Book1-ThePhantomMenace

To Lisa, Jill, Amanda, & Alex, the kids who grew up with the story & to Hunter, the first of the next generation A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY. … Tatooine. The suns burned down out of a cloudless blue sky, washing the vast desert wastes of the planet in brilliant white light. The resultant glare rose off the flat, sandy surface in a wet shimmer of blistering heat to fill the gaps between the massive cliff faces and solitary outcroppings of the mountains that were the planet’s sole distinguishing feature. Sharply etched, the monoliths stood like sentinels keeping watch in a watery haze. When the Podracers streaked past, engines roaring with ferocious hunger and relentless drive, the heat and the light seemed to shatter and the mountains themselves to tremble. Anakin Skywalker leaned into the curve of the raceway that took him past the stone arch marking the entry into Beggar’s Canyon on the first lap of the run, easing the thruster bars forward, giving the engines a little more juice. The wedge-shaped rockets exploded with power, the right a tad harder than the left, banking the Pod in which Anakin sat sharply left to ......