I got addicted to Star Wars when I was 13 and 24 hours later, I had written my first fanfic. It was pathetic and made Leia a Mary Sue and ignored pretty much every law of good writing, but I was 13 and didn't know any better.

When I was 15, I wrote my first epic. It was 300 pages long and marginally better because it had some complex, I think, characters. I kept rushing through the important stuff because I wanted to write the fun stuff like lightsaber duels and mass destruction and even war crimes trials (based on the one John Grisham book I'd read).

I grew out of that. I took writing classes and learned the value of grammar. One brutally honest English teacher taught me how to focus my writing. I became an English major and was forced to take Creative Writing. Above all, I wrote my brains out until I learned things such as pacing and characterization and dialect.

Now, I have a good friend who has been sending me Star Wars books for some time. He has contributed everything from Allegiance to Invincible and so on and so on to my bookshelf. So, thank goodness, I didn't spend a cent on the Legacy of the Force series.

So today, as I was leaving the house, I picked up my mail and found LOTF: Invincible sitting in a nice padded envelope with a bag of candy, a note from my friend and a bookmark. I left most of that on the kitchen table since I had to make a bus, but peeled off the 20% off sticker and started reading on the one-block walk to the bus stop.

Now, let me first say that it's really not entirely Troy Denning's fault that I laughed bitterly at the end of reading this series. After all, I truly enjoyed Tatooine Ghost. I cried during Star by Star. There were even some decent moments in the Dark Nest Trilogy.

Nor is it Aaron Allston's fault. He was absolutely not the right man to tackle this subject, but he had one redeeming book as I mentioned before in the series. I have read my X-wing books so often that they're cracking and frayinig along the edges. He made me fall in love with Wes Janson.

Karen Traviss was the one author whom I had not read before this, because frankly, what I had read in passing was not my cup of tea. Still, she seemed to initially tackle the subject with understanding and elan.

Where it all went wrong is a very fundamental thing. This was supposed to be a group effort and I saw very little narrative cooperation. Yes, it was important to have each author contribute their own style to the project, but it went way, way beyond that.

The authors could have learned the necessary skills to have made this work if they had spent even 10 minutes on a fanfiction message board. When you write a round-robin there, you plan out the plot together, you work off of each other's characters and you develop an overall narrative style.

Instead, there was no such thing as seamless teamwork. We knew we could get no real character development from Karen, but, fierfek, mando'ade, bob'ika, we could expect to know how to swear in Mando by the end of the book. With Aaron, it would have rampant references to the pilots, forget that this is the SW equivalent of Nazi Germany and be inappropriately goofball. With Troy, it was S&M jokes, an attempt to be as goofy as Aaron and more plot than accurate characterization.

The Legacy of the Force is the longest insult with which the fans have been slapped since the travesty that is known as the New Jedi Order series. It is a cooperative blunder that far outstrips even the New Jedi Order.

So when I approached Invincible, I had hopes for Troy. When SxS came out, I read it while waiting for orchestra rehearsal to start. I sat in the hallway in the Harris Fine Arts Center and could not breathe during the reaction to Anakin Solo's death. I subsequently had to play the Star Wars suite during the practice and found myself bawling during Princess Leia's theme because of Troy Denning's writing. I thought, if this guy can make me weep over the death of a character I disliked just because it affected Leia, my gosh, what will the end of this series be like?!

I loved the flashbacks. They were appropriate insights into what had been.

Then began the chapter headings. You know, I enjoyed Karen's quotes to both give insight into the off-screen opinions of the Galaxy and to lighten the situation, but Troy's adoption of them seemed entirely inappropriate. Right off the bat, I finally understood what the entire stylistic point of the book was: to make a desperate attempt to show that Troy could play nice with the writing styles of the other two. Well bully for him. The problem was that he was caught up in doing that rather than paying attention to making the story work.

Now, I've seen this sort of thing happen before. I have been writing Pink 5 backstory with the director's help and blessing since 2006. Somewhere along the line, a writer tried to do a fanfic of her own. Instead of spinning off of the original movies as I have done, she tried to use every catchphrase and trademark narrative point that comprises what we call the PU--Pink5extendedUniverse, aka what I've written (and what Timothy Zahn has written into Allegiance for 2 pages). Well, when you knock off a spinoff of a work of genius, it loses its magic.

I do have to say that I feel badly for the man. He had 8 books of shoddy, squabbling plotlines and each writer's own agenda shoved into his lap and was expected to make a workable ending out of it. A friend of mine theorized that Jacen wasn't going to die, but that he was going to escape and be taken down in another series. I loved that idea because it made logical sense that if poor Mr. Denning was expected to shove the entire end of the war into 299 pages, it couldn't happen.

No, he tried. He tried valiantly, but it just didn't work. The other two writers' pet agendas were, as usual, given cameo appearances. "Oh, there's that whole plotline with Boba Fett? Let's see...um, we can fit him in between the joke about tying Han up and the need for Zekk and Jag to be shirtless to be of any interest to Jaina Solo. Pilots? Continuity? No, sorry, Jaina hasn't been made aware of her parents' sex life for a third time yet. It just goes to emphasize the fact that other than a gross reference to her having a dream about Jag and Killik mating pheremones, she's thirty-something and not GETTING ANY! No wonder she wants to kill everyone!"

See, there was a great scene in the making at the beginning with the attack on the Verpine. Though um, did anyone else notice this? The Imperial Remnant had an aerosol attack against the Verpine? So there are two ways to interpret this: 1) the way to kill off a Fett, a Solo and a station full of praying mantises is to spray their eyes with hairspray or 2) The Empire has enough technology to design weapons of mass destruction...and they just discovered Black Flag. I mean, come on.

But still, that was fun to read. Even if it took up 30 pages.

And then we finally got to see the Jedi Council actually acting like, *gasp*, THE JEDI COUNCIL! Except, of course, half of the Jedi scenes were comprised of everyone going "Oh, guess what? We finally got our Wookieepedia translated into Aurabesh and we figured out EVERYTHING we didn't know about the past! Isn't that kind of convenient?" The entire thing with the council of war made me want to read Timothy Zahn writing the height of the Rebellion. If you can't tell, I don't think any of these three writers could have actually pulled it off, but my gosh, Troy Denning came close for a bit there!

Oh, wait, we've wasted 80 pages of the book and nothing's actually happened! Quick! Who has the template? Is it time for another dumb joke as a chapter heading? Another moment where Leia offers to tie Han up and Jaina goes between "EWEWEWEW!" and "Oh, gosh, I hope I can find my one true S&M love!" No, it's time to actually remember that this book is about the rise and fall of a Sith Lord. Stick Leia in a micromini and pleather and get Ben conveniently wounded. ####ty Nurse Tahiri to the rescue! Let me 'interrogate' you with my hand down your pants on your, ahem, inguinal ligament. When S&M fails, hints of statutory rape can work just fine!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of "I'm JINO! Hear me whine!" Sure, it's nifty that he's finally mind-tricked Comcast and now he can look up what a bad guy's superpowers are supposed to be on CUSWE.

Did I mention that there was really no need to have a chase scene comprised entirely of Leia being a backseat driver and arguing with her daughter about whether they could take a short cut through the GeeCee?

The scene that made the entire book worth slogging through: Nickel One. Sure, it had the dumbest name for a location ever invented, but finally, a decent fight scene that had the token Skywalker dismemberment and the token near-escape because no way was Jaina Solo going to die if she wasn't in skin-tight pleather herself! But, um, I think he got the tone of the whole thing wrong. I mean, Jacen get's an arm whacked off and just staggers around flapping his stump and making convenient symbolic/ominous bloodstains all over his shell-shocked sister. I hadn't been that needlessly traumatized by callous lack of medical research (brachial artery bleed-out anyone? If he's gouting blood from that thing, he's gonna be dead pretty much now) since, let's see, Stephen King's Needful Things. Is it a good thing, Troy, that you put me in mind of two fat hicks disemboweling each other on a street because they both think a picture of Elvis is pleasuring them? Yeah, I didn't think so.

So Jaina makes it out of there "with legs so full of shrapnel they rattled." She has broken ribs. A concussion. And the creepy Kingesque blood trail. *s######* How convenient. One lame joke from 15-year-old Jacen and she's back in the game and ready to become the human cannonball again. (Don't even get me started on her "intrusion" tactics. I think Troy was just kind of coming up with anything that made sense to him at 5 a.m. two hours before deadline!)

So, big surprise, they get discovered at their super-secret-hiding-place-of-doom-wait-we've-never-heard-of-that-either... and make it out way too easily while Jaina finally gets onboard in time to wear skintight pleather and shake her butt at GAG members so they'll give her access. Does this remind anyone else of Tenel Ka going "Oh me oh my I can't possibly give you a fleet unless...voulez-vous coucher avec moi ces soir?" in Troy Denning's other grand flop called The Dark Nest Trilogy? Is Troy really convinced that all politics and war and marriage is based on perversion. My gosh, I hope I never meet him or his wife. I'd be too embarrassed trying to figure out what brand of kinky that man lives by.

So, finally, whoops, killed Isolder who really had no function. The Moffs have Alpha Red all over again. Jaina goes to confront Jacen. They spend time smacking each other's tendons and unraveling muscles and making really metaphysical appraisals of "OWOWOW sword across my six-pack!" and then it's like Mara's death all over again. Jacen gets distracted--Oh, crap, am going to die, have to warn my secret lover and my ####### daughter about the impending crisis--and bad-girl Jaina in her pleather shish-kabobs him right there.

And.

She.

Feels.

Nothing.

Then, Leia's reaction. With Anakin, she went into hysterics and shock. With Jacen "OH GOD! THE PAIN! Nope, that was heartburn from last night's tacos. Oh, and Jacen's dead." I'm glad that he had Han and Leia's reactions to creepifying Jaina with dead!Jacen in her lap, because that made it less contrived. Just a little. How convenient that no one can find Zekk. I smell a crappier sequel! Who was Zekk's patron, anyway?

Oh, and so, my friend alleged that the book ends with nearlydead!Jaina, dead!jacen and Jaina running off with Jag. Um, where in the entire last chapter of her joking around with Han and Leia and watching Daala get sworn in as Chief of State did she run off with Jag?

Next pet peeve: Tahiri's "redemption." She was so darn wangsty because all the Solo guys are scum and she just wants to go get a pedicure or something! And then, oh, right, the hot little bit called Ben convinces her otherwise. Is it because he's still ##### or is it because he's really really interested in her being redeemed? NO ONE CAN TELL!

So, you've just killed your brother. You're practically dead. You're out of bacta, but still have to be suspended in mid-air and bactified. So, what do you do? React to having killed your brother? Noooooo, that would be human of you. But wait, there's a mysteriously-looking-like-your-dead-brother-5-year-old-with-a-bad-dye-job! Named Amelia! Who's a war orphan. Please, god, don't let them write anything about Amelia. Or Daala, the "universally acceptable" candidate. Can I quote a t-shirt about Hillary Clinton here? "Life's a b****. Don't vote for one!" She had no character development, just showed up to take power. How frigging convenient!

I don't know if there's any way I could be more disgusted with that book. Really. Sure, they spent years putting together the plotline in the most incoherent form possible, completely ignored things like characterization and forgot Leia for an entire book, but hey, it sells, right?

So the entire point of this rant is, yes, I was once as crappy a writer as Troy was in this last book, but I grew out of it. They gave him 299 pages to throw in absolutely everything and Trekkies (or did you not notice Battlestar Voyage?) and he had so much fun with his pervy little scenes that he forgot to write a story.