of their movie versions but the most disappointing thing is that the heroes of the story they really don't bring a whole lot to the table luke is bland akbar is mainly there for exposition about the fish planet and characters we love like han solo lando and chewie they're only in the story for a hot minute and they just like don't they don't do anything han is like the perfect example of this han supposed to be star wars rogue character dashing around breaking the rules saving the day but his like only scene in this book consists of him telling leia that he is ready to settle down and he heads off to cloud city to buy a sky house yeah that's it pretty much just i'm retiring see ya would have been cool if the characters on the cover actually played a larger role in the story the cover is actually the best part of this book oh and i almost forgot this book's internal monologue for trioculus is ridiculous this guy seems really insecure about that third eye i don't know if that's like a stigma in star wars world or what but every time trioculus is in a scene this book really wants to remind you that this dude has three eyes two of trioculus's eyes were right where threepio expected them to be on either side of his nose however it was trioculus's third eye right in the middle of his forehead that made him look rather unusual as the only mutant in his school on kessel he was teased and hit constantly by the other students who made fun of his third eye he stared with his third eye causing his loyal officers to shudder trioculus didn't like the way the captain seemed to be staring at him it was as though the captain were repulsed by trioculus's third eye he stared at the captain with his third eye trioculus peered with all three of his eyes at the misty dark ocean bottom trioculus's three eyes turned fiery shutting his two lower eyes he stared at the image with his third eye okay we get it you don't have to mention it every paragraph if i had to pick a character to be my favorite it would probably be captain dunwell because he is the only one that didn't annoy me and he's essentially an ahab analog i get what they were going for with this book it's basically like moby dick for star wars kids mixed with like a little bit of captain planet this book has gotten a lot of flack over the years for being like overly preachy in its environmental message that really didn't bother me as much as the surface level with which it approaches the topic so the glove of darth vader is actually the first installment in a longer series called jedi prince and each book of the series covers a different kind of save the planet socio-political issue again i don't mind it when stories cover subject matter like that i just want it to be done well the worst moment in this book by far is the end of chapter six and the beginning of chapter seven i've gotta talk about it because when i was reading it i literally almost fell out of my chair at how dumb it was so at the end of chapter six r2 is hacking into dunwell's ship's central system the heroes are gonna free the whales and then just blow the facility up set it to self-destruct r2 asks luke okay how much time should we put on the countdown clock and the book says luke stopped to think how much time would the wilodons need to swim to a safe distance and how much time would he his droids and admiral ackbar need to get their calamari and mini sub away from here without being destroyed by a gigantic explosion give us 10 minutes that should do it said luke and if it doesn't well then we're all history yeah sure 10 minutes whatever just throw an ember out that feels right but that's not the worst part that's not the worst part the worst part is right after that so as the reader you're thinking okay unlock the whales let them head out start the 10-minute countdown and bounce but no no that's not what they do for some random reason they start the countdown first and then chapter seven kicks off with luke freaking out like okay now we gotta figure out how to free the whales what don't you do that first why would you start the self-destruct timer before you figured out how to get the whales out of there you free the whales first and then start the countdown cause that's what makes sense right i have read reviews of this book online and nobody mentions this am i the only one that notices this it's also a little weird to me that in a book called the glove of darth vader the glove of darth vader ends up doing literally nothing i mean it's literally just a macguffin it serves merely to give the characters something to do and i guess to give this book a cool sounding title the best thing that this book has going for it is the twist the idea that the moths have selected this like fraud figurehead that's dressed up as a sith in order to rule the empire it's a really interesting concept it's just the execution really isn't there again i think i'm being too picky it's for kids i get it it is not fair to judge a children's story on the same level that you would judge a story for grown adults not that that stopped star wars fans before overall as cheesy and disappointing and weird as the story may be i'm glad that books like the glove of darth vader were written because without them i would have never gotten into reading in the first place i think the goal with these books was hey let's write a short little easy to read star wars adventure slap a cool cover on it and let's see if we can get kids reading books i think that's laudable it worked i mean at least for me it did this got me reading books and because i finished this book i wanted to read another one and another one and another one and you know the first book that a kid reads it doesn't have to be earth shattering it just has to get them interested in reading more or something i don't know did you read this book as a kid is this book older than you for a lot of you probably how would you make this story better let me know in the comments also hey do you have an idea for a website maybe you've got stories of your own to tell or a creation that needs to be seen you should check out this video's sponsor squarespace they provide you the tools to create a beautiful website tailored to your specific needs getting set up is simple start by selecting from one of their many stunning templates and then customize the layout to fit the design you have in mind are you an aspiring musician or podcaster then you'll love their audioblocks feature which makes publishing tracks and episodes quick and painless you can post across multiple social media accounts at once with their simultaneous posting feature and if you've got something to sell they make it easy to set up your own online storefront you can try it all out for 30 days by going to squarespace.com to get a free trial give it a shot if you like the experience then when you're ready to launch your site head over to squarespace.com austinmcconnell to save 10 percent on your first purchase of a website or domain

Channel: AustinMcConnell

Views: 398,199

Keywords: austinmcconnell, austin mcconnell, austin mcconnel, austinmcconnel, gregory austin mcconnell, star wars, really weird, really weird star wars, video essay, the glove of darth vader, book review

Id: nHFh10hRtHQ

Length: 31min 52sec (1912 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020