Invincible review, part 4 - mmmm, spoilery
Chapter Eighteen
Jaina makes her merry way back from Mirta's cell, and stops to have a nice little chat with a nurse and a guard, thus learning that Jacen is in the infirmary too, with a body, and might be headed to the disposal pit. Jaina figures that means Isolder's a goner, thinks a few angsty thoughts about how low her brother's sunk, and goes about her business.
She catches a glimpse of Jacen and some others with a hover gurney. She stops to have another nice chat, this time with an Emdee droid, and asks if Lord Caedus and his escorts had been going toward the disposal pit. The droid not only answers in the affirmative, but volunteers all sorts of other useful information seemingly without reason, such as that they had a body with them, which prisoner that body was, the apparent method of death, and how Caedus must have been behind it, since he always is.
What a conveniently talkative droid. Sigh.
Recalling the surge of Force power she had experienced when she fought Caeus the first time, Jaina wondered if she should reach out to her uncle Luke when the fight began. Perhaps he would be able to bolster her stregngth as he had on Nickel One. But then she recalled Mirta's comment about her brother underestimating her, and she realized that calling on Luke would be a mistake. From what Mirta had said - and from what she had observed herself on Nickel One - Caedus was obsessed with their uncle. He would be ready for Luke's strength, prepared to see through Luke's illusions as he had not been the first time. If Jaina expected to win this fight, she would have to fight in a different way - her own way.
I don't buy the reasoning behind not reaching out to Luke. Mind, I couldn't care less whether Jaina does or not, but her reasoning seems faulty. How is Jacen more likely to see through Luke's illusions this time? Because he's "ready for Luke's strength"? He's ready - or rather, thinks he is, since kind of the whole freaking point of the whole book's freaking plot was that Luke had loads of powers that Jacen doesn't know about - for Luke's strength head-on, not illusions. He doesn't believe he's fighting illusions, so he wouldn't be looking for the telltale signs. And there was the whole thing about Luke's vision, that if Luke fought Jacen, he'd win. Sure, he'd go all Sith afterward, but he'd win; therefore, and based on what we've seen a multitude of times now, it seems a safe assumption that Luke is stronger than Jacen. And if Luke is stronger, then isn't he strong enough to maintain an illusion that Jacen already believes in? And if Jacen's only basis for seeing through those illusions is his obsession with Luke, and Jaina observed in their first battle that Jacen was obsessed with their uncle, why wouldn't he have been prepared to see through those illusions the first time around if he was going to at all?
This book is driving me crazy, because the flaws in logic seem so glaringly obvious that I start thinking, "No, it's just not possible that all these professionals, who write and edit for a living and who have done so for years, would miss such giant, crazy plot holes. I must be missing something, not them." But the more I look, the more certain I am that my reasoning is logical; if I'm missing something, so be it, but all of my reasoning can't be so wrong. Yet it's equally inconceivable to me that so many professionals would miss so much. So I go back and forth, back and forth, wondering which of us is really the stupid one, and distressed over whichever answer is correct.
I need a drink. Thank heaven I bought a couple of cheap single serve bottled cocktails at the grocery store the other day. Oooh, this one has vodka in it! That should get me through the last forty pages. I hope, anyway.
Okay, so Jaina's all ready to face down Jacen. When she goes through the proper door, four guards are standing about ten meters away; "there was no sign of Caedus; presumably, he had gone through the hatch behind the guards."
Jaina hurled herself onto the floor, rolling toward the four and shrieking softly but shrilly.
She then points back to the door from whence she came and says that there are assassins out there. How that explains her rolling on the floor toward them, I do not know. What I mostly quoted this part for was sheer curiosity about how someone can shriek "softly but shrilly." That sounds rather challenging. Eh.
The guards run past Jaina in pursuit of the illusory assassins, and Jaina cuts them all in half.
The fight had begun.
Well, at least we're sticking with the clichés for now.
Back to Jacen's POV. He's near the Biodisposal Pit, which is "a sweltering, foul-smelling durasteel hole into which poured all of the dirty bandages, used scalpels, excised organs, dead bodies, and other hazardous waste from not only the infirmary but the Anakin Solo's entire Prison Hold as well." But! Get this!
As might be expected, it was a relatively quiet and lonely place, half cloaked in shadow by the overhanging expanse of the main deck, and half illuminated by the harsh brilliance spilling from the open mouth of the fusion incinerator.
Get it, guys? Get it? It's half light and half dark! Symbolism! Gee whillikers, Mr. Denning! Sure is good of you to help us along that way!
Jacen left his guards behind specifically so they wouldn't see the "gross violation of prison procedure he was about to commit" - basically, he wants to dump Isolder's body without taking any tissue samples for identification. Sadly, he winds up arguing with a droid for two pages over that very issue. Interestingly, although Jacen is so cavalier about taking sentient lives, he just keeps arguing with the droid instead of deactivating it. For that matter, why does he care what the guards witness him doing? Isn't he kind of in charge here? As in, the Sith Lord who already is known to kill officers on a whim? Are they really going to protest, especially over the routine identification of a dead body before incineration? If Jacen's acting this way because he is, as Traviss so Britishly put it, a nutter, then the authors need to give us a bit more of a glimpse inside Jacen's thought processes. Show us his inner conspiracy theories, or his conviction that if the guards see him breaking regulations he'll be written up and demoted, or something. I don't think it should boil down to the reader saying, "Why is he doing this again? Well, I guess we can chalk it up to him being kind of cuckoo by now. I suppose." Come on, guys! Convince me! You're hardly even trying here.
The droid finally gives up, then comments: "Oh, I see. The tissue samples have already been collected."
That's right, boys and girls! The sneaky Moffs did already get to Isolder! Those Moffs. Always up to something.
Jacen contacts the bridge and says to hold all launches, especially missile boats. Too late! One already launched. Neener neener, Lord Caedus! Jacen says to get his StealthX prepared, but:
He let the sentence trail off as the door opened on its own, revealing a dark-uniformed woman with an athletic build and brown, furious eyes.
"Jaina?"
A lightsaber snap-hissed to life, and suddenly Caedus felt as though he were going to vomit fire.
I was going to complain about how vomiting fire wasn't a great analogy for being angry, but it turns out that it was a little more literal. Jacen Force-shoves Jaina across the room, but when she looks back, she sees Jacen still standing, "with a thumb-sized scorch hole just below his ribs." And he's still throwing Force-lightning at her, too. (Hey, Atty! Maybe Jacen's already a zombie!)
Sigh - I'd heard about this part. They're at the biodisposal waste pit, right? Jaina threw a droid at Jacen; Jacen's shoulder and head came down on a crate. Jacen popped back up with "more than a dozen used syringes hanging from his shoulder and face." A little later on, those needles are spoken of as in his face almost down to the barrel. Unnecessary. Truly. I don't find it as offensive as the Tahiri/Ben scene (though it is a disgusting image, don't get me wrong), but it's still just completely unnecessary. We sat through eight books of darkness, death, and despair just to get the goriest, most disgusting and ignoble final duel possible? Del Rey, "SW fan" is not necessarily synonymous with "masochist."
Jacen tells Jaina that she needs to get out of his way; he's trying to save Tenel Ka and Allana. Jaina does not believe him. Oh, the irony. Jacen throws her toward the incinerator; she barely avoids falling in, but winds up seriously burned on the exterior.
Then Jaina opened herself fully to the Force, drawing it in through the power of her emotions - not through her anger or pain, as a Sith might, but through her love of what her brother had been . . . the teenage jokester who could always find hope in a desperate situation, the questioning warrior who had bested the Yuuzhan Vong warmaster in personal combat, the reluctant champion who had shown the galaxy the way to compassionate victory.
The Force came pouring in from all sides, saturating Jaina and devouring her, filling her with a roaring maelstrom of power, carrying away her pain and leaving in its place the strength not only to survive, but to rise and fight.
In other words, she's using basically the same techniques as Jacen. Because not only is LotF a dark and dirty galaxy where evil triumphs more often than not and death is pretty much always pointless, it's also a hopeless galaxy where the heroes act no better than the villains. Not really what I want out of SW, thanks.
More of a thoroughly gory and disgusting battle, then:
. . . Caedus seemed to know that Jaina had already killed him, and whatever he had in mind, it was not vengeance. When her blade came around, his lightsaber was still hanging at his side. He was staring up toward the ceiling, his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the murk overhead, and the only attempt he made to save himself was to take one step back into the light spilling from the furnace.
It would not be enough, Jaina knew. She closed her eyes and felt the lightsaber sink in, felt it slicing through his ribs into his chest. And Jaina felt something in the Force, too - something that made her pulse stop and her chest sink and her blood freeze in her veins. Her brother was reaching out to Tenel Ka, screaming at her through the Force, warning her there was danger, urging her to take Allana and . . .
Then the blade reached Caedus's heart, and he dropped at her feet, and Jaina felt nothing at all.
Notice the symbolism there? Jacen took one step back into the light, even as our Jedi heroine drew the Force in through the power of her love, just as her Sith brother had been doing. We get it, Troy. We get it.
My honest reaction? What a gyp. As gory as the fight was, and even with the heavy-handed "one step into the light" symbolism, this was a total gyp. They built Jacen up into a Sith for nine books. He's dead in less than six pages. And that's just the attempt that someone finally stuck around to the end for; he could have been killed at least three or four times over before this if people hadn't kept pulling back at crucial moments for no apparent reason.
I throw my hands up in despair. What was the point, guys? What was the freaking point? Mara's dead, Pellaeon's dead, Isolder's dead, Zekk's gone, the Skywalker and Solo families are torn to shreds emotionally and will likely never really recover - and with each of those losses go the potential for so many more stories that can now never be told. And for what? A cheap, pale imitation of Anakin Skywalker's fall? Anakin's had far more reason behind it, was imbued with far more painful irony, and culminated in a far more moving confrontation. I see your parallels, LotF team, but they fall flat and wearying.
Well, that's it, then; Jacen's dead. Let's see how they wrap up the final details.
Chapter Nineteen
Ben, Tristan, and Tarragon are - somewhere. Shedu Maad, whatever that is. Says it's a mining world. Guess that was where they evacuated to. Imperial troops are attacking. Ben says they'll hold out. I cannot for the life of me figure out what Tarragon's first sentence here has to do with anything that's gone before, but here it is:
"Still, I wish it was Zekk telling me that." She turned her goggles in Ben's direction. "No offense, handsome."
"None taken," Ben said. "Zekk's got a better chance of keeping up with you, anyway."
Taryn gave him a sly girn, then cocked her brow. "How good a chance?"
"Uh, pretty good," Ben said. "I guess. I can't believe you're thinking about that right now."
"I can think about a lot of things at the same time," Taryn purred. "It's the sign of a healthy mind."
I see that even now, we're not going to let up on the inappropriate innuendo around the fourteen-year-old. How reassuring that is.
Tristan and Tarragon get a communication over their comlinks, and Tarragon whispers to Ben that there's been an attack on the Dragon Queen and almost everyone with royal blood is dead.
Ben's heart dropped so far he'd have to pick it up off the ground. "Tenel Ka?"
Taryn shook her head. "Don't know yet."
"Allana?"
Taryn shook her head again and did not answer.
Denning should be forbidden to ever, ever write the word "heart" again. He inevitably pairs it with stupid metaphors and similes. You hear me, Troy? Find another word to malign. "Heart"'s off limits from here on in.
The terrible twosome and Ben sneak around and find some Hapan officers. What they're doing there, I don't know. Honestly, nothing's been set up in this narrative. You just take it at face value and hope it makes some sense. Tristan and Tarragon basically seem to intimidate the officers into agreeing that there will be no deals with the Moffs. One of the officers says there are reports of "a female Jedi penetrating our perimeter with a squad of Elite Guard stormtroopers." Trista expresses disbelief that a Jedi would be with the Imperials; Ben says it's not a Jedi. The officers lie again about not being aware of Ducha Requud's betrayal - I guess someone was collaborating with Moffs. Another fun Hapan assassination plot.
The so-called Jedi is Tahiri, of course. She and the stormtroopers with her are carrying a baradium warhead. Everyone is worried about this.
Tarragon tries to set up a sniper shot at Tahiri, but Ben stops her because to do so would set of Tahiri's danger sense and start a firefight when they're outnumbered. In a couple of minutes, Tahiri looks behind her, says someone's coming, and Tarragon tries to blast her, and Ben doesn't interfere for whatever reason. Tahiri dives away too fast, though. Tenel Ka's Select Commandos come up behind the Imperials and fire. Tarragon gives her blaster rifle to Ben and says to keep the Jedi busy, while she throws grenades at the troopers. At some point Tahiri is caught by the shock wave of a grenade and thrown back into the trees. She pops up again, though, and bats away blaster shots with her lightsaber.
There's a long, boring confrontation between Ben and Tahiri. And I do mean boring. Ben basically talks her into submission. She even says at one point, "I'm done with all Solos." Oy gevalt. One of our new Siths is a mentally unbalanced ninny, the other's a petulant little girl. Give me Palpatine and Vader any day.
"If you're going to run, you better do it now," Ben said. "I'll tell them you drowned and floated away or something."
Tahiri's brow rose. "You'd lie for me?"
"If you want me to," Ben said. "And don't worry - I'm a lot better at it than you are. That's one thing Jacen taught me that I haven't forgotten yet."
Tahiri turned on the glow rod again. Her face was solemn but resolute. "I think it's time to leave the lies behind," she said. "It's time to leave a lot of things behind."
For a moment, Ben wasn't sure whether she meant to come back with him - or just to get herself killed.
Then a bright light began to shine down on them, and Taryn's voice echoed down from above.
"Move, and you're a dead woman," she warned. "Ben, get away from her."
Ben looked up to see the Hapan rappelling swiftly down the shaft, holding the rope in one hand and her blaster rifle in the other.
"It's okay," he called up. "She's with us."
Well. That was just about as emotionally satisfying as Jacen's death.
Between chapters here, there's an insert based on the time in the NJO when Anni Capstan died. Jacen came to comfort Jaina, and stays with her while she sleeps:
And Jaina hears him whispering to her in her dreams, telling her that no on you love really ever has to die - not if you don't want them to . . . All you have to do is hold a place for them in your heart.
Reasonably touching, but nowhere near enough to make up for all the pointless death of this series, if you ask me.
Yes, I'm bitter. Definitely bitter.
Okay, moving on.
Chapter Twenty
Han's POV. Tenel Ka's alive; she's just made some announcement. The reader didn't see it, but Han refers to it.
The Jedi and their backup forces overwhelm the GAG commandos defending a hangar on the Anakin Solo.
Leia gets The Look on her face, and yes, it is capitalized like that. Han knows that look signifies a death in the family, and he can't bear to ask if it was Jaina. So he tells Threepio to go load the baradium missile. Threepio protests that that's not part of the plan. Han says Threepio heard Tenel Ka's announcement: they killed Allana. If Jaina is gone too, Han plans on blasting pretty much everything in sight.
Leia says that Jaina is still alive, but she still has The Look on her face. Han starts to ask, and Leia interrupts to say that Jacen is dead; Jaina got him.
Jaina's POV again:
When the disposal pit door opened, Jaina was sitting on the floor where shadow became light, holding Jacen's head in her lap and whispering that he wasn't really dead - that he would always have a place in her heart, now that she could finally feel their twin bond again.
Except that Jaina wasn't actually whispering the words. She wasn't even thinking them, really. Imagining might be a better way to describe it, or experiencing. She was more a witness to her thoughts than their author, lost in that hazy netherworld of anguish that existed only in the narrow margin between wakefulness and death.
I've heard some say that the fact that Jaina feels the twin bond again is proof that Jacen turned to the light at the last; I'm writing it off as being part of the delirium she's obviously experiencing, because it doesn't make any sense for the bond to reassert itself when Jacen dies, no matter which side he's on at the time. He's dead.
Jag arrives. He tries to pull Jacen away, and Jaina hurls Jag away with the Force. Jag picks himself up and comes back more cautiously; he gives Jaina a stim-shot and holds her hand and tells her that help is on the way. Jaina says he has to do something for her; find Zekk. For the J/Jers:
Jag's face fell. "Okay," he said. "As soon as the medics get here, I'll go tell him - "
"No," Jaina gasped. "He's missing. Hit during the StealthX raid."
"Oh." Jag looked even more distressed, and Jaina loved him for that. "We'll find him. Don't worry."
"Have to worry."
"I'll make sure Master Skywalker knows, too," Jag assured her. "We will find him."
If he can be found, Jaina thought, silently adding the unspoken condition of search-and-resuce missions. She squeezed his hand again. "Thanks."
"Thanks aren't necessary," Jag said. "Zekk is a good man."
"Not for . . . Zekk." Jaina shook her head - and wished she hadn't as her neck erupted into scalding pain. "For getting here first. "Glad it was . . . you."
"Me, too." Jag looked more worried than pleased. "But hold on. Help is coming."
Jaina also tells him to get Mirta out, and not to send anyone slow because Mirta has a blaster rifle. (Apparently she can still move one arm. Convenience FTW, that's this book's motto.)
Then Han and Leia arrive.
Jaina looked up to see her parents rushing over. Their eyes were rimmed with red and their faces were pale, but her father was doing his best to look smug and confident, while her mother was trying - and failing - to hide her alarm behind a calm veneer.
As they drew nearer and saw Jacen's head resting in Jaina's lap, they finally exhausted their last reserves of composure. Her father's lip began to tremble and her mother's brown eyes turned liquid with sadness. They knelt beside her, trying not to look at their son's body but unable not to, and seemed helpless to speak around the lumps in their throats.
After a couple of seconds, her mother pulled an airsplint from the medpac in her hands and immobilized Jaina's broken arm, while her father found a canister of sterinumb and gingerly sprayed her burns. Their tasks seemed to help them focus their thoughts, and they began to give her unscorched shoulder and unbroken arm tentative squeezes of affection.
On some level, Jaina knew, they were probably trying to reassure her, to let her know that nothing had changed between them. But that was impossible, of course. Jaina had become the Sword of the Jedi, with everything that meant.
Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends. Yours is a restless life, and never shall you know peace, though you shall be blessed for the peace that you bring others. Take comfort in the fact that, though you stand tall and alone, others will take shelter in the shadow that you cast.
So Luke had spoken when he made Jaina a Jedi Knight, and so Jaina had become. It wasn't a destiny she would have chosen - but who ever truly chooses? She doubted that her brother had envisioned his destiny to end here, with him lying dead in his sister's lap.
You deserved better, Solo family.
Han's POV again.
Once Cilghal had pronounced Jaina stable enough to move, he had insisted on staying with Luke to confront the men responsible for his grandaughter's death.
So Han, Jag, and all the Jedi Masters go confront the Moffs. Lots of Imperial officers die in the final stand. The Moffs, save one who was apparently stupid enough to fight a Jedi and who is now bisected on the floor, are alive and well sitting around a tactical display.
Luke tells the Moffs that Darth Caedus is dead, and they now have two choices:
"The first is this: you become Hapan prisoners of war and face a war crimes trial for your nanokiller attack on the royal family."
Several Moffs paled visibly, but one - a grim-faced man with short, steel-gray hair, actually looked relieved.
"That doesn't sound like a very attractive option," he said. "What is your other proposal?"
Luke turned and studied the man for a moment, then said, "Frankly, Moff Lecersen, my other proposal sickens me. But we need the Remnant's support - and its fleets - to end this war. The easiest way to achieve that is to invite the Moff Council to join us in reestablishing the Galactic Alliance."
A mumur of relief rounded the table, but now Lecersen looked worried, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
"That seems more than generous, Master Skywalker," he said. "What's the drawback?"
Luke waved Jag forward, then pushed him toward the front of the table. "Him," he said. "I can hand you over to the Hapans, or I can hand you over to someone who will let you live - as long as you stay in line."
As for Jag's own reaction:
Finally, he turned to Luke. "Why are you springing this on me now?" he asked. "It would have been good to have some time to think it over."
"For you," Luke said, nodding. "But I wanted it to be clear to the Moffs that this isn't something you arranged - that you're doing them a service, not making a power play."
"And doing the galaxy a service as well," added a round-faced Moff with beady eyes and two chinds. "Without our support, the Jedi coalition will have a difficult time convincing Bwau'tu and his fellow admirals that they've rejoined the Galactic Alliance."
"And with our fleets, the Alliance will have the power it needs to force the Confederation to the bargaining table," another Moff added. "You could end the war, Commander Fel."
Jag sighed . . .
"Seen in that light," Jag said, his voice strong but lacking enthusiasm, "I really have no choice."
1) What a waste of a good story. If the Fel-led empire of Legacy's day came about through Jag, what a novel it would have made to show this occuring in a more plausible way. If there's one thing LotF has excelled at, it's throwing away great story potential.
2) As it stands now, Jag was a line officer in a naval fleet that is not part of the Imperial Remnant - and last I heard, he was exiled from that and officially dead to his family. I love Jag, but while he has the ability to do this job, he has no credentials for it at all. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would support this move.
3) I find it even more difficult to believe that the Moffs are actually trying to convince him to take the job. Well, except that it keeps them from a GFFA-style Nuremberg. I guess that explains it.
Han is pissed. He demands to know whose idea the nanokiller was. All the Moffs nod toward one, and Han thumbs the safety off his blaster.
Then he looks around to see why the Masters aren't stopping him.
Naturally, Saba speaks before Luke. *facepalm* She tells Han that they have plenty of Moffs; blast two.
After getting the almighty Saba's permission, Han turns to Luke for his opinion. Luke shrugs and says to go ahead if it'll make him feel better. Han realizes that it wouldn't make him feel better. He does insist, however, that the Moffs have to pay for what they did:
". . . Maybe set up a mission to help out worlds in poverty or something - a real generous mission."
More clumsy Legacy set-up. I adore Legacy, but Del Rey's part of the EU didn't need to be butchered to make it plausible.
Tenel Ka appears to make a few threatening noises at the Moffs - because honest to goodness, that's all it boils down to; she comes in, makes a few threats, and leaves - and on her way out we read:
"Come with me, Captain Solo," she said, motioning for him to follow. "There is something I really must tell you."
Epilogue
The crimson stains left by her brother's blood had finally faded from Jaina's face and throat, but perhaps not from her heart.
No Furies either, I'm guessing. Darn it.
Jaina is angsting about why she hadn't believed Jacen. She's not, though, angsting about him being dead. She thinks that he was too far gone for any redemption (Vader, people, Vader), but if only she'd given him a few extra seconds, Allana might be alive.
Jaina is also, for what it's worth, "floating in a sterile hoverest cabinet, suspended in midair with a nurturing bacta mist swirling over her burned flesh and an opaque modesty curtain draped over - but not touching - her bare skin."
No sign of Zekk. At all. Can't ID any StealthX pieces as belonging to his fighter, the rescue beacon wasn't triggered, no sigh of him in the Force.
Mirta's fine, healing nicely, and so's her husband, but of course they can never go back to Mandalore.
Leia says they have some good news, which Jaina interprets as Jag coming to see her and which Han confirms, but they also tell her that the war is over, completely. And guess what, all? We're just in time to catch the end of the ceremony on the holo!
I'm tempted to type out the whole scene, but it's really long. So here's the Cliffs Notes version:
The new Alliance Chief of State is Admiral Daala. Jaina says she's not in the mood for practical jokes. Han says no joke, the only hitch in the peace deal was that Bwau'tu wouldn't take the job, and he recommended Admiral Daala. Turns out that she was "the only universally acceptable choice." Yeah.
"Daala might not be that bad," her father said. "Give her a chance."
Okay. For a moment, let's set aside the facts that Daala tortured Han, tried to destroy the Jedi Academy with all the Jedi in it, and basically has acted like a very stupid person with no strategic skills whatsoever on a widespread vendetta against anything not Imperial and plenty of things that are Imperial from her first appearance. Let's just look back to chapter nine of this book. There, Han referred to Niathal and Daala as "the Conniver Sisters", and said that the only side those two ever took was their own. But now she might not be that bad, and we should all give her a chance.
They decide to hear what Daala has to say, and this really must be typed out.
"What can I add that has not already been said here today?" she began. "If this war has taught us anything, it is that we all lose when we fight. My friends, the time has come to try a new way -"
Here she had to stop and wait for the applause to die down again - and it too nearly a minute.
When she was finally able to continue, she said, "The way of cooperation, so that we can all win together."
More thunderous applause.
Daala motioned for quiet, then continued, "My friends, it is my promise to you here today that sometime in the not-too-distant future, we will live in a galaxy where our space navies exist to better our societies, not defend them - where we won't need Jedi to sort out our differences and mete out justice, because we will be living under a government that is just."
The crowd rose to its feet, roaring and cheering, and Jaina realized with a cold shudder that Jacen had not failed. He had sacrificed everything - his name, his family, his reputation, his life - to unite the galaxy. And now here Jaina was, watching the birth of a galaxywide league of worlds dedicated to working together in peace.
Had Jacen won after all?
So. At the end of LotF, one of KJA's characters is leading the galaxy. And everyone's happy about it. And no one cares about all those youthful indiscretions like attempted mass murder. And we get more stupidly blatant PT parallels with the "thunderous applause." And the thunderous applause is sparked by a Romper Room-style pep talk. And that pep talk includes the thought of eliminating Jedi. And Jaina thinks that might mean that Jacen won after all, because now they have a peacefully united galaxy.
I just don't have the energy to mock that as it deserves to be mocked. I give it a solitary, despairing *facepalm*, and move on to the coup de grace. (Still ignoring punctuation because the character map and I don't get along. Sad but true.)
Jaina tells her parents that she thinks Jacen became Jacen again for a second before she killed him. Leia says it's okay; if Jaina had hesitated, she'd be the one dead now. Jaina still feels guilty; if only she'd given him time to warn Allana.
I'll just go ahead and type out the last part of the book:
"Yeah, about that," her father said. "There's something we haven't been able to tell you yet."
Jaina frowned. "What?"
Her mother went to the door and opened it, then said, "Amelia, would you come in here for a minute?"
Jaina looked to her father. "Amelia?"
"A war orphan," he said. "Turns out the kid's Force-sensitive. Your mother and I are going to be acting as guardians while she's at the Jedi academy."
Jaina began to grow very suspicious. "An orphan?"
"That's how it was explained to us," her mother said. "But it's possible the mother just felt the Jedi academy would be a safer environment than she was able to provide."
She ushered a nervous-looking child of about four or five into the room. the girl had a swarthy complexion and short-fropped black hair, and for a minute, it actually fooled Jiaina. But the button nose was a bit of a giveaway - as was the familiar hint of her brother and Tenel Ka in the girl's Force presence.
"Hello, Jaina," Allana's small voice said. "They tell me we're going to be sisters now."
Jaina smiled, her heart suddenly filling with a joy she had not thought imaginable just ten seconds earlier. "I guess we are, Amelia. Welcome to the family."
Sigh.
Overall opinions:
Pros:
- Tiny hints of the J/J 'ship.
- Kyp had a good line.
- Some affection is finally shown between the Skywalker/Solo family; Han and Leia and Jaina all fear for Ben when he's captured. (Luke and Ben themselves, meanwhile, are a lot less demonstrative. One might describe them as cold, and as holding the Solos at arms' length.)
- Luke being willing to risk Ben if that's what needed doing, and the fact that he was written as looking like it was killing him to do so. I still disagree that that was what needed doing, but if it was, Luke would ultimately be willing to make even that sacrifice.
- Allana's not dead.
Cons:
- Contradictions. So many contradictions. Contradictions from the same character; contradictions between characters; contradictions in the span of anywhere from four paragraphs to sixty pages; contradictions between this book and other LotF books. Jaina decides dispassionately that she must kill Caedus, then reflects on how she personally hates him as a traitor and killing him is a personal act of outrage and reprisal. Luke can't go after Caedus because he's tainted by the dark side; it might be too personal and he'll fall - but it's all right for Jaina, for whom it's even more personal, and even though she fully expects to be tainted by the dark side. Mandalorians would never leave a fallen comrade; yes, they would, without even thinking twice. Mandalorians hate Jedi for the way they treated the clones; Mandalorians don't mind following Jedi because they made pretty good generals back in the day. Jaina is not an assassin - while she's on a mission of assassination. Jaina ignores wounded (actually scrambles over them) in order to not show weakness before Boba Fett; Jaina refuses to become so ruthless as a Mandalorian because she's a Jedi. For some people, the dark side is an inescapable fate if they so much as blink the wrong way; for others, they can dabble all they like - personally hate and kill from a sense of outraged betrayal, or torture an innocent person to death - but they're either considered noble or redeemable. Han considers Daala to be a conniver only out for herself - but when she's given leadership over the entire galaxy's political system, he says we should give her a chance. Over and over and over and over again.
- The entire plot rests on a house of cards. Luke's entire strategy, as he explains it, depends on visions he's seen, therefore Caedus might have seen them as well. Luke influences Caedus's visions merely by focusing on him so hard in meditation that Caedus's own meditations and visions keep focusing on Luke - frankly, that's the fanciest way of saying "wishful thinking" that I've ever seen. Since when does one Jedi's meditation actively interfere with that of another Jedi without tapping into a direct mind bond of sorts - let alone a Jedi's meditation have such an effect on a Sith? This could work, yes, but there's very little logic or precedent to it that I'm aware of. The reader is expected to believe it primarily because the author tells her to. Not good storytelling.
- As it's told, Luke is far, far too overpowered. He's tapping into a Sith's visions. He's actively manipulating the future. He knows shatterpoint. At great distances, he puts forth illusions that shield Jaina completely from Jacen's eyes and Force senses. He knows about the previously unknown Nightsister blood trails. I'm all for a strong, wise, knowledgable Luke, but this definitely feels like overkill.
- For such a short book, this narrative was remarkably padded with unnecessary information. Leia and Jaina's rescue attempt for Ben accomplished nothing and could have been deleted. Trista and Taryn were completely unnecessary; existing characters could have been used more effectively. Boba Fett and Mirta had far too much of the narrative devoted to them. All of Luke's illusions ultimately turned out to be for nothing; they weren't used at all in the final confrontation between Jaina and Caedus. (And if the explanation for that is, "At least Caedus wasn't specifically prepared for Jaina because he thought Luke was coming," it's not a good one. So . . . you got Caedus all hyped up to fight someone far stronger than Jaina? Sounds like a good way to prep him to beat Jaina to me.) Nothing at all involving shatterpoint turned out to have any real bearing on the plot. Jacen's use of it, Luke's knowledge of it, Jaina's tutoring in the technique - none of it played any real role. Every last word could have been deleted. Much of the dialogue could have been tightened up. Lots of fat should have been trimmed here.
- Characterization. Luke is cold and ruthless. Han's primary contribution is inappropriate jokes at inappropriate times. (Sith-blood solvent? Our next kids? Darth-in-chief? Shut up, Han.) Leia gets remarkably little face time, relatively speaking, and much of it is relegated to "I'm still a sex kitten; look at me go!" moments. Both Han and Leia are completely in favor of someone - anyone - killing their son, and actively resist even Jaina's occasional concern that there might still be good in him. Ben is an uppity, self-important, bratty ingrate, and frankly, his determination to redeem Tahiri reads more like Stockholm Syndrome than true Jedi ideals. Jaina is intimidated by Caedus, indecisive, and apparently unable to flirt even when she tries. She has a few good moments, but pretty much only when she's being the avenging Sword of the Jedi. The Jaina I once knew had more to her than that. I'm pretty sure Caedus is meant to read as insane, but we aren't given enough insight on him to really buy into that. The most I got out of it was that he kind of swung back and forth now and then. Fett talks too much. Tahiri's characterization still has no foundation at all - not her foray into Sithdom nor her renouncing of the whole schmear.
- We continue LotF's general fuzziness on exactly what the dark side of the Force is, as well as its effect on people. Basically, we read that because Luke felt a moment of active vengeance when he killed Lumiya, he is irrevocably tainted and can no longer directly fight a Sith Lord, because if he does, he'll wind up becoming a Sith Lord himself regardless of his own thoughts, feelings, wishes, or actions. The dark side is basically treated like the event horizon of a black hole: you go one step too far and nothing you do ever again will change your fate; you'll be inexorably sucked into the darkness. (For Luke, anyway. Everyone else seems to have a free pass to do whatever they like and still be considered light side Jedi.)
- Denning continues his love affair with the Force. Everything Jedi do, they do with the Force. They don't need to raise their hands, raise their voices, open their eyes, use magclamps to hang on to the outside of a ship like ordinary people - nothing that a Jedi ever does is done without the Force. Way, way, way overdone.
- Jaina is the only one of all the Skywalkers and Solos to give a moment's thought to Caedus even potentially being redeemable, and she doesn't give it much more than that moment's thought. My heart was not set on Caedus being redeemed, by any means, but all these descendants of Anakin Skywalker and no one thought that redemption was even an option?
- The Ben/Tahiri scene. Completely and totally inappropriate, to put it mildly.
- So incredibly much was left out. The entire war that's been at the base of pretty much everything that's happened for eight books? Unless something concerning it happened to Caedus's fleet, it was resigned to a handful of brief paragraphs and an epilogue. I don't think we even know Niathal's ultimate fate. Wedge and company weren't even mentioned. We still don't even know what happened to Tycho. Nothing is said of Tahiri's fate - not even her potential fate. What happened to those Sith tassels back in Betrayal? What happened on Kashyyyk? No mention of Mara in any way save for one line from Caedus that now Luke knows who killed his wife - granted, there was no reason to mention her much in the main plot, but as a hugely main character killed in this series, at some point one of her family could have at least thought of her. Zekk's complete disappearance is more than a little bit pointless. What about those Sith that we ran into back in Inferno? Or the Sith sphere, even? This was a really half-assed way to wrap up a nine book series.
- Too many movie references. We know Leia once pulled a thermal detonator out of a pouch. We know that Luke ran into a wampa. We know that Leia strangled Jabba. There's not a single reason to mention any of that. These books take place forty years after the OT, and nothing from the OT that was mentioned in this book had any bearing on the plot in any way.
- Daala. Are you kidding me? You really expect me to believe that Daala comes out of the woodwork twenty-five years after her last appearance and just happens to get named galactic Chief of State? That is so utterly ridiculous, unsupported by narrative (general EU or this book specifically), and meaningless that major points get knocked off for that move alone.
- Botched Legacy set-ups. I love Legacy. There were a number of fairly obvious Legacy set-ups in this book. The only one that even approached the "reasonably well handled" threshhold was Caedus's vision of Luke sitting on his, Caedus's, throne, which could (maybe-possibly) be interpreted as Jaina doing so, since Luke was shielding her at the time; that could (maybe-possibly) be taken as confirmation of the Fel Imperial line coming through Jag and Jaina. Everything else that obviously related to Legacy was a cop-out and a waste of great potential stories.
- Just plain bad writing. Jacen thinks that Luke knows for sure who killed Mara, but as Revelation and Invincible were written, Jacen is unaware of that fact. Leia explains that she doesn't know how to explain. Ben's capture and inevitable torture is "some very sad news." Poorly done metaphors and similes - par for the course with Denning's writing. A gazillion completely unnecessary references to Jaina having once been a Killek Joiner, when only one was even marginally appropriate for the narrative. (We know you wrote DN, too. WE KNOW.) Characters' jaws drop at least three separate times. Their eyes "flash." The phrase "three seconds" is used at least three separate times; eye-catching words and phrases are repeated in quick succession. Dialogue sounds like a pair of old ladies out for high tea. Italics everywhere - 95% of this book's italics could have been deleted. The narrative is overly rushed; it reads as though Denning put off any writing at all until a week before the deadline.
- Trista and Taryn. There was no reason for them to be there at all. Everything they did could have been accomplished by existing characters, or new secondary OCs with far less of the narrative devoted to them. And everything either of them did or said was either irritating or illogical. They're Tenel Ka's cousins - that no one's ever heard about and no one on Hapes even knows exist, even though our main characters have known Tenel Ka her whole life and Hapan royals and half-royals are always under the spotlight. Ben and Jaina both instantly think that they must be very close relatives of Tenel Ka because of the amazing resemblance, but apparently no one on Hapes is that bright. What makes them most useful is that no one knows they're Tenel Ka's cousins, but they tell Ben that little fact less than five minutes after they meet him for no reason at all.
- Denning apparently thinks that older women are going to fall all over Ben. He's fourteen. Tahiri had an ulterior motive, disgusting and inappropriate though it was. Trista and Taryn did not, yet they unrelentingly and blatantly flirted with him for no particular reason save that he was male. Yeah, and he's still a kid, too. (Not to even mention that the "OMG flirting twins who want a guy who's obviously not in their league, isn't he just so lucky" fantasy is seriously straight from a beer commercial. Grow up, Denning.)
- Denning has weird ideas about how women think. Some of this is undoubtedly tied to his odd views on a few female characters, so I'm unsure how much is general mistakenness and how much is specific. But Leia, calm and always in control Leia, spends an awful lot of time focusing on innuendo and flirting despite the war and the imminent assassination of her son by her daughter. Jaina, meanwhile, has regressed from the supremely capable and independent character she was in the NJO to someone who is constantly intimidated by Caedus's power (for no logical reason that I can see), who is mostly just a pawn in Luke's game, who is still waffling between at least two love interests she should have chosen between more than a decade ago, and who is so emotionally constricted that her own mother tells her to be less frigid, and when she tries to flirt to gain information, she fails miserably. Trista and Taryn are egotistical and perpetually on the prowl - when no one else is around, they'll happily flirt madly with a fourteen-year-old boy. Tenel Ka accomplishes nothing on her own, then gives up her only child to whom she has been shown to be utterly devoted with no narrative reason given at all. Tahiri is a incompetent, petulant little girl. And of course, we can't forget Han's big line: "What? He didn't think a girl could do it?" Thanks for that, Troy.
- The usual obvious favoritism of Saba. She's a good character when she's not overplayed, but as far as Denning's concerned, the only other Jedi who matters is Luke, and even he takes a backseat when Saba's around.
- Bad editing. There are mistakes in spelling and punctuation, and at least one missing word on the last page.
- Shatterpoint. Major points taken off for rewriting the definition of shatterpoint, especially since it turned out to have nothing to do with the story at all.
- Deus ex machinas all over the place. Who knew that Luke had such vast and specific power? Who'd ever have guessed that Caedus could track Jaina so precisely by following his own shed blood? Pretty handy that Luke knew shatterpoint all along and just kept it quiet! Isn't it great that Tenel Ka just happened to have cousins no one knew about? Isn't it convenient that the Moffs can whip up a specific nanokiller so quickly, in contrast to our previous information? There's a lot of stuff in this book that's overly convenient.
- Flow-walking, with or without any explanations is - at best - a Rube Goldberg device. Why did we waste our time with that?
- Nightsister blood trail. Again, a Rube Goldberg device. Same thing could have been accomplished without the mystical blood connections.
- Han clings to the illusion of youth more and more desperately with each Denning novel, thus rendering him a pitiable character. Han deserves better than that. Let him age gracefully.
- Allana. Why did Tenel Ka give her up again? Tenel Ka did quite a good job of raising and protecting Allana, and was shown to be completely devoted to her. Caedus was the primary threat who breached Tenel Ka's security, and he was not only kind of a special case, being a Sith Lord, but he's dead now. All those other plots are nothing more than a day in the life of a Hapan noble, and they were smacked down pretty thoroughly. Tenel Ka is well used to those, and can handle it. Instead, for no reason I can see save a ridiculous narrative substitute for Han and Leia's lost child, she's handed over to her grandparents to be raised. This little bitty girl, in one fell swoop, loses her mother, the only way of life she's ever known, her eventual throne, her appearance, her name, and even her identity - and the reader is apparently supposed to feel joy over this. Um, not quite.
- We only saw the POVs of Jaina, Caedus, Han, and Ben; I don't recall anyone else's POV in this entire book. So we really have no insight as to why Luke is suddenly the super-powerful ruthless manipulator. We don't see anything of what Tahiri's really thinking. Nothing from Tenel Ka. Nothing from Leia. Nothing from any Jedi POV save Jaina and Ben. Lots of opportunities missed here.
- Zekk's disappearance was not only stupid in itself, but was a really half-hearted way to let the J/J 'ship gain precedence. The whole thing reads as though Denning was told to have Jaina end up with Jag, but he really, really didn't want to and so dragged his feet and made it all as grudging as possible.
- Caedus's insanity, such as it was, wasn't given enough to play with. I say as I said with previous LotF books: I think the authors are trying to make him look insane, but it's honestly hard to tell if that's what they meant or whether they just think that all Sith Lords are slightly unbalanced. Caedus was definitely a tad looney at times, but full-blown driven mad by the dark side? I didn't see it. I was specifically looking for it this time because I was spoiled and had seen people saying he was, and I did not see it.
- Caedus's end and Tahiri's "redemption" both fell completely flat. I felt no emotional connection to either character. I was not sad that Jacen died save for the idiotic pain it inflicts on the Solo family; I did not care that Tahiri seemed to renounce Sithdom.
- Jacen's old jokes starting each chapter. You know what? If they'd gone the redemption route and Jaina brought Jacen back from the dark side somehow, that could have been touching. When he winds up hacked to death by his sister, I'd consider those asides as the height of bad taste.
- What exactly did the title have to do with anything? Who was invincible? Not Jacen, who died. Not Jaina, who spent half the book fully expecting to die or fall to the dark side.
- It was all boring. That's a personal call, of course; I know there are plenty who thought otherwise. But I was thoroughly bored for most of this book. It came out May 13. It has 299 pages. It's the conclusion of a nine book series that I've been following for two years. I finished it today, May 25. It took me nearly two weeks. At one point, I set the book down and didn't pick it up at all for five days. When I finally did finish it, I felt no desire at all to do so and had to force myself to read. That's a pretty amazing feat, Troy. I'd dare you to top it, but I won't be reading anything of yours again. Thanks for the ride.
1 out of 10. It could have been worse, but not by much.
Invincible review, part 1
Invincible review, part 2
Invincible review, part 3