Happy New Year and all that jazz, enjoy it, we now have less than 6 years until we see if the Mayans were right

I'm posting this on my new 22 inch, widescreen, HD monitor, woot!
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This novel was a hard one to place... I liked it in the same way I liked Betrayal, but this very much feels like the end of the Prequel Trilogy arc of Legacy. We all knew where this was going (and where it will likely continue to go for another novel or two), so, in the words of Harrison Ford to George Lucas regarding the creation of Indy 4 "Get on with it, man!". Thankfully it's still not as bad as the Yuuzhan Vong arc where we all knew where it was going from Book 1 and it took us 19 to get there.

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SPOILERS FROM HERE FORWARD!
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I wanted to shoot Ben Skywalker by the end of the novel, but I think that was intended.

Once again, Jacen is the character I want (really I do!) to love... but he keeps setting off my common sense alarm! We're expected to believe and accept that Jacen is so committed to the letter of the law and equality of justice for all to the point that he'd fire on his own parents (speaking of which, the standout "mini-moment" of the novel is the Anakin Solo needing to draw on battery power to keep the lights on when it fires its cannons), but we're also expected to believe that he'd start assaulting people with Vader-grips? Hm...
Having Jacen wear a cape this early on was a bit over the top I suppose, but worked for me.

For that and the overall "this is just leading up to the real tension later in the series" feeling, I was tempted to give this a 3 out of 5, but then I started to reward the book for what it did well and brought it up to 4.

First up, in contrast to Bloodlines (and Betrayal to a lesser degree), Aurra Sing's comeback works as a callback to the prequels. Why? Because she's not a forced prequel reference; she's a character that's an actual - required - part of the novel. It even makes sense that she'd bring up the fact that she saw Anakin Skywalker race. I mean, if you saw a young Joseph Stalin play soccer - wouldn't you remember it years later? It'd be an interesting story! So there's one kudo to Mr. Denning: he makes the prequels work for him fluidly, rather than placing them up as a speedbump and drawing undue attention to it. Once again these stories take place 59 years after Episode III and 36 after Episode VI. They don't need to be referenced every 3 seconds (the only "speedbump" reference I can recall is Leia commenting that Han wouldn't want to kiss a Hutt).

Secondly, if anyone recalls my review of the Dark Nest Trilogy, I found Denning to play up Jedi abilities waaaay too much. It wasn't until later that I learned he used to work in video games and made that make perfect sense. Thankfully he seems to have toned this down largely. The most exaggerated power was Lumiya turning the entire bar against Luke, but I'll discount that as being a side-effect of them all being drunk and already being easily manipulated low-lifes
Oh and Allana's little moment with the knock-out tube didn't really work for me either, but whatever, I was just glad the "silver cylinder" wasn't a lightsaber.

Lastly, for 3-5 consecutive pages I was thoroughly convinced that Denning was going to blow up the Falcon, Han, and Leia in one fell swoop and become the most controversial Star Wars author since R. A. Salvatore. That actually would have been a bold move in my opinion and would have worked well, but the series would only be 5 or 6 books long then - instead of nine - because Jacen would need to die immediately. Thankfully I hadn't seen the cover for Exile or I would have missed out on this genuinely tension filled moment so rare in Star Wars novels. That alone boosted it from 4 to 4.25

A rather good book and certainly worth the read... I just wish they'd get on with it. We know Jacen goes full-Sith.

Off-topicish: why does Lumiya's whip have leather threads? Wouldn't the Lightsabered threads kinda... immediately destroy them?
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Warning! Baseless rambling predictions ahead

I haven't even read the teaser section for Exile or anything else beside the fact that Jacen needs to go Full-Sith soonish in order to fulfill his destiny of receiving a name from the "Darth Who?" contest (I'm still mad about a major (if obvious) spoiler being a contest, whose idea was that?).

I predict Tenel Ka will eventually turn against Jacen. Ben will also turn to the Good side (well, Luke's side anyway). Jacen will kill Tenel Ka. Allana will become his Sithly apprentice and they shall rule the galaxy as father and daughter... for 15 minutes. Luke, Ben, Mara Jade, R2-D2, and Boba Fett (who has obviously become a Jedi - he's practically the only character that hasn't) will defeat Darth Jacen, but then Kyle Katarn will finally snap, kill everyone (except Ben, who will go into exile), and rule the galaxy as Darth Krayt.

What? It could happen
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◄Rive "Kyle Katarn Addict" Caedo►
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