Our first glimpse of life after the Yuuzhan Vong for our heroes was delivered and finished by Troy Denning a couple days ago. My thoughts on the third installment, as well as the trilogy as a whole follows below.

I already posted my thoughts on the first two books earlier, as far as the Swarm War goes, it too had problems. While it was nice to see Leia's character evolve, other's suffered. Luke never blasted out force lightning (thank goodness) and the solution to the Killik problem made sense. But so many plot threads were left unfinished. Jacen and Tenel Ka's story was never rounded out in a satisfactory way. Luke's reforming of the Jedi Order was totally dumped halfway through. Jaina, Zekk, and Jag needed to be sorted out.

As far as the series as a whole goes, I really did not enjoy it. The Killik plot line could have been utilized correctly, but these books took it to the wrong direction. Billions and billions of bugs fighting millions of Chiss isn't very convincing. Too many of the locations were unfamiliar, too many of the species were new, especially after the NJO, we need locations and species that we knew and cared about. The technology was not introduced enough, Stealth X's were one example of this, why couldn't we either introduce them properly or just stick to XJ wings or E-wings?

But here's my main complaint, the Jedi were too powerful. The point is not that they can do this, continuity does allow the Jedi too use these powers and act like this, but that's not the point! The point is that it's not fun! We like our Jedi how they are; we don't want them to change. It's simply more enjoyable for the Jedi to be the Jedi of old. What exactly is fun about Jaina and Zekk clicking their throats and rubbing antenni? Nothing, sure, it could happen, sure it may even make sense, but that's not nearly as important as whether or not it is enjoyable. Fun shouldn't contradict continuity, but if they do, fun should take priority.