Allies

This book is based off a series called Star Wars. A father named Luke Skywalker with his son Ben travel the galaxy to find an evil force. Supprised by an offer by the sith to make an alliance, they set of to a planet called Klatoin. Nearing the planet they call apon the help of Lando Calrisian. His ship is the only hope of geting through a series of black holes known as the Maw. When Lando sets off Luke decides to go ahead of him into the Maw. Ben falls in love with a daughter of the sith.

The reason i like this book is due to the fact that it is a Star Wars book. I always liked Star Wars. It is also a Si-Fi book. I also perfer books that sometimes dont make scence. It also gives people the thought that these books can make a movie. I would recommend this book to Si-Fi readers. These books are cool.

This book is based off a series called Star Wars. A father named Luke Skywalker with his son Ben travel the galaxy to find an evil force. Supprised by an offer by the sith to make an alliance, they set of to a planet called Klatoin. Nearing the planet they call apon the help of Lando Calrisian. His ship is the only hope of geting through a series of black holes known as the Maw. When Lando sets off Luke decides to go ahead of him into the Maw. Ben falls in love with a daughter of the sith.

The reason i like this book is due to the fact that it is a Star Wars book. I always liked Star Wars. It is also a Si-Fi book. I also perfer books that sometimes dont make scence. It also gives people the thought that these books can make a movie. I would recommend this book to Si-Fi readers. These books are cool. ( )

I have a hard time picturing how a whole society can function on Sith terms - at least as openly as they are. No one makes any pains to disguise betrayal - not even among family or friends. Yet, this series does a good job of showing how easily betrayal comes to so many. Luke has solved one of the problems facing the Jedi, but the shakiness of the government isn't so easily fixed. ( )

The first thing I can say about this fifth book is that it's a reassuring size. The last one by Golden was a bit thinner than the rest of the series, but this one isn't. As for the story, it's much better than the first three in the series.

As I often do, I'll start by discussing the characters, and in particular with my favourite character - Vestara. Vestara is a Sith apprentice, a bad guy by definition, but I find that I can't help but like her, can't help but want her plans to succeed. As in the previous book, we don't see an awful lot of scenes from her point of view, but if anything this makes her character more interesting, and the rare chapter that is from her perspective an exciting glimpse into her life.

And one of the ways we get to explore Vestara is through Ben, and his interactions with her, which are both interesting and amusing. I must admit to really enjoying their scenes together. However, some of his moods and ideas about things switch rapidly and are often unexplained. However, this is much more true of Luke - quite a major character. He just seemed a bit too vague a character. One minute he hated the Sith, the next he was agreeing with them - even with strange ideas that I don't see why anyone would agree with. So it's a little strange that I found the other Sith in general to be quite good characters. None of them were as major characters as Luke, Ben or Vestara, but I felt that they were done really well - particularly the High Lord and Vestara's Father.

This whole paragraph is a spoiler, so look away now if you don't want to know anything. Daala gets the Mandalorians to siege the Jedi Temple. As a political move, this is pretty silly. People kind of like the Jedi, and kind of dislike the Mandalorians. I can see why she want to do it for her own pet hate of the Jedi, but I always thought of her as more level headed than that.

I'm not really liking the character that Daala is becoming, and the whole thing about the trials of Tahiri and Niathal are kind of tedious. it was interesting at first, and Tahiri's lawyer is an interesting character, but it just seems that it's going on for an awful long time. I don't mind reading it, it's not that bad, but I don't look forwards to those sections. I had been hoping it would have been cleared up by the end of this book, but it hasn't. In fact, it seems to be one of the few things that weren't.

The ending seemed a bit strange to me. It all happened quite fast, but it felt like the story was pretty much over. There was still the trial as mentioned a moment ago, and a brief scene with two people pretending to be jedi which made no difference to the story but suggests another, but the main story arcs seem to have vanished. Except the characters disagree. I'm not really sure where the story can go from here.

It was an improvement on the first three books, but not as good as the fourth. The main body of the book was good, and I really liked Vestara, but the ending was a bit too final. There's another four books to go, but not an awful lot of story to go with them. But it's made the series as a whole that little bit better, and it was fun to read - so if you don't mind a slow start, this series is looking better all the time. ( )

Allies is a very divisive book, mostly for its moments of wonderful characterization and then character derailment, as well as some minor pacing issues. However, the good far outweighs the bad, and it works very well.

Following their alliance with the Lost Tribe of Sith, Luke and Ben go to Klatooine, where they await Lando's arrival, so that they can get into the Maw safely and kill Abeloth. As they deal with that, the Jedi are swarmed with negative public opinion and Chief of State Daala has a new plan to make them look worse than they already do.

Like I said before, there were some rough patches here, foremost among them the handling of a certain relationship, as well as some surprisingly (debatable) misogynistic traits in characterization, which comes as a surprise, as the author is a woman and handled all of her characters well in Omen. Some parts were disappointing, but the bonding between Ben and Vestara was much appreciated, especially since they both realize that they can never trust each other given their current situation. ( )