Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXXI: The Unifying Force by James Luceno

This is it! It took me a year and a half to reread the series in chronological order, but I've finally come to the end of The New Jedi Order. I have to say it hasn't held up: I remember liking much more of it than I did on this reread. Its highs are still great (Edge of Victory, Star by Star, Traitor), but when you're not always eagerly picking up the latest installment to find out what happens next because you do know what happens next, the repetitiveness, aimlessness, rough edges, and dull characterizations become much more apparent.

Hardcover, 529 pages
Published 2003
Acquired December 2003
Previously read February 2004
Reread September 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force
by James Luceno

Year Five of the Invasion (Months 1-3)
The New Jedi Order goes out much as it began, which is to say: blandly. Given a nineteen-book series with tons of characters to wrap up, Luceno devotes significant chunks of time early in the novel to Boba Fett and Judder Page, neither of whom have appeared in these books before. A lot of the novel feels oddly low-key: Zonoma Sekot appears in the sky over Yuuzhan'tar/Coruscant, but no one seems particularly worried about or interested in what ought to be an ominous moment. Luceno has obviously read Traitor, unlike Walter Jon Williams, but I'm not sure he gets it any better. He can bog anything down in procedural details, even the wrapup to a four-year galaxy-spanning epic, unfortunately.

Next Week: A new reading adventure begins: twelve novellas for twelve Doctors, as I finally hit up the prose fiction celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXX: The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes

Mass market paperback, 305 pages
Published 2003
Acquired 2003
Previously read November 2003
Reread September 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: The Final Prophecy
by Greg Keyes

Year Four of the Invasion (Month 12)
This is probably the best of the post-Traitor books in The New Jedi Order, though it's also the weakest of Greg Keyes's four contribution to the saga. Jaina ends up involved in some wacky space war escapades that feel like they're there to take up page count, but the core of the book is the adventures of Jedi Knights Corran Horn and Tahiri and Yuuzhan Vong Nom Anor, Nen Yim, and Harrar trying to get to Zonoma Sekot, which might hold the key to defeating the Yuuzhan Yong. All three Yuuzhan Vong characters have reason to be disaffected with the leadership of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, but different reasons. Keyes is as always great with characterization, and particularly his handling of the Yuuzhan Vong stands out: all three characters might be rebels, but none of them are "good guys" as a result, and they all come to their rebellion from different perspectives still influenced by their culture. His achievement is especially notable with Harrar, who had been a paper-thin villain in James Luceno's books, but little else, prior to this.

The problem is that the action feels inconsequential; some things happen that are of importance to The Unifying Force, but the stakes aren't very high. It's a shame that this was Keyes's last Star Wars book, as I thought he, Troy Denning, and Matt Stover were the big discoveries of The New Jedi Order. Denning and Stover went on to write many more Star Wars novels (as did, alas, Luceno), but Keyes moved on to original projects after this. Though these days he's writing tie-ins to properties like Interstellar, X-COM, Independence Day, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Elder Scrolls, so I feel like returning to Star Wars would be a step up.

Next Week: I wrap up this long odyssey through The New Jedi Order in The Unifying Force!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXIX: Reunion by Sean Williams and Shane Dix

Mass market paperback, 390 pages
Published 2003
Acquired 2003(?)
Reread July 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Force Heretic III: Reunion
by Sean Williams and Shane Dix

Year Four of the Invasion (Months 10-11)
I had memories that this was the best of the "Force Heretic" novels: Luke and company finally reach Zonoma Sekot and learn its secrets while Han and Leia go on a rollicking space adventure on a weird planet. Well, I don't know if the difference was that reading all three Force Heretic books in one go really showed how little happened, but this time I found it the worst of these books. As always, nothing actually happens, yet nearly 400 pages are somehow taken up. Seriously, I don't get how Williams and Dix do it; both plots here are extremely simplistic, yet hundreds of pages somehow go by. Events that should be momentous have all the energy sapped out of them; events that should be fun are delivered as dully as possible. The midpoint peak of The New Jedi Order turns out to be an aberration; it is ending as dully and as falteringly as it began.

Who was the "Force Heretic," anyway?

Next Week: We're almost done! It's the antepenultimate New Jedi Order adventure: The Final Prophecy!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXVII: Refugee by Sean Williams and Shane Dix

Mass market paperback, 397 pages
Published 2003
Acquired 2003(?)
Reread June 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Force Heretic II: Refugee
by Sean Williams and Shane Dix

Year Four of the Invasion (Month 9)
"Force Heretic" continues its inexplicable move of making sure we know how planets from the least-interesting Bantam-era novels are holding up; Refugee specifically fills us in on the Ssi-ruvvi, the violent xenophobic reptiles last seen in The Truce at Bakura. It is not remotely interesting.

Also Luke and Mara and company get bogged down in Chiss politics while visiting a library. This subplot is possibly even duller than that synopsis makes it sound. I can't even begin to describe how uninteresting it is.

Next Week: A dangling loose end you didn't care about is tied up in "Or Die Trying"!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXV: Remnant by Sean Williams and Shane Dix

I've finally built up a couple week's buffer here, which means I can finally get back to my other reviewing duties: I have a whole pile of Big Finish audio dramas that I've listened to but not yet reviewed at Unreality SF. The first is up now (and hopefully more follow, as it's my spring break this week): Doctor Who: The War Doctor: Infernal Devices.

Mass market paperback, 413 pages
Published 2003
Acquired 2003(?)
Reread June 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Force Heretic I: Remnant
by Sean Williams and Shane Dix

Year Four of the Invasion (Month 8)
This is one of those 400-page books that you're hard-pressed to explain how it could possibly be as long as it is. There are basically three plots: the first is Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade, and company, en route to the Unknown Regions, helping the Imperial Remnant (hence the title, I guess, though I've no idea why this trilogy is called "Force Heretic") fend of a Yuuzhan Vong attack. This is, for what it's worth, the most interesting of the plots. Which isn't worth very much. It's always nice to see Pellaeon, but otherwise little of interest goes on here.

But that said, the other two plots are even worse. Han and Leia are sent off on the Millennium Falcon to see how some far-flung parts of the galaxy are faring during the invasion, and the answer is utterly tedious. Local politics, blah blah blah, pointless bickering, blah blah blah. Like, it would be hard to imagine a duller plot to inject in the middle of your galaxy-spanning invasion series. Even the Tahiri subplot is utterly dull: I like the idea that her Jedi and Yuuzhan Vong sides have to be reconciled, but Williams and Dix handle it in the most uninteresting way imaginable.

Finally, Nom Anor is getting up to cult hijinks underground on Coruscant. Again, should be interesting; again, sure is dull. I love Nom Anor, but this meanders and goes nowhere.

All that said, this is probably the best of the "Force Heretic" books!

Next Week: A comic book side trip into the universe of video games in "Equals & Opposites"!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXIV: Ylesia by Walter Jon Williams

PDF eBook, 90 pages
Published 2002
Reread April 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Ylesia
by Walter Jon Williams

Year Four of the Invasion (Month 3)
This is another New Jedi Order side story that I'd read before, but never in context: I don't know if this is true, but it reads as if it was cut right out of the middle of Destiny's Way, and it was released as an eBook alongside it. I don't think I read it until three years later, though, when it was printed in the back of Dark Nest I: The Joiner King. On its own, I seem to recall, it's a fun side adventure: the Galactic Alliance has to take the Hutt world of Ylesia from the Yuuzhan Vong and the Peace Brigade, only it's currently being run by the weaselly Thrackan Sal-Solo, cousin of Han. Thrackan is a dumb-but-fun villain, and it's enjoyable to see all his plans unravel. But while I remember enjoying Ylesia when I originally read it back in 2005, if you pause Destiny's Way in the middle to read it, it comes across as irrelevant padding: it's only a distraction to the main plot of the novel it was (presumably) snipped from. I would have been better off reading this on its own than in the middle of the bigger story.

Next Week: It's the beginning of the end of The New Jedi Order, as Luke Skywalker goes looking for a Remnant!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXIII: Destiny's Way by Walter Jon Williams

Hardcover, 448 pages
Published 2002
Acquired December 2002
Reread May 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way
by Walter Jon Williams

Year Four of the Invasion (Months 1-4)
The New Jedi Order really peaks in the middle: Edge of Victory I: Conquest, Star by Star, and Traitor are all top-notch, and much of the surrounding work is solid. But Destiny's Way is basically just perfunctory. It has its occasional fun bit, like Han and Leia talking to Pellaeon, or the return of Admiral Ackbar, or Lando playing politics (they should have made him president), and the final space battle is pretty good-- but I don't care for the genocide subplot, some of the politicking is dumb/boring, and Walter Jon Williams clearly did not read Traitor, as the Vergere here is a totally different character from the one in that book. More than any other NJO hardcover, this one feels like it's just there to take up space, to bridge the gap between the New Republic being on the verge of defeat in Star by Star with the requirement that it has to be able to win the war in five books' time. There are worse NJO books, but there are more ambitious ones as well.

In Two Weeks: Discover what happened in the middle of this novel, which was snipped out and made into its own release called Ylesia!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXII: Traitor by Matthew Stover

Mass market paperback, 292 pages
Published 2002
Acquired 2002(?)
Reread February 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Traitor
by Matthew Stover

Year Three, Month 2 through Year Four, Month 1 of the Invasion*
Discriminating fans know that every Star Wars novel should be by Matthew Stover and/or Troy Denning and/Greg Keyes: their work is the very definite highlights of The New Jedi Order. Traitor takes this war we've been reading and makes it about something, applies a philosophical underpinning, and then questions the very same underpinning. The cover makes this book look like it's of a pair with Dark Journey, and I guess technically it is, but Traitor outperforms Dark Journey on every possible level. Good characters, good story, good plotting, good jokes. The ending is epic. This isn't quite Star by Star or Conquest, but it's by far one of the best NJO books.

Next Week: Admiral Ackbar is back in Destiny's Way!

* Year Three of the Invasion is an odd one: four novels occur in its first four months, and then while Traitor stretches across most of the year, most of the main characters are absent from it; for them, there's a nine-month gap in appearances between Rebel Stand and Destiny's Way. Traitor gives us some glimpses of this time-- the Yuuzhan Vong have a plan to overwhelm the wider galaxy with refugees-- but it seems to be an unusual period of stasis during the Invasion, given that not much changes between Rebel Stand and Destiny's Way.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XXI: Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston

Star Wars books two days in a row? What is this, some kind of fanboy blog? Anyway, it's been seven months, but now it's time to wrap up my reviews of The New Jedi Order.

Mass market paperback, 367 pages
Published 2002
Acquired 2002(?)
Reread February 2015

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand
by Aaron Allston

Year Three of the Invasion (Months 3-4)
Perhaps the best and worst thing one can say about an Aaron Allston novel is that it contains competent space action. That is to say, this is a novel with little ambition that it accomplishes spectacularly well. There are space battles, interesting tactics, and quips, and there are definitely times I'll take successful nonambition over failed ambition. Allston knows what he wants this book to be, an he does it well, which is more than you can say for a lot of New Jedi Order novels.

One thing I will always remember about this book is thinking that Wedge Antilles could die. Chewbacca showed that main film characters weren't safe, and Anakin Solo showed that main novel characters weren't safe-- next to them, Wedge is small potatoes, so I was on the edge of my seat the first time I read it. The effect is somewhat muted thirteen years later, however.

Next Week: We finally find out what happened to Jacen Solo in Traitor!

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XX: Rebel Dream by Aaron Allston

Mass market paperback, 304 pages
Published 2002
Acquired 2002(?)
Reread December 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream
by Aaron Allston

Year Three of the Invasion (Months 2-3)
If you've been read all of my reviews of The New Jedi Order, you might note that I spend my time either complaining that the book is deeply dull or otherwise flawed, or praising the book for being excellent. So far there's been a real dearth of solidly competent novels. Well, that changes here with the late Aaron Allston, who was probably the definition of "solidly competent" when it comes to Star Wars. This made him not a great fit for things like Legacy of the Force, alas, but spot on for books like this-- basically the function of this book is to provide a fun adventure during the lull between hardcovers. There's plenty of great fleet tactics, starfighter battles, and intelligence skullduggery-- no one ever really did Star-Wars-as-military-sf better than Aaron Allston and Michael Stackpole, and here Allston proves himself more adept at adapting his style to the needs of the overall NJO story than Stackpole was, by eschewing the Force stuff and just focusing on the space battles. Disposable, I suppose, but enjoyable.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XVIII: Dark Journey by Elaine Cunningham

Mass market paperback, 301 pages
Published 2002
Acquired 2002(?)
Reread December 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Dark Journey
by Elaine Cunningham

Year Three of the Invasion (Month 2)
I think Dark Journey would be disappointing at any point, but it's especially disappointing after the really strong run from Recovery to Star by Star. Everyone in this book seems a little... overdramatic, somehow. Like, Jaina makes small decisions, and everyone reacts really bigly to them, and things seem off-- like Jaina would ever marry into the Hapan royal family, yet it's treated like a real possibility. In terms of showing how the fallout of Star by Star has affected Jaina, this book doesn't really succeed, unfortunately.

It's probably worth noting that my experience of reading this book was somewhat diffuse, as I read it interspersed with other books in chronological order; this is a period where the novels all overlap with one another. The order I followed was:

1. Dark Journey, chapters 1-11
2. Traitor: "Embrace of Pain"
3. Dark Journey, chapters 12-21
4. "The Apprentice"
5. Dark Journey, chapters 22-25
6. Traitor: "Cocoon"
7. Rebel Dream, chapters 1-8
8. Dark Journey, chapters 26-28
9. Traitor: "Nursery"
10. Rebel Dream, chapters 9-17
11. Traitor: "Garden"
12. Rebel Stand
13. Traitor (to end)

But reviewing them that way would be nuts, so I'll be doing them in whole parts despite how it doesn't represent my actual reading experience.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XVII: Star by Star by Troy Denning

Hardcover, 606 pages
Published 2001
Acquired December 2001
Reread July 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Star by Star
by Troy Denning

Year Three of the Invasion (Months 1-2)
I still don't know why Luke Skywalker was so opposed to Jedi taking action in the earlier New Jedi Order books, and thus why he suddenly decides it's okay to take action here isn't really explicable. But, I'm glad he does because though it isn't quite as good as Conquest, Star by Star is the book that really kicks the New Jedi Order up a notch. While Luke, Leia, Han, and company try to do what they can as the Yuuzhan Vong advance on Coruscant, Anakin Solo leads a team of Jedi apprentices on a strike team to destroy the voxyn queen, the "mother" of Force-sensitive, Jedi-hunting creatures starting to plague the galaxy. Unlike the ponderous space strategy of the earlier books, this is really effective.

It's a little different for Star Wars, but it works. Denning brings concepts into Star Wars that are new but work with what we've seen before. The Jedi shadow bombs are a clever idea, but I love the Jedi battle meld, which is used to co-ordinate the actions of the strike team, but also to really make that strike team come to life as characters: this is a group of desperate people, pushed to their limits, and it's utterly engrossing to read about. Anakin Solo was brought to life by Conquest, and Denning really sustains that development here, plus lifting up Jacen and Jaina for the first time in the series. Meanwhile, Leia and Han's adventures on Coruscant are the danger-a-minute escapes you'd expect from them; other than the strike team, these are the best segments of the book-- you can see why Denning went on to write Tatooine Ghost, as he gets these characters perfectly. There are even nice parts for Lando and C-3PO! Heck, he's even the first NJO writer to treat Borsk Fel'lya as a genuine character, and not just an improbable obstacle for our heroes.

Famously, this is the book that kills Anakin Solo. Though I'm disappointed it had to happen given how much Del Rey mishandled the Solo kids in the years to come, the death scene itself is incredibly well done, and it's the right choice for both the book and the series. Anakin consumed by the Force as he dies to save his teammates-- it's marvelous. And then... that scene where Leia and Han find out... you can feel their grief, I got shivers just from reading it. How utterly devastating. This is the emotional low point of The New Jedi Order, this is its The Empire Strikes Back, and it promises that nothing will ever be the same again...

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XVI: Rebirth by Greg Keyes

Mass market paperback, 292 pages
Published 2001
Acquired 2001(?)
Reread July 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory II: Rebirth
by Greg Keyes

Year Two of the Invasion (Month 8)
Rebirth is not quite the triumph that Conquest was-- it's too diffuse to be as good a novel. Instead of the sharp focus on Anakin that Conquest gave us, Rebirth divides up a number of characters: Luke and Mara on the run from the government, Han and Leia and Jacen trying to organize the Great River, Jaina and Kyp and Rogue Squadron investigating a Yuuzhan Yong superweapon (picking up a dangling plot thread from Ruin), the shaper Nen Yim trying to save a dying worldship, and Anakin and Tahiri and Corran on a supply run that goes horribly wrong.

It's reminiscent of the expansive approach used by Luceno in his Agents of Chaos approach, but Keyes makes it work much better: each of the threads follows interesting characters, and he hangs a good character development thread on each plot. Han and Leia and Jacen fighting the Yuuzhan Vong is exciting, Star Wars action, but there's also a nice examination and improvement of the relationship between Jacen and his father. I also really liked the birth of Ben Skywalker in the Luke/Mara plot. The strongest of the plots is the Anakin and Tahiri one-- like in Conquest and Emissary of the Void, Keyes keeps the twists and turns coming, providing a rollicking fun adventure that allows some youngsters to grow into the roles of heroes. It's not a great book, but it's one of the better New Jedi Order ones.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XIV: Conquest by Greg Keyes

Mass market paperback, 291 pages
Published 2001
Acquired 2001(?)
Reread May 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest
by Greg Keyes

Year Two of the Invasion (Month 2)
This book gets off to another rough start, where the man who blew up the Death Star tries to convince you that taking action against aggressors could somehow lead to the Dark Side. But roll your eyes and get on to the next scene, because after that this book is brilliant. Seriously, Top 5 Star Wars books, easy. Greg Keyes completely inhabits and understands Star Wars in a way the previous New Jedi Order writers haven't. No, I'm not saying he knows his continuity (though he does and I'll get to that in a minute), I'm saying he knows what makes Star Wars work and he's able to replicate it without making a slavish copy of the original films. (We should note that this is a skill that even George Lucas lost sometime after 1983. Probably the only other writers to possess it are Matt Stover and John Jackson Miller.) This book gives us a young man, uncertain about his place in the universe, and plunges him into a desperate adventure with group of unlikely comrades. Okay, that seems obvious, you say, but if that's obvious then why do most Star Wars writers insist on giving us "political" "thrillers"?

Young Anakin Solo disobeys Master Luke Skywalker's order to go to the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4 because he insists it's under threat from the Yuuzahn Vong. A couple of awesome action sequences later, and he's crashed in the forest with a criminal, a crazy former TIE pilot, and two kids for company, trying to rescue someone important to him. Along the way he demonstrates his basic goodness, learns some valuable moral lessons, meets more awesome characters (some of whom die), listens to mystical prophecies, and saves the day with style. It does not get any better than this!

Extra points should be given for the fact that this is the first book where the Yuuzhan Vong feel like a real civilization. A lot of this is due to Vua Rapuung, the former warrior who befriends Anakin, and is poignant, hardcore, and hilariously deadpan all at once. But there's also the various Shamed Ones and our glimpses into the mind of Nen Yim, the young heretic shaper. This book transforms the war against an unstoppable aggressor into something more meaningful and difficult.

This is the first book in the series to make me care about Anakin Solo as a character. Keyes does this partly through just being better at writing than Salvatore, Stackpole, Luceno, and Tyers, but also he's obviously the only NJO writer to actually have read the Junior Jedi Knights books. Keyes threads Conquest with characters from this series, giving Anakin's life an emotional depth-- but just like the original Star Wars works if you haven't met Luke and his adoptive parents before, so too does Conquest (I only read the first JJK book). Is Master Ikrit the greatest Jedi Master of all time? Signs point to yes. Is Anakin/Tahiri one of the few ships I could ever admit to having? Um... I guess so. (I don't think the book quite succeeds in rationalizing why we haven't seen Tahiri and Ikrit since the NJO began, though-- Anakin has been back to Yavin 4 multiple times since the death of Chewbacca, yet he's never talked to Tahiri about it? We've never even seen him avoiding her? But that's more a critique of the other NJO novels than this one; it's amazing how this book reveals the extent to which Anakin was a blank cipher in the other books.)

I remember being this the point, seven books in, where The New Jedi Order finally clicked for me, the point where it started to work and cemented itself as something worth reading. Though I am enjoying my experiment in rereading the series with all the ancillary material included, it does exacerbate the early difficulties of the NJO-- this is the fourteenth installment! If Conquest hadn't been as good as I remembered, I might have given up here, but thankfully it was excellent, and for the first time in this reread, I am avidly anticipating going onwards.

Let's close by quoting this adorable but keenly insightful bit where Anakin is watching Tahiri as she falls asleep, reflecting on the fact that he's not seen his best friend in a year and something... something is different:

By the faint orange light of the gas giant outside, he could make out traces of her features, so familiar and yet somehow different. It was as if, below the girl's face he had always known, something else was pushing up, like mountains rising, driven by the deep internal heat of a planet.
     Something you couldn't stop even if you wanted to. It made him want to hang on and run away at the same time, and in a mild epiphany he realized he had felt that way for some time.
     As children they had been best friends. But neither of them was a child anymore, not exactly.
     His arm had gone numb from her weight, but he couldn't bring himself to shift, for fear of waking her.

Awwww...

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XIII: Recovery by Troy Denning

Kindle eBook, n.pag.
Published 2001
Acquired April 2014
Reread May 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Recovery
by Troy Denning

Year One of the Invasion (Month 12)
I read this supplementary eBook at some point in the past (it's collected in the paperback of Star by Star, and I think I borrowed it off someone) but not where it falls in the chronological sequence of The New Jedi Order, shortly after the events of Balance Point. This book reminded me of how Troy Denning is one of my favorite Star Wars authors, and why-- because he can write fun. Han and Leia are trying to make their way from Duro back to Coruscant, only all sorts of unsavory types are after them following Balance Point. There's fun stuff here: Han trying to con bounty hunters into thinking he's a doctor, a mysterious passenger on the Falcon, a new subfaction of Jedi, complicated plans and deceptions, and best of all, Han and Leia's rapprochement. This is good, fun, real Star Wars in a way that The New Jedi Order has lacked up until now.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XII: Balance Point by Kathy Tyers

Hardcover, 333 pages
Published 2000
Acquired 2000(?)
Reread May 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Balance Point
by Kathy Tyers

Year One of the Invasion (Months 11-12)
I didn't have particularly fond memories of this book, but to my surprise, it turned out to be the best installment of The New Jedi Order (barring the third volume of Invasion) since Vector Prime. Tyers's book is much more focused than Stackpole and Luceno's duologies, and all the better for it: most of the actions take place on Duro, where Leia is coordinating the refugee crisis and Han is running a resettlement camp-- except communication is so bad that they're unaware of each others' presence. The Solo kids are there, too, Jacen and Anakin dealing with the fallout of Jedi Eclipse and Jaina recovering from injuries received with Rogue Squadron. The book has a strong, central plot, but even better, it has characters: in a lot of major and minor ways, Tyers really focuses on them as people, especially in their interactions with one another. It feels like damning with faint praise to say something like this, but after two volumes of the non-writing of James Luceno, Balance Point really feels like a breath of fresh air. The Han/Leia relationship is probably the centerpiece of the book, and Tyers nails that one especially perfectly.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode XI: Jedi Eclipse by James Luceno

Mass market paperback, 348 pages
Published 2000
Acquired 2000(?)
Reread May 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse
by James Luceno

Year One of the Invasion (Month 9)
Like in Luceno last's New Jedi Order tedium-fest, there's some potential here: Han and Droma trying to find Droma's family in the midst of the galaxy's refugee crisis. This plot is actually a lot of fun, with the usual hijinks you expect Han Solo to get into. Unfortunately, the rest of this novel consists of military and political posturing with absolutely no character hook to hang on-- it's just people with titles talking to/about other people with titles.

Even when there is potential for more in the politics, it is squandered: Leia goes to Hapes to convince them to join the fight on the side of the New Republic, but then just stands around while male characters fight over her. (Somehow, women can be marginalized even in the matriarchal society of Hapes.) Then, she has a vague vision of badness again and again, but does nothing about it... then something bad happens! Man, riveting. And, for the two people out there who considered the Corellian Trilogy the high point of Star Wars fiction, Luceno peppers the book with characters from that series so you don't have to miss them anymore.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode X: Hero's Trial by James Luceno

Mass market paperback, 352 pages
Published 2000
Acquired 2000(?)
Reread April 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos: Hero's Trial
by James Luceno

Year One of the Invasion (Months 7-8)
Seriously, what's up with these Star Wars books that take forever to get going? Do you guys even know what book series you're writing? I like character work as much as the next man, but in Star Wars it should happen during the action, not before it. I don't know how Luceno even got this one out to over 350 pages, because what happens is: Han Solo mopes and investigates some stuff with some guy who I guess was in another book, he gets in some fights, the Yuuzhan Vong attack a space station he's in, he stumbles into a plot, victory. Meanwhile, the actual plot is happening to bunch of characters who I am pretty sure I would not care about even if I did remember their fleeting appearances in The Black Fleet Crisis.

There's a three-page section where Luceno just describes technical modifications that happened to the Millennium Falcon in other books. Seriously!

Admittedly, Luceno is good at writing Han Solo, and that saves Hero's Trial. Han gets all the best lines, and is a total badass (as always), and his interplay with Droma is great. (I love how Han expects Droma to have heard of him, and Droma's like, "your real name's Han Organa?") The way he lucks and gambles his way through the assault on the Jubilee Wheel and the Queen of Empire are both utterly perfect. Also I really like it when Luke and Leia decide to fly in to help. And Luceno treats C-3PO as an actual character, which I think no novelist other than Stover has ever bothered to do. It's better than Stackpole's efforts, but the New Jedi Order is going to have to do better than this in the long term.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode VIII: Ruin by Michael A. Stackpole

Mass market paperback, 292 pages
Published 2000
Acquired 2000(?)
Reread April 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide: Ruin
by Michael A. Stackpole

Year One of the Invasion (Month 5)
Ruin is a curiously diffuse book, setting up plots that seem to come out of and go nowhere: Luke tracks down a Jedi who is going to get a superweapon because the Yuuzhan Vong killed her boyfriend, but he catches her and she doesn't, no fanfare. Or the New Republic scouts the Sernpidal system and discovers the Yuuzhan Vong are building a big spaceship, and do nothing about it. Jaina makes friends with Rogue Squadron off-page, and then her friends die off-page. Meanwhile Corran Horn is kicking butt on Garqi and Elegos A'Kla (who I remember liking in I, Jedi) is trying to understand Yuuzhan Vong commander Shedao Shai. Ruin plays to Stackpole's strengths more than Onslaught, in that it's more of a military novel, and Shedao Shai is a good villain, but we've still got a slow-building story with somewhat flat characters that seems to be focusing on all the wrong things.

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode VI: Onslaught by Michael A. Stackpole

Mass market paperback, 292 pages
Published 2000
Acquired 2000(?)
Reread March 2014

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide: Onslaught
by Michael A. Stackpole

Year One of the Invasion (Month 3)
Reading this validated my belief that the timeline I'm going off is miscalibrated; there's no way that the first two volumes of Invasion could fit between this and Vector Prime, as the Yuuzhan Vong have clearly not been heard from since then.

Like Vector Prime, this book suffers from starting dully, with lots of political scenes and squabbling; I'm not sure why the powers-that-be behind The New Jedi Order were so into story thread of government denial of the Yuuzhan Vong threat, because it is utterly dull. Who wants to see our heroes constantly arguing with a bunch of idiots?

I remember liking Stackpole's X-Wing novels, but I don't think he's at his best when away from that milieu. Things are a little too mechanical in his writing, a little too black-and-white, and while that's suited for stories for fighter pilots, it doesn't really work for the Jedi: the Force doesn't come across as a mystical presence, but a tool: in his books, Jedi always talk about "TK" (i.e., telekinesis), and that just feels so incredibly un-Star Wars to me. Can you imagine Alec Guinness saying it? Also, characters are constantly lecturing each other on its correct use. Again, it's hard to be interested in the philosophical debate between Luke Skywalker and Kyp Durron when the narrative clearly thinks Luke is right and Kyp is an idiot.

Stackpole's at his best when dealing with Corran Horn, the Jedi without telekinesis but with great mind powers, which leads to some inventive scenes, and there's a great ground battle on Dantooine near the end of the novel, but it just takes too long for everything to get there and get going.