Invincible review, part 3 - now featuring spoilers
Here we go, folks. Sadly, I had so much to say that I broke LJ. This'll be split into two posts. My condolences to anyone who actually plows through it, though I did try to lay on the snark to make it worthwhile. :p
Chapter Fourteen
Jaina is having a sparring session with Zekk, Lowbacca, Tesar, and apparently Jag as well. She wipes all of them out, of course. I'm a little confused as to why Jag is sparring with four Jedi Knights; I love Jag, but I don't think any non-Force sensitive is really capable of that. Jaina's trying to prove to everyone that she's ready to go after Jacen again. Eventually people point out that Jaina's not going to do any good if she reinjures herself training, so she goes on to practicing a Force technique instead of a physical one.
Shatterpoint.
That's right, boys and girls, Jaina's practicing shatterpoint.
During one of her debriefings with Luke, she had described how Jacen had used shatterpoint to destroy Roegr's beskar'gam. Luke had surprised her by suggesting that he teach it to her.
Jaina should not have been surprised that her uncle had mastered the technique himself - but she was. So she had foolishly blurted out something about it being a lost art, and that hardly anyone could master it. Luke had simply smiled and replied that an art was not lost just because it could be wielded only by a handful, and that if her twin brother was one of the few capable of learning it, so was she.
I call deus ex machina shenanigans again. Shatterpoint hasn't been mentioned since Mace died. How does anyone know about it? How is it something that can be taught in the first place? I got the impression that it was an inborn talent. And how does Luke know about it? When did he learn it? Why hasn't he used it before? I know that a lot of things can happen offscreen and still be valid; just because we never seen anyone use the bathroom doesn't mean that everyone simply reabsorbs their biowaste. But big Force techniques not seen for generations probably should be shown. Otherwise, like I said: deus ex machina. "Jacen knows a Force technique hardly able to be mastered by anyone ever that's been thought to be a lost art for decades and decades, Jaina? No problem. I know it too. Never you mind how. I'll teach you. So what if hardly anyone can do it? If I can and Jacen can, you can."
Not to mention - again - that shatterpoint was not, as far as I recall, spoken of as finding the shatterpoints within physical objects. That was an analogy used by Mace to illustrate how he saw the shatterpoints within situations and people. It doesn't bother me so much that a Jedi might be able to see shatterpoints within physical objects as it does that this is automatically spoken of as being part of Mace's shatterpoint talent. Because that's not what it was. Don't redefine things midstream.
Jaina breaks up a whole lot of things via the new and improved shatterpoint technique, then:
Behind her, Jaina's father let out a loud, embarrassing whoop. "Who needs a lightsaber?" Han exclaimed. "I haven't seen anything that impressive since your mother wrapped a chain around Jabba's throat."
"Han, you didn't see that," her mother said. "Freeze-blind, remember?"
Sigh. Yes, we remember what Leia did in the movies, Troy. We remember that she was in the skimpy bikini, too. Pardon my cynicism in suspecting that that's half the reason you remember the scene fondly enough to reference it here, when Han's seen plenty things more impressive than that in the last, oh, FORTY YEARS.
Tristan and Tarragon bring Ben back. Jaina's first impression is "they were obviously relatives of Tenel Ka - and fairly close relatives, at that." Again, how is it that "no one" knows they're Tenel Ka's cousins if both Ben and Jaina's first thoughts are that they simply must be related?
Jaina runs to embrace Ben, then tells him to never do that again - as in, running away from his backup. Ben tells her he did the right thing and followed protocol. Leia joins them and agrees that Ben acted rightly (WTH, Leia? You sure didn't seem to think so at the time) and asks him to "please forgive Jaina". WTH again? "Please forgive Jaina"?
Well, apparently there is indeed a sin to forgive, because:
Ben . . . looked back to Jaina and frowned. "I'm a Jedi, Jaina, with a job to do, just like you. If we're going to keep working together, you're going to have to remember that - okay?"
As I've said, my brother is Ben's age, and I'm about Jaina's age. Sometimes Dylan does talk to me the way Ben's doing to Jaina. An interesting difference, though, is that even while Dylan's talking down to me, he knows perfectly well that he's treading on slippery ground, because I'm the adult, not him; even if his sentiments are correct, he's under an obligation to express them with more respect than condescension. He knows he's acting inappropriately and running the risk of being smacked down.
Does anyone do that with Ben? Does anyone say, "Hey, talk respectfully to your cousin. She's old enough to be your mother, she was a Jedi Knight almost before you were born, and she's a veteran of several wars - no matter what you think of her words or actions, don't talk to her as though you're the wise parent and she the wayward child"?
Nope. As you've read above, Leia asks Ben to forgive Jaina. Jaina herself meekly says, "Yeah, sure, Ben. Sorry." No one else says a word to Ben.
Ben just shook his head, then turned to his father, who was standing quietly beside Leia.
"Good to see you, Dad," he said. "At least you're not treating me like a kid anymore. Thanks."
Ben, newsflash: YOU. ARE. A. KID. As you yourself show so clearly with your emphasized word there. And your cousin wasn't treating you like a kid. She was speaking both as a more experienced Jedi, to whom you should listen once in a while, and as your cousin, who loves you dearly and was terrified for you when you were captured.
I liked Ben throughout most of LotF, even when Traviss got her hands on him. With Invincible, I'm mostly thinking that he's a brat and an ingrate.
Ben says there was a problem with his escape, and maybe he should let Tenel Ka explain it. Zekk asks, "Tenel Ka's here?" After which, we read: "Ben looked at Zekk as though he had just asked a very foolish question." Well, hey, that's the way Ben's looking at everyone these days. He's turned into a typical teenager who thinks all the adults around him are intolerably stupid, yet he of all people should have ample reason to know otherwise, and not a single adult ever corrects him. Instead, he gets promoted to Jedi Knight - and most people in Lit seem to be saying that this is the best Ben characterization we've seen yet, and that Ben's the only one acting like a true Jedi. I beg to differ. But let's move on.
Tarragon flirts with Zekk. Zekk is confuddled. Well, actually - "Zekk was clearly reeling from the straightforward manner of Hapan women". Because Zekk's never really been around straightforward or flirtatious women before, you know. He's only really spent time with women like Jaina, Tenel Ka (A HAPAN WOMAN), Leia, Mara, that sort, you know. The shy, retiring kind who'd never simply speak their mind or tell a man what they expected or wanted.
Tenel Ka and Allana arrive. Jaina knows that she's her niece, but apparently no one but she, Han, Leia, and Tenel Ka know, so no one greets her as family. I understand the practicality of this, but the implication is that neither Luke nor Ben know. Can't say I agree with that, since not only is Allana their family too, but as Grand Master Luke should probably know about any children of Jacen's, but hey, characters know all sorts of things they haven't mentioned before the final book of a nine book series. I'm sure we'll find out a few books down the road that Luke knew all along and just kept mum, like with shatterpoint.
Tenel Ka reveals that her father's been captured, and since he knew the location of the Jedi base, they must assume that it's been compromised. Han asks what the chances are that Jacen has the right charts to find them. We read:
"Even if he doesn't, the Force will guide him," Luke said. He turned to Tenel Ka. "But I doubt your father revealed our location. I think Caedus may have found us another way."
He points to the stains Jaina's still sporting, whereupon Tenel Ka's jaw drops (geez, Troy, please find another phrase. People's jaws very rarely literally drop) and she asks, "That's Caedus's blood?" Tenel Ka explains:
". . . it's a blood trail . . . Some of the Nightsisters used the technique to mark their slaves - so they could always track them down."
1) WTF, Luke? You knew all along and just plain didn't say anything?
2) So . . . the Nightsisters assume that when a slave escapes, they'll first injure their masters in a way that results in being bloodspattered? Or are we saying that the Nightsisters just slash themselves and preemptively mark their slaves? Not that their culture wouldn't be the sort who'd do something stupid like that, but again, we're relying an awful lot on techniques and tactics that haven't been seen before. In a standalone book or the earlier books in a series, that's narrative development. In the final installment of a nine book series, it's running dangerously close to deus ex machina. And we have an abundance of those instances in this book, folks.
3) They really need their blood to track people? Really? A simple application of the Force or just some plain decent tracking skills aren't good enough?
Jaina confronts Luke about why he didn't say anything. Luke said he did know Caedus would be coming - for him. Saba, of course, does all the speaking for the Jedi when Luke doesn't, and asks, "Does one win a battle by breaking the Sword, or the warrior who wieldz it?"
So Jaina's role is now diminished to a pawn in Luke's grip. Great. Let's just gut this book of some more meaning, why don't we?
Tenel Ka says she and her fleet stand with the Jedi; "better to defend it (her throne) here among friends than on Hapes, with more enemies at my back than in front of me."
As Luke and the others began to make plans for the coming onslaught, Jaina was still struggling to grasp how her brother had taken advantage of her. She did not understand exactly how Nightsister blood trails worked, but she assumed the Force-user somehow maintained a connection to the blood he had shed, and employed that to keep track of his living property.
This isn't actually the point I'm trying to make with this passage, but I just have to interrupt to point out something else that's just occurred to me: So, a Nightsister maintains a connection to the blood she sheds - doesn't that make things difficult when she gets a papercut? Or a sliver? Or - and pardon me for going here - what about when she has a period? Wouldn't all those conscious connections to one's shed blood and whatever it touches get distracting? "Quick, fellow Nightsister! My escaped slave is that way! Oh, wait, that's the village dump. Must be my old tampons."
The alternative is that the Nightsisters have a switch in their brain where they can say, "Okay, I'm going to consciously maintain a connection to THIS blood! But not that blood, because that's not useful to me." And that's just getting into the realm of the ridiculous to me. Yes, Jedi can selectively employ certain techniques, but this just really feels wrong to me. It's like the Bene Gesserit in Dune apparently being able to consciously control what gender child they conceive. I mostly thought Dune was interesting, but wow, did that bit dissolve my suspension of disbelief and yank me right out of the story. What's a Bene Gesserit doing, then? Somehow she's aware of the chromosomal makeup of each and every one of those millions of ejaculated sperm cells within her body, picks one, then guides it to her egg cell, and somehow diverts all the rest? (What a way to suck the romance right out of lovemaking, btw. "Yeah, honey, that was great. I'll be right with you - just have to get a count of your sperm." *facepalm*) Come on. The Bene Gesserit couldn't have been cool enough without that bit of inanity? Same principle here. This is too far-fetched. It's not entertaining, it's not plausible; it's distracting.
Anyway, to continue the passage:
If Jaina'd had any lingering doubts about whether there might be any trace of Jacen left inside Darth Caedus, they were gone now. Caedus had known exactly what he was doing when he ordered those stormtroopers to redirect their fire. And his cold calculation in the face of such an injury scared her even more than seeing him stand up after losing his arm. He hadn't wanted Jaina killed then, because he needed her to lead him to the Jedi now.
When Jaina returned her attention to the others, it was to find her father studying her with sad, sympathetic eyes. "It finally happened, didn't it?" he asked.
"Yeah," Jaina said. "I think it did."
Ben frowned. "What happened?"
"Her last hope died," Leia said. "She realized that Jacen is totally gone. There's nothing left to bring back into the light."
So many problems, I hardly know where to start.
1) Going back to Jaina and Jacen's duel, Jacen sure didn't look like he was coldly calculating anything. He looked mentally unbalanced. For almost the whole time, he thought he was fighting Luke. We read this from Jacen's POV, and he was certain that he was fighting Luke. When, after Jaina cut off his arm and he threw her across the room with Force lightning, he realized that Jaina was there, his first question and priority was to find Luke. He asked Jaina where Luke was. Once she dropped behind cover, Jacen directed his stormtroopers to direct their fire to an empty corner, because "Skywalker was the dangerous one." Subpoints to this objection:
1a) Luke was shielding Jaina with an illusion of himself. Jacen had reason to believe that Luke was there, especially if Jacen himself is unbalanced, which I thought we'd kind of established that he was. I, for one, read that scene as Luke giving off an illusion of himself in the corner to draw fire away from Jaina; this seemed to be supported by Jaina suddenly feeling completely drained and exhausted, and thinking she herself saw something in that corner.
1b) Jacen hasn't really been written as sane enough to be that lucid and "coldly calculating", to make an instant change from being certain that Luke was there to realizing that it had all been an illusion and he was fighting Jaina the whole time, therefore, quick, find a way to let her go and she'll lead me to the Jedi!
1c) If Jacen was in fact that lucid, doesn't that undermine Luke's entire plan to shield Jaina? Doesn't it undermine everything Luke's accomplished so far? Because Luke had earlier said that if Jacen "realized that I'm using visions of the future to plot strategy . . . he would have started to grow suspicious of what he was seeing." Doesn't this principle hold true even if it's not specifically the visions, since Jacen would realize that Luke had and was using a power and strategy Jacen had never anticipated, and he, Jacen, should therefore be doubly suspicious of everything Force-related now? And if that happens, doesn't it undermine the entire plot of this book, and thus the conclusion of a nine book series?
1d) If Jacen was "coldly calculating" a way to let Jaina escape, he couldn't have found a way to do it that doesn't reinforce the OMG-he's-a-nutter reaction the troops have been having anyway? You know, first seeing phantom fleets and then ordering stormtroopers to shoot at empty corners is not a way to increase the troops' confidence.
1e) If Jacen was this lucid and coldly calculating, doesn't that undermine his entire characterization up to this point? You spent all this time trying to convince us that Jacen was borderline insane, then you suddenly yank that out from under the readers by telling us that in an instant where he has the most reason to fall prey to mental instability, he suddenly becomes entirely lucid and strategic and calculating? Why?
2) I don't know how it's so utterly impossible to keep one's senses after a battle amputation (assuming, of course, that one is sane to begin with); it's hard, certainly, but didn't Luke remain pretty lucid and calculating after Vader cut off his hand? He kept his moral resolve, he remained defiant, he deliberately made the choice to potentially end his life rather than side with evil. But when Jacen does less for a worse reason, it's "Wow, Jacen, you're the bestest and evillest. Your terrifying Force skills paralyze me with fear." Uh-huh.
3) I notice smartass "I know better than all of you grizzled war veterans old enough to be my parents and grandparents because I trained with Jacen's own Gestapo" Ben didn't catch on.
4) Couldn't it have been said that there was nothing left of Vader to bring back to the light? Wasn't all of Anakin gone? Obi-Wan and Yoda felt that Anakin was dead. Vader said so himself - said that his former name meant nothing to him. He cut off his son's hand. He was willing to turn his son over to the same darkness that had consumed him for two decades. He was willing to do the same to his daughter, and taunt his son with the fact. He stood by and watched Palpatine electrocute his son for some time. And as a result, Vader stayed with the dark side, Luke died, and Palpatine prevailed, thus continuing the reign of the dark side over the galaxy - oh, wait. I'm not saying that Jacen had to be redeemed for this story. I am saying that it's a damned confusing thing for Anakin's children and grandchildren to be so certain that there's no chance of redemption and that they should shut off even the possibility of such a thing in their minds.
Sigh.
Ben argues. Ben wants to know how you know when someone can be brought back to the light. Ben points out that he did some pretty terrible things, but no one gave up on him. Han says, "You got a little confused, kid. That happens. But you didn't go around killing family members and burning planets."
No, Ben just killed a handful of people who, although not family members, didn't deserve to die. And tried to arrest his aunt and uncle at blasterpoint. And, IIRC, accidentally incited Jacen to go burn Kashyyyk. Yeah, he got confused, but it wasn't exactly the sort of confusion that should be swept under the rug. (And then promote the confused person to a Jedi Knight at fourteen. 'Cause he's all betters now.)
Luke, meanwhile, is studying Ben "not with shock or disbelief over his son's naiveté, but with pride." This somehow prompts Jaina to ask Ben if he's talking about Tahiri, whereupon Ben looks uncomfortable, then defends Tahiri because "she hated what she did", and "she's not like Caedus. Not yet."
Whereupon we get, not a discussion about redemption, not a decision about what to do with Tahiri, but a non sequitur from the previously silent Allana: "Jedi Jacen likes hurting people. He scares me."
Which gives Jaina a chance to reassuringly kneel down, take "Allana's tiny hands in her own", and "really promise" that Jacen will never scare her again.
Aw! Nothing like some warm fuzzy interaction with little kids to make fratricide all sunshiny!
Chapter Fifteen
The Jedi and Tenel Ka's fleet are preparing for an ambush among the Mists (some astronomical feature the Jedi were hiding in, if I didn't mention that before. Lotsa navigational hazards). Supposedly Jaina's blood trail (say, does that vanish if Jacen dies? Or does she get to be marked for the rest of her life with the blood of the brother she slays? Sounds like something right out of Sophocles. Can we get some blue ghostie-type Furies out of this deal?) will trick Jacen into thinking this is where the real super secret Jedi base is.
Then when Jacen appears, the fleet is going to blow up his ship! No more Caedus! No, I kid. Who'd take the easy way out in LotF? They're going to cover so Jaina can sneak inside and kill him. "Hello. My name is Jaina Solo. You killed my aunt. Prepare to die." BTW, how's she going to sneak in if we're doing all this in space instead of on a planetary surface? Can she slip past a capital ship's shields into a hangar bay without noticing? Or is she just going to ram Jacen's ship and hope her own stays in one piece until it's through the hull?
Meanwhile, Jaina realizes that Zekk isn't paying much attention to her. This makes Jaina sad. Because Jaina "had simply taken for granted that they would always be the ideal mission partners, in Force contact on an almost unconscious level, able to read each other's thoughts and intentions to almost the same degree as her parents."
Jaina had tried to tell herself that the change was due to her current mission, because she had to confront Caedus alone. But she knew better. The truth was, Zekk had probably just grown weary of waiting for her to sort out her personal life. Or maybe the time apart had helped him realize he didn't need to be anything more than her wingmate. That probably shouldn't have made her sad, but it did.
Well, Jaina, twelve years or so is kind of a long time to keep guys dangling after you. The only wonder here is that either Jag or Zekk is still interested anyway. And yeah, you probably have no right to feel sad about it.
Zekk, of course, is oblivious to all of Jaina's emo-ness. Because he's thinking about Tarragon. No, I'm not kidding. Apparently, it only takes one look at a Hapan girl to throw twelve years of puppyish devotion right out the window.
Meanwhile, back on the Uroro Station where all the Jedi and their handful of non-Jedi allies are hiding out, we get something from Han's POV. Han is observing "Saba and the other masters", who are waiting their turn for the battle.
Has anyone else noticed that every single time the Masters are referred to as a group in one of Denning's books, they are referred to as "Saba and the other masters"? Every. Single. Time. Doesn't matter whose POV we're reading; every character thinks "Saba and the other masters." Not only does Saba always get top billing and nearly always do the talking, but the other Jedi Masters don't even get an individual mention most of the time. They're just "the other masters", following Saba meekly wherever she goes.
Han and Luke have a brief discussion, which Saba butts in on. Of course. Then:
He turned to Leia, who seemed only marginally less worried than he was. "Our next kids are not going to be Jedi."
"Sure, Han, whatever you say." Leia's eyes did not leave the viewport. "But I don't think you have to worry about having more kids."
"Hey, I'm still young," Han said. "And you're a Jedi."
1) Three paragraphs; three italicized words.
2) Yet a little more focus on Han and Leia's sex life. Isn't this a slightly inappropriate moment to discuss conceiving more children, since, you know, they're surrounded by other people and in the middle of a critical battle?
3) Does a jest about "our next kids" seem unfeeling to anyone else? Sure, humor can deflect tension, but "our next kids"? One son is dead; the other is a Sith Lord marked for death; their only daughter is currently in mortal danger on a mission to kill her twin brother. But Han jokes about "our next kids" as though their children are disposable? I realize that this is a weird thing for me to say, both since I don't have children myself and because I absolutely hate it when people act as though my opinion on such things is worthless unless I do have children of my own, but does Denning have kids? Because I really can't imagine any of the parents I've known in my life joking quite like this.
4) Even if Han actually wanted more kids (and yes, even if he's joking), it's one heck of an assumption that his sixty-year-old wife would be interested in more pregnancies, births, and infant care. Precious few women I know of that age would be willing to go through it all again. And Leia herself said she couldn't imagine doing it again all the way back in VP.
5) Mara was a Jedi too, but when she was in her early forties in BP, the implication was very strong that she and Luke had very little time left to conceive. Contrariwise, Tendra is not a Jedi, yet in an earlier book we established that she's pregnant without medical intervention, and she's only a few years younger than Leia is now. The EU needs to make up its mind.
6) Perhaps the most important concern of all for me here is that Denning's H/L affection has led him far, far astray of doing them justice. He's been harping on this "Han's not old" business since DN. Every book of his, there's some area where either Han or another character is fervently insisting that OMG HAN IS NOT OLD. HE'S NOT, HE'S NOT, HE'S NOT. And frankly? It's gone way, way too far. Han looks pathetic in my eyes now. I read this line and I feel pity for him. He sounds like a beaten old man, trying desperately to cling to the illusion of youth. And it's really hard for me to not resent Denning for making me think of Han that way.
Luke's off in another deep trance again. Naturally, Saba steps into the void and basically takes charge, acting both as liaison for the group of masters and Han and Leia, and acting as though she's in charge of the masters themselves. Because of all the masters here, of all the ones that have an EU history far longer than Saba's, none of them are as wonderful and worthy of the spotlight as Saba Sebatyne. Play favorites a little more, why don't you, Troy?
I'm also rolling my eyes a little bit that every time any Jedi speaks to another, it's always "Master" this and "Master" that. Formality amongst non-Jedi or for the sake of Council room propriety is one thing, but again, this is Luke's Jedi Order, not Yoda's. These masters are all long-time friends, and on a first name basis. I could understand if they insisted that the younger Knights address them as "Master" to reinforce the command structure, but I don't see why it's "Master Durron" and "Master Horn" and "Master Skywalker" and so on and so forth when they're speaking to each other. They can call each other Kyp and Corran and Luke and still get the job done, and they'd sound a lot more like themselves.
Han orders Ben to start the evacuation. Again, there's little reason to have a fourteen-year-old in charge of any of this. Guess it's the EU's way of keeping the Skywalkers in the spotlight. And as an absolute diehard Skywalker fan, I'd prefer they act a little more realistically, thanks. Ben may be Luke and Mara's son, but he's also only fourteen. He can play a secondary or tertiary role for a while longer.
Ay carumba. The next section opens with this line:
Like the little brother it was named for, the Anakin Solo hung in the shadow of the mighty Megador.
Um, Troy? When did Anakin Solo ever hang in the shadow of Jacen - or anyone else, for that matter? IIRC, in the NJO before Anakin's death, Jacen was very much in the shadow of his little brother, not the other way around. And Anakin Solo certainly never hung specifically in the shadow of any person or ship named Megador. So as tempting as the "little brother" simile undoubtedly was to you, it was a really poor choice for the final manuscript. (Also, Megador is a stupid name. All I can think of when I read it is Megatron, and I was never even a big Transformers fan.)
Jaina and Zekk's X-wings are in sorry shape, so what do they decide to do? Why, they're going to attack a Star Destroyer head on, of course! Just the two of them!
Jaina knew it was crazy. But they both had a full load of shadow bombs, and there was no sense in carrying them all the way back to Shedu Maad.
Um, isn't Jaina supposedly the only one who can take out Caedus? So wouldn't it make more strategic sense to do whatever it takes to maintain the whole trap they've set for him and keep herself alive so that she can carry out her mission instead of saying, "Well, hey, I've still got some weapons left. Might as well use them even if it kills me"?
There's an aside where Jaina's astromech talks back to her and Jaina wonders "if his personality module had suffered some heat damage." What any of that has to do with anything, I do not know.
With the battle underway, Jaina is spoken of as being "truly surprised" by the StealthX flight, which is "rolling and dodging and sliding away from the Solo's defensive fire as though their pilots knew where it would blossom before it arrived." So - Jaina Solo, trained as and surrounded by Jedi her whole life and an X-wing fighter pilot since she was sixteen, is surprised at the abilities of Jedi pilots in StealthX fighters? This makes sense how?
Leading the pack was the charcoal wedge of a Mandalorian Bes'uliik - large and somewhat ungainly, but still fast and powerful. It was taking more fire than the StealthXs, since it was leaving a long stream of bright blue efflux in its wake and its sense-negation technologies weren't as efficient. But it hardly mattered, because it was being flown by the best starfighter pilot Jaina had ever seen - Luke Skywalker, of course -
*rolls eyes* We know Luke's a good pilot. We even know that Jaina thinks so. Don't throw us these stupid little sops. It doesn't make up for the book's larger failings. And if you really must throw in the stupid little sops, at least you could try to do it more smoothly than that.
Jaina and Zekk use the distraction to get closer to the Anakin Solo. They launch their shadow bombs. Then:
. . . Zekk wasn't there anymore. Jaina couldn't feel him in the Force - couldn't even find the combat-meld. She hadn't felt him die, hadn't experienced a sudden shock of fear and pain, could not even remember a wistful pang of regret of farewell. He was just . . . gone.
Meh.
Jaina is being targeted, and figures that the only way the gunners would even know where she was would be courtesy of Jacen. They don't get her, though. Additionally, Jaina's estimation of Luke as the best starfighter pilot she'd ever seen doesn't stop her from telling what strategies to use. Luke leads his flight on another strafing run, and:
Seeing that they would never make it - and that even if they did, they would never survive - Jaina opened herself to the Force again and reached out to Luke with all the strength she could muster, urging him not to waste himself and his Jedi like that.
Sounds like they all had a pretty darned lousy plan for confronting Jacen after all, to me. Jaina's supposed to be the only one who can take out Jacen, but she needlessly risks her life dropping shadow bombs even though Luke and Tenel Ka's forces should have things reasonably under control. Zekk vanishes into thin air. Luke apparently has no other plans than suicide runs. And Jaina, who just did the same thing herself despite being the spearhead of the whole plan, tells Luke his strategic thinking sucks. Just wipe 'em out, Caedus. They're all too stupid to live. Or at least too stupid to read about.
Luke continued on course for an instant, until a trio of cannon bolts hammered some sense into him by bouncing off the Bes'uliik's beskar nose.
Yup, like I said. Best starfighter pilot ever, except when he loses his head and leads his entire wing into certain death, until his niece warns him off - and even then he doesn't listen until actual fire "hammered some sense into him." Yeah. Honestly, Del Rey? I'm not kidding any more. Just kill them all, please. It's a mercy killing.
Jaina's ship gets blown to pieces, and she ejects and watches it blow holes through the decks of the capital ship below. The chapter closes with a time-honored cliché:
Get ready, Caedus. Jaina activated her suit thrusters, then concealed her Force presence again and started down into the fuming ruins of the cloaking cone. Here I come.
But what would she have done if the ship blew up without conveniently blasting an entry hole? Floated around in that suit until Jacen followed his old blood and picked her up - or blew her out of the sky? For such a complete joke of a Sith Lord Jacen's turned out to be, the Jedi sure are doing a terrible job of opposing him.
Chapter Sixteen
I am marginally cheered up, snark-wise, for the next chapter begins with a time-honored cliché:
Victory was within his grasp.
If we can keep up that sort of narration, I can manage to get some snark out of it. If Jacen could start twirling a handlebar mustache while tying Jaina to a reactor set to self-destruct, that would be just great. Let's see how close we come.
Jacen knows it's an ambush and believed Luke was coming for him, thus he ran like a frightened pitten to his Tactical Salon with "intestines filled with ice" - but now he's standing "calmly . . . his gaze fixed on the holodisplay." Why? Another lovely Sith vision. Yeah, I can see how the battle meditation would get a little boring. Nice of the Force to shake things up a bit for him.
So, Jacen's seeing a grown-up Allana on a white throne, surrounded by a hundred beings of all species. Tahiri's shrieking at him - calling him "Lord Caedus", no less - and trying to pull him away, but Jacen is transfixed. But then
. . . the face of his beautiful daughter twisted into the angry, hateful visage of his sister Jaina.
Get ready, Caedus, she was warning him. Here I come.
Caedus laughed. "I am ready, Jaina." He turned his back on the vision, finally allowing Tahiri to pull him away. "And I've already won."
Oh, yes, I am cheered up indeed. Quick, Jacen, use the Force to grow that mustache out. You're going to need it.
Jacen's still laughing as Tahiri pulls him out of the salon, then pauses to - get this - straighten his robes. Must be presentable in the middle of battle! As she tidies him all up, she says the Moffs are afraid they're going to lose the war.
Caedus's temper began to rise. Bwua'tu had already wiped out Niathal's traitors and trapped both the Bothan and Corellian fleets at Carbos Thirteen. Admiral Atoko was neutralizing the Mandalorian nuisance by inflicting some sorely needed urban renewal on Keldabe - with just the remains of the Fifth Fleet. And yet, the Moffs were worried because they had run into some relatively minor resistance here. Did they really expect Jedi to be defeated as easily as Mandalorians and Corellians?
One paragraph, three italicized words.
More importantly, the big war that's been taking up the majority of eight novels before this? The end of it just got summed up in two sentences. Troy, why have I been reading hundreds of pages devoted to the political reasons for this conflict, and battle scenes, and political maneuvering, and personal conflicts between main characters stemming from political differences, and assassinations, and all sorts of things directly related to the war if you were just going to sweep it under the rug with less than fifty words, which themselves are merely a summation of things happening offscreen? That is utterly terrible storytelling.
Jacen, new age Sith that he is, does not embrace his anger, but controls it and politely says, "I appreciate the warning, Tahiri. I'll be sure to reassure them."
If only Palpatine and Vader had thought to be so courteous while taking over the galaxy, maybe they could have had a flash in the pan Empire, too. Live and learn.
Tahiri says that the Moffs' confidence would be more easily gained if they'd never been ambushed, and orders Jacen to fix it:
"Fix it how?" Caedus asked. "Are you under the impression that I can change the past?"
Tahiri looked confused. "Well . . . yeah," she admitted. "You did it for me."
Now Caedus understood. "The kiss, you mean."
"What else?" she asked. "You flow-walked me back to the battle on Baanu Rass, and I kissed Anakin. If you could do that, why not flow-walk back and warn someone about the ambush?"
. . .
He knew why Tahiri believed he could do such a thing: because he had allowed her to believe it.
1) Could we get any more formal? "Are you under the impression"? Come on.
2) If Jacen knows why Tahiri would be believe such a thing - since he deliberately manipulated her to believe that - why would he stop to ask what she means? Tighten up the dialogue, Troy! And drop that last dialogue tag while you're at it and show us Tahiri's actions or expression or something. Honestly.
Her obsession with Anakin had been a convenient tool for him; she had wanted - still wanted - to bring Anakin back so badly that Caedus had not even needed to imply the possibility. Tahiri had simply seized on the hope, and he'd used that to bend her to his will.
Sigh. Look, this has no basis. It never did. Tahiri has moved past this. Even so soon as Rebel Stand, she was a capable young adult and Jedi who refused to be controlled by her pain. Nothing in LotF ever gave us a good reason to believe that Tahiri would still be so obsessed with Anakin, and revert so entirely. How am I supposed to believe a plot that has absolutely no foundation?
"The flow-walking was real," Caedus interrupted. "We did return to the battle at Baanu Rass and you did kiss Anakin. But the past didn't change. It can't."
Tahiri's eyes started to burn with denial. "That makes no sense," she said. "If I really kissed him, then we changed the past."
Caedus shook his head. "When you drop a pebble into a river, what happens? There's a splash, and then the splash disappears. The splash is real, but the river doesn't change. It continues on just the same."
"But it does change," Tahiri objected. "Maybe you can't see it, but the pebble is still there, rolling along the bottom."
"And the kiss is still there, too" Caedus said. He reached out and gently tapped Tahiri's temple. "In there. That's where the bottom of the flow is."
"In my mind?"
"In the way you perceive the past," Caedus said.
I'm going to have nightmares about italics.
As far as the whole flow-walking thing, the explanation makes as much sense as the flow-walking itself ever did, in that if you twist your mind around enough, it eventually seems marginally reasonable, yet pointless. Just as the effects of the blood trail could be achieved with either more mainstream Force use or plain critical thinking and deductive reasoning, so flow-walking to alter one's memories is a ridiculously convoluted solution to a problem. This is a narrative Rube Goldberg machine. So's the whole damned series, but that's another story.
Tahiri, her razor-sharp wit undulled by her disappointment, tells Jacen - excuse me, Lord Caedus - that he's "the slime under a Hutt's tail." Tahiri, really, now. How's the man supposed to function after a cruel blow like that?
Caedus stopped in front of the battle-seasoned GAG sergeant and gave a sigh of feigned exasperation.
"Apprentices," he said. "They can be so touchy about criticism sometimes."
The sergeant nodded sagely, and Caedus felt the tension drain from the Force as guards from both groups decided that the trouble between the two Sith was nothing they needed to worry about.
"It's the same with all subordinates, my lord." The sergeant glanced at a flat-faced Gotal with gray sensory cones and spotty cheek fuzz, then leaned closer and added, "Sometimes I feel like killing them myself."
Well. That's a singularly pathetic way to suck up to a Sith Lord.
Jacen joins Tahiri and the Moffs. The Moffs say they've been sooooo concerned about Jacen's welfare. Tahiri chimes in saying how true that is; they seem quite concerned about Jacen's sanity. The Moffs are dismayed by this. In fact, the first sentences of two consecutive paragraphs both specifically mention the Moffs "sputtering denials." Troy, haven't we already had that chat about repeating yourself? Such an amateur mistake. I'm disappointed in you.
Tahiri repeats herself, too; she tells Jacen, "I tried to tell them you're just Hutt spawn, but for some reason they don't seem to believe me." There are other insults in the galaxy besides Hutt-oriented ones, Tahiri.
So, Jacen brushes off the insults and suggestions of insanity and tells the Moffs to spit out their concerns and quit bothering Tahiri. They think that offing Tenel Ka would be just dandy and throw her fleet into confusion, but Jacen doesn't want to attack the Dragon Queen because he can sense Allana there. He doesn't care a bit about Tenel Ka, just for the record. He thinks that he "wouldn't have a problem" with killing her. Just not Allana. Isn't he a darling?
The Moffs suggest using a nanokiller like they did for Fett, which leads to a side discussion about that little tactic. They air-dispersed the nanokiller, which lives FOREVER BWAHAHAHAHA, so that if Fett ever sets foot on Mandalore again, he's nano-meat.
Once we've finished that little aside, Jacen gets back to telling the Moffs that he doesn't see how a nanokiller can help them with Tenel Ka. The Moffs say, oh, no, they can have that nanokiller ready in an hour!
What do you know - more deus ex machina shenanigans!
The Moffs back down, but Jacen's sure their spokesman's lying - "but it was impossible to tell about what, exactly. Did the fool think he could actually steal a sample of Isolder's blood from beneath Caedus's nose?"
Probably. That's a plot-telegraphing line if I ever read one.
Jacen tells Tahiri to hop into a StealthX and go follow the Jedi transports to find their real base:
"Okay," Tahiri said. "But letting me believe we could bring Anakin back was a terrible way to use me. I still haven't forgiven you."
Hee, the lulz. I can just see her, with her fists on her hips and her foot stamping defiantly. You mean old Sith Lord, Jacen. I'll do what you say, but I still haven't forgiven you!
Jacen says no duh, Tahiri, that was kind of the point, then goes off to take care of Isolder so no one can engineer those nanokillers and get Allana.
Chapter Seventeen
Back to Jaina's POV. She's in the Anankin Solo's prison hold looking for Isolder before anyone finds her, because killing him is still on the to do list. Ah, and I see she's still acting like the noble Jedi who'll do it without being tainted by the dark side: she's swapped uniforms with a female security officer, and the female security officer is now being used not only as a pretend prisoner to get Jaina in, but as a human shield of sorts. As other guards come into view, Jaina tells her prisoner:
"If you even meet their eyes, I'll kill you all, and still do what I came to do. Understand?"
I do believe Denning's torn down the Jedi as much as Traviss did; they just used different ways. Traviss used outright hostility and contempt; Denning just made them all appear stupid and thuggish, without even a convincing facade of moral high ground. Both ways accomplish the same thing.
We read:
There had been a lull in the explosions for about half an hour after Jaina boarded, but then the Anakin Solo had followed the Megador forward and begun to take a steady trickle of hits. Whatever else he was, Caedus was certainly no coward.
No? That's what I'd call someone who flees with icy intestines at the mere thought of Luke coming after him again. Jaina sure has an inflated view of Jacen.
Jaina uses mind tricks to get rid of the two guards, then tries another tactic to find Isolder's location:"Can you tell me what cell the Hapan prince is in?"
Both guards frowned, and Dex asked, "Why would you need to know that?"
"Because . . . " Jaina let her explanation trail off there, trying to make the best of her tight uniform by flashing a coy smile. Playing the flirt had worked pretty well for her mother back on Coruscant, so Jaina saw no reason it shouldn't work for her here. She raised her brows. "I hear he's worth looking at."
Dex shook hs head in annoyance. "I don't think I can help you with that, Captain."
The two guards marched off without awaiting a proper dismissal, leaving Jaina to stand there wondering what her sixty-year-old mother had that she didn't.
Denning's love, Jaina, Denning's love. Better luck with the next author.
Jaina's prisoner comments on Jaina's tremendously lame flirtation skills, Jaina says it's not too late to kill her, and the prisoner laughs like they're BFFs at a sleepover. I don't know if it's Denning's grasp on the whole prisoner/captor dynamic that's weak or if this is his warped sense of how women think coming to the fore again, but someone needs to tie his wrists together and stop him from writing, already.
When the prisoner lets slip that she'd thought Jaina was here for the Mandalorian, not Isolder, then hesitates at giving any further information, Jaina says:
"There are a lot of ways a Jedi can hurt you - most of them so bad that you can't even scream."
And Jaina has the moral right to kill Caedus why, when she's acting pretty Sithly herself? And this is the one Jedi that they all think can kill him without being tainted by the dark side? Uh-huh . . .
Jaina realizes that the Mandalorian prisoner must be Mirta:
Jaina had left a wounded comrade behind. To a Mandalorian commando, that was all that would matter - and to Fett, all that would matter was that it had been Mirta.
So apparently Jaina's back to being a Mando commando again. Also fearing Fett's great and terrible wrath. Which never actually comes. But everyone's afraid of him anyway. Yeah, I don't get it, either.
The smart thing would have been to forget that CeeCee had ever mentioned a Mandalorian prisoner. That was what Fett would have done in her place, maybe even Mirta herself. But Jaina was a Jedi, not an assassin. She couldn't just turn her back on an ally - even a quasi-ally.
1) What do you know? Back to Jedi again. Such as Jedi are these days, anyhow.
2) Um, didn't you just say that a Mandalorian would consider it anathema to leave a wounded comrade? Like, four paragraphs ago? But now a proper Mandalorian would do just that?
3) Jaina is an assassin. She's on a mission of assassination. Right now.
4) No one holding a human shield and threatening them with death or pain enough to leave them voiceless gets to claim compassion as a virtue.
Oy with the contradictions, already!
Kriffing Mandalorians. They were like Hutts - once they got their claws into you, they never let go.
Hutts don't have claws. You really need to polish the metaphors, Troy. That's an acceptable one for an amateur, but not for a professional novelist. Also, there are more species in the galaxy than Hutts. Just FYI.
Jaina fights her way into Mirta's cell, knocks out her human shield, and starts to unfasten Mirta's restraints, then realizes that Mirta's paralyzed. She says that if she makes it, she'll try to come back for Mirta.
"You have to do some things for me," Mirta said. "If you survive, I mean. You have to promise."
"Maybe," Jaina said cautiously. She knew better than to make a blind agreement with a Mandalorian. "What do you have in mind?"
"You have to warn Ba'buir," Mirta said, using the Mando'a word for her grandfather. "The Moffs took some of my blood - they've designed a nanokiller for him."
Jaina nodded. "I can do that."
Mirta's eyes grew as dead and cold as Fett's. "And you have to . . . " Her voice grew strained and cracked, and Jaina could tell that she was fighting some sort of internal battle. "You have to tell him he deserves it. That he did this . . . to me."
1) We KNOW what ba'buir means. We've already read it ad nauseum. And even if we hadn't, simple context reading would give us the definition. It requires, oh, maybe a third grade reading level. Maybe. Give the reader some credit, would you?
2) He even screwed up telling us the definition. "Ba'buir" is not the word for Mirta's grandfather, specifically, as Denning's wording implies. It's "grandfather", straight out. Saying it's the "Mando'a word for her grandfather" makes it sound like it's a title belonging to Fett only, which is not only incorrect, but potentially robs the passage of any emotional impact, since any reader who didn't actually know what ba'buir means is now likely to think that Mirta's calling him something like "Manda'lor" instead of "grandpa."
3) Enough with the cold and dead eyes, honestly. We know the Mandalorians are the GFFA's spotlight emo group. WE KNOW.
Mirta tells Jaina that Jacen underestimates her. Jaina says nuh-uh, Jacen's WAY stronger than me!
"He's magnitudes stronger than me in the Force. All I've got on him is five weeks of Mandalorian commando training."
"And that's enough to get the job done." Mirta's tone was reprimanding, like a parent scolding a child for wanting a third bowl of frezgel. "But I mean, his weakness is more delusional. He's convinced you couldn't have taken his arm - at least not alone. He thinks Luke was with us."
Jaina paused, recalling Caedus's confusion at the end of the battle. She also recalled her own condition, how the strange surge in her Force powers had su ddenly faded just before Caedus had redirected the stormtroopers' fire. "Maybe Luke was there."
1) *facepalm* Are we ever going to hear the end of that bloody Mando training?
2) Look, he's using context reading here! If he trusts the reader to figure out what "frezgel" is supposed to represent, why not with "ba'buir", or when using the claws metaphor, use a species that actually has claws? Why, why, why?
3) Okay, so the context reading is pretty stupid here, too. "Frezgel." Seriously. "Mommy, can I have a frezgel cone after we visit the House of Plastex? Can it be double scoop?" But still. It's the principle of the thing.
4) Luke Skywalker is not "Luke" to Mirta.
5) Jaina, honey, if you think that Luke was there, then you've just undercut your argument for ignoring any chance of redemption for Caedus, remember? You decided that was cold calculation on Jacen's part, in order to let you get away and lead him to the Jedi base. Now you think that Luke might really have been there - well, all the cold calculation and your moment of giving up hope are out the window, aren't they? Doesn't anyone keep track of anything in these books?
Just to reemphasize the fact that Jaina is A JEDI AND NOT AN ASSASSIN KTHXBAI, Mirta bids her farewell with the Mando "good luck" phrase "Shoot straight and run fast" - which we earlier learned is specifically for an assassin.
Back to Jacen's POV. He's going to visit Isolder. Hey, just where Jaina's going! Aren't coincidences something?
Jacen has a moment where he thinks that the logical thing to do would be to let the Moffs let loose the nanokiller on Tenel Ka and Allana, because it might help them win the battle. But the even though the Sith way is the way of pain, he can't let Allana go. Then he fortunately remembers his vision of Allana on the white throne, and realizes that "without her, there would be no white throne." So obviously, he must stop the Moffs' plan at any cost. Allana must be saved, not sacrificed. Mm-kay. Let's just get on with it, already.
Jacen tells Isolder that he'll take him to his ship and he'll be released; just don't get captured again. Isolder gets suspicious and says, "This is about the nanokiller, isn't it?" I'd like to know where Isolder got that idea, since it was brought up out of his hearing. Maybe the Moffs have already been there?
Jacen decides it's not worth the time to convince Isolder that it's not a trap, and uses the Force to twist Isolder's head around, breaking his neck. Sigh. Nothing like a gory death to make the narrative shine.
Invincible review, part 1
Invincible review, part 2
Invincible review, part 4
Chapter Fourteen
Jaina is having a sparring session with Zekk, Lowbacca, Tesar, and apparently Jag as well. She wipes all of them out, of course. I'm a little confused as to why Jag is sparring with four Jedi Knights; I love Jag, but I don't think any non-Force sensitive is really capable of that. Jaina's trying to prove to everyone that she's ready to go after Jacen again. Eventually people point out that Jaina's not going to do any good if she reinjures herself training, so she goes on to practicing a Force technique instead of a physical one.
Shatterpoint.
That's right, boys and girls, Jaina's practicing shatterpoint.
During one of her debriefings with Luke, she had described how Jacen had used shatterpoint to destroy Roegr's beskar'gam. Luke had surprised her by suggesting that he teach it to her.
Jaina should not have been surprised that her uncle had mastered the technique himself - but she was. So she had foolishly blurted out something about it being a lost art, and that hardly anyone could master it. Luke had simply smiled and replied that an art was not lost just because it could be wielded only by a handful, and that if her twin brother was one of the few capable of learning it, so was she.
I call deus ex machina shenanigans again. Shatterpoint hasn't been mentioned since Mace died. How does anyone know about it? How is it something that can be taught in the first place? I got the impression that it was an inborn talent. And how does Luke know about it? When did he learn it? Why hasn't he used it before? I know that a lot of things can happen offscreen and still be valid; just because we never seen anyone use the bathroom doesn't mean that everyone simply reabsorbs their biowaste. But big Force techniques not seen for generations probably should be shown. Otherwise, like I said: deus ex machina. "Jacen knows a Force technique hardly able to be mastered by anyone ever that's been thought to be a lost art for decades and decades, Jaina? No problem. I know it too. Never you mind how. I'll teach you. So what if hardly anyone can do it? If I can and Jacen can, you can."
Not to mention - again - that shatterpoint was not, as far as I recall, spoken of as finding the shatterpoints within physical objects. That was an analogy used by Mace to illustrate how he saw the shatterpoints within situations and people. It doesn't bother me so much that a Jedi might be able to see shatterpoints within physical objects as it does that this is automatically spoken of as being part of Mace's shatterpoint talent. Because that's not what it was. Don't redefine things midstream.
Jaina breaks up a whole lot of things via the new and improved shatterpoint technique, then:
Behind her, Jaina's father let out a loud, embarrassing whoop. "Who needs a lightsaber?" Han exclaimed. "I haven't seen anything that impressive since your mother wrapped a chain around Jabba's throat."
"Han, you didn't see that," her mother said. "Freeze-blind, remember?"
Sigh. Yes, we remember what Leia did in the movies, Troy. We remember that she was in the skimpy bikini, too. Pardon my cynicism in suspecting that that's half the reason you remember the scene fondly enough to reference it here, when Han's seen plenty things more impressive than that in the last, oh, FORTY YEARS.
Tristan and Tarragon bring Ben back. Jaina's first impression is "they were obviously relatives of Tenel Ka - and fairly close relatives, at that." Again, how is it that "no one" knows they're Tenel Ka's cousins if both Ben and Jaina's first thoughts are that they simply must be related?
Jaina runs to embrace Ben, then tells him to never do that again - as in, running away from his backup. Ben tells her he did the right thing and followed protocol. Leia joins them and agrees that Ben acted rightly (WTH, Leia? You sure didn't seem to think so at the time) and asks him to "please forgive Jaina". WTH again? "Please forgive Jaina"?
Well, apparently there is indeed a sin to forgive, because:
Ben . . . looked back to Jaina and frowned. "I'm a Jedi, Jaina, with a job to do, just like you. If we're going to keep working together, you're going to have to remember that - okay?"
As I've said, my brother is Ben's age, and I'm about Jaina's age. Sometimes Dylan does talk to me the way Ben's doing to Jaina. An interesting difference, though, is that even while Dylan's talking down to me, he knows perfectly well that he's treading on slippery ground, because I'm the adult, not him; even if his sentiments are correct, he's under an obligation to express them with more respect than condescension. He knows he's acting inappropriately and running the risk of being smacked down.
Does anyone do that with Ben? Does anyone say, "Hey, talk respectfully to your cousin. She's old enough to be your mother, she was a Jedi Knight almost before you were born, and she's a veteran of several wars - no matter what you think of her words or actions, don't talk to her as though you're the wise parent and she the wayward child"?
Nope. As you've read above, Leia asks Ben to forgive Jaina. Jaina herself meekly says, "Yeah, sure, Ben. Sorry." No one else says a word to Ben.
Ben just shook his head, then turned to his father, who was standing quietly beside Leia.
"Good to see you, Dad," he said. "At least you're not treating me like a kid anymore. Thanks."
Ben, newsflash: YOU. ARE. A. KID. As you yourself show so clearly with your emphasized word there. And your cousin wasn't treating you like a kid. She was speaking both as a more experienced Jedi, to whom you should listen once in a while, and as your cousin, who loves you dearly and was terrified for you when you were captured.
I liked Ben throughout most of LotF, even when Traviss got her hands on him. With Invincible, I'm mostly thinking that he's a brat and an ingrate.
Ben says there was a problem with his escape, and maybe he should let Tenel Ka explain it. Zekk asks, "Tenel Ka's here?" After which, we read: "Ben looked at Zekk as though he had just asked a very foolish question." Well, hey, that's the way Ben's looking at everyone these days. He's turned into a typical teenager who thinks all the adults around him are intolerably stupid, yet he of all people should have ample reason to know otherwise, and not a single adult ever corrects him. Instead, he gets promoted to Jedi Knight - and most people in Lit seem to be saying that this is the best Ben characterization we've seen yet, and that Ben's the only one acting like a true Jedi. I beg to differ. But let's move on.
Tarragon flirts with Zekk. Zekk is confuddled. Well, actually - "Zekk was clearly reeling from the straightforward manner of Hapan women". Because Zekk's never really been around straightforward or flirtatious women before, you know. He's only really spent time with women like Jaina, Tenel Ka (A HAPAN WOMAN), Leia, Mara, that sort, you know. The shy, retiring kind who'd never simply speak their mind or tell a man what they expected or wanted.
Tenel Ka and Allana arrive. Jaina knows that she's her niece, but apparently no one but she, Han, Leia, and Tenel Ka know, so no one greets her as family. I understand the practicality of this, but the implication is that neither Luke nor Ben know. Can't say I agree with that, since not only is Allana their family too, but as Grand Master Luke should probably know about any children of Jacen's, but hey, characters know all sorts of things they haven't mentioned before the final book of a nine book series. I'm sure we'll find out a few books down the road that Luke knew all along and just kept mum, like with shatterpoint.
Tenel Ka reveals that her father's been captured, and since he knew the location of the Jedi base, they must assume that it's been compromised. Han asks what the chances are that Jacen has the right charts to find them. We read:
"Even if he doesn't, the Force will guide him," Luke said. He turned to Tenel Ka. "But I doubt your father revealed our location. I think Caedus may have found us another way."
He points to the stains Jaina's still sporting, whereupon Tenel Ka's jaw drops (geez, Troy, please find another phrase. People's jaws very rarely literally drop) and she asks, "That's Caedus's blood?" Tenel Ka explains:
". . . it's a blood trail . . . Some of the Nightsisters used the technique to mark their slaves - so they could always track them down."
1) WTF, Luke? You knew all along and just plain didn't say anything?
2) So . . . the Nightsisters assume that when a slave escapes, they'll first injure their masters in a way that results in being bloodspattered? Or are we saying that the Nightsisters just slash themselves and preemptively mark their slaves? Not that their culture wouldn't be the sort who'd do something stupid like that, but again, we're relying an awful lot on techniques and tactics that haven't been seen before. In a standalone book or the earlier books in a series, that's narrative development. In the final installment of a nine book series, it's running dangerously close to deus ex machina. And we have an abundance of those instances in this book, folks.
3) They really need their blood to track people? Really? A simple application of the Force or just some plain decent tracking skills aren't good enough?
Jaina confronts Luke about why he didn't say anything. Luke said he did know Caedus would be coming - for him. Saba, of course, does all the speaking for the Jedi when Luke doesn't, and asks, "Does one win a battle by breaking the Sword, or the warrior who wieldz it?"
So Jaina's role is now diminished to a pawn in Luke's grip. Great. Let's just gut this book of some more meaning, why don't we?
Tenel Ka says she and her fleet stand with the Jedi; "better to defend it (her throne) here among friends than on Hapes, with more enemies at my back than in front of me."
As Luke and the others began to make plans for the coming onslaught, Jaina was still struggling to grasp how her brother had taken advantage of her. She did not understand exactly how Nightsister blood trails worked, but she assumed the Force-user somehow maintained a connection to the blood he had shed, and employed that to keep track of his living property.
This isn't actually the point I'm trying to make with this passage, but I just have to interrupt to point out something else that's just occurred to me: So, a Nightsister maintains a connection to the blood she sheds - doesn't that make things difficult when she gets a papercut? Or a sliver? Or - and pardon me for going here - what about when she has a period? Wouldn't all those conscious connections to one's shed blood and whatever it touches get distracting? "Quick, fellow Nightsister! My escaped slave is that way! Oh, wait, that's the village dump. Must be my old tampons."
The alternative is that the Nightsisters have a switch in their brain where they can say, "Okay, I'm going to consciously maintain a connection to THIS blood! But not that blood, because that's not useful to me." And that's just getting into the realm of the ridiculous to me. Yes, Jedi can selectively employ certain techniques, but this just really feels wrong to me. It's like the Bene Gesserit in Dune apparently being able to consciously control what gender child they conceive. I mostly thought Dune was interesting, but wow, did that bit dissolve my suspension of disbelief and yank me right out of the story. What's a Bene Gesserit doing, then? Somehow she's aware of the chromosomal makeup of each and every one of those millions of ejaculated sperm cells within her body, picks one, then guides it to her egg cell, and somehow diverts all the rest? (What a way to suck the romance right out of lovemaking, btw. "Yeah, honey, that was great. I'll be right with you - just have to get a count of your sperm." *facepalm*) Come on. The Bene Gesserit couldn't have been cool enough without that bit of inanity? Same principle here. This is too far-fetched. It's not entertaining, it's not plausible; it's distracting.
Anyway, to continue the passage:
If Jaina'd had any lingering doubts about whether there might be any trace of Jacen left inside Darth Caedus, they were gone now. Caedus had known exactly what he was doing when he ordered those stormtroopers to redirect their fire. And his cold calculation in the face of such an injury scared her even more than seeing him stand up after losing his arm. He hadn't wanted Jaina killed then, because he needed her to lead him to the Jedi now.
When Jaina returned her attention to the others, it was to find her father studying her with sad, sympathetic eyes. "It finally happened, didn't it?" he asked.
"Yeah," Jaina said. "I think it did."
Ben frowned. "What happened?"
"Her last hope died," Leia said. "She realized that Jacen is totally gone. There's nothing left to bring back into the light."
So many problems, I hardly know where to start.
1) Going back to Jaina and Jacen's duel, Jacen sure didn't look like he was coldly calculating anything. He looked mentally unbalanced. For almost the whole time, he thought he was fighting Luke. We read this from Jacen's POV, and he was certain that he was fighting Luke. When, after Jaina cut off his arm and he threw her across the room with Force lightning, he realized that Jaina was there, his first question and priority was to find Luke. He asked Jaina where Luke was. Once she dropped behind cover, Jacen directed his stormtroopers to direct their fire to an empty corner, because "Skywalker was the dangerous one." Subpoints to this objection:
1a) Luke was shielding Jaina with an illusion of himself. Jacen had reason to believe that Luke was there, especially if Jacen himself is unbalanced, which I thought we'd kind of established that he was. I, for one, read that scene as Luke giving off an illusion of himself in the corner to draw fire away from Jaina; this seemed to be supported by Jaina suddenly feeling completely drained and exhausted, and thinking she herself saw something in that corner.
1b) Jacen hasn't really been written as sane enough to be that lucid and "coldly calculating", to make an instant change from being certain that Luke was there to realizing that it had all been an illusion and he was fighting Jaina the whole time, therefore, quick, find a way to let her go and she'll lead me to the Jedi!
1c) If Jacen was in fact that lucid, doesn't that undermine Luke's entire plan to shield Jaina? Doesn't it undermine everything Luke's accomplished so far? Because Luke had earlier said that if Jacen "realized that I'm using visions of the future to plot strategy . . . he would have started to grow suspicious of what he was seeing." Doesn't this principle hold true even if it's not specifically the visions, since Jacen would realize that Luke had and was using a power and strategy Jacen had never anticipated, and he, Jacen, should therefore be doubly suspicious of everything Force-related now? And if that happens, doesn't it undermine the entire plot of this book, and thus the conclusion of a nine book series?
1d) If Jacen was "coldly calculating" a way to let Jaina escape, he couldn't have found a way to do it that doesn't reinforce the OMG-he's-a-nutter reaction the troops have been having anyway? You know, first seeing phantom fleets and then ordering stormtroopers to shoot at empty corners is not a way to increase the troops' confidence.
1e) If Jacen was this lucid and coldly calculating, doesn't that undermine his entire characterization up to this point? You spent all this time trying to convince us that Jacen was borderline insane, then you suddenly yank that out from under the readers by telling us that in an instant where he has the most reason to fall prey to mental instability, he suddenly becomes entirely lucid and strategic and calculating? Why?
2) I don't know how it's so utterly impossible to keep one's senses after a battle amputation (assuming, of course, that one is sane to begin with); it's hard, certainly, but didn't Luke remain pretty lucid and calculating after Vader cut off his hand? He kept his moral resolve, he remained defiant, he deliberately made the choice to potentially end his life rather than side with evil. But when Jacen does less for a worse reason, it's "Wow, Jacen, you're the bestest and evillest. Your terrifying Force skills paralyze me with fear." Uh-huh.
3) I notice smartass "I know better than all of you grizzled war veterans old enough to be my parents and grandparents because I trained with Jacen's own Gestapo" Ben didn't catch on.
4) Couldn't it have been said that there was nothing left of Vader to bring back to the light? Wasn't all of Anakin gone? Obi-Wan and Yoda felt that Anakin was dead. Vader said so himself - said that his former name meant nothing to him. He cut off his son's hand. He was willing to turn his son over to the same darkness that had consumed him for two decades. He was willing to do the same to his daughter, and taunt his son with the fact. He stood by and watched Palpatine electrocute his son for some time. And as a result, Vader stayed with the dark side, Luke died, and Palpatine prevailed, thus continuing the reign of the dark side over the galaxy - oh, wait. I'm not saying that Jacen had to be redeemed for this story. I am saying that it's a damned confusing thing for Anakin's children and grandchildren to be so certain that there's no chance of redemption and that they should shut off even the possibility of such a thing in their minds.
Sigh.
Ben argues. Ben wants to know how you know when someone can be brought back to the light. Ben points out that he did some pretty terrible things, but no one gave up on him. Han says, "You got a little confused, kid. That happens. But you didn't go around killing family members and burning planets."
No, Ben just killed a handful of people who, although not family members, didn't deserve to die. And tried to arrest his aunt and uncle at blasterpoint. And, IIRC, accidentally incited Jacen to go burn Kashyyyk. Yeah, he got confused, but it wasn't exactly the sort of confusion that should be swept under the rug. (And then promote the confused person to a Jedi Knight at fourteen. 'Cause he's all betters now.)
Luke, meanwhile, is studying Ben "not with shock or disbelief over his son's naiveté, but with pride." This somehow prompts Jaina to ask Ben if he's talking about Tahiri, whereupon Ben looks uncomfortable, then defends Tahiri because "she hated what she did", and "she's not like Caedus. Not yet."
Whereupon we get, not a discussion about redemption, not a decision about what to do with Tahiri, but a non sequitur from the previously silent Allana: "Jedi Jacen likes hurting people. He scares me."
Which gives Jaina a chance to reassuringly kneel down, take "Allana's tiny hands in her own", and "really promise" that Jacen will never scare her again.
Aw! Nothing like some warm fuzzy interaction with little kids to make fratricide all sunshiny!
Chapter Fifteen
The Jedi and Tenel Ka's fleet are preparing for an ambush among the Mists (some astronomical feature the Jedi were hiding in, if I didn't mention that before. Lotsa navigational hazards). Supposedly Jaina's blood trail (say, does that vanish if Jacen dies? Or does she get to be marked for the rest of her life with the blood of the brother she slays? Sounds like something right out of Sophocles. Can we get some blue ghostie-type Furies out of this deal?) will trick Jacen into thinking this is where the real super secret Jedi base is.
Then when Jacen appears, the fleet is going to blow up his ship! No more Caedus! No, I kid. Who'd take the easy way out in LotF? They're going to cover so Jaina can sneak inside and kill him. "Hello. My name is Jaina Solo. You killed my aunt. Prepare to die." BTW, how's she going to sneak in if we're doing all this in space instead of on a planetary surface? Can she slip past a capital ship's shields into a hangar bay without noticing? Or is she just going to ram Jacen's ship and hope her own stays in one piece until it's through the hull?
Meanwhile, Jaina realizes that Zekk isn't paying much attention to her. This makes Jaina sad. Because Jaina "had simply taken for granted that they would always be the ideal mission partners, in Force contact on an almost unconscious level, able to read each other's thoughts and intentions to almost the same degree as her parents."
Jaina had tried to tell herself that the change was due to her current mission, because she had to confront Caedus alone. But she knew better. The truth was, Zekk had probably just grown weary of waiting for her to sort out her personal life. Or maybe the time apart had helped him realize he didn't need to be anything more than her wingmate. That probably shouldn't have made her sad, but it did.
Well, Jaina, twelve years or so is kind of a long time to keep guys dangling after you. The only wonder here is that either Jag or Zekk is still interested anyway. And yeah, you probably have no right to feel sad about it.
Zekk, of course, is oblivious to all of Jaina's emo-ness. Because he's thinking about Tarragon. No, I'm not kidding. Apparently, it only takes one look at a Hapan girl to throw twelve years of puppyish devotion right out the window.
Meanwhile, back on the Uroro Station where all the Jedi and their handful of non-Jedi allies are hiding out, we get something from Han's POV. Han is observing "Saba and the other masters", who are waiting their turn for the battle.
Has anyone else noticed that every single time the Masters are referred to as a group in one of Denning's books, they are referred to as "Saba and the other masters"? Every. Single. Time. Doesn't matter whose POV we're reading; every character thinks "Saba and the other masters." Not only does Saba always get top billing and nearly always do the talking, but the other Jedi Masters don't even get an individual mention most of the time. They're just "the other masters", following Saba meekly wherever she goes.
Han and Luke have a brief discussion, which Saba butts in on. Of course. Then:
He turned to Leia, who seemed only marginally less worried than he was. "Our next kids are not going to be Jedi."
"Sure, Han, whatever you say." Leia's eyes did not leave the viewport. "But I don't think you have to worry about having more kids."
"Hey, I'm still young," Han said. "And you're a Jedi."
1) Three paragraphs; three italicized words.
2) Yet a little more focus on Han and Leia's sex life. Isn't this a slightly inappropriate moment to discuss conceiving more children, since, you know, they're surrounded by other people and in the middle of a critical battle?
3) Does a jest about "our next kids" seem unfeeling to anyone else? Sure, humor can deflect tension, but "our next kids"? One son is dead; the other is a Sith Lord marked for death; their only daughter is currently in mortal danger on a mission to kill her twin brother. But Han jokes about "our next kids" as though their children are disposable? I realize that this is a weird thing for me to say, both since I don't have children myself and because I absolutely hate it when people act as though my opinion on such things is worthless unless I do have children of my own, but does Denning have kids? Because I really can't imagine any of the parents I've known in my life joking quite like this.
4) Even if Han actually wanted more kids (and yes, even if he's joking), it's one heck of an assumption that his sixty-year-old wife would be interested in more pregnancies, births, and infant care. Precious few women I know of that age would be willing to go through it all again. And Leia herself said she couldn't imagine doing it again all the way back in VP.
5) Mara was a Jedi too, but when she was in her early forties in BP, the implication was very strong that she and Luke had very little time left to conceive. Contrariwise, Tendra is not a Jedi, yet in an earlier book we established that she's pregnant without medical intervention, and she's only a few years younger than Leia is now. The EU needs to make up its mind.
6) Perhaps the most important concern of all for me here is that Denning's H/L affection has led him far, far astray of doing them justice. He's been harping on this "Han's not old" business since DN. Every book of his, there's some area where either Han or another character is fervently insisting that OMG HAN IS NOT OLD. HE'S NOT, HE'S NOT, HE'S NOT. And frankly? It's gone way, way too far. Han looks pathetic in my eyes now. I read this line and I feel pity for him. He sounds like a beaten old man, trying desperately to cling to the illusion of youth. And it's really hard for me to not resent Denning for making me think of Han that way.
Luke's off in another deep trance again. Naturally, Saba steps into the void and basically takes charge, acting both as liaison for the group of masters and Han and Leia, and acting as though she's in charge of the masters themselves. Because of all the masters here, of all the ones that have an EU history far longer than Saba's, none of them are as wonderful and worthy of the spotlight as Saba Sebatyne. Play favorites a little more, why don't you, Troy?
I'm also rolling my eyes a little bit that every time any Jedi speaks to another, it's always "Master" this and "Master" that. Formality amongst non-Jedi or for the sake of Council room propriety is one thing, but again, this is Luke's Jedi Order, not Yoda's. These masters are all long-time friends, and on a first name basis. I could understand if they insisted that the younger Knights address them as "Master" to reinforce the command structure, but I don't see why it's "Master Durron" and "Master Horn" and "Master Skywalker" and so on and so forth when they're speaking to each other. They can call each other Kyp and Corran and Luke and still get the job done, and they'd sound a lot more like themselves.
Han orders Ben to start the evacuation. Again, there's little reason to have a fourteen-year-old in charge of any of this. Guess it's the EU's way of keeping the Skywalkers in the spotlight. And as an absolute diehard Skywalker fan, I'd prefer they act a little more realistically, thanks. Ben may be Luke and Mara's son, but he's also only fourteen. He can play a secondary or tertiary role for a while longer.
Ay carumba. The next section opens with this line:
Like the little brother it was named for, the Anakin Solo hung in the shadow of the mighty Megador.
Um, Troy? When did Anakin Solo ever hang in the shadow of Jacen - or anyone else, for that matter? IIRC, in the NJO before Anakin's death, Jacen was very much in the shadow of his little brother, not the other way around. And Anakin Solo certainly never hung specifically in the shadow of any person or ship named Megador. So as tempting as the "little brother" simile undoubtedly was to you, it was a really poor choice for the final manuscript. (Also, Megador is a stupid name. All I can think of when I read it is Megatron, and I was never even a big Transformers fan.)
Jaina and Zekk's X-wings are in sorry shape, so what do they decide to do? Why, they're going to attack a Star Destroyer head on, of course! Just the two of them!
Jaina knew it was crazy. But they both had a full load of shadow bombs, and there was no sense in carrying them all the way back to Shedu Maad.
Um, isn't Jaina supposedly the only one who can take out Caedus? So wouldn't it make more strategic sense to do whatever it takes to maintain the whole trap they've set for him and keep herself alive so that she can carry out her mission instead of saying, "Well, hey, I've still got some weapons left. Might as well use them even if it kills me"?
There's an aside where Jaina's astromech talks back to her and Jaina wonders "if his personality module had suffered some heat damage." What any of that has to do with anything, I do not know.
With the battle underway, Jaina is spoken of as being "truly surprised" by the StealthX flight, which is "rolling and dodging and sliding away from the Solo's defensive fire as though their pilots knew where it would blossom before it arrived." So - Jaina Solo, trained as and surrounded by Jedi her whole life and an X-wing fighter pilot since she was sixteen, is surprised at the abilities of Jedi pilots in StealthX fighters? This makes sense how?
Leading the pack was the charcoal wedge of a Mandalorian Bes'uliik - large and somewhat ungainly, but still fast and powerful. It was taking more fire than the StealthXs, since it was leaving a long stream of bright blue efflux in its wake and its sense-negation technologies weren't as efficient. But it hardly mattered, because it was being flown by the best starfighter pilot Jaina had ever seen - Luke Skywalker, of course -
*rolls eyes* We know Luke's a good pilot. We even know that Jaina thinks so. Don't throw us these stupid little sops. It doesn't make up for the book's larger failings. And if you really must throw in the stupid little sops, at least you could try to do it more smoothly than that.
Jaina and Zekk use the distraction to get closer to the Anakin Solo. They launch their shadow bombs. Then:
. . . Zekk wasn't there anymore. Jaina couldn't feel him in the Force - couldn't even find the combat-meld. She hadn't felt him die, hadn't experienced a sudden shock of fear and pain, could not even remember a wistful pang of regret of farewell. He was just . . . gone.
Meh.
Jaina is being targeted, and figures that the only way the gunners would even know where she was would be courtesy of Jacen. They don't get her, though. Additionally, Jaina's estimation of Luke as the best starfighter pilot she'd ever seen doesn't stop her from telling what strategies to use. Luke leads his flight on another strafing run, and:
Seeing that they would never make it - and that even if they did, they would never survive - Jaina opened herself to the Force again and reached out to Luke with all the strength she could muster, urging him not to waste himself and his Jedi like that.
Sounds like they all had a pretty darned lousy plan for confronting Jacen after all, to me. Jaina's supposed to be the only one who can take out Jacen, but she needlessly risks her life dropping shadow bombs even though Luke and Tenel Ka's forces should have things reasonably under control. Zekk vanishes into thin air. Luke apparently has no other plans than suicide runs. And Jaina, who just did the same thing herself despite being the spearhead of the whole plan, tells Luke his strategic thinking sucks. Just wipe 'em out, Caedus. They're all too stupid to live. Or at least too stupid to read about.
Luke continued on course for an instant, until a trio of cannon bolts hammered some sense into him by bouncing off the Bes'uliik's beskar nose.
Yup, like I said. Best starfighter pilot ever, except when he loses his head and leads his entire wing into certain death, until his niece warns him off - and even then he doesn't listen until actual fire "hammered some sense into him." Yeah. Honestly, Del Rey? I'm not kidding any more. Just kill them all, please. It's a mercy killing.
Jaina's ship gets blown to pieces, and she ejects and watches it blow holes through the decks of the capital ship below. The chapter closes with a time-honored cliché:
Get ready, Caedus. Jaina activated her suit thrusters, then concealed her Force presence again and started down into the fuming ruins of the cloaking cone. Here I come.
But what would she have done if the ship blew up without conveniently blasting an entry hole? Floated around in that suit until Jacen followed his old blood and picked her up - or blew her out of the sky? For such a complete joke of a Sith Lord Jacen's turned out to be, the Jedi sure are doing a terrible job of opposing him.
Chapter Sixteen
I am marginally cheered up, snark-wise, for the next chapter begins with a time-honored cliché:
Victory was within his grasp.
If we can keep up that sort of narration, I can manage to get some snark out of it. If Jacen could start twirling a handlebar mustache while tying Jaina to a reactor set to self-destruct, that would be just great. Let's see how close we come.
Jacen knows it's an ambush and believed Luke was coming for him, thus he ran like a frightened pitten to his Tactical Salon with "intestines filled with ice" - but now he's standing "calmly . . . his gaze fixed on the holodisplay." Why? Another lovely Sith vision. Yeah, I can see how the battle meditation would get a little boring. Nice of the Force to shake things up a bit for him.
So, Jacen's seeing a grown-up Allana on a white throne, surrounded by a hundred beings of all species. Tahiri's shrieking at him - calling him "Lord Caedus", no less - and trying to pull him away, but Jacen is transfixed. But then
. . . the face of his beautiful daughter twisted into the angry, hateful visage of his sister Jaina.
Get ready, Caedus, she was warning him. Here I come.
Caedus laughed. "I am ready, Jaina." He turned his back on the vision, finally allowing Tahiri to pull him away. "And I've already won."
Oh, yes, I am cheered up indeed. Quick, Jacen, use the Force to grow that mustache out. You're going to need it.
Jacen's still laughing as Tahiri pulls him out of the salon, then pauses to - get this - straighten his robes. Must be presentable in the middle of battle! As she tidies him all up, she says the Moffs are afraid they're going to lose the war.
Caedus's temper began to rise. Bwua'tu had already wiped out Niathal's traitors and trapped both the Bothan and Corellian fleets at Carbos Thirteen. Admiral Atoko was neutralizing the Mandalorian nuisance by inflicting some sorely needed urban renewal on Keldabe - with just the remains of the Fifth Fleet. And yet, the Moffs were worried because they had run into some relatively minor resistance here. Did they really expect Jedi to be defeated as easily as Mandalorians and Corellians?
One paragraph, three italicized words.
More importantly, the big war that's been taking up the majority of eight novels before this? The end of it just got summed up in two sentences. Troy, why have I been reading hundreds of pages devoted to the political reasons for this conflict, and battle scenes, and political maneuvering, and personal conflicts between main characters stemming from political differences, and assassinations, and all sorts of things directly related to the war if you were just going to sweep it under the rug with less than fifty words, which themselves are merely a summation of things happening offscreen? That is utterly terrible storytelling.
Jacen, new age Sith that he is, does not embrace his anger, but controls it and politely says, "I appreciate the warning, Tahiri. I'll be sure to reassure them."
If only Palpatine and Vader had thought to be so courteous while taking over the galaxy, maybe they could have had a flash in the pan Empire, too. Live and learn.
Tahiri says that the Moffs' confidence would be more easily gained if they'd never been ambushed, and orders Jacen to fix it:
"Fix it how?" Caedus asked. "Are you under the impression that I can change the past?"
Tahiri looked confused. "Well . . . yeah," she admitted. "You did it for me."
Now Caedus understood. "The kiss, you mean."
"What else?" she asked. "You flow-walked me back to the battle on Baanu Rass, and I kissed Anakin. If you could do that, why not flow-walk back and warn someone about the ambush?"
. . .
He knew why Tahiri believed he could do such a thing: because he had allowed her to believe it.
1) Could we get any more formal? "Are you under the impression"? Come on.
2) If Jacen knows why Tahiri would be believe such a thing - since he deliberately manipulated her to believe that - why would he stop to ask what she means? Tighten up the dialogue, Troy! And drop that last dialogue tag while you're at it and show us Tahiri's actions or expression or something. Honestly.
Her obsession with Anakin had been a convenient tool for him; she had wanted - still wanted - to bring Anakin back so badly that Caedus had not even needed to imply the possibility. Tahiri had simply seized on the hope, and he'd used that to bend her to his will.
Sigh. Look, this has no basis. It never did. Tahiri has moved past this. Even so soon as Rebel Stand, she was a capable young adult and Jedi who refused to be controlled by her pain. Nothing in LotF ever gave us a good reason to believe that Tahiri would still be so obsessed with Anakin, and revert so entirely. How am I supposed to believe a plot that has absolutely no foundation?
"The flow-walking was real," Caedus interrupted. "We did return to the battle at Baanu Rass and you did kiss Anakin. But the past didn't change. It can't."
Tahiri's eyes started to burn with denial. "That makes no sense," she said. "If I really kissed him, then we changed the past."
Caedus shook his head. "When you drop a pebble into a river, what happens? There's a splash, and then the splash disappears. The splash is real, but the river doesn't change. It continues on just the same."
"But it does change," Tahiri objected. "Maybe you can't see it, but the pebble is still there, rolling along the bottom."
"And the kiss is still there, too" Caedus said. He reached out and gently tapped Tahiri's temple. "In there. That's where the bottom of the flow is."
"In my mind?"
"In the way you perceive the past," Caedus said.
I'm going to have nightmares about italics.
As far as the whole flow-walking thing, the explanation makes as much sense as the flow-walking itself ever did, in that if you twist your mind around enough, it eventually seems marginally reasonable, yet pointless. Just as the effects of the blood trail could be achieved with either more mainstream Force use or plain critical thinking and deductive reasoning, so flow-walking to alter one's memories is a ridiculously convoluted solution to a problem. This is a narrative Rube Goldberg machine. So's the whole damned series, but that's another story.
Tahiri, her razor-sharp wit undulled by her disappointment, tells Jacen - excuse me, Lord Caedus - that he's "the slime under a Hutt's tail." Tahiri, really, now. How's the man supposed to function after a cruel blow like that?
Caedus stopped in front of the battle-seasoned GAG sergeant and gave a sigh of feigned exasperation.
"Apprentices," he said. "They can be so touchy about criticism sometimes."
The sergeant nodded sagely, and Caedus felt the tension drain from the Force as guards from both groups decided that the trouble between the two Sith was nothing they needed to worry about.
"It's the same with all subordinates, my lord." The sergeant glanced at a flat-faced Gotal with gray sensory cones and spotty cheek fuzz, then leaned closer and added, "Sometimes I feel like killing them myself."
Well. That's a singularly pathetic way to suck up to a Sith Lord.
Jacen joins Tahiri and the Moffs. The Moffs say they've been sooooo concerned about Jacen's welfare. Tahiri chimes in saying how true that is; they seem quite concerned about Jacen's sanity. The Moffs are dismayed by this. In fact, the first sentences of two consecutive paragraphs both specifically mention the Moffs "sputtering denials." Troy, haven't we already had that chat about repeating yourself? Such an amateur mistake. I'm disappointed in you.
Tahiri repeats herself, too; she tells Jacen, "I tried to tell them you're just Hutt spawn, but for some reason they don't seem to believe me." There are other insults in the galaxy besides Hutt-oriented ones, Tahiri.
So, Jacen brushes off the insults and suggestions of insanity and tells the Moffs to spit out their concerns and quit bothering Tahiri. They think that offing Tenel Ka would be just dandy and throw her fleet into confusion, but Jacen doesn't want to attack the Dragon Queen because he can sense Allana there. He doesn't care a bit about Tenel Ka, just for the record. He thinks that he "wouldn't have a problem" with killing her. Just not Allana. Isn't he a darling?
The Moffs suggest using a nanokiller like they did for Fett, which leads to a side discussion about that little tactic. They air-dispersed the nanokiller, which lives FOREVER BWAHAHAHAHA, so that if Fett ever sets foot on Mandalore again, he's nano-meat.
Once we've finished that little aside, Jacen gets back to telling the Moffs that he doesn't see how a nanokiller can help them with Tenel Ka. The Moffs say, oh, no, they can have that nanokiller ready in an hour!
What do you know - more deus ex machina shenanigans!
The Moffs back down, but Jacen's sure their spokesman's lying - "but it was impossible to tell about what, exactly. Did the fool think he could actually steal a sample of Isolder's blood from beneath Caedus's nose?"
Probably. That's a plot-telegraphing line if I ever read one.
Jacen tells Tahiri to hop into a StealthX and go follow the Jedi transports to find their real base:
"Okay," Tahiri said. "But letting me believe we could bring Anakin back was a terrible way to use me. I still haven't forgiven you."
Hee, the lulz. I can just see her, with her fists on her hips and her foot stamping defiantly. You mean old Sith Lord, Jacen. I'll do what you say, but I still haven't forgiven you!
Jacen says no duh, Tahiri, that was kind of the point, then goes off to take care of Isolder so no one can engineer those nanokillers and get Allana.
Chapter Seventeen
Back to Jaina's POV. She's in the Anankin Solo's prison hold looking for Isolder before anyone finds her, because killing him is still on the to do list. Ah, and I see she's still acting like the noble Jedi who'll do it without being tainted by the dark side: she's swapped uniforms with a female security officer, and the female security officer is now being used not only as a pretend prisoner to get Jaina in, but as a human shield of sorts. As other guards come into view, Jaina tells her prisoner:
"If you even meet their eyes, I'll kill you all, and still do what I came to do. Understand?"
I do believe Denning's torn down the Jedi as much as Traviss did; they just used different ways. Traviss used outright hostility and contempt; Denning just made them all appear stupid and thuggish, without even a convincing facade of moral high ground. Both ways accomplish the same thing.
We read:
There had been a lull in the explosions for about half an hour after Jaina boarded, but then the Anakin Solo had followed the Megador forward and begun to take a steady trickle of hits. Whatever else he was, Caedus was certainly no coward.
No? That's what I'd call someone who flees with icy intestines at the mere thought of Luke coming after him again. Jaina sure has an inflated view of Jacen.
Jaina uses mind tricks to get rid of the two guards, then tries another tactic to find Isolder's location:"Can you tell me what cell the Hapan prince is in?"
Both guards frowned, and Dex asked, "Why would you need to know that?"
"Because . . . " Jaina let her explanation trail off there, trying to make the best of her tight uniform by flashing a coy smile. Playing the flirt had worked pretty well for her mother back on Coruscant, so Jaina saw no reason it shouldn't work for her here. She raised her brows. "I hear he's worth looking at."
Dex shook hs head in annoyance. "I don't think I can help you with that, Captain."
The two guards marched off without awaiting a proper dismissal, leaving Jaina to stand there wondering what her sixty-year-old mother had that she didn't.
Denning's love, Jaina, Denning's love. Better luck with the next author.
Jaina's prisoner comments on Jaina's tremendously lame flirtation skills, Jaina says it's not too late to kill her, and the prisoner laughs like they're BFFs at a sleepover. I don't know if it's Denning's grasp on the whole prisoner/captor dynamic that's weak or if this is his warped sense of how women think coming to the fore again, but someone needs to tie his wrists together and stop him from writing, already.
When the prisoner lets slip that she'd thought Jaina was here for the Mandalorian, not Isolder, then hesitates at giving any further information, Jaina says:
"There are a lot of ways a Jedi can hurt you - most of them so bad that you can't even scream."
And Jaina has the moral right to kill Caedus why, when she's acting pretty Sithly herself? And this is the one Jedi that they all think can kill him without being tainted by the dark side? Uh-huh . . .
Jaina realizes that the Mandalorian prisoner must be Mirta:
Jaina had left a wounded comrade behind. To a Mandalorian commando, that was all that would matter - and to Fett, all that would matter was that it had been Mirta.
So apparently Jaina's back to being a Mando commando again. Also fearing Fett's great and terrible wrath. Which never actually comes. But everyone's afraid of him anyway. Yeah, I don't get it, either.
The smart thing would have been to forget that CeeCee had ever mentioned a Mandalorian prisoner. That was what Fett would have done in her place, maybe even Mirta herself. But Jaina was a Jedi, not an assassin. She couldn't just turn her back on an ally - even a quasi-ally.
1) What do you know? Back to Jedi again. Such as Jedi are these days, anyhow.
2) Um, didn't you just say that a Mandalorian would consider it anathema to leave a wounded comrade? Like, four paragraphs ago? But now a proper Mandalorian would do just that?
3) Jaina is an assassin. She's on a mission of assassination. Right now.
4) No one holding a human shield and threatening them with death or pain enough to leave them voiceless gets to claim compassion as a virtue.
Oy with the contradictions, already!
Kriffing Mandalorians. They were like Hutts - once they got their claws into you, they never let go.
Hutts don't have claws. You really need to polish the metaphors, Troy. That's an acceptable one for an amateur, but not for a professional novelist. Also, there are more species in the galaxy than Hutts. Just FYI.
Jaina fights her way into Mirta's cell, knocks out her human shield, and starts to unfasten Mirta's restraints, then realizes that Mirta's paralyzed. She says that if she makes it, she'll try to come back for Mirta.
"You have to do some things for me," Mirta said. "If you survive, I mean. You have to promise."
"Maybe," Jaina said cautiously. She knew better than to make a blind agreement with a Mandalorian. "What do you have in mind?"
"You have to warn Ba'buir," Mirta said, using the Mando'a word for her grandfather. "The Moffs took some of my blood - they've designed a nanokiller for him."
Jaina nodded. "I can do that."
Mirta's eyes grew as dead and cold as Fett's. "And you have to . . . " Her voice grew strained and cracked, and Jaina could tell that she was fighting some sort of internal battle. "You have to tell him he deserves it. That he did this . . . to me."
1) We KNOW what ba'buir means. We've already read it ad nauseum. And even if we hadn't, simple context reading would give us the definition. It requires, oh, maybe a third grade reading level. Maybe. Give the reader some credit, would you?
2) He even screwed up telling us the definition. "Ba'buir" is not the word for Mirta's grandfather, specifically, as Denning's wording implies. It's "grandfather", straight out. Saying it's the "Mando'a word for her grandfather" makes it sound like it's a title belonging to Fett only, which is not only incorrect, but potentially robs the passage of any emotional impact, since any reader who didn't actually know what ba'buir means is now likely to think that Mirta's calling him something like "Manda'lor" instead of "grandpa."
3) Enough with the cold and dead eyes, honestly. We know the Mandalorians are the GFFA's spotlight emo group. WE KNOW.
Mirta tells Jaina that Jacen underestimates her. Jaina says nuh-uh, Jacen's WAY stronger than me!
"He's magnitudes stronger than me in the Force. All I've got on him is five weeks of Mandalorian commando training."
"And that's enough to get the job done." Mirta's tone was reprimanding, like a parent scolding a child for wanting a third bowl of frezgel. "But I mean, his weakness is more delusional. He's convinced you couldn't have taken his arm - at least not alone. He thinks Luke was with us."
Jaina paused, recalling Caedus's confusion at the end of the battle. She also recalled her own condition, how the strange surge in her Force powers had su ddenly faded just before Caedus had redirected the stormtroopers' fire. "Maybe Luke was there."
1) *facepalm* Are we ever going to hear the end of that bloody Mando training?
2) Look, he's using context reading here! If he trusts the reader to figure out what "frezgel" is supposed to represent, why not with "ba'buir", or when using the claws metaphor, use a species that actually has claws? Why, why, why?
3) Okay, so the context reading is pretty stupid here, too. "Frezgel." Seriously. "Mommy, can I have a frezgel cone after we visit the House of Plastex? Can it be double scoop?" But still. It's the principle of the thing.
4) Luke Skywalker is not "Luke" to Mirta.
5) Jaina, honey, if you think that Luke was there, then you've just undercut your argument for ignoring any chance of redemption for Caedus, remember? You decided that was cold calculation on Jacen's part, in order to let you get away and lead him to the Jedi base. Now you think that Luke might really have been there - well, all the cold calculation and your moment of giving up hope are out the window, aren't they? Doesn't anyone keep track of anything in these books?
Just to reemphasize the fact that Jaina is A JEDI AND NOT AN ASSASSIN KTHXBAI, Mirta bids her farewell with the Mando "good luck" phrase "Shoot straight and run fast" - which we earlier learned is specifically for an assassin.
Back to Jacen's POV. He's going to visit Isolder. Hey, just where Jaina's going! Aren't coincidences something?
Jacen has a moment where he thinks that the logical thing to do would be to let the Moffs let loose the nanokiller on Tenel Ka and Allana, because it might help them win the battle. But the even though the Sith way is the way of pain, he can't let Allana go. Then he fortunately remembers his vision of Allana on the white throne, and realizes that "without her, there would be no white throne." So obviously, he must stop the Moffs' plan at any cost. Allana must be saved, not sacrificed. Mm-kay. Let's just get on with it, already.
Jacen tells Isolder that he'll take him to his ship and he'll be released; just don't get captured again. Isolder gets suspicious and says, "This is about the nanokiller, isn't it?" I'd like to know where Isolder got that idea, since it was brought up out of his hearing. Maybe the Moffs have already been there?
Jacen decides it's not worth the time to convince Isolder that it's not a trap, and uses the Force to twist Isolder's head around, breaking his neck. Sigh. Nothing like a gory death to make the narrative shine.
Invincible review, part 1
Invincible review, part 2
Invincible review, part 4