Remember when Star Wars was simple? You had your good guys; you had your bad guys. Light and dark. Jedi and Sith. Those good old days are gone.

"Right and wrong, good and evil, light and dark – most of the time, they are illusions that prevent us from perceiving the greater reality. The Jedi have learned to distance themselves from these illusions, to seek the truth beneath the words." - Luke Skywalker in The Joiner King

The Joiner King picks up about 8 years after the New Jedi Order series ended, with the Jedi still trying to work out the implications of their new understanding of the Force. Jacen has been off for several years studying all sorts of different traditions and honing his Force powers in new ways. He, along with Jaina and the other survivors of the mission on which Anakin was killed, are summoned, apparently through the Force, to the Unknown Regions to help a colony of insectoid aliens in a border war with the Chiss. The problem is, the Jedi are being assimilated into the hive mind, and Han, Leia, Luke, and Mara all rush off to try to bring them back.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. There was good action in addition to some more interesting insight into the new philosophical direction the Jedi have taken. It was clear that Luke has his doubts about the new moral relativism of the Jedi order, and I hope that will be developed more fully as the series continues. The part of the book I had the most problem believing was that Jaina and her friends could be so quickly taken in by this insect colony and be so much under its control. They are Jedi, after all. I would expect them to be better able to resist what was essentially mind control. The descriptions of Jaina and Zekk rubbing forearms like giant bugs really creeped me out after a while, and I am hoping that Jaina snaps out of it in the next book! ( )

This is, arguably, the first serious STAR WARS novel in almost two years. That is, we've had the CLONE WARS books and the LABYRINTH OF EVIL/REVENGE OF THE SITH duology, which ranged from really really great down to actively awful. These books, for better or for worse, were mostly action-adventure romps wherein all the pieces are put back at the end for the main characters, we don't see the minor characters again, and there's no overall plot to speak of.

Meanwhile, though, we had THE NEW JEDI ORDER. While the CLONE WARS novels are merely set during a war, and don't really have any macroscale importance, THE NEW JEDI ORDER *was* the war; it took us from beginning to middle to end. Sure, there may have been some missteps along the way... but in the end, it was one giant space opera, in a manner that even the more serious (in terms of trying to be science-fiction, instead of a fairy-tale in space) STAR WARS movies were never really able to pull off. It's this series that DARK NEST is the successor to. Not the sequel--it doesn't touch on the plot of the NJO, and leaves the unanswered questions unanswered, though character threads were picked up.

So, if the CLONE WARS are a fairy tale, and TNJO is a massive space opera, then what's DARK NEST?

Both, to be honest.

The tone of the story is definitely more in line with the STAR WARS movies, or the CLONE WARS novels, than THE NEW JEDI ORDER was. At the same time, though, while it's a fast-paced adventure piece it continues the trend we've been seeing for a while now that really came to a head in THE NEW JEDI ORDER: it acts like a serious piece of science fiction, right down to the *groan* technobabble.

THE JOINER KING gets into some relatively heavy material for an "adventure" novel: the whole concept behind the titular Dark Nest, mainly, but also the continued ponderings on the nature of the Force extending from TRAITOR.

Perhaps my main complaint about the book is that it's started down a slippery slope of technology. The Falcon now carries war droids (and they don't even have interesting personalities a la HK-47 to justify thier presence); we have R9s now for no apparent reason; and one or two other pieces along those lines. More, none of this was actually necessary in the story. But it makes me fear a literal deus ex machina later on, beyond the minor not-so-literal one in the ending of THE JOINER KING.

Over the last five years, the Jedi have also been sliding down the slippery slope of morality as well. Most of them--even Luke--have twisted "the only 'dark side' is that within you" to "the ends justify the means". Seeing how this has affected the characters we've come to know is a bit of a shock; not everyone is as pure as you might think....

Overall: good plot, good writing as I've come to expect from Denning. Some interesting background was developed, and several moral questions were raised that aren't going to go away anytime soon, both of which mean the other two books are very promising indeed. But some bits that seemed like lazy writing (the technology that was introduced) were somewhat offputting. ( )

Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't get interested in it. ( )

Good job with the classic characters as older. ( )

Excellent book with good characterizations