Troy Denning

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 show more 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.

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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 show more 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...

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Would it be that Troy Denning had been writing Star Wars novels ten years earlier, because in many ways, this is the novel that The Courtship of Princess Leia should have been. Bridging the gap between Courtship and Heir to the Empire, Tatooine Ghost takes Han and Leia to Tatooine so that they can recover an important painting at auction. But what it ends up doing is confronting Leia with her past: the grandmother she never knew and the father she doesn't want to.

Tatooine Ghost links show more elements revealed in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones into the original Star Wars characters to great effect: the sequences where Leia reads the diary of Shmi (surely one of the most underrated Star Wars characters) are excellent, even riveting, despite their flashback status. These are used to drive Leia's emotional journey-- which is paralleled with her physical journey. This is a harrowing escapade for Leia, Han, and Chewbacca. I doubt that any other Star Wars stories have revealed the harshness of Tatooine quite so effectively as this one.

What Denning also does well is write the Han/Leia relationship. I think this can be a tricky one to manage, because you have to be true to the films in depicting their characters-- which don't really show Han and Leia in a committed relationship very much. But Denning manages to get their characters spot on, and yet portray the depth of the commitment they have to one another.

There are a lot of things to like about this book: a good role for Chewbacca, random prequel characters like Kister and Wald, a Thrawn cameo, and best of all, the Squibs! Denning doesn't forget that Star Wars should be zany and funny. I loved it everytime they showed up and caused trouble, well-intentioned in their own way.

The pacing could maybe be better-- the second half drags a little bit as they travel through the desert so much-- but on the whole this is one of my favorite Star Wars novels. show less

And here it is, the long-awaited conclusion to most recent Star Wars novel saga, Legacy of the Force. LotF has been a bit of a mixed bag all around-- though many of the individual novels have been fairly good or even excellent, the whole they add up to has been less than cohesive. This book is a case in point. The Jaina of this book feels nothing like the Jaina of Revelation-- which is a real blunder, given that half of Revelation was setup for Jaina's role in this book! Darth Caedus was an show more impotent villain up until the end, hardly worthy of a nine-book series, and this book really shows up one of the series' weaknesses as a whole: once the Jedi finally, actually, honestly decide to pit themselves against Caedus, they defeat him in about a week. So why did they just sit around for the rest of the series? The tight POV on Jaina, Jacen, and Ben is also a baffling choice for the final book in the series, as it essentially prevents many of the threads from the rest of the series from being wrapped up. (Not that the threads ever really ran cohesively from book to book in the first place.) And the less said about the stupidity of the epilogue, the better. The thing with the jokes at the beginning of each chapter was very good, however. A disappointing end to a disappointing series that has caused me to decide to never buy a Star Wars hardcover ever again. (Well, I say that now.) show less