I can't help but be a bit surprised at to how many less than favorable reviews this book has gotten so far. I personally loved it. Sure, if your judging it on the scale of say, Heir to the Empire, than perhaps it leaves a bit to be desired, but to judge it in that way at all seems unfair, since this book is (as some of you adults seem to forget) aimed at twelve year olds. That is not to say that older people couldn't enjoy it (I'm almost sixteen) but they should keep that in mind. Most children wouldn't want to read a four hundred page book that you need a dictionary to get through with eight plots tangling themselves into each other. As a children's book, however, like Jedi Apprentice and Young Jedi Knights before it, it's excellent, managing to hold a fairly complex plot along with plenty of character development for Anakin and Obi-Wan both. Anyway, in this book the Jedi council decides to allow Anakin Skywalker (now thirteen) to build his own lightsaber at last. However, Anakin's childhood as a slave still returns to haunt him, and Obi-Wan cannot help but wonder, is his Padawan truly ready for this responsibility? Ready or not, Anakin tackles the project in the caves of Illum, and when he and Obi-Wan return to the Jedi Temple, the council already has a mission ready for them. They are ordered to find and intercept a gang of slave pirates; the very same ones who once traumatized Anakin and his fellow slaves. Anakin is quite eager to at last take his revenge on them, but is the temptation to the dark side too much to bear? Anyway, like I said this book was great, It was fascinating to find out how the lightsaber that would someday be weilded by Luke Skywalker and then Mara Jade was built! It was a great book, overall, and I recommend it stroungly to fans of Jedi Apprentice and Star Wars books in general.