Scott's Rating:   3 out of 4

Hoole and the kids travel back to Tatooine and Jabba's Palace. Hoole asks Jabba to remove their identities from Imperial records. Jabba agrees to try, but he wants Hoole to translate a B'omaar monk scroll first. While Hoole does the translation, the kids explore Jabba's palace and meet the B'omaar monks. They learn that the monks happen to find enlightenment from having their brains removed and put in spider droids. Groovy. Anyway, the kids find out about a lucrative side business Jabba has involving the brain spiders and Tash ends up having her brain removed and put in a spider droid. Freaky, man.

Scott:

    At least this is another story that doesn't follow the previous storyline patterns. I'm glad that Whitman is finally exploring the horrific corners of the existing Star Wars Universe! Sure, making up new horrors is a good effort, but only if they ARE scary. It's much better now to look at horrible things like the brain spiders which were in the films. It ties these books in a more legitimate way to the films. Getting to explore the depths of Jabba's palace was a nice treat.

Scott:

    This story was fairly predictable. All of the clues were obviously right in front of Zak, but it took him several chapters to finally realize what is going on. It is poor writing to have your audience be 10 steps ahead of your character in a mystery story, and that's exactly what happened here.

Scott:

    Brains brains brains. Need I say more?