Greg Keyes

I didn't think I could get any more excited to see Dawn, but Greg Keyes' prequel novel just ratcheted up my anticipation. A gripping read with a tension that grows and grows as San Francisco spirals out of control with the spread of the 'Simian Flu'. The book successfully spits the book in three; a cast of characters dealing with outbreak of the flu, while a team tries to capture the apes in the forest. The pandemic and the collapse of the city is quite the page turner, a disaster that keeps show more getting worse and worse, and as the reader you hope for the best for the cast of characters. When a crazed religious sect known as Alpha/Omega rears its head, the novel takes some really scary turns. The sections in the forest offers a relief to the tension of the global breakdown, its characters isolated for most of the book. Two ape experts; Malakai skilled in poaching them, and Clancy, a primate specialist seem a pair destined to be enemies, but how they come to work together is one of the best parts of the novel. Their characters stand out, especially Malakai, a former African child solider with a hardened back story that in most novels would prepare for him for anything; but not here. The struggle of the apes to survive is quite involving, with Keyes capturing deftly the outsider views of the apes as they try to understand the chaos around them in the human world, as well as surviving attempts to capture them. The biggest plus coming out of this novel is the complete back-story to Dreyfus, played by Gary Oldman in the movie. A man of real conscious, running as a mayoral candidate when the outbreak occurs, the reader feels great sympathy for him as his city starts to crumble around him. For fans of the newer Apes movies, this book is essential reading and one that, like me, you probably won't be able to put down till you're done. show less

This is probably the best of the post-Traitor books in The New Jedi Order, though it's also the weakest of Greg Keyes's four contribution to the saga. Jaina ends up involved in some wacky space war escapades that feel like they're there to take up page count, but the core of the book is the adventures of Jedi Knights Corran Horn and Tahiri and Yuuzhan Vong Nom Anor, Nen Yim, and Harrar trying to get to Zonoma Sekot, which might hold the key to defeating the Yuuzhan Yong. All three Yuuzhan show more Vong characters have reason to be disaffected with the leadership of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, but different reasons. Keyes is as always great with characterization, and particularly his handling of the Yuuzhan Vong stands out: all three characters might be rebels, but none of them are "good guys" as a result, and they all come to their rebellion from different perspectives still influenced by their culture. His achievement is especially notable with Harrar, who had been a paper-thin villain in James Luceno's books, but little else, prior to this.

The problem is that the action feels inconsequential; some things happen that are of importance to The Unifying Force, but the stakes aren't very high. It's a shame that this was Keyes's last Star Wars book, as I thought he, Troy Denning, and Matt Stover were the big discoveries of The New Jedi Order. Denning and Stover went on to write many more Star Wars novels (as did, alas, Luceno), but Keyes moved on to original projects after this. Though these days he's writing tie-ins to properties like Interstellar, X-COM, Independence Day, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Elder Scrolls, so I feel like returning to Star Wars would be a step up.

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One of my favorite books of the year, tied into one of my favorite movies of the year! The way Keyes expands on the stories being told in the films expands the appreciation for the series overall. My favorite aspect of the novel is how the apes are now starting to develop complex dreams, which leads to more advanced thinking and an appreciation of a world beyond the tangible. I also liked the sketching out of the remains of the human world, including the factionalism and the dire religious show more cults that remind one of the nuke-worshipping mutants from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Details such as these that make these novels so essential to the greater narrative of the movies. show less

This book gets off to another rough start, where the man who blew up the Death Star tries to convince you that taking action against aggressors could somehow lead to the Dark Side. But roll your eyes and get on to the next scene, because after that this book is brilliant. Seriously, Top 5 Star Wars books, easy. Greg Keyes completely inhabits and understands Star Wars in a way the previous New Jedi Order writers haven't. No, I'm not saying he knows his continuity (though he does and I'll get show more to that in a minute), I'm saying he knows what makes Star Wars work and he's able to replicate it without making a slavish copy of the original films. (We should note that this is a skill that even George Lucas lost sometime after 1983. Probably the only other writers to possess it are Matt Stover and John Jackson Miller.) This book gives us a young man, uncertain about his place in the universe, and plunges him into a desperate adventure with group of unlikely comrades. Okay, that seems obvious, you say, but if that's obvious then why do most Star Wars writers insist on giving us "political" "thrillers"?

Young Anakin Solo disobeys Master Luke Skywalker's order to go to the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4 because he insists it's under threat from the Yuuzahn Vong. A couple of awesome action sequences later, and he's crashed in the forest with a criminal, a crazy former TIE pilot, and two kids for company, trying to rescue someone important to him. Along the way he demonstrates his basic goodness, learns some valuable moral lessons, meets more awesome characters (some of whom die), listens to mystical prophecies, and saves the day with style. It does not get any better than this!

Extra points should be given for the fact that this is the first book where the Yuuzhan Vong feel like a real civilization. A lot of this is due to Vua Rapuung, the former warrior who befriends Anakin, and is poignant, hardcore, and hilariously deadpan all at once. But there's also the various Shamed Ones and our glimpses into the mind of Nen Yim, the young heretic shaper. This book transforms the war against an unstoppable aggressor into something more meaningful and difficult.

This is the first book in the series to make me care about Anakin Solo as a character. Keyes does this partly through just being better at writing than Salvatore, Stackpole, Luceno, and Tyers, but also he's obviously the only NJO writer to actually have read the Junior Jedi Knights books. Keyes threads Conquest with characters from this series, giving Anakin's life an emotional depth-- but just like the original Star Wars works if you haven't met Luke and his adoptive parents before, so too does Conquest (I only read the first JJK book). Is Master Ikrit the greatest Jedi Master of all time? Signs point to yes. Is Anakin/Tahiri one of the few ships I could ever admit to having? Um... I guess so. (I don't think the book quite succeeds in rationalizing why we haven't seen Tahiri and Ikrit since the NJO began, though-- Anakin has been back to Yavin 4 multiple times since the death of Chewbacca, yet he's never talked to Tahiri about it? We've never even seen him avoiding her? But that's more a critique of the other NJO novels than this one; it's amazing how this book reveals the extent to which Anakin was a blank cipher in the other books.)

I remember being this the point, seven books in, where The New Jedi Order finally clicked for me, the point where it started to work and cemented itself as something worth reading. Though I am enjoying my experiment in rereading the series with all the ancillary material included, it does exacerbate the early difficulties of the NJO-- this is the fourteenth installment! If Conquest hadn't been as good as I remembered, I might have given up here, but thankfully it was excellent, and for the first time in this reread, I am avidly anticipating going onwards.

Let's close by quoting this adorable but keenly insightful bit where Anakin is watching Tahiri as she falls asleep, reflecting on the fact that he's not seen his best friend in a year and something... something is different:

By the faint orange light of the gas giant outside, he could make out traces of her features, so familiar and yet somehow different. It was as if, below the girl's face he had always known, something else was pushing up, like mountains rising, driven by the deep internal heat of a planet.
     Something you couldn't stop even if you wanted to. It made him want to hang on and run away at the same time, and in a mild epiphany he realized he had felt that way for some time.
     As children they had been best friends. But neither of them was a child anymore, not exactly.
     His arm had gone numb from her weight, but he couldn't bring himself to shift, for fear of waking her.

Awwww...

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