The story really hits its stride in this volume. Cade Skywalker shows an admirable level of twistiness when placed under pressure, and a heroic quality under the mercenary exterior. Ostrander does a nice job of salting the language with Huttese invective much as Joss Whedon uses Mandarin Chinese in his Serenity universe. I still want to make Duursema watch about forty hours of Hong Kong martial arts films and get some sense of balance to her combat scenes. ( )

For every bit of badness in Legacy of the Force, there's a bit of goodness in Legacy, which can loosely be considered a followup to it-- over the span of a century, though. It's another solid installment in the saga, though perhaps my least favorite one to date. Not that it's bad-- merely good instead of excellent. The problem is Cade Skywalker. I'm just not that interested in The Last Of The Skywalkers-- will he choose of the path of good in the end? Well, duh. Or so you may think-- though Cade may reject the teachings of the One Sith in this installment, he escapes them by using the Dark Side, so I will give Ostrander some credit and admit things might not be as clear-cut as I expected. The cool part about Legacy is its new galactic society-- a nice change from the overfamiliar prequel and New Jedi Order eras-- and its expanded cast of characters. Particularly shining in this volume is Darth Krayt-- even though his true identity feels a little gratuitous-- and Morrigan Corde. I'm really looking forward to where they're going with her.