Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: Tales of the Jedi, Vol. 2

Star Wars Legends Epic Collection #2

by Kevin J. Anderson, Tom Veitch (Writer), Chris Gossett (Visual Art)

The history of the Old Republic!

Five thousand years before Luke Skywalker, the Sith Empire rules the galaxy at the height of its powers - but the Great Hyperspace War could lead to their downfall! Then, a millennium later, two Jedi legends emerge: Nomi Sunrider, who takes up her murdered husband’s lightsaber, and Ulic Qel-Droma, who discovers the final resting place of fallen Jedi Freedon Nadd - who may not be at rest after all!

Can they save the Holocron containing all of Jedi history, or will the dark side of the Force triumph?

Collecting STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI - THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE SITH #0-5, STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI - THE FALL OF THE SITH EMPIRE #1-5, STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI #1-5 and STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI - THE FREEDON NADD UPRISING #1-2.

Genres: Star Wars, Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Marvel, Fiction, Space Opera

480 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2022

About the author

Yes, I have a lot of books, and if this is your first visit to my amazon author page, it can be a little overwhelming. If you are new to my work, let me recommend a few titles as good places to start. I love my Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. series, humorous horror/mysteries, which begin with DEATH WARMED OVER. My steampunk fantasy adventures, CLOCKWORK ANGELS and CLOCKWORK LIVES, written with Neil Peart, legendary drummer from Rush, are two of my very favorite novels ever. And my magnum opus, the science fiction epic The Saga of Seven Suns, begins with HIDDEN EMPIRE. After you've tried those, I hope you'll check out some of my other series.

I have written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E., and The X-Files, and I'm the co-author of the Dune prequels. My original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series and the Nebula Award-nominated Assemblers of Infinity. I have also written several comic books including the Dark Horse Star Wars collection Tales of the Jedi written in collaboration with Tom Veitch, Predator titles (also for Dark Horse), and X-Files titles for Topps.

I serve as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest.

My wife is author Rebecca Moesta. We currently reside near Monument, Colorado.

Reviews

[Rutger ter Laak · Rating 3 out of 5]

not bad not good.

[L.G. Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely awesome! I wasn't sure of it at 1st because it's a 90s comic & I generally enjoy the 2015+ artwork, but this was done amazingly well :) Both from a visual and story standpoint. I really enjoyed Kevin J Anderson's written works + the other author's as well.

It's really cool to see 5000 years before the Galactic Empire & I recommend this to Star Wars fans in general. Looking forward to Volume 3!

[Al Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly about half the comics are written by Kevin J Anderson who is one of the worst living sci fi writers, the other comics are written well enough. Gauge for yourself the value of selecting to read.

[Subham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent story arc/volume and yeah some stories are like very weird and take forever to read and contradict other established lore but considering it was some of the early SW material you will find some contradictory things but still maybe thats the charm of it. Also the art is terrible in some places and feels dated but still makes for an okay one time read and helps flesh out the timeline.

The first arc was so fun focus on siblings Gav and Jori Daragon as they lose their parents and trying to survive on Koros system but when assassins target them they escape to Korriban, the world of the sith and the last dark lord died and so competition for the title, Ludo Kressh and Naga sadow and how the latter planned to deceive people by showing that the republic has attacked and how that in turn leads to manipulation by him and how through it he becomes the dark lord and trains Gav and then orchestrates an attack by Ludo and how Jori escapes and how he in turn kills Ludo and people against his rule and may have kickstarted a war with the republic. And also focus on Empress Teta and her 2 jedis as they warn the republic on coruscant about one jedi's vision and what it will lead to next!

The second story arc sees naga sadow plan come to fruition with his attack on the koros system and before that we see the struggles and imprisonment of Jori and how she convinces Teta to defend against the sith and the big war that happens and yeah our heroes lose in the beginning but emerge victorious in the end, Gav's sacrifice and how naga sadow is defeated and exiled and him going to yavin next and I feel like his story is not over and may continue in the next volume!

The ending is another story arc set 1k years later as we see Jedi padawans Ulic and his brother and friend go to the Onderon system to solve the problem there, a love story of the queen's child Galia and the secret of her ancestor Freedon nodd, a dark jedi and how his spirit lives and how the Jedi along with their Master arca and other jedi fight him, bring peace to Onderon and defeat this dark jedi. Plus losses! There are also tales showing the origin of another Jedi named Nomi sunrider and there is her daughter and like her emotional origin and her training with her master Thon whose like an elephant which was wild and fighting against a hutt's men and yeah her going to Onderon and fighting with Ulic and all. Also two cousins Satal and Aleema keto steal some sith artefacts and maybe villains of next arc?

So yeah the first 2 arcs are pretty decent but its Kevin Anderson writing it and he does connect it to his Jedi academy book trilogy so maybe if you read both, you might like it more but the third one I didn't like that much, the writer and the art both didn't help and the battle of Onderon should have been the main focus point and Nomi's origin could have been done in 1 issue rather than extending like this.. so a volume with mixed stuff... maybe read it once if you're a completionist.

[Cannon Qorson · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the oldest and weirdest star wars comics! The force is off the rails here, totally overpowered. This series is a blast to read even if it is very flawed.

The Golden Age of the Sith and The Fall of the Sith Empire

I thought these two arcs were alright. They are prequels to the original series and definitely suffer from prequel-itis. They are rushed and the characters aren't super strong (though this feels like a weird thing to complain about as most of the characters in this series are pulpy and archetypical. Idk it bothered me more in these series then in the others.) I will say I like how they made the technology feel really older and different then in the movies (I think this is the only SW story that takes this into account) and its fun seeing such an early time period. Wish we got more stories in this area. Theres also a lot of sith and sith lore and stuff which is cool. But yeah, not very good. The art is also very weak. Though I like the aesthetics and some of the landscapes are nice, Dario Carrsco Jr has a weird tendency in his artwork to detail his characters spit in their mouths, which doesn't ruin the book but is an odd design choice that I very much dislike. In conclusion, these arcs are alright but not great.

Ulic Qel Droma and the Beast Wars of Onderon

This arc is better. Its mostly dramatic action without much character work, though it introduces important characters and the worldbuilding with Onderon is cool. Art is pretty good but... why are the Onderonians green? Overall, this arc is fine, similarly to the last one.

The Saga of Nomi Sunrider

This one is the best in this volume. Its better written, the art is pretty good for the most part, I liked this arc.

The Freedon Nadd Uprising
This one like most of the others is okayish. The Krath subplot is cheesy, but this whole series is cheesy so who cares? The art is fine. However, the colorization is frankly bizarre! Why are Aleema and Satal yellow? Why is Ulic Qel Droma, a light skinned human, green?! Why is Ulic Green? His brother isn't! Why is he?! Whyyyyyyy?!

Overall, this stories in this volume are very cool and good fun, but are nowhere near masterpieces. I read the subsequesent arcs in the dark horse TPB format, as at the time of purchasing the third TOTJ epic collection had not yet been released.

[Rick Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

You'd think that when a series has free reign to explore events so far disconnected from canonical Star Wars we'd get something more interesting than this. The second volume of the "Tales of the Jedi" line of the Star Wars Legends Epic Collections collects:

The Golden Age of the Sith #0-5 - This miniseries details the evens of the Old Sith Empire, before the Sith were the sworn enemies of the Jedi Order. These proto-Sith were an actual race that lived on the planet Korriban, and during this era two Sith lords vie for the title of Dark Lord of the Sith. Naga Sadow and Ludo Kressh have clashing ideologies, where the Sadow seeks conquest of the fledgling Republic and Kressh having a more conservative, isolationist view. Sadow siezes an opportunity when two Force-sensitive siblings, Gav and Jori Daragon, arrive on Korriban inadvertently. Gav is taken prisoner, but Jori manages to escape back to the Republic and attempts to warn the people that an invasion is coming.

The Fall of the Sith Empire #1-5 - Following directly from the "The Golden Age of the Sith" arc, we now see Sadow's plans come to fruition with his invading forces wreaking havoc on the Republic. The story focuses on how the advent of hyperspace technology has made conquest much easier, and hence coins the phrase that encompasses this conflict as "The Great Hyperspace War".

Tales of the Jedi #1-5 - Set a millenium later, the series follows the stories of Nomi Sunrider, a woman who takes up her fallen husband's lightsaber, and Qel-Droma, a Jedi who discovers the secret behind the fallen Jedi Knight, Freedon Nadd.

Tales of the Jedi - The Freedon Nadd Uprising #1-2 - Following up from the Qel-Droma issues from Tales of the Jedi, we see the full extent of Freedon Nadd's spiral into the Dark Side.

Overall, most of these stories were either middling or not good. The various characters introduced throughout don't really feel very memorable, and there isn't much interesting world-building here that hasn't been done better in other stuff. I'd say it's probably fair game to just skip this volume altogether unless you're a true Star Wars diehard (which I have to assume is most people who'd be picking this up anyways).

[Timothy Moshier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not the world's biggest comics fan, but I'll admit to enjoying a dip between attractively illustrated covers once in a while. Purely with the goal of enjoying an AMCA podcast, I spent some time reading the Tales of the Jedi comics. I think I was somewhat thrown off by what felt like a significant style change about halfway through volume 2, which really isn't the fault of the individual comics so much as the chronological as opposed to release order way in which they're presented here. Some of the stories felt like they lacked context, and the style of art and presentation can sometimes be a bit confusing, at least for a reader who's not particularly familiar with the medium. Moreover some of it lacks a sense of scale and importance in my opinion, considering how grandiose some of the elusions to the events here have been in other Star Wars media. That being said I did enjoy this compendium, even if I wasn't engrossed by it, and this would probably be a 3.5/5 if that was an option. I just can't call it a 4.

[Marcus Finch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting to see the Jedi as peak badasses well before we knew exactly what the prequels would be, the ancient human history, namely Egyptian, imagery is so interesting to see how this goes about presenting it. Incredibly weird which I appreciate but man if the writing here can be just so blunt and stupid, unlike Bakura though that is absolutely a benefit because it can be so goddamn funny. The earlier story (which is later in this book because of timeline which is weird but whatever) is definitely better, the characters are a bit obvious but I much prefer Ulic and Nomi as leads rather then the Daragon siblings who are just so stupid. That first story is very very dumb but the villain, Naga Sadow is an all timer for me for sure now, he's like a comic supervillain just saying out loud all of his plans. Its awesome. Anyway, definitely worth reading just cause of how strange it is but just go in knowing its very dumb at times.

[Joshua Mifsud · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I had only ever purchased the 1993/1994 comics and this was the cheapest way to finally get my hands on the golden age of the sith, which I’d been dying to read for years.

I can definitely say that reading the lore about the sith empire and naga sadow online was actually more epic than the comics themselves. I still can’t believe how atrocious the art was. It was so monochromatic that you couldn’t even differentiate between what you were seeing.

The Freedon Nadd uprising still stands as the best collection out of these by far.

I bought the next volume so I’m hoping Exar Kun doesn’t disappoint like these did.

[John O'connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

So. Way back in the early 90s before Star Wars made a big return to the pop culture mainstream there were a few bits here and there of Star Wars stuff being made. Roll playing games, some video games, and some comic books. I remember picking up the first issue of Tales of The Jedi in the comic book store and being shocked. A Star Wars story set 4000 years in the past? I was so in.

I was thinking about it a few months ago and I wanted to re-read the comics, so I ordered this collection off of Amazon. I still have the issues somewhere in a comic bin but I don’t feel like digging them out.

This contains multiple arcs of the comics, they are loosely connected. The comics are in chronological order rather than the publication order, which felt different to me since I had read them as they came out over years.

The art is pretty solid, quite a few artists, some flashes of brilliance here and there. Readable, storytelling is fairly decent but a few hard to decipher page layouts here and there. Colors look good, I don’t know if they recolored them for this version of if it’s the slightly glossy paper stock but it looks nice.

The stories are a bit scattered, the Golden Age of the Sith stories taking place 1000 years before the Tales of the Jedi proper stories. Some cool Jedi powers, weird explanations of the Sith , it’s fun and weird. A thing to keep in mind is that these books came out YEARS before the prequels did - before midichlorians, before the Sith rule of two, before clones, before everything.

Recommended basically for hard core Star Wars nerds only.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This took me far too long to get through for the simple reason that it was terrible. I remember back in the early 2000's, everyone raving about this series on Star Wars forums. I don't remember what was coming out back then that this was good in comparison, but fuck me it must have been horrendous.

[Jessica McKendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy this collection very much. First and foremost, I didn't really like the art style. I thought the adventures on Onderon were interesting, I liked Cay Quel-Droma and how he helped discover that the beast riders of Onderon were NOT the bad guys and that the royal line of Onderon was haunted by the Dark Side. .

I was not at all interested in Nomi Sunrider, I personally did not like her character at all. She just wasn't someone I connected with, so I thought the parts about her were pretty boring. I also didn't like how her Master, Jedi Master Thon, basically forced her to use a lightsaber even though she didn't want to.

Something that has kind of confused me is that there is also no explanation in this comic series about why one Jedi Master is allowed to have three apprentices, and why Jedi like Nomi Sunrider were allowed to have children and husbands. That was odd to me that there just wasn't any kind of explanation.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Art quality and style are very obviously not modern, and I commend Master Thon for his patience with Nomi Sunrider at the beginning; I would not have been able to endure her continuing refusal to fight even when the only other option was death.

[Adam B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing material. Prior never had the chance to experience the stories pre-KOTOR.
It's such an experience to finally piece things together and to better understand the legends lore of the KOTOR era. GAoS was exceptionally amazing.
Can't wait to read the 3rd volume.

[Alejandro Montero · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic expanded universe comic, first time reading it after many years. Some stories still hold up, others not as much.
It's fun to see a time with different rules for Jedi

[Leon Bernik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just pure awesome!!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

These comics are very nostalgic to me. I love the ancient Egyptian iconography that everyone was obsessed with in the 90s, myself included.

[B.A.G. Studios · Rating 3 out of 5]

While much more entertaining than Dawn of the Jedi, I’m afraid the first half of this volume (being the “Golden Age of the Sith” and “Fall of the Sith Empire” arcs by Kevin J. Anderson) is just still too far removed from the Galaxy I know and love for me to get into it much. It’s much closer to what I want, but just a tad too far back for my taste. That, combined with Anderson’s paper thin characters (I kinda get now why he’s so divisive in this fandom, despite being rather impressed that he was so prolific in the world-building — edited 3 anthologies and wrote 3 short stories, 4 novels, 15 junior novels, and 32 comic issues — and yet did all of that in only five years… wow), and yet still I find it largely uninspired this time around. It’s telling that the recap (though notable to say, it was written first) is more thrilling than the 11 pages we get here.

In contrast is that stuff, the main title, jumping ahead about a thousand years. Ulic Qel-Droma is a really solid apprentice-type character, and Nomi Sunrider is maybe a top ten Jedi character for me now. I love the art in both of these arcs, though I will say, I think the artist on Nomi’s arc was a little too green for sequential characters… the people look kinda off, but the vistas are so striking that it more than makes up for that in my mind. (Side Note: While watching Star Trek the other day, I had the thought, “How does someone searching an unknown planet for an intelligent life form walk past a lizard without trying to see if it can communicate? How do they know that’s just a lizard?” and #3 basically gave me that a week after I thought it, so I felt very seen.)

At first I was afraid that these two arcs would be kinda forgettable, because they seemed to be wholly disconnected from one another, but at least they were entertaining. And then the Freedon Nadd Uprising comes around, and suddenly it hits the gas. Very good stuff here, though I always cringe a bit at the Force Ghosts being used this fast and loose (I also didn’t know holocrons were full-on ChatGPTs you could ponder life with, either). Nevertheless, this was solid from a characters perspective, it’s fun from an action perspective, the art is nice, and the story has me hooked.

This whole volume feels like it’s culminating in getting the team together, almost like a Tim Story Fantastic Four (but better) where the point is just setting up for next time. But I’m not saying that as a criticism here, it’s working in its favor. Even by the end, the first arc makes more sense, tied together with Jedi Battle Meditation (even if I would still say to skip those and just start with the main title and Ulic). I’m stoked to see the continuation, namely because of Nomi, but the setup is also fascinating from a lore perspective. I expect I’ll have more opportunity to get into that next volume.
I rounded down to a 3/5 for this review, but it’s a high 3. The Anderson arcs bring it down quite a bit, but if it were just the main title stories, it would handily be a 4.

[Jacob Mahaffey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a lot of comics from the 90’s, everything is a little over complicated, oddly paced, and sloppy. Whereas some interesting ideas occasionally come forth, it was difficult to get attached to anything happening, and easy to get distracted but cluttered artwork.