Rating: 
Summary: Very good for the older fan
Review: This book is full of character development and light on action. It introduces some characters like Luminara and Bariss that you actually care about. They are not the typical Jedi stereotype in the Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu tradition, which is refreshing and make them less robotic.The continued character development of Anakin was welcome, however it is hard to justify the separation he feels from his mother since Phantom Menace did such a lousy job in establishing that to begin with (the book established this better, however I had the misfortune of seeing the movie first). Personally, I don't think that any of the books/movies will ever recover from the fact that they didn't establish a believeable mother/Anakin connection to thoroughly explain why Anakin is who he is. Another issue is that they are not continuing to establish a wish for Anakin to be with Padme'. It just rekindles out of the blue with "clones"
Rating:
Summary: A charming prequel to a Prequel
Review: One of the worst things Star Wars fans have to face while new Episodes are in the works is the three-year wait between movies...I mean, Episodes. Most of us then turn to the myriads of Star Wars discussion groups and analyze the existing five movies (sometimes going off into bizarre tangents such as the "is Palpatine really Darth Sidious or isn't he?") and, like fortune tellers reading tea leaves, try to divine the particulars of the next Episode. Another thing we Star Wars fans do while we wait for new Episodes is wondering what happens to the characters between Episodes, especially when the span of time (10 years between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones...and four between Episodes II and III, for instance)is long. Or maybe we hear a line in an existing film about something that happened prior to the current movie and we want to know more. This is where the Expanded Universe novels are at their best, when they address events mentioned but not seen in the film series. Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter and Cloak of Deception, both Episode I prequels, fill in some of the blanks dealing with the rise of Palpatine in the Senate and explain somewhat better the blockade of Naboo. Greg Bear's Rogue Planet also showed a glimpse of 12-year-old Anakin Skywalker's relationship to Obi-Wan Kenobi and his life as a Padawan learner. Of all the prequels to the Prequels, though, Alan Dean Foster's The Approaching Storm works best as an appetizer to Episode II. While it is a novel that has characters created by Foster alone, it also teems with major and minor characters who appeared in Episode II. The plot revolves around a border dispute on the planet Ansion, a minor planet by itself but bound by a series of treaties to other systems. In the shadows lurk the separatists led by Count Dooku, who makes a brief literary cameo. Although the hardcover of this novel was released 4 months before the premiere of Episode II, I only read the paperback version in December of 2002, so I wasn't bugged by the spoilers or by the constraints imposed by Lucasfilm so fans would not find out too much about the plot of Episode II far, far in advance. Because Foster wrote the novelization to Star Wars: A New Hope, he captures the voices and personalities of the movies well. He also is wonderful at creating his own characters, even if they are characters who will never be seen on film. The Approaching Storm is therefore a fun and exciting novel that makes the two-year wait for the conclusion of the Prequel Trilogy more bearable.
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