First, the good parts. Mara's Force Ghost finally shows up. Hopefully, there'll be a bit more in Invincible.
Captain Shevu's story arc was nice, and the space battle wad done pretty well--minus the Mando boarding party, of course.
The political stuff was decent. Essentially, the GA has been split between Jacen and Cha Niathal, who's set up a government in exile on Fondor.
The return of Daala and the death of Pellaeon could have been avoided, and the Daala part was plain old deus ex machina. But none of these things make the story horrible.
Sigh... Mandalorians. Who the heck introduced them to KT? How did she get the idea they were so awesome?
Jaina's Mandalorian training. It has moments, but then you look back, and ask: what did she actually learn?. And the answer turns out to be:
How to become a temporary psychopath. Yes, KT actually uses the word. Basically, you shut your feelings down and treat the opponent as an object to get through, at any cost.
That's it. Everything else she "learns" is your typical pulled-out-of-KT's-ass-and-attributed-to-Fett-and-the-Mandalorians bullshit. Try this on for size:
Yes. The reason Jaina has to be the one that kills Jacen is so that the family has no excuse to blame anyone else. And KT clearly thinks Fett is admirable for forcing her to do this.Boba Fett on page 368 wrote:Because if I put him down like the vermin deserves, your family can blame that rotten Boba Fett again when the truth wears off, when you need an excuse to stop feeling bad about what you had to do.
Traviss's anti-Jedi crap fills almost the entire last quarter of the book. Like this:
Yes, KT made Admiral Daala, who gassed dozens of officers when they refused to obey her, who, in this very book, hired Mandalorians to assassinate Moffs she didn't like, an advocate of democracy.page 347 wrote:"I think there can be a third way," she said. "No Jedi Council. Keep them in their box, away from politics, and certainly never arm them.
"Ordinary barves running their own affairs? You crazy woman, Daala. It'll never catch on."
Daala also wants Fett's "consulting services" in that aspect (i.e. how to defeat Jedi). This is when you really want to be able to step into the pages of the novel and remind everyone of the Sarlacc incident.
Mando'a, of course, is still nothing more than a code for English with tons of apostrophes it always was, and I really hate the beskar (or however it is called) iron, first, because it's a bad concept, and second, because it is responsible for Mirta-Sue (Boba Fett's granddaughter) not getting sliced in half by a lightsaber. Because, in KT's world, we just can't have anything bad happen to the Fett family, unless it can be milked for anti-Jedi propaganda.
Also, in the previous books, we got the background on Fett: he left his wife when his daughter was a baby, the daughter hated him and raised her own daughter to hate him and try to kill him. Well... wrong. I mean, Fett is awesome, and can't be a bad husband or father. (I'm exaggerating here; Fett does reflect back on his life, and notes that they had marital problems, and that he never returned and saw his family.) However, the actual reason Fett left was...
because his superior officer raped his wife, and he killed him, and then wouldn't tell the court why he did it.
And Fett and his wife are going to get back together. And she's still young, so they might have another kid down the line. I don't think there's anything planned post-LOTF, but if KT does any of it, it's almost guaranteed.
And with this book, my hope that KT's pet Jedi from the Republic Commando series who fell in love with clones would die when the clones got Order 66 is gone. No surprise, but some disappointment. Both the Jedi who left the Order to become a Mando, and the son of the Jedi who fell in love with a clone are still alive.
The only good thing I have to say is that I'm glad KT isn't finishing the series. The last thing we need is for Mandalorians to save the day directly.
The series overall would be better if the authors wrote it in a differnet order. If it was Traviss, Denning, Allston, each triple would have books improve, and we could hope for the final book to be the best one of the series (Allston's books are the best not just because he is a better writer and has better grasp on the characters, but also because he doesn't have to deal with the Mandalorian crap leftover from the book preceding his).
This is a new low. (OK, not quite. The Crystal Star and the Dark Empire comics still stand out.) But... with all this baggage built up, expecting anything on the level of even, say, The Truce at Bakura in the post-ROTJ EU is stupid. I doubt I'll read anything that takes place after Invincible, because I don't care any more.
- PeZook
