Denning keeps up the suspense by separating two large groups of Jedi into two separate, critical missions and alternating viewpoints. The overall tale of the Yuuzhan Vong war continues, with new developments of tactics and R&D on each side and a major strategic shift at the end. I do wish Denning had been able to make more of the minor characters distinctive; there were times when I was referring back to the dramatis personae listing at the beginning to try to remember who was which and not finding them. ( )

I went with an audiobook for this one. It may have been abridged - there was a storyline involving the Solo children, but that was about it. If it wasn't abridged, that's a bold storytelling choice - leaving out the old, recognizable characters in favour of the 'next generation' of Jedi. Basically, the Solos and a bunch of other young Jedi go on a raid to attack the Yuhzong Vong on their own turf. Everything seems to go farly well, until they are attacked by dark Jedi and Anakin dies! Right after he became a (somewhat) interesting character, as well. Anakin's death, ironically, becomes thematically similar to Chewbacca's earlier in teh series - it's a reminder to the readers that no characters are 'safe', and that death can strike at any time. That's a very necessary atmosphere to have in war novels, I think, and it's something that the NJO novels have been kind of lacking up to this point. I must say, though, that I'm not really looking forward to the next few novels being nothing more than another Han pity party (even though I know that might seem somewhat callous to say) ( )

http://blogs.starwars.com/marvolo/5 ( )