The Black Fleet Crisis was written by Michael P. McKube-McDowell and published in 1996-1997. It is set 16 years ABY and is the series which seems to have caused the most confusion amongst EU readers in that many incorrectly think that Luke found his mother (but not Padme) in this series...

The series is being discussed in the BC&T forum in this thread and more information about the books and their blurbs can be found here.

My thoughts on this series were posted in the thread here:

I've just finished the first of the trilogy - Before the Storm - and was pleasantly surprised that it was not as bad as I was expecting.

Once again the portrayal of Luke was the weak point (why do so many EU authors have trouble with him). Leia's characterisation was limited but was not too bad.

... and I don't quite get Lando's part in it all.

It started rather slowly, but once I got past the first 50 or so pages it actuallky moved reasonably quickly.

So - on to Shield of Lies I go.

then here:

The author has made it exceptionally easy for me to ignore the part of SoL that does not interest me: with the book unusually neatly divided into thirds with the "Lando" part being discretely contained in the first hundred pages I am just skipping over those for the time being and heading straight into the "Luke" part (although the "Leia" part is what interests me most and I was strongly tempted just to head to the last 100 pages and forget all of the rest!).

and here:

Well, Shield of Lies down, only Tyrant's Test to go.

As I said earlier, I decided to skip the Lando segment because it just seemed irrelevant. (The decision to split this book into thirds was odd, but useful in this respect).

The Luke part was a little better than I was expecting, but still seemed under-par. I just wanted to get to the important part of the story - what was happening with Leia and the Yevetha.

I was rather surprised towards the end to see so many similarities between Yevethan culture and what came later with the Yuuzhan Vong. Perhaps it was because of this that we did not read anything about the war between the two ... it would have been a pure blood-bath.

The ending really got me in, so that I am looking forward to the next book to find out what happens to this part of the story. I dread having to wade through the other parts, though, as this time around the author has not so conveniently split the stories.

then finally:

Finally finished!

Once again I ignored the Lando subplot, except at the very end where it integrated with the Luke story line.

Once again I was disappointed with the Luke story line ... I just didn't get where his head was meant to be at all.

And I was sadly disappointed with the way the Leia part dissolved in this third part of the trilogy ... with her having no apparent input from the time of the decision to go to war, and just vaguely reappearing in the Epilogue. Very disappointing.

However, the Yevethans were a reasonable foe and made for a good change from Empire/Superweapons (as I said re the middle book, the Yuuzhan Vong do seem to be remarkably similar in many respects).

I am not sorry that I read (well two thirds of) this trilogy ... but I don't think I'll be hurrying back to re-read it.

...and in response to a comment regarding Leia's characterisation (shown in bold):

It just seemed like she [Leia] thought she knew more than some people did about their own area of expertise.

I think that it was meant to be in part a shadow of her family history in combination with her wish for a peaceful solution that led to this. That seemed to be spelt out in the first book but was not really folowed through subsequently. Maybe it was assumed that this impression would linger and it would be overkill to restate it.

There was also the problem that she was concerned about the impression that others would have if she, with her family history, was seen to be the aggressor. This was playing intot he hands of the Yevethan ut as she was totally ignorant of their motives she was unaware of this.

However, I think she could have explained her position to the others better rather than treating them like servants being dismissed.

and in relation to a comment about Luke's characterisation (shown in bold) I replied:

Smashing up someone else's spacecraft for no good reason doesn't seem like what one would expect from Luke

It struck me as VERY odd too. For awhile I thought that maybe it was meant to be symbolic of his moving away from being a combatant to an ascetic, but even that didn't really make sense.

Then again, not much of what Luke did in this trilogy made an awful lot of sense (and why did he not "feel" Leia's distress through these difficult times - she may not have called for him directly, but I would have thought that the pain of the kidnapping of Han would have been radiated to him).


It is worth noting that the author has his own FAQ site here.


Links to all of my reviews/overview blogs can be found in this blog.