Star Wars: Scourge by Jeff Grubb

Star Wars: Scourge
by Jeff Grubb

Published: 2012
Read: November 2025

As I've discussed in the past, I've been picking up some Star Wars novels from the waning days of the old EU from the library. I appreciate that Del Rey tried to put out some standalones, not connected with the big tedious storylines, largely focusing on new characters.

Unfortunately, Scourge is a lot like Shadow Games in that the execution is not very good. I like the idea of a Jedi librarian forced into action by the death of his apprentice, but the occasional moment aside, I didn't find him a very distinctive character. On top of this, I often found author Jeff Grubb's dialogue awkward. I could see what the book was going for, a group of disparate people who have to work together is the original Star Wars trope, but if your dialogue doesn't work, then the character interactions you need to make this trope function just don't come off.

The book is supposedly set in the late Bantam, pre–New Jedi Order era, but though I'm sure you could always squint and things would be fine, I didn't think the details rang true, and I'm not sure why it wasn't just set in the prequel era. It felt more in line with that era's Jedi than Luke's.