The cover of Brotherhood (Mike Chen, 2022) promises a buddy adventure with the two most famous Jedi of the prequel era. The surprise is how little time Obi-Wan and Anakin actually spend together, and how much better the reunion hits because of the wait. This is a story about two men learning to see each other as equals after years of master and apprentice, and it earns that by keeping them apart for almost the entire book.
The setup: days after Geonosis, a bombing on neutral Cato Neimoidia threatens to drag the Trade Federation fully into the war. Obi-Wan goes there alone and unarmed to find the truth. Anakin, newly knighted and secretly married, breaks every rule to reach him.
The best thing Chen does is refuse to build the book around the big names. The real star is the setting, gilded bridge-cities strung over fog, and its people. The Neimoidians have been franchise punchlines since 1999 (cowardly accountants in tall hats), and Chen actually takes their culture seriously. Ruug Quarnom, a weary Neimoidian sniper who becomes Obi-Wan's reluctant ally, is the best character in the book by a mile: cynical without being nihilistic, loyal to an ideal she knows her leaders have betrayed. She's the moral center the Jedi can no longer occupy.
The other thing I loved: the real climax isn't a duel. Palpatine spends the book drifting through the margins as Anakin's understanding confidant, and the tragedy gets converted into the law that formally makes the Jedi generals of the Republic army. Obi-Wan runs a patient, evidence-first diplomatic play built on the faith that truth wins, and it loses, beaten by raw grief in a courtroom. Chen lets his hero fail, and it stings.
It's not a clean win as a novel. Chen over-explains (feelings get named, then re-named a paragraph later), the central mystery resolves into a shrug that mostly sets up the wider Clone Wars, and Ventress's radicalized pawn follows a schematic path. Come for Obi-Wan and Anakin, stay for Ruug and Cato Neimoidia, and appreciate the rare Star Wars story that understands the war was lost in the Senate long before the first shot.
- Author: Mike Chen (2022)
- Canon status: canon
- Timeline: the opening days of the Clone Wars, right after Attack of the Clones
- Key players: Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ruug Quarnom, Asajj Ventress, a quietly poisonous Palpatine
- Pairs with: the early seasons of The Clone Wars, though it needs zero homework
- Get it: Hardcover · Amazon · Goodreads