Star Wars is about choices. It's about what leads to people making choices, about why they might have made the right or wrong choices, about the pain that goes with making either of these choices and the redemption that can still be achieved after making the wrong choices.

Jacen's character was 'born' in 1991 in The Thrawn Trilogy. Seventeen years later we are seeing his character's Grand Finale in Troy Denning's Invincible.

For most of these seventeen years fans have cheered him on, wanting him to succeed and carry on his family's legacy in a positive way. During the NJO his character went through major development. In the early books events led to him refusing to use the force. He then went through a metamorphis in Traitor and came out with greater acceptance of his force abilities. The series concluded with him heading down the path of greater learning about the force. Perhaps if he had chosen to remain with the Jedi Order at this time things would have turned out very differently.

From the time of the Dark Nest Trilogy it was clear that we had an ambiguous Jacen. He was making some disturbing choices and was beginning to rationalise these decisions in disturbing ways.

By the beginning of Legacy of the Force it was clear that Jacen's choices were leading him down a dark path.

As Legacy of the Force progressed it was even more clear that there would be no easy redemption from this dark path. We were not going to get a happy ending for Jacen.

In my opinion, as the series progressed the only reasonable ending was one that involved no future for Jacen's character. It was just a matter of how his character died and whether he achieved redemption before dying.

Troy Denning wrote the book that gave us the end of Anakin Solo and the events that led to the beginning of the end of Jacen Solo, Star by Star. It was an enormously powerful book that took us through a major turning point in the Yuuzhan Vong war, describing the broad macro events of the war in considerable detail as well as the various micro events involving the central characters. It gave us an extraordinary insight into the grief felt by parents at the loss of their son and the flow of grief through the force felt by relatives, friends and acquaintances.

I was looking forward to another enormously powerful book such as this to conclude the Legacy of the Force series.

The Book as Jacen's Grande Finale

From the prologue it was clear to me that the author was aware that something was going to happen in this book that should not be taken lightly. We were going to see the end of a character that has been with us for all those years and we were reminded of some of the history. More importantly, we were reminded of the special relationship between Jacen and his twin Jaina - the person we all knew was going to be the one who would bring him down.

I felt myself tearing up from that first page.

The 'jokes' at the beginning of each chapter were things that I knew had annoyed some people, but to me they carried on this important recognition that something serious was happening. This was someone who had a light side (broadly speaking), who had been just a kid like other kids and who we had laughed or groaned with as he was growing up.

The occasional references, or even flashbacks, to events of the past reminded us about the good while we were seeing the consequences of the bad.

In the early chapters we read about Han and Leia's rationalisation that Jacen was already dead and that Caedus was the person they were now dealing with. Even with this approach, though, they were still apprehensive - and not only because of their concern that they could lose their last child, Jaina.

For her part, Jaina recognised that this was her brother but that she had to avoid being distracted by that fact if there was to be any chance of her surviving the encounter to come with Caedus. This was not something she was taking lightly, but was something she recognised had to be done.

It was recognised by all the relevant characters that there was no hope for Jacen's redemption. They had analysed (although largely by reference to previous discussions rather than going through the process in this book) that previous incidents meant that they could not successfully bring down the Sith without killing Jacen. It was just a matter of making sure that this happened without creating a new Sith in the process.

I found this to be credible and absorbing. The characters were generally very matter-of-fact in their approach, but we knew from the outset that they had to be detached in their approach - they were all so connected that it was the only way to deal with the situation without descending into the dark themselves. It was in its own way sad that these characters could not be emotional about what they were doing.

The author did a marvellous job telling this aspect of the story. Whilst I have read that many others have differing views, I do not think that this could have been written any better than it has been.

It was the highly emotional conclusion to Jacen's story that I had been expecting and it was given the solemnity it deserved.

The Book as the Finale of Legacy of the Force

There were many issues that could or should have been wrapped up in this book:

- what happens to the Correllians
- what happens to the rest of those who opposed the GA
- what happens to the GA after Jacen
- what happens to the Imperial Remnant after Pellaeon
- what happens to the Jedi Order after being on the run for so long

and at a more personal level

- what happens with Luke and Ben now that they face a peaceful future without Mara
- what happens to Han and Leia now that they have just one child, but have gained a grandchild
- what happens to Tenel Ka and Allana after Jacen
- what happens to Jaina/Jag/Zekk
- what happens to Lon Shevu
- what happens to the Mandalorians
- what happens to Wedge, Tycho, Gavin and all the others in the background that we want to know about.

I expected that all of the broad issues would be wrapped up in this book. I expected that during the course of the book there would be indicators of how each of these story threads would be resolved with some detailed resolution at the end.

Instead, without giving too much away, we received little indication/build up and an almost 'by the way' approach as the book reached its conclusion.

As for the personal aspects of the story - apart from the whole grief issue, dealt with in my earlier comments, I was quite disappointed.

Again, without giving too much away, we still had way too many personal relationships left up in the air, few of the series' characters acknowledged and - yet again - a missing presumed (but we all know not) dead character. That particular type of story line is becoming as old as the cloned characters and/or non-deaths of Corran Horn in the x-wing books.

There were also some plot developments - including some decisions by Luke (for example, the decision about the suicide mission) about which I am still ambiguous. This is not necessarily a bad thing - we should never expect everything to be black or white. I'll see if re-reading makes my feelings any more clear...

Conclusion

So, bottom line, overall the story of Invincible was a tad (but only a tad) disappointing - especially when this is the same author who wrote the magnificent Star by Star so we all know that he has it in him to write this broader story.

Deliberate choices (there's that word again) were made to narrow the focus of the book. I'm not sure that this was the right choice.

I'm going to re-read the whole series before commenting on my overall views of Legacy of the Force - maybe when I read all the books in quick succession I'll feel a little differently about this book, but having just finished it for the first time my view is that it is a great conclusion to the Jacen Solo saga, but only a good conclusion to the Legacy of the Force.