Star Wars: Invincible
I cannot currently think coherenly about BSG so I will write up my ep reaction to that in a day or two. Meanwhile, I will talk about the last book in the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force series.
I really have no idea how to even begin this review. The book provoked a very strong reaction in me, but whether or not I liked it, I find hard to tell. Whether or not the reaction I had was the reaction Troy Denning intended, I also find hard to tell.
It's a very, very spare book, and with the exception of the epilogue, I think that works in its favour. There is nothing here that doesn't need to be here. Vader's surviving grandchildren and Tahiri - standing in for the loss and empty space left by Anakin Solo; every move on her journey informed by it - dance through the story, hunting each other and saving each other and killing each other.
And Luke... Luke is where I really don't know where to start. With his eyes, blazing white? With dialogue that ends in, "mine...mine," in a totally different context but verbally identical to his sister's vision, all those years ago, of a Sith Lord trying to steal her children for the darkness?
Truthfully, I don't think Denning was trying to foreshadow Luke's descent into darkness. I'm not interested in that story because it would have to end with his redemption and that would be cheap, especially in the face of past stories such as Dark Empire.
But at the same time, for the first time in my EU-reading career, I believed there was a darkness, haunted and driven about Luke.
I think that I saw in him Paul Muad'dib or Leto II from the DUNE series. Not a meglomaniacal evil overlord, but a tyrant. A title and an attitude that does not exist in the light/dark Jedi/Sith duality of the galaxy and so I...can't parse it properly in the context of the novel.
Frankly, he did not feel human to me. He was terrifying. But much like Denning's last series in the EU - the Dark Nest trilogy - I find myself reading themes and subtexts as powerful and clear to me as riptides, but still, under the surface. Things I can't be 100% sure I'm not imagining. Things I don't know if other authors will ever use. Like ending The Swarm War with Luke wondering how the Order will survive without him, and pondering the failure of having to make himself Grandmaster, but then the next series...it's all aces. His Grandmasterhood is...grand.
I don't know. I just don't know.
I know that Jacen Solo originally began this path because he turned around and murdered a friend because he couldn't see a future in which she survived that did not also include him killing his Uncle Luke.
I know it's easy to say, "Luke would rather have died than seen Jacen as a Sith Lord."
But how can we answer the question: What sort of future is it where it's better that Jacen end up killing Luke? How would that ever have come about? Was Jacen always destined to become dark, or did Luke need killing?
I know that Luke is repeatedly portrayed in this novel as detached and intimidating. Is explicitly compared to a dejarik player - not in a tactical and practical sense, but from the perspective of his niece, the pawn. And what is the player to the pawn? The hand of god: nigh onmniscient, inscrutable, allpowerful.
I know that I was infinitely and hugely relieved when I saw Jaina turning a critical eye on the Mandalorians, questioning their attitudes more roundly than she did in the last novel, choosing to discard their attitudes when she felt to keep them would stop her from being a Jedi.
Repeatedly, Jaina makes choices to save people she "shouldn't" for cold, practical reasons. Or to try and save them. To jeopardise herself and her mission for Ben, for her parents, for dying Verpine she's never spoken to before. And these traits are good, positive things.
And she ignores the Mandalorians when they tell her not to bother.
And she ignores Luke.
Luke turns on her - his Blazing Eyes moment - when she tries to ask whether it's worth the lives she thinks her Uncle will sacrifice to keep her element of surprise against her brother, snapping at her that it's not her responsibility to worry about those lives. Though it's a human, normal, compassionate and selfless response. He lectures her about her attachments; an almost painful admission of his own flaws and his own situation, before he drops her from the ship into the battle in her dropsuit. Talks to her about how the dark side can creep in through her own emotions when she faces Caedus. But...Jaina isn't the one who's heading after her brother in Vengeance. Jaina is not Luke and Jacen is not Lumiya, and when Jaina finds herself in the middle of battle, she makes a judgement call and risks herself to save her parents - deliberately and expressly against Luke's orders - because to do otherwise would be to make choices on the same path as Jacen. And later, she makes another judgement call and doesn't help her parents and trusts them, and both times she is right.
And Luke is...inhuman. Not dark. I loved his smackdown of Boba, pointing out that Boba tried to use the Jedi as badly as the Jedi used his troopers.
But I do feel that there's something unsettling and nauseous about Jaina having to treat her Jedi advice with the same kid gloves as the advice she receives from Boba Fett.
Something is separating Luke from Jacen in terms of the morality of his decision making, but to be honest with you, if we take it back to Betrayal, I'm not sure what.
Luke frightens me here. And I think what frightens me most is the notion that his behaviour may never be addressed in subsequent novels. Because Denning is doing That Thing again. That thing where I think - in isolation - this is a masterpiece of subtlety. Characterisation that unsettles me without my ever being able to point and say, "Here, this is what's wrong." A creepy, chilling undertone that hides effortlessly under the surface of a seemingly average novel.
But then, the last few times he's done That Thing, those themes weren't really picked up on, those promises remained empty.
Perhaps it's my faith in the direction of the EU that's hollow. Everything I'm reading points towards implosion. Something rotten in the state of the Alliance, and in the state of the Jedi Temple too. But that's in tension with the out-of-universe fact that I believe the authors are straight-jacketed into certain things, like, we can't ever make Luke a failure for too long; we can't have him die; he can't have a tragic ending, the Jedi must remain strong and Democracy must be paid lipservice as long as he lives. So I end up wondering...am I imagining this? If I'm not is there a point?
Because as unsettling as my interpretation of this Rotten-ness is, it's more unsettling when it gets dropped utterly. Because it's still there in my mind, in the background, behind everyone's smiles.
So yes. In case you hadn't noticed, Luke really creeped me out in this novel and not even this many paragraphs of babbling have helped me work out my issues.
Regarding Ben, I've liked him for a long time, though I really, really don't think he's ready to be a Knight. Mind you, my faith in Luke's judgement isn't huge right now. To compare him to Anakin Solo, there's something tragic about the way he's been cut loose, declared an adult, already. Anakin kept trying to do that for himself, but there was always a sense from his parents, from his siblings, from his Uncle, that reminded us how young he was. Anakin was Ben in Exile, and became Ben in Revelation only in the final novel of his career.
You know the other thing I wonder is how they'll handle Ben as he grows up. I always wondered how they'd handle grown-up Anakin Solo. It's...so much easier to be the idealistic hero when you're young. It's Luke's core problem. He started being the Old Man when the core of his personality was the Young Hero.
Jacen was finally, finally terrifying. Because they dialled back the insanity and made it quieter. Because here is the Sith Lord we were promised in Betrayal. Pensive, sorrowful, so far gone, he passed through madness and found a quiet space on the other side.
I like this Jacen because he refuses to be categorised simply. He loves Allana absolutely and unconditionally and truthfully, and treasures that pain because it is real and because it strengthens him and because it reminds him of why he did this. But that love doesn't make him a good man or prevent him from being a murderer or a Sith.
When Jaina disabled him so thoroughly he knew he would be unable to defend himself from her final attack, he chose to use his last moment to save his daughter. Selflessly. But that doesn't mean that he became a good man. It doesn't mean that if Jaina had hesitated (and she only realised what he was doing as she was killing him), and not killed him, he wouldn't have used his next move to force-blast her to death as she feared.
I love that he isn't simple. People talk about using love as redemption, and that's a great and powerful thing, but Vader denied that love, and when he refound it, and saved his son, was liberated and chose to cast off the shackles of the dark side.
Jacen never stopped loving Allana. And never considered his love of her to be at odds with his Sith persona. That he died for her doesn't mean that he repented.
I don't know what it means. I don't know if he repented. I don't know anything.
I know that Jaina, holding her dead twin's corpse, affected me more than I thought it would.
I know that I feel a great deal of this series lacked in execution what only, really, Betrayal and Invincible managed to capture.
I know that a good end novel doesn't redeem the whole thing, however much I wish it did.
I know that I feel like this whole series was written to get to the scene with Jaina holding her dead twin, who she just killed, quietly insane with grief. And you know what? I bloody well agree that that's a powerful enough scene that it serves as its own justification for writing a story that leads to it. But it doesn't justify a 9 book series. For that, you need more, and Legacy of the Force didn't have it. But it doesn't stop that scene from being powerful.
I know that I loved the complexities that defied categorisation in almost every character, and I know that I hope I'm not making them up and that Luceno will continue with the theme of confusion and loss and an unnameable something being gone from the galaxy: everything out of balance.
And finally, I know that I will not touch that Daala-as-CoS stuff with a BARGE POLE because I truthfully and honestly believe that if the "thunderous applause" was not a deliberate nod to Palpatine's election, it is the most nonsensical, offensive, surreal, bizarre and stupid development I have ever seen. That even if there is some weird chain of events that makes this development believable in-universe, the fact that it was never explained to the reader renders it moot. If there is no irony, IT IS AWFUL. And if I were giving this novel a score, it would lose a millionty points just for this.
I am, however, not giving it a score because I hate scoring things.
So I will simply say: it made me think a lot more than I was expecting. I think I might actually love this book in isolation, even as I fear for what the context of wider canon will do to all the bits I love. And I think I might hate it for making me love it so.
So there.
I really have no idea how to even begin this review. The book provoked a very strong reaction in me, but whether or not I liked it, I find hard to tell. Whether or not the reaction I had was the reaction Troy Denning intended, I also find hard to tell.
It's a very, very spare book, and with the exception of the epilogue, I think that works in its favour. There is nothing here that doesn't need to be here. Vader's surviving grandchildren and Tahiri - standing in for the loss and empty space left by Anakin Solo; every move on her journey informed by it - dance through the story, hunting each other and saving each other and killing each other.
And Luke... Luke is where I really don't know where to start. With his eyes, blazing white? With dialogue that ends in, "mine...mine," in a totally different context but verbally identical to his sister's vision, all those years ago, of a Sith Lord trying to steal her children for the darkness?
Truthfully, I don't think Denning was trying to foreshadow Luke's descent into darkness. I'm not interested in that story because it would have to end with his redemption and that would be cheap, especially in the face of past stories such as Dark Empire.
But at the same time, for the first time in my EU-reading career, I believed there was a darkness, haunted and driven about Luke.
I think that I saw in him Paul Muad'dib or Leto II from the DUNE series. Not a meglomaniacal evil overlord, but a tyrant. A title and an attitude that does not exist in the light/dark Jedi/Sith duality of the galaxy and so I...can't parse it properly in the context of the novel.
Frankly, he did not feel human to me. He was terrifying. But much like Denning's last series in the EU - the Dark Nest trilogy - I find myself reading themes and subtexts as powerful and clear to me as riptides, but still, under the surface. Things I can't be 100% sure I'm not imagining. Things I don't know if other authors will ever use. Like ending The Swarm War with Luke wondering how the Order will survive without him, and pondering the failure of having to make himself Grandmaster, but then the next series...it's all aces. His Grandmasterhood is...grand.
I don't know. I just don't know.
I know that Jacen Solo originally began this path because he turned around and murdered a friend because he couldn't see a future in which she survived that did not also include him killing his Uncle Luke.
I know it's easy to say, "Luke would rather have died than seen Jacen as a Sith Lord."
But how can we answer the question: What sort of future is it where it's better that Jacen end up killing Luke? How would that ever have come about? Was Jacen always destined to become dark, or did Luke need killing?
I know that Luke is repeatedly portrayed in this novel as detached and intimidating. Is explicitly compared to a dejarik player - not in a tactical and practical sense, but from the perspective of his niece, the pawn. And what is the player to the pawn? The hand of god: nigh onmniscient, inscrutable, allpowerful.
I know that I was infinitely and hugely relieved when I saw Jaina turning a critical eye on the Mandalorians, questioning their attitudes more roundly than she did in the last novel, choosing to discard their attitudes when she felt to keep them would stop her from being a Jedi.
Repeatedly, Jaina makes choices to save people she "shouldn't" for cold, practical reasons. Or to try and save them. To jeopardise herself and her mission for Ben, for her parents, for dying Verpine she's never spoken to before. And these traits are good, positive things.
And she ignores the Mandalorians when they tell her not to bother.
And she ignores Luke.
Luke turns on her - his Blazing Eyes moment - when she tries to ask whether it's worth the lives she thinks her Uncle will sacrifice to keep her element of surprise against her brother, snapping at her that it's not her responsibility to worry about those lives. Though it's a human, normal, compassionate and selfless response. He lectures her about her attachments; an almost painful admission of his own flaws and his own situation, before he drops her from the ship into the battle in her dropsuit. Talks to her about how the dark side can creep in through her own emotions when she faces Caedus. But...Jaina isn't the one who's heading after her brother in Vengeance. Jaina is not Luke and Jacen is not Lumiya, and when Jaina finds herself in the middle of battle, she makes a judgement call and risks herself to save her parents - deliberately and expressly against Luke's orders - because to do otherwise would be to make choices on the same path as Jacen. And later, she makes another judgement call and doesn't help her parents and trusts them, and both times she is right.
And Luke is...inhuman. Not dark. I loved his smackdown of Boba, pointing out that Boba tried to use the Jedi as badly as the Jedi used his troopers.
But I do feel that there's something unsettling and nauseous about Jaina having to treat her Jedi advice with the same kid gloves as the advice she receives from Boba Fett.
Something is separating Luke from Jacen in terms of the morality of his decision making, but to be honest with you, if we take it back to Betrayal, I'm not sure what.
Luke frightens me here. And I think what frightens me most is the notion that his behaviour may never be addressed in subsequent novels. Because Denning is doing That Thing again. That thing where I think - in isolation - this is a masterpiece of subtlety. Characterisation that unsettles me without my ever being able to point and say, "Here, this is what's wrong." A creepy, chilling undertone that hides effortlessly under the surface of a seemingly average novel.
But then, the last few times he's done That Thing, those themes weren't really picked up on, those promises remained empty.
Perhaps it's my faith in the direction of the EU that's hollow. Everything I'm reading points towards implosion. Something rotten in the state of the Alliance, and in the state of the Jedi Temple too. But that's in tension with the out-of-universe fact that I believe the authors are straight-jacketed into certain things, like, we can't ever make Luke a failure for too long; we can't have him die; he can't have a tragic ending, the Jedi must remain strong and Democracy must be paid lipservice as long as he lives. So I end up wondering...am I imagining this? If I'm not is there a point?
Because as unsettling as my interpretation of this Rotten-ness is, it's more unsettling when it gets dropped utterly. Because it's still there in my mind, in the background, behind everyone's smiles.
So yes. In case you hadn't noticed, Luke really creeped me out in this novel and not even this many paragraphs of babbling have helped me work out my issues.
Regarding Ben, I've liked him for a long time, though I really, really don't think he's ready to be a Knight. Mind you, my faith in Luke's judgement isn't huge right now. To compare him to Anakin Solo, there's something tragic about the way he's been cut loose, declared an adult, already. Anakin kept trying to do that for himself, but there was always a sense from his parents, from his siblings, from his Uncle, that reminded us how young he was. Anakin was Ben in Exile, and became Ben in Revelation only in the final novel of his career.
You know the other thing I wonder is how they'll handle Ben as he grows up. I always wondered how they'd handle grown-up Anakin Solo. It's...so much easier to be the idealistic hero when you're young. It's Luke's core problem. He started being the Old Man when the core of his personality was the Young Hero.
Jacen was finally, finally terrifying. Because they dialled back the insanity and made it quieter. Because here is the Sith Lord we were promised in Betrayal. Pensive, sorrowful, so far gone, he passed through madness and found a quiet space on the other side.
I like this Jacen because he refuses to be categorised simply. He loves Allana absolutely and unconditionally and truthfully, and treasures that pain because it is real and because it strengthens him and because it reminds him of why he did this. But that love doesn't make him a good man or prevent him from being a murderer or a Sith.
When Jaina disabled him so thoroughly he knew he would be unable to defend himself from her final attack, he chose to use his last moment to save his daughter. Selflessly. But that doesn't mean that he became a good man. It doesn't mean that if Jaina had hesitated (and she only realised what he was doing as she was killing him), and not killed him, he wouldn't have used his next move to force-blast her to death as she feared.
I love that he isn't simple. People talk about using love as redemption, and that's a great and powerful thing, but Vader denied that love, and when he refound it, and saved his son, was liberated and chose to cast off the shackles of the dark side.
Jacen never stopped loving Allana. And never considered his love of her to be at odds with his Sith persona. That he died for her doesn't mean that he repented.
I don't know what it means. I don't know if he repented. I don't know anything.
I know that Jaina, holding her dead twin's corpse, affected me more than I thought it would.
I know that I feel a great deal of this series lacked in execution what only, really, Betrayal and Invincible managed to capture.
I know that a good end novel doesn't redeem the whole thing, however much I wish it did.
I know that I feel like this whole series was written to get to the scene with Jaina holding her dead twin, who she just killed, quietly insane with grief. And you know what? I bloody well agree that that's a powerful enough scene that it serves as its own justification for writing a story that leads to it. But it doesn't justify a 9 book series. For that, you need more, and Legacy of the Force didn't have it. But it doesn't stop that scene from being powerful.
I know that I loved the complexities that defied categorisation in almost every character, and I know that I hope I'm not making them up and that Luceno will continue with the theme of confusion and loss and an unnameable something being gone from the galaxy: everything out of balance.
And finally, I know that I will not touch that Daala-as-CoS stuff with a BARGE POLE because I truthfully and honestly believe that if the "thunderous applause" was not a deliberate nod to Palpatine's election, it is the most nonsensical, offensive, surreal, bizarre and stupid development I have ever seen. That even if there is some weird chain of events that makes this development believable in-universe, the fact that it was never explained to the reader renders it moot. If there is no irony, IT IS AWFUL. And if I were giving this novel a score, it would lose a millionty points just for this.
I am, however, not giving it a score because I hate scoring things.
So I will simply say: it made me think a lot more than I was expecting. I think I might actually love this book in isolation, even as I fear for what the context of wider canon will do to all the bits I love. And I think I might hate it for making me love it so.
So there.