(no subject)
So, I finished Sacrifice last night.
The Good
- Nice to see Ben finally becoming a little more discerning about Jacen. Liked his wariness at the start, and the way he now seems older (and thanks, Karen, for reminding me he seems older every five seconds in case I forgot), because frankly he seemed too young in some of the other books and it annoyed me. A lot. Was disappointed that he took the same ‘Lumiya’s using Jacen’ route as everyone else even hearing what he heard. Even though he’s been duped by Jacen, knowing him as closely as he does, surely he has to be aware of Jacen’s potential. I’m hopeful about that line where he wonders how Jacen knew where Mara’s body was, and puts the thought aside for later.
- Liked Mara’s interactions with Ben towards the latter half of the book. Liked the way she handled the news about his part in assassination; it was exactly what he needed. Also like the way she treats him with respect, as a person. Nicely handled. I started to get a feel for how and why Ben’s so close to her, and also how she intercedes between Luke and Ben (and the irony, here, in little ways their family echoes the one Luke grew up in! Kind of painful, really) As for the issues between Luke and Ben - well, for one, I think they’re very similar, though I don’t think Ben realises it, and also there’s the shadow that Luke casts just by being who he is and having done the things he has. Also Luke has father issues, which, I don’t know, you’d hope he would be able to use to make himself a better father, but maybe not. And that’s not even touching on the whole thing with Jacen usurping Luke as the father figure in Ben’s life.
- Liked Mara cottoning on to exactly what’s going on with Jacen instead of assuming he’s a pawn; I’m inordinately glad someone finally got this, because I was frustrated they were all being so stupid when they have an idea of what Jacen’s capable of. I like that Mara realised this by her own reasoning and instincts once Ben told her what he’d heard. Also liked her anger that she’d been duped by Jacen and that she’d fought Luke over it when Luke’s instinct had in fact been correct (though that still doesn’t explain WHY she was such an idiot about the whole thing)
- Insults! At Jacen! Particularly Luke’s “patronising little jerk” HA! DOUBLE HA! And loved the way Cal Omas got in a last little word, even though the man’s an idiot (or has been written as one)
- Jaina. Though I’m not and haven’t ever been a fan of her character, it’s good to see her back around. She is a Solo, after all, and I don’t see why she should be getting next to no screen time when we have pages and pages of Mandos. *sigh* I did like the Jaina/Mara interactions, and the fact she was there with Luke just after Mara’s death.
- Hm, Luke. Liked his anger when Lumiya baited him with Ben, that was very much in line with the Luke who flew off the rails when Vader threatened Leia, and that’s something that I don’t think he would lose with time - it’s just so fundamental to him. Also liked Mara’s line about Luke having a Don’t-stop-me look, and how it always made her want to stop him. Ha, nice.
- Jacen’s coup. Not that I like the coup itself as such but I’m just glad the dragging politics angle was brought to something of head, though, unfortunately, I think there’s more along that line to come. Gah. If I wanted to hear about back-stabbing politicians, I’d watch the news.
- The Mando stuff, taken in isolation, was actually kind of interesting. I don’t think we’ve really seen culture-building on that level anywhere else in Star Wars EU, that I can recall off the top of my head at least. Taken in terms of the plot, well… yes. Point? What point?
- And the big one, Mara’s death. Obviously I don’t like that it happened, nor do I agree that it was necessary; but if she had to go, it was fitting for her to go down in battle (a battle she was winning, too, you little creep, Jacen). Heartbreaking last words. As to whether she would have reacted to Jacen’s ploy that way, well, I think it would be pretty hard not to have a split second hesitation, purely reflex, before killing someone wearing the image of your son; having said that, though, I can see the other side of it, that Mara is more than familiar with that kind of tactic and surely should have been expecting it from Jacen.
- Luke’s reaction to the death. Nicely handled, I thought, from the scene immediately after with Jaina and Tenel Ka through to the last scene with Ben. Killing Lumiya as he did - that, possibly, was the most heartbreaking thing, because that whole section had such a bleak tone of despair about it that you knew how broken Luke was, what Mara’s death took from him, and then in the next scene where he’s with Ben, he’s just - not quite there, the way he’s talking to Mara, the words he’s using, and then when he finds out it wasn’t Lumiya that took Mara from him at all, that Lumiya was manipulating him again to believe it had been, and he’s just! It’s so! *woobles*
Okay, I’m trying to be articulate here, and I just can’t do it. aklfslk! Luke angst! Skafjal!
That’s all. :p
The Bad
- Mara drove me crazy in the first half of the book, and it was horrible, because I knew what was coming, but I was so fed up with hearing that she used to be Emperor’s Hand. I know it was a huge shaping influence on her life, but given all she’s become, should it really define her the way it still did in this novel? That would seem incredibly sad to me, not to mention utterly wrong.
- Mara going after Lumiya alone. Um, why? She was no less emotionally involved than Luke in terms of the threat to Ben, and there was no reason Luke shouldn’t have gone with her, particularly when Lumiya had shown herself to be a pretty formidable foe (she nearly killed Luke, for one). There’s belief in your own ability, and there’s being an idiot. Mara shouldn’t be the latter, given everything she’s been through in her life. She and Luke have been backing each other up for years now - why suddenly change that?
- The going on and on about the hand thing in Exile between Luke and Lumiya. It just sounded stupid and petty. Is Luke really dumb enough that he’d be swayed by something so insignificant? Is there a reason Mara thinks he is?
- Mara not leaving some kind of message with what she’d figured out about Jacen. WHY oh WHY not, Mara? She’s a pragmatist, and she knows they don’t understand the full extent of Jacen’s abilities, so why go after him alone? Why be so absolutely certain you’ll win? It seems so stupid. *frustration* Presumably it would derail the storyline to have Luke and others figure things out at this stage, but it’s such a lame device to have Mara figure everything out and then conveniently DIE before telling anyone else.
- The reasoning behind Mara’s death and how she’s Jacen’s ‘sacrifice’. Seems a bit flimsy for such a pivot thing. In fact, you could say cheap and unnecessary. *glowers*
- The structure and pacing felt out of whack. Three quarters of the book drag almost painfully, and then suddenly we have all manner of climatic events crammed into the last fifty pages. And way too much POV time was given to nonessential characters, though IMO this has been a failing of the whole series so far.
- The continuing Stu-ification of Jacen and his Force powers, and the way everyone else around him is diminished to make him seem all the more powerful. Luke’s supposed to be a Jedi with a lifetime of experience behind him. How exactly is he so ineffectual? It smacks of lazy writing to me.
- Luke and Mara’s relationship. Being a L/M fangirl I usually adore my L/M scenes, but the ones in this book (at least up until Mara’s death) felt a bit flat. Particularly those from Mara’s POV. There wasn’t much affection to be had there. The snoring was amusing, yes, and there were a few other lines that I liked. But there was a lack of warmth, or regard, or something there that was strange. And it’s a real shame. Of all the books, this one surely deserved to have one tiny little moment in it of Luke and Mara just being… Luke and Mara.
- The idea that Mara would think Luke couldn’t stomach killing Lumiya if it were necessary because he wasn’t an assassin, etc, and Luke’s thoughts echoing this. This doesn’t seem quite right to me; Luke’s as much a warrior as Mara is, IMO, and he did plenty of fighting in the Vong war. It sounds faintly like that old argument that Luke’s morality makes him weak, which I don’t agree with. He’s not soft, and Mara as I always imagine her to be wouldn’t think he was.
- The way that Luke has allowed himself (and this is more of a complaint about the series in general than the book itself, but I felt it pretty keenly in this one) to be undermined, between Jacen usurping him as father-figure to Ben and his failure to do anything at all about Jacen’s darkness, despite the fact he’s seen it coming for quite a while. I hate this series for painting him that way.
The Puzzling
- What was with the Oedipal vibes? Between Ben pondering the way his relationship with Luke may have been complicated by his fiercely protective feelings toward Mara as he got older and Jacen’s ‘mwahaha’ moment about how Mara’s going to be crystallized for Ben forever as some kind of vision of perfection and he’d come to hate Jacen, etc, etc… It was odd. Very odd. I was vaguely amused.
- Jacen worrying about Luke as a serious threat when he thought he would have to kill Ben, but not even considering him in the light of Mara’s death. Y’know, I think he may be a little unhappy about that event also, Jacen. Also odd was Jacen’s passing thought (again, when he thought he would have to kill Ben) about Luke and Mara taking revenge on him via Allana if they found out about her parentage. Huh? Is he seriously this delusional, that he thinks they would do that? Does he know them at all?
- Mara not fading after death. Is this supposed to be significant? Am I meant to be reading something into it? Also, it didn’t make sense that Jacen thought Mara wouldn’t become one with the Force because she didn’t vanish. First of all, Qui-Gon didn’t vanish, and secondly, Jedi had been becoming one with the Force when they died long before Qui-Gon discovered his little technique. Hadn’t they? The way I understand it, what Qui-Gon found was a way to retain your identity while doing so. Or something. Also perplexing was Luke’s thought about trying to remember how Yoda became ‘one with the Force’, as though it was something one Jedi could do for another Jedi after that Jedi was dead. This doesn’t line up with anything I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m assuming that Mara not fading was either meant to be deliberate on her part and will be significant down the line (I’m hoping it’s this one), or that the poison Jacen used didn’t allow her to do whatever she had to do to vanish. But yes, confusing. To me, at least.
- Luke’s epiphany about how he’s lost who he is trying to play into his role as leader. This one’s not really puzzling, so much as ambiguous. I don’t agree with the assumption that Luke isn’t cut out for leading the Jedi, personally, and I think he should really be much better at it than he’s shown to be in the NJO and in this series. So I don’t like the concept on that level. However, they’ve chosen to take him down this route where he’s indecisive and still wracked in fairly elementary moral dilemmas that he surely should have resolved within himself years ago, so on another level, I’m glad he seems to have taken a step towards identifying that and stepping back into a more active role. Again. Up until Mara died, that is; where they'll take him from here is anyone's guess.
In other news, I'm very glad it's now the weekend. How is it people can be so rude? Really. Basic courtesy never killed anyone, why do so many people take such pains to avoid it? And why do the rude ones always come in groups? Is there something in the water today?
The Good
- Nice to see Ben finally becoming a little more discerning about Jacen. Liked his wariness at the start, and the way he now seems older (and thanks, Karen, for reminding me he seems older every five seconds in case I forgot), because frankly he seemed too young in some of the other books and it annoyed me. A lot. Was disappointed that he took the same ‘Lumiya’s using Jacen’ route as everyone else even hearing what he heard. Even though he’s been duped by Jacen, knowing him as closely as he does, surely he has to be aware of Jacen’s potential. I’m hopeful about that line where he wonders how Jacen knew where Mara’s body was, and puts the thought aside for later.
- Liked Mara’s interactions with Ben towards the latter half of the book. Liked the way she handled the news about his part in assassination; it was exactly what he needed. Also like the way she treats him with respect, as a person. Nicely handled. I started to get a feel for how and why Ben’s so close to her, and also how she intercedes between Luke and Ben (and the irony, here, in little ways their family echoes the one Luke grew up in! Kind of painful, really) As for the issues between Luke and Ben - well, for one, I think they’re very similar, though I don’t think Ben realises it, and also there’s the shadow that Luke casts just by being who he is and having done the things he has. Also Luke has father issues, which, I don’t know, you’d hope he would be able to use to make himself a better father, but maybe not. And that’s not even touching on the whole thing with Jacen usurping Luke as the father figure in Ben’s life.
- Liked Mara cottoning on to exactly what’s going on with Jacen instead of assuming he’s a pawn; I’m inordinately glad someone finally got this, because I was frustrated they were all being so stupid when they have an idea of what Jacen’s capable of. I like that Mara realised this by her own reasoning and instincts once Ben told her what he’d heard. Also liked her anger that she’d been duped by Jacen and that she’d fought Luke over it when Luke’s instinct had in fact been correct (though that still doesn’t explain WHY she was such an idiot about the whole thing)
- Insults! At Jacen! Particularly Luke’s “patronising little jerk” HA! DOUBLE HA! And loved the way Cal Omas got in a last little word, even though the man’s an idiot (or has been written as one)
- Jaina. Though I’m not and haven’t ever been a fan of her character, it’s good to see her back around. She is a Solo, after all, and I don’t see why she should be getting next to no screen time when we have pages and pages of Mandos. *sigh* I did like the Jaina/Mara interactions, and the fact she was there with Luke just after Mara’s death.
- Hm, Luke. Liked his anger when Lumiya baited him with Ben, that was very much in line with the Luke who flew off the rails when Vader threatened Leia, and that’s something that I don’t think he would lose with time - it’s just so fundamental to him. Also liked Mara’s line about Luke having a Don’t-stop-me look, and how it always made her want to stop him. Ha, nice.
- Jacen’s coup. Not that I like the coup itself as such but I’m just glad the dragging politics angle was brought to something of head, though, unfortunately, I think there’s more along that line to come. Gah. If I wanted to hear about back-stabbing politicians, I’d watch the news.
- The Mando stuff, taken in isolation, was actually kind of interesting. I don’t think we’ve really seen culture-building on that level anywhere else in Star Wars EU, that I can recall off the top of my head at least. Taken in terms of the plot, well… yes. Point? What point?
- And the big one, Mara’s death. Obviously I don’t like that it happened, nor do I agree that it was necessary; but if she had to go, it was fitting for her to go down in battle (a battle she was winning, too, you little creep, Jacen). Heartbreaking last words. As to whether she would have reacted to Jacen’s ploy that way, well, I think it would be pretty hard not to have a split second hesitation, purely reflex, before killing someone wearing the image of your son; having said that, though, I can see the other side of it, that Mara is more than familiar with that kind of tactic and surely should have been expecting it from Jacen.
- Luke’s reaction to the death. Nicely handled, I thought, from the scene immediately after with Jaina and Tenel Ka through to the last scene with Ben. Killing Lumiya as he did - that, possibly, was the most heartbreaking thing, because that whole section had such a bleak tone of despair about it that you knew how broken Luke was, what Mara’s death took from him, and then in the next scene where he’s with Ben, he’s just - not quite there, the way he’s talking to Mara, the words he’s using, and then when he finds out it wasn’t Lumiya that took Mara from him at all, that Lumiya was manipulating him again to believe it had been, and he’s just! It’s so! *woobles*
Okay, I’m trying to be articulate here, and I just can’t do it. aklfslk! Luke angst! Skafjal!
That’s all. :p
The Bad
- Mara drove me crazy in the first half of the book, and it was horrible, because I knew what was coming, but I was so fed up with hearing that she used to be Emperor’s Hand. I know it was a huge shaping influence on her life, but given all she’s become, should it really define her the way it still did in this novel? That would seem incredibly sad to me, not to mention utterly wrong.
- Mara going after Lumiya alone. Um, why? She was no less emotionally involved than Luke in terms of the threat to Ben, and there was no reason Luke shouldn’t have gone with her, particularly when Lumiya had shown herself to be a pretty formidable foe (she nearly killed Luke, for one). There’s belief in your own ability, and there’s being an idiot. Mara shouldn’t be the latter, given everything she’s been through in her life. She and Luke have been backing each other up for years now - why suddenly change that?
- The going on and on about the hand thing in Exile between Luke and Lumiya. It just sounded stupid and petty. Is Luke really dumb enough that he’d be swayed by something so insignificant? Is there a reason Mara thinks he is?
- Mara not leaving some kind of message with what she’d figured out about Jacen. WHY oh WHY not, Mara? She’s a pragmatist, and she knows they don’t understand the full extent of Jacen’s abilities, so why go after him alone? Why be so absolutely certain you’ll win? It seems so stupid. *frustration* Presumably it would derail the storyline to have Luke and others figure things out at this stage, but it’s such a lame device to have Mara figure everything out and then conveniently DIE before telling anyone else.
- The reasoning behind Mara’s death and how she’s Jacen’s ‘sacrifice’. Seems a bit flimsy for such a pivot thing. In fact, you could say cheap and unnecessary. *glowers*
- The structure and pacing felt out of whack. Three quarters of the book drag almost painfully, and then suddenly we have all manner of climatic events crammed into the last fifty pages. And way too much POV time was given to nonessential characters, though IMO this has been a failing of the whole series so far.
- The continuing Stu-ification of Jacen and his Force powers, and the way everyone else around him is diminished to make him seem all the more powerful. Luke’s supposed to be a Jedi with a lifetime of experience behind him. How exactly is he so ineffectual? It smacks of lazy writing to me.
- Luke and Mara’s relationship. Being a L/M fangirl I usually adore my L/M scenes, but the ones in this book (at least up until Mara’s death) felt a bit flat. Particularly those from Mara’s POV. There wasn’t much affection to be had there. The snoring was amusing, yes, and there were a few other lines that I liked. But there was a lack of warmth, or regard, or something there that was strange. And it’s a real shame. Of all the books, this one surely deserved to have one tiny little moment in it of Luke and Mara just being… Luke and Mara.
- The idea that Mara would think Luke couldn’t stomach killing Lumiya if it were necessary because he wasn’t an assassin, etc, and Luke’s thoughts echoing this. This doesn’t seem quite right to me; Luke’s as much a warrior as Mara is, IMO, and he did plenty of fighting in the Vong war. It sounds faintly like that old argument that Luke’s morality makes him weak, which I don’t agree with. He’s not soft, and Mara as I always imagine her to be wouldn’t think he was.
- The way that Luke has allowed himself (and this is more of a complaint about the series in general than the book itself, but I felt it pretty keenly in this one) to be undermined, between Jacen usurping him as father-figure to Ben and his failure to do anything at all about Jacen’s darkness, despite the fact he’s seen it coming for quite a while. I hate this series for painting him that way.
The Puzzling
- What was with the Oedipal vibes? Between Ben pondering the way his relationship with Luke may have been complicated by his fiercely protective feelings toward Mara as he got older and Jacen’s ‘mwahaha’ moment about how Mara’s going to be crystallized for Ben forever as some kind of vision of perfection and he’d come to hate Jacen, etc, etc… It was odd. Very odd. I was vaguely amused.
- Jacen worrying about Luke as a serious threat when he thought he would have to kill Ben, but not even considering him in the light of Mara’s death. Y’know, I think he may be a little unhappy about that event also, Jacen. Also odd was Jacen’s passing thought (again, when he thought he would have to kill Ben) about Luke and Mara taking revenge on him via Allana if they found out about her parentage. Huh? Is he seriously this delusional, that he thinks they would do that? Does he know them at all?
- Mara not fading after death. Is this supposed to be significant? Am I meant to be reading something into it? Also, it didn’t make sense that Jacen thought Mara wouldn’t become one with the Force because she didn’t vanish. First of all, Qui-Gon didn’t vanish, and secondly, Jedi had been becoming one with the Force when they died long before Qui-Gon discovered his little technique. Hadn’t they? The way I understand it, what Qui-Gon found was a way to retain your identity while doing so. Or something. Also perplexing was Luke’s thought about trying to remember how Yoda became ‘one with the Force’, as though it was something one Jedi could do for another Jedi after that Jedi was dead. This doesn’t line up with anything I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m assuming that Mara not fading was either meant to be deliberate on her part and will be significant down the line (I’m hoping it’s this one), or that the poison Jacen used didn’t allow her to do whatever she had to do to vanish. But yes, confusing. To me, at least.
- Luke’s epiphany about how he’s lost who he is trying to play into his role as leader. This one’s not really puzzling, so much as ambiguous. I don’t agree with the assumption that Luke isn’t cut out for leading the Jedi, personally, and I think he should really be much better at it than he’s shown to be in the NJO and in this series. So I don’t like the concept on that level. However, they’ve chosen to take him down this route where he’s indecisive and still wracked in fairly elementary moral dilemmas that he surely should have resolved within himself years ago, so on another level, I’m glad he seems to have taken a step towards identifying that and stepping back into a more active role. Again. Up until Mara died, that is; where they'll take him from here is anyone's guess.
In other news, I'm very glad it's now the weekend. How is it people can be so rude? Really. Basic courtesy never killed anyone, why do so many people take such pains to avoid it? And why do the rude ones always come in groups? Is there something in the water today?