A Trip With Jacen Solo : Part 2

[soloing]

Source - Canon Review with Trip & Havac!

• Part XXI: Heirs of the Force
  In which our hero plays with his snake
  
  
• Oh, wowee! Jacen is at the academy with his sister, learning Force things! Next generation, ahoy!

• KJA actually makes the interesting decision of starting with Jacen and Jaina already having been at the academy for a month, instead of dropping them off right at the beginning of the training. This is probably for the best since, much like in the JAT, KJA shows a near-complete lack of interest in actually showing Jedi training. Seriously, the guy who's written the most material nominally about Jedi training . . . has shown almost nothing about what it's like to learn to use the Force. He also drops Anakin out of the picture, which is unusual as all previous material focused on all the Solo kids as a unit.

• Jacen likes animals. He has a lot of them caged up in his room. I wonder when Jacen's animal-awareness will progress far enough that he goes all PETA on himself. He doesn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that his animals have a tendency to eat each other, which is either enlightened or sociopathic. I'm not sure which.

• Uh-oh! Jacen's poisonous snake escaped! You know what, I realize Raynar is being set up as the jerk kid, but I'm totally going to have to go with him here. Jacen needs to get his critters the hell out of the building.

• So the thing escaped, bit Raynar, and knocked him out. Good thing KJA designed Jacen's snake to just knock you out when it bites you. Jacen manages to sneak it away while we the readers laugh at the pompous rich kid who totally had that snake bite coming due to his pompous richness and lack of being friends with the main characters.

• Then they go to a lecture by Luke. Apparently Luke gives these lectures a lot, but he seems to be stuck on a pretty one-note "do or do not, go out and be Jedi, learn, learn, blah blah blah" mode. I'm not sure what exactly they learn from this. Tenel Ka shows up by climbing in the window. Oh, she's so wacky! She's so fit! She's so huge and muscular! No, seriously, she's really, really muscular!

• OK, KJA, when you're setting up a love interest, you want to emphasize how hot she is, not how big her biceps are and how she's way bigger and stronger than the guy. Apparently Jacen has a bodybuilder fetish or something.

• Uh-oh! A commotion! Luke goes to deal with it, and the kids climb out the window, Tenel-style, to see what's going on! Oh, no! A giant, random plotbeast! Luke badasses the hell out of it by just walking up to it and convincing it to leave, rather than killing it. Apparently, he really doesn't care if giant vicious creatures lurk in the jungle where his kids run around all the time.

• Then Papa Solo shows up. Yay! For fourteen-year-olds, Jacen and Jaina are ridiculously fond of their father, and squeeingly eager to ingratiate themselves with him. Though I suppose it's really kriffing tough not to like Han Freaking Solo. Really bad forced "humor" occurs.

• Enter the new student, Lowbacca. Apparently, Jacen and Jaina, despite being raised by a Wookiee and capable of understanding him in previous works, can't understand Lowie. Retcon waiting to be made: Lowie spoke a non-Shyriiwook dialect.

• So the kids are nice and friendly, and make friends with Lowie. And then they take him to see Tenel Ka at lunch, and she manages to be ridiculously flat and emotionless and still make friends. And they do some kind of cheesy friends-forever pledge thing.

• And then Jacen's snake gets loose (no, no, the crystal snake) and tries to attack Raynar, and Jacen attacks Raynar and starts messing with his lap to get the snake, and it starts a food fight. Luke looks in and chuckles.

• Chewie gets Lowie a car for his birthday . . . uhh, a skyhopper for his Jedi training. Jaina and Jacen help put it together, though Jacen ends up being pretty much useless for all the A-Teamesque assembly scenes, which is kind of sad, I guess. Jaina's good at fixing things, Lowie's good at computers (oooh, contemporary!), Tenel's good at physical activity, and Jacen's good at . . . talking to animals. He's got the equivalent of Heart in Captain Planet. He just kind of sits around being useless most of the time.

• Jaina wants to take a ride in Lowie's ship first, because she's a selfish jerk. She relents when Em Teedee makes it clear Lowie thinks she's a selfish jerk. Go translator droid.

• Lowie sees something shiny! This is exciting! The kids go to look later, and find a crashed TIE! More A-Team assembly scenes occur over the next several days, as a bunch of kids repair a thoroughly wrecked, complex spacecraft. Yeah, I don't buy it either.

• The kids also get "lessons" from Tionne, which consist of "Hey, go lift some leaves or something. Teacher's gotta go out for a smoke." This is seriously all they do. They get one instruction for like the whole day, and they basically have 99% free time. How the hell did this place get accredited?

• While wandering around the crash site, Jacen finds a path, that leads . . . to the House of Qorl! He runs back to warn them, but up shows the deranged crashed TIE pilot!

• Lowie and Tenel run off like craven cowards. To be fair, Jaina and Jacen run too. They just suck at escaping.

• Qorl takes them back to his hut and ties them up.

• Hilarious out-of-context prose of the day:

Jacen and Jaina looked at each other, their liquid-brown eyes meeting as a host of thoughts gleamed unspoken between them.

• So Jacen and Jaina sit around and chat with mad, brainwashed Qorl. Little is achieved. Meanwhile, Tenel Ka gets attacked by Sith battle hydras, and Lowie gets back to the academy, where no one understands Lassie saying that the kids fell down the TIE-pilot well, since Lassie lost his protocol droid. Rather than anyone possessing an IQ above twelve and getting a datapad for Lassie to type, they just keep shouting "We can't understand you!" and Lassie just barks louder. It's like a bad tourist and a Bolivian street vendor. Finally, Lassie gets on the line to Uncle Lassie and the Dog Whisperer, who manage to get the message across to Tionne the ditz.

• Meanwhile, Qorl engages in child labor and makes the kids fix his TIE. They finish repairs, and he takes off, hotly pursued by federal agents.

• Then there's a silly climax where Qorl buzzes the Jedi academy and his weapons don't work, and a crystal snake planted by Jacen does absolutely nothing of import, and Han chases him around the sky for a while before he leaves. Then Han picks up the kids.

• Happy happy, whatever.

• Stay tuned for our next adventure, when Jacen hangs out with the wrong crowd!
• Part XXII: Shadow Academy
  In which our hero is abducted by a dominatrix witch
  
  
• So, we open with Jacen in Luke's office, playing with his lightsaber. However, it's presented through Jacen's imagination, so it opens like Jacen's fighting an evil dark side warrior! Wow, KJA, you really had us fooled! How exciting!

• Luke walks in on him playing with his lightsaber ("I swear it wasn't what it looked like!") and promptly smacks Jacen around for chopping his desk in half. OK, that's not actually what happened, but it should have. Luke takes the lightsaber away and tells Jacen he's not ready. Adventure, excitement, craving, so on and so forth. Then when Jacen agress, Luke says no, really, don't take everything a teacher says at face value. He might be wrong. Except Luke's right on this. Definitely. Trust him. But don't. But he's right. But just don't trust that he's right. Except he is.

• So Jacen, Jaina, and Lowie are going on a field trip to GemDiver Station. Apparently no other students are cool enough. Seriously, way to go with the favoritism, Lukie. Well, Tenel Ka could go too, because she's friends with the cool kids. But she doesn't want to, because she's terrified her horrible secret would get out! She's royalty! (Never mind that Jacen and Jaina are too, or at least they ought to be, except Leia appears to have just entirely given up on the whole House of Organa thing) This makes Jacen sad, because the girl of his bench-pressing dreams won't go with.

• Out of context
  prose of the day:

Twin pairs of eyes -- each the color of Corellian brandy -- met in a mixture of excitement and anticipation.

• I've got a feeling I'm going to find at least one of these in each book. These kids meet (brandy-brown, don't forget they're brandy-brown! Not any other alcoholic color! brandy-brown!) eyes excitedly waaaaay too much.

• Lando shows up to take them for their tour. Boring things are said. Jacen asks to go out on a diamond-mining expedition. Lando reluctantly agrees, because if there's one thing Lando's known for, it's being pressured into doing highly dangerous things with his best friend's children by a punk kid. They fly around in their magic QUANTUM ARMOR!!!! ship (this is going to be KJA's beskar throughout the book, and probably the rest of the series) with their magic energy tether, and almost die, and Lando lets them try trawling for diamonds (it's really not mining) and only Jacen snags one. He's so special.

• Jacen gets to keep it, because Lando is a dumbass and promised to let anyone who got one keep this incredibly valuable stone. Jacen says he'll give it to his mommy.

• Now that we burned through a couple chapters, the actual plot kicks in, and the place gets attacked. Despite having a RIDICULOUSLY VALUABLE station producing RIDICULOUSLY VALUABLE gems, Lando has crap security. A couple fighters and Skiprays shoot right through it and board the station. God forbid an actual pirate fleet ever gets ideas. Lando and the kids just kind of haplessly wander around, don't try to escape, and make a stand where absolutely nothing happens and they get stunned.

• Oh, wow, the Solo kids getting kidnapped? Really? I never would have seen that coming. Not after it was just in the last book! Wow, that KJA's really clever to throw us off like that. That brings us to Jacen's . . . ninth kidnapping attempt in fourteen years? Gee, I hope they don't come to overrely on this particular plotline or anything.

• They wake up aboard a ship. And they're not kept prisoner or anything. Jacen just opens up the door and finds stormtroopers outside. So he goes "Oh crap!" and shuts it, and then some Nightsister shows up and is all "We gonna turn you evil! That's why we don't bother to restrain you! Evil's great! You'll just embrace it!" And everyone else in the world goes, "You're an overconfident idiot." Flying the ship is Qorl. Wowee, what a coincidence! But he has a droid arm! Jacen finds this disgusting. Well, good to know anti-cyborg sentiment is alive and well. Seriously, between this, and the Nightsisters' big message being "Men are equal!" and Daala being the uberfeminist icon woman who gets her job by sleeping with a man, and the villains of the next YKJ arc being alien rights activists, does KJA have any idea what he's actually doing here?

• And so they arrive at the SHADOW ACADEMY! WHOAH! They're going to be turned evil! I'm so scared. And they land, and who is the headmaster but Brakiss, the failed student Luke happened to mention in the first book? For some reason, Jacen is immediately struck by how handsome Brakiss is. Like, really, really handsome. But I bet he's not as big and muscular as Tenel Ka.

• So, they get all kinds of fun lessons from Brakiss and Tamith Kai. Like this:

"You will not ask questions; you will receive indoctrination."

• Yeah, that'll get 'em. Jaina points out that Luke's going to find them and then boy, they'll be sorry. This point seems to be completely lost on every kidnapper, ever. Seriously, do you really want to mess with Luke Skywalker? Really?

• Jacen mocks their stormtrooper guards, and Jaina criticizes Brakiss's teachings. Brakiss has some serious control issues or something, and can't stand to be questioned, so rather than counter her arguments, he fries her with Force lightning. This seems a thoroughly reasonable response. For some reason. Lowie freaks the hell out and starts smushing stormies with benches and stuff. This is why everyone should have a Wookiee friend. Jacen talks him down. Or maybe it was Brakiss shouting "Cease this disturbance!"

• Brakiss gives Jacen a lightsaber. Jacen thinks again about how beautiful Brakiss is before refusing it. He knows he's being tempted. Then Brakiss puts it in his hand, and Jacen just can't resist that smooth cylinder, and he brings it to life. Then he asks Brakiss why he shouldn't just kill him. Apparently, Jacen is a not a believer in the advantage of surprise. Brakiss is all "Killing me is daaaahhhhk syyyyyyyyyyyde!" and Jacen goes, "Oh, well then," and gives that up. Then Brakiss makes him fight holographic monsters and crap. The monster KJA chooses is actually a sentient species, an Abyssin, but no one seems to get that part.

• Meanwhile, Jaina does the same thing, and Lowie gets tortured like Chewie in TESB, except with the addition of fire hoses. Because clearly there's only one way to torment a Wookiee.

• Jaina and Jacen both go in and duel each other, disguised holographically as Darth Vader. This is stupid for multiple reasons. Let me list these reasons. One: those have to be some ridiculously short Vaders in order for their shrouds to actually match actions. Two: holograms cannot stop a lightsaber blade. So when one does, you might want to reconsider whether it's a hologram. Three: both of them know they're being holographically cloaked. Does it really not occur to them that perhaps someone else, some twin else, is being cloaked? Four: when they look at their arms and legs and bodies, shouldn't they say, "Hey, why am I cloaked like Vader too?" Five: Hello, twin bond? Force? Sensing each other's presence? In summation, Epic Believability Fail.

• Rather than have any cool OMG I almost killed my sibling! reveal, Brakiss just gets bored and shuts the hologram generator off when they're not going much. Yeah, I've that's not a totally boring letdown, not to mention the fact that the prose is really dull and it's a bad ripoff of the TESB cave scene. No way will anyone be talking about that in ten years as if it's actually interesting or anything.

• Then they have to work together in some test thing where Jaina and Jacen go in a room and get rocks thrown at them. They each have a stick, and they're blindfolded, and Lowie is in a room controlling drones that can shoot rocks down. This is a pretty stupid test, since the rocks come so fast and furious that it's impossible to really deflect them all, and you're guaranteed to injure your trainees without gaining any greater insight into their skills. However, this goes from stupid to too-dumb-to-be-believed when the room starts shooting knives at them. You know how you prove a trainee really has it? You kill them, and remark that, based upon the number of knives they deflected before they were cut to ribbons, they really could have been a promising student and isn't that a crying shame.

• Now that enough Shadow Academy Showcase has gone by, and KJA has burned up some more chapters, Jacen finally gets the idea of using the OMG UBER HARD Corusca gem hidden in his boot to cut his way out. He slices into the door panel and hotwires it (though without actually knowing what he's doing; he's totally Han's kid), and just wanders through the halls until he finds the other kids. He doesn't bother to try to free the other kids, since they're a bunch of cardboard cutout Brakiss-parrots who enjoy being evil, and Lowie hacks into the computer, except he doesn't, because he doesn't know the password. Em Teedee just totally ignores his Imperial programming and slices in for them (the Imperial reprogrammers did a crap job) and closes all the doors. Thus assured of victory, the kids beat a quick retreat to the docking bay, where they are not caught by any of the guards running around in the halls.

• In the hangar, they find Luke, who has just landed spending the other half of the book tracking down the kids and trying to get to second base with Tenel. But they're locked inside by their own insistence on locking doors, since it locked the space door too.

• SPAAAAAAAACE DOOOOOOOOOR! It's a DOOOOOOOOR . . . to SPAAAAAAAAACE!

• Qorl calls down Brakiss and Tamith Kai on them. Luke wanders off and wonders what to do with Brakiss . . . he failed him, so should he talk with him or something, or just kill him? The kids just close the door on Brakiss so Luke doesn't have to deal with it, and make Luke get aboard. Tenel Ka breaks Tamith Kai's knee while she's sitting still powering up for like five minutes to go Force lighning on Tenel Ka's ass. This is still pointless, since they can't get the door open, but Qorl has an attack of Plot Conscience and lets them go. All is well.

• Back on Yavin, Luke offers Jacen his lightsaber to see what he's learned. But Jacen learned he's not ready for a lightsaber, and with cutting self-analysis he refuses. Man, I hope we don't get to see any more of this clever, insightful, self-analyzing, thoughtful, philosophizing Jacen. He's a total loser. I just want the Fun Happy Action Wannabe Never His Mind On Where He Was What He Was Doing Bad Joke Jacen.

• Moral lesson delivered and ominous ending line about the lurking threat of Brakiss, we freeze-frame and fade to black, as we wait for next book, when JACEN HAS NEW FRIEND!

• To keep you going, here's an image from the cover, in which Jacen looks either determined, about to cry, or constipated. I'm not sure which.

• Part XXIII: The Lost Ones
  In which our hero is neglected by his parents
  
  
• So, despite this being a series about Jedi students, KJA seems to be allergic to showing actual Jedi training. The first book avoided introducing it and just gave us people levitating leaves. Shadow Academy had them go on a field trip and get kidnapped. Now, three books in, he just can't handle that Jedi Academy anymore, and sends them on vacation to Coruscant. Wow, he got sick of the premise after the first book and completely ditched it by the third. Nice.

• On the other hand, this gives us the opportunity to let the kids run around doing their own thing without even having to worry about how come they're not actually in school. Except for the part where we realize that Luke might be a doofus who lets the kids do whatever they want, but how come Han and Leia just let their children run wild across the Coruscant cityscape? I mean, seriously. And where the hell is the Secret Service here? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

• So, we open with Jacen cracking horrible jokes. I hope this phase doesn't outlast this series. So, the kids are going to Coruscant, with their friends, for vacation. And to see their really really good friend Zekk, who, in a shocking coincidence, is only mentioned anywhere ever now that they're going to Coruscant to meet him.

• Continuity note: the time given for how long they've known this expert scavenger works out to be almost the exact same time Jacen was running around scavenging parts for their Special Non-Adult Droid. Serendipitous.

• Jacen can't concentrate on his dejarik game because Tenel Ka is sitting next to him. This is the book that finally goes out in the open: yes, Jacen fantasizes about being bench-pressed by the decathlete of his dreams. He's got a crush. Awwww. It's so sweet.

• They then go to play a game where the twins shoot at debris from the Falcon on their way in, doing their civic duty to cleanse Coruscant orbit of trash. This isn't actually very exciting, and basically just serves to give us Important Future Plot Information about debris and provide an excuse for a dual ANH Quote Homage.

• They land, and yay family, and Jacen tries to give his gem to his mom, and Mommy refuses Mommy's Boy.

• Then they go hang out with Zekk, who shows up by dropping from a statue. Wow, how unconventional and endearing! Tenel Ka is startled and wraps him up in her Action-Girl Fibercord Thing. Obviously this is the setup for a 'ship. I mean, come on, this is how Dathomiri warrior-women show their love, right? Charming meet-cute. Obviously they're destined for love.

• Zekk leads them off to go scavenge some things. This must be very exciting. They wander around the undercity, with no security, into very dangerous places, where mom would be upset if she knew and all that. How come mom doesn't know? How come she lets her kids wander around with a street child on Coruscant, of all places? This ain't Alderaan, lady.

• They go to steal a hawk-bat egg so they can sell it on the black market. Seriously. Jacen is gleefully oblivious to the whole treating-animals-well thing; he just likes to use them to amuse himself, so what would he care? So they steal it, and Momma Hawk-bat comes back, and is very angry. Jacen finally gets a chance to use Heart, and calms her down.

• They leave. Zekk, who is a total jerk, leads them through the bad gang's headquarters and taunts them. Then the Lost Ones attack, and the kids have to flee and barely escape, and Zekk somehow manages to act like he totally didn't see that one coming. KJA doesn't even try to explain it or make it make sense, either.

• So they go hang out with the poor kid at his poor-kid apartment, and invite him to a banquet. Then they go on a money-blowing vacation to the poles without the poor kid and whoop it up in the snow. Then they think to ask mom if the poor kid can come, because they kinda invited him already, and Leia is forced to do something obviously bad by her jerk kids.

• Zekk is all out of style or whatever, but it goes off pretty well, and Cousin It the Ambassador is totally cool, and then Zekk eats some random bouquet that was put in front of him, and everyone eats their bouquet to make him feel better, and Zekk is all angsty and the twins realize, "Gee, maybe we shouldn't have invited the poor kid to the banquet and just expected him to be able to handle it on his own."

• The next morning, they go to Zekk's place, and he isn't in, and they wait, and he doesn't show up, and they keep trying him for a couple days, and he's not there. They figure he's just embarrassed, because nothing could happen to a kid who runs around the undercity all the time. They go to Leia, and she doesn't care, because poor kids go missing all the time. Seriously.

• Peckhum, the old man who lives with Zekk in a totally non-creepy arrangement, shows up from his random mirror service all upset that Zekk isn't home. So Jacen and Anakin and Tenel and C-3PO go search for him. Jacen is paired with Tenel, and Anakin gets 3PO. Yeah, Jacen was the one coordinating this setup. So Jacen's hanging out with his hot body-building babe (perhaps at long last realizing that he's writing a romantic interest, KJA finally has Jacen think about her hair and having her arm around him, rather than her muscles). Then they go out on a rickety bridge that falls apart (why isn't Leia sending out some police to do this instead of letting her kids run around the undercity? And where is the parental supervision, period?) and Tenel Ka grabs Jacen tight and saves his butt by reenacting the ANH Death Star chasm scene, totally undoing the progress of the last sentence. Look, I'm all for female empowerment and that, but does your hero really need to a pansy damsel in distress who is totally out-masculined by his love interest?

• Then they find Zekk talking to the Lost Ones. He's all "Go away!" and then Tamith Kai shows up, and Tenel and Jacen start really mouthing off at her. Apparently they're too stupid to realize they're antagonizing a fully-powered Nightsister as barely-trained students, in the Coruscant undercity, with the way they came in having fallen apart. But it makes for good theater.

• Or else they realize that these are the wussiest villains ever, since when Jacen keeps arguing against the whole Shadow Academy thing (Zekk's had it pointed out to him by Brakiss that his friends really do show a remarkable lack of interest in his welfare and are a bunch of privileged snots) and only belatedly realizes he should run, Tamith Kai (She's a Full Name Only character), despite violently hating the children, has them stunned and just leaves them lie, rather than actually killing them. The Second Imperium is huge on stunning, mostly because despite being an utterly second-rate upstart power, the heroes are so stupid that they keep getting beat, and various important characters like Lando and Ackbar would be dead if the Second Imperium stormtroopers could work out how to flip the selector level on their blasters.

• Leia and Anakin find them, still passed-out, and wake them up, and sad news is made known. Meanwhile, Jaina and Lowie are on the mirror with the creepy old man and Chewie, and they realize that there's a spot where the Shadow Academy is. You see, Leia was complaining that the New Republic didn't have the resources to map all the debris in Coruscant orbit. They really ought to track it, but it's just waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard to do. So Jaina decides she and Lowie will sit down and do it in an afternoon. Seriously. And Leia thinks that's a great plan. Seriously. And Jaina and Lowie do it. Seriously. That whooshing sound you hear? That's all internal logic, currently in the process of being defenestrated.

• Anyway, there's a gap in the debris, almost like a cloaked station is sitting in the Coruscant system. They call the fleet and point the mirror at it. In some way which is never fully explained, this make the cloaked station stop being cloaked. It runs away. Zekk leaves a message saying he has no hard feelings, but he has to go be a Dark Jedi now, OK? Because that's the only way he can be somebody. If this were a musical, there would totally be some kind of song there.

• Then Luke takes them back to Yavin, where we get an OMG OMINOUS ending about forces of dark gathering and coming wars and other dialogue cribbed from LOTR, and it sounds like the Jedi are going to make lightsabers or something. Despite deciding they weren't ready for lightsabers one book ago. Well, I guess wandering around the Coruscant undercity aimlessly with your friends and looking for trouble will really grow a guy up.

• Stay tuned for next book, when they make LIGHTSABERS! WOW! YIPPEE SKIPPY SOMETHING SOMETHING EXCITING!
• Part XXIV: Lightsabers
  In which our hero mutilates his crush
  
  
• Oh noes! Shadow Academy! Dangerous!

• Luke calls a meeting, which basically just serves as an excuse to mock Raynar some more. Oh, look at the pudgy rich kid! We mock your outfit, rich boy!

• Ominous, ominous, battles to come, etc, etc. Lukie's going to accelerate their training so they can face the Shadow Academy. Presumably, this means they'll actually have training now.

• Then Luke comes and talks to the Four Very Special, Bestest, Better Than Anyone Else In The Academy Kids. They get favoritism out the wazoo as Luke lets them, and only them, make their lightsabers.

• Gahh, kaiburr crystals. Bad KJA. Bad continuity.

• Jacen builds his using his Corusca gem. I never could have seen that one coming.

• They practice for a while with sticks and crap, and then Luke takes them out to practice with remotes. KJA really didn't think this one through, since he has the kids put on red-tinted visors. The remotes are red. This makes the remotes invisible, since they get filtered out.

• Optics does not work that way. Being filtered out doesn't make them invisible, genius. You think the light from the tree behind it just shoots right through it to the kids' eyes? They're going to see great big remote-shaped blobs hovering around. Science fail.

• So they pretty much suck at it, and are only barely getting the hang of it when Tenel Ka jumps up and slices a remote in half -- not with the Force, but with her Magic Warrior Woman Hearing. Luke gets all pissy that she ruined a good remote and shuts down lessons; way to ruin it for everyone, Tenel.

• Since this was obviously sufficient training, we skip ahead to dueling, in which Luke has the kids go at each other with real live lightsabers. Can you say accident waiting to happen? You want slow practice drills, half-speed sessions, something before you hand kids the sharpest blades in the galaxy and say, "OK, get cracking."

• Boy, did I call that one or what? Jaina and Lowie do fine, mostly because they're too properly terrified to really get too risky. Jacen, however, starts in with a bunch of cocky crap (gaaaaaaauuuuuuuugh gratuitous ANH quote-homage); he thinks he's Little Luke Skywalker. He keeps trying to distract Tenel Ka and maneuver her onto bad footing -- he's treating it like a real duel, and clearly way too interested in getting a win. So Pansy Boy turns out to be pretty good at the lightsaber thing, and he and Tenel get all competitive. And they lock lightsabers, and push, and push, and Jacen's giving it harder and harder to Tenel, and suddenly she blows. Well, her lightsaber blows. Jacen ignores the signs that it's about to fail, and when it lessens resistance, he pushes harder (way to go, Einstein!) and slices her arm off.

• This, kids, is why you don't play with lightsabers. You might end up crippling your really ripped, sexily buff, skimpy-leather-outfit-wearing, taller-than-you-and-can-kick-your-ass crush.

• Jacen gets all emo, and Tenel gets all emo, and everyone else gets emo too. He might have cut himself, but he already sliced up enough arms for the day. Luke won't let him see Tenel; she has to recover or something. Then Luke sends her away in the middle of the night. What an ass.

• Luke, for the first and only time in his life, actually does the smart thing and sends in Tionne for grief counseling. They're all lightsaber-phobic now. But Tionne just tells a story about Nomi Sunrider (KJA: unable to resist compulsively referencing TOTJ since 1994) and doesn't really fix anything.

• Then Luke decides he screwed up before, and he has to take the kids to see Tenel Ka, and get her away from Ta'a Chume. So they show up at Hapes, and the kids are all "Hapes? She's from Dathomir!" and Luke's all like "I totally have to blow Tenel Ka's secret for her now." She's royalty, and has a complex about it.

• Yep. KJA can't even get halfway through the book before he has to get away from that awful academy setting he wrote himself into. So, four books in, we have one and a half books actually set at the Praxeum and in any way, shape, or form about actual Jedi training.

• Luke came to get Tenel Ka out of Ta'a Chume's influence and reinforce the whole "She's going to be a Jedi" thing. So he leaves the kids on Hapes for a month. Makes sense.

• Finally, Tenel comes to see Jacen in his room privately. She's wearing some slinky Hapan gown, and starts taking off her cloak and hiking up her dress to sit down. Be more careful how you write your thirteen-year-old love interest, dude. Anyway, Jacen's all excited, and apologizes to her, and she refuses his apologies, because she has a complex and this is ALL HER FAULT. No, it's ALL HIS FAULT. No, it's ALL HER FAULT. Finally Jacen just reverts to clueless form and unthinkingly goes "Wanna hear a joke?" This has apparently reached reflexive-response-to-discomfort status now. Tenel laughs, because Jacen is here to be her friend. Awww. Wub. They get all sobby and hug. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

• So everyone goes and hangs out in Tenel Ka's room, and Ta'a Chume comes in, and it's dinner time, and they won't go, because Tenel wants to stick it to Grandma. Bah Hapans! This turns out to be extremely fortuitous, since a bomb goes off in the dining room.

• Realizing this seems like a problem, they flee to the extremely isolated island fortress where they're supposed to be safe, despite not really having anything for guards and nowhere to run. Have they ever seen a horror movie? This is not a good idea.

• Tenel Ka picks out a super-special room for Jacen that's all aquarium. How sweet. She makes him close his eyes and holds his hand when she shows it to him. Ohh, wub. God, would you just make out already or something? The romantic tension is so thick you can cut it like your girlfriend's arm.

• Jacen and Jaina go swimming in their underwear.
  What, they don't have swimsuits in the royal island residence? Jacen challenges Tenel to an emotional ocean race in which he gets beat by a cripple.

• Ta'a Chume tries to get Tenel to mediate some dispute, and she's stuck in "Politics evil!" mode until Jacen points out that developing diplomatic skills isn't exactly going to kill her. He might, however, next time they duel. Tenel basically handles this by chewing out the ambassador, acting really demanding and arrogant, and being a total jerk until the ambassador is finished, at which point she tells him he loses, goodbye. Yeah, Jacen, when you get married, definitely let her be the one who goes out to the used speeder lot.

• Ambassador Yfra, the ridiculously-overplayed-as-suspicious lady in charge of taking care of them, sends them out in a boat for a nice, totally unsecured, point-of-hiding-defeating cruise. The kids are getting cabin fever and jump at this. So they go out all alone, to the middle of a bunch of carnivorous seaweed or something that Jacen pisses off. They have to fight it! They do. They escape. They realize whoever programmed the wavespeeder to go out there and stop maaaaaybe was gunning for them. It might be Yfra, they think. Just maybe.

• They don't say anything, because this is freaking Hapes, and Ta'a Chume, and they can't trust anybody. Then Ta'a Chume shows back up from the hard work of investigating, and Yfra leaves, and assassins show up in the night. Your Reef Fortress sucks, Hapans. What follows is absolutely unbelievable. It's really, really bad. The kids go on a full-out killing spree against the hive-minded bugs, with decapitations and spearings and guts and slime and what-not abounding, and no one really being bothered by the idea that they're killing people. I'm glad KJA treats the kids' first kills with the appropriate gravity.

With their lightsabers ignited, Jacen and Jaina slashed in, chopping the two frontmost Bartokks into quivering bug pieces.

And of course, Jacen's priceless line: "Hey! Aren't you supposed to die?"

• It gets even worse; the bugs keep going despite their dismemberment, so we get twitching bug parts and the gleefully depicted stomping of a decapitated bug head into mush by Lowie.

• Once they kill the bugs in the room, there are still a bunch outside, so they have to go out the windows. It's really not worth depicting the rest of the climax; just go watch the end of Patriot Games. It's the same thing, just with more carnivorous seaweed and less fire. And less Harrison Ford. And less Sean Bean. OK, let's face it, it's inferior.

• So they escape, and arrest Yfra, and because this is a children's book, she isn't executed on the spot but is instead promised a fair trial.

• Luke comes and takes them back. Then Tenel makes a new lightsaber with her spare rancor tooth (what do you mean everyone doesn't have a spare rancor tooth?) and by completely shattering a priceless Hapan royal heirloom to knock some gems out of it.

"Hi, kids. This is Indiana Jones, here to tell you to respect artifacts. These priceless historical treasures are irreplaceable, and need to be handled with the greatest of care. Please immediately report any artifacts you find to the nearest museum, and do not handle them any more than absolutely necessary. Above all, don't damage them. Not unless the fate of the free world hangs in the balance and it's the only way to stop the Nazis and/or Commies. Always remember: it belongs in a museum."

• So they duel, and Jacen's all scared, and Tenel Ka's back to pathological-need-to-prove-herself mode, and this time Jacen doesn't chop anything important off. Success all around, and with that heartening image, we close.

• Tune in next time, when I can guarantee you that the ominous Shadow Academy does evil things, and as little story as possible will actually take place on Yavin 4.