I don't think it's unfair to expect more from a young adult novel. There are plenty of stories, both YA and intended for younger children, that do a really good job. It's mostly the odd tone and what looks like deliberate flattening efforts that make me think the whole idea felt unnatural to Watson.
A friend who really enjoys her work despite some of the flaws did remark that every planet Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan visited seemed to be having some sort of kids-vs-adults generational conflict. I was immediately seized with the urge to write a crossover with Peter Pan. ("Second star to the right and straight on till morning? These are the worst navigation instructions ever.") Perhaps fortunately, I was stymied by the absence of a plot.
Scout's age actually is in line with Watson's limit of thirteen, though. She turned thirteen right about three months before Attack of the Clones and was chosen (after despairing about the prospect) on her birthday. Unfortunately, her first master went to Geonosis and got killed in the first battle of the Clone War.
(There actually is a discrepancy about her age, though it's not internal to the book. Stewart seems to have thought he was writing about a year after AotC, and thus says Scout is fourteen; the official Clone Wars timeline on StarWars.com plants Dark Rendezvous two and a half years after AotC, in which case she'd have to be younger as of Geonosis or older in the book. I usually write her as being older in the book, since the anguish about not being chosen actually seems to be more critical to her character than being fourteen vs. fifteen.)
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A friend who really enjoys her work despite some of the flaws did remark that every planet Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan visited seemed to be having some sort of kids-vs-adults generational conflict. I was immediately seized with the urge to write a crossover with Peter Pan. ("Second star to the right and straight on till morning? These are the worst navigation instructions ever.") Perhaps fortunately, I was stymied by the absence of a plot.
Scout's age actually is in line with Watson's limit of thirteen, though. She turned thirteen right about three months before Attack of the Clones and was chosen (after despairing about the prospect) on her birthday. Unfortunately, her first master went to Geonosis and got killed in the first battle of the Clone War.
(There actually is a discrepancy about her age, though it's not internal to the book. Stewart seems to have thought he was writing about a year after AotC, and thus says Scout is fourteen; the official Clone Wars timeline on StarWars.com plants Dark Rendezvous two and a half years after AotC, in which case she'd have to be younger as of Geonosis or older in the book. I usually write her as being older in the book, since the anguish about not being chosen actually seems to be more critical to her character than being fourteen vs. fifteen.)