A Trip With Jacen Solo : Part 3

[soloing]

Source - Canon Review with Trip & Havac!


 Part XXV: Darkest Knight
In which our hero wanders the wild and wondrous Wookiee world

• Despite its use of the superlative, this is not in any way, shape, or form better than The Dark Knight.

• Lowie is all morose. No one knows why.

• The Falcon shows up. Apparently Luke can't stand the Jedi Academy any more than KJA can, and he's taking off for adventures with Han. There's nothing like going on about how much the academy is threatened by the Second Imperium and then just leaving it.

• Now we need to waste a whole scene watching Tenel Ka watch a video from Anakin about how to braid her hair with one arm! We need to get a transcript of the whole thing! God, he must have been desperate for filler.

• Sad revelation time: Lowie's would-be girlfriend died and his sister might run off into the understory alone to do her rite of passage. Lowie did it, but Sirra can't, because it's too dangerous. Total big-brotherism right there. Sirra agreed to go with Lowie, so he's got to take off for Kashyyyk.

• Of course, since they're spoiled brats and there's no possible way their friend could do anything without them, the kids ask to go with. Luke throws all that "increased training" stuff out the window, and lets the Special Favorite Headmaster's Relatives And Friends go off from the Academy and do whatever the heck they want.

• Guess what this means? That's right. Another book where we're not actually at the Praxeum. Whew. I was really getting sick of the place after we spent a whole half a book there last time.

• So they fly to Kashyyyk with Chewie in the Shadow Chaser -- which has QUANTUM ARMOR. Don't forget. Jacen offers an extensive lecture on the topic of humor to Tenel Ka. None of it makes any impact. Is it seriously possible to have someone so utterly humorless? It's actually kinda scary. It's like she's some kind of complete pyschopath or something. Has she been tested for some kind of chemical imbalance? Are her dopamine receptors working?

• Jacen gets bored with the Iron Lady and wanders around. He feels a critter through the Force, and being a relatively one-dimensional character with only one real interest in life, eagerly rushes to find it. It is a rodent thing with too many legs. Seriously, Jacen, it belongs in a mousetrap, not in your hand. One small problem: it chewed through a bunch of wires in the ion shield generator. That shouldn't be a big deal, right?

• In a shocking coincidence, they are immediately struck by an ion storm. Like, it can't even wait until Jacen gets all the way to the cockpit to report it. Do components ever fail that actually aren't a problem? Has anyone ever written a story where they find the hyperflimfloozlecyberfuse (seriously, KJA has a thing for cyberfuses. They're not just fuses . . . they're CYBERfuses!), and someone says, "Ah, we'll be OK without it" and they actually are OK?

• This drops the ship out of hyperspace and blanks the navicomputer. Except Lowie and Chewie have the coordinates for Kashyyyk memorized, so they still just go there. But other stuff on the ship is wrecked. Generic . . . ship stuff.

• So now we get to meet Lowie's family. His mom and dad are the classic Wookiee occupation, appropriate to the relatives of the daring Chewbacca: factory workers. His sister is, I kid you not, a Goth Wookiee. She's all moody and emo and cuts patterns into her fur to show on the outside that she's different inside, not like anyone else. Because she has DREAMS! And EMOTIONS! She doesn't want to conform to your social expectations! She wants to be SPECIAL! And not have to actually do work!

• Nothing really happens, because Sirra's too emo to go out on her rite of passage yet. So the kids wander around, and take a tour of the exciting computer parts factory. There, they see Wookiee workers in full-body hairnets. This is hilarious.

• Apparently the only way to get around here is by bantha. The Wookiees love and produce technology, but I guess they're just not into the whole speeder thing.

• So Jaina's off fixing the ship with Chewie, and the rest of the kids are playing video games. Moreover, they're playing video games where they reenact the Battle of Yavin. Apparently gamemakers are as unoriginal in the GFFA as they are here. Maybe in the next book they'll play the Battle of Hoth. Jacen sucks at this game, just like he does at anything that doesn't involve animals. Way to make a compelling, dynamic, and totally non-pathetic hero.

• So they get a message from the factory that's completely unclear but sounds bad. They can't call back, because the lines are cut. So they go there, and the Tour Droid (yes, it's always capitalized) tells them there is no emergency and nothing is wrong. Not to be deterred by the fact that nothing actually does look like it's wrong, the kids prepare to rush inside when TIE fighters attack!

• Jacen runs to a gun turret and starts shooting down TIEs. He shoots a bomber right before it can unload on the city. Man, the name of Jacen Solo will forever be remembered on Kashyyyk as the deliverer of its cities! Then, threat over, Jacen goes back to pretty much sucking, and just wings a few. Then more Wookiees show up to run the defenses, and Jacen gets another shot just so we remember he's actually a hero and not comic relief, and then he leaves so they can go track down the people who disabled the defenses.

• KJA has actually devised an ingenious answer to his continual need to fluff out the books with filler and insert random action scenes: he simply makes the last 50% of the book all one long, continuous action scene.

• They run into Zekk in the hall. He's commanding the Second Imperium attack, and is all "Grr, dark side!" but he just stands around rather than actually attacking anybody. Jacen decides this makes a good opportunity to split. They run away, and go through a hatch in the floor into . . . THE UNDERSTORY!

• They are chased by Zekk and a Nightsister and stormtroopers. They keep running. They get attacked by random plant life. They kill the plant life. They get surrounded by stormies. A stormie steps on a large and unusually fierce slug, which makes enough trouble that they can escape. Then we get our third and final "Oh noes!" moment in the jungle, in which they are again jumped by the remaining stormtroopers and the Nightsister, who apparently is of a new and improved model which does not burst blood vessels when using the dark side. They stay nice and hot. New and improved is pretty much how they're described; they sound like they come with a warranty. The stormtroopers fall down from the tree (when good guys fall through the tree canopy, they land a few branches down and are pretty much OK. When bad guys fall through the canopy, they fall screaming to their deaths. Across the board). The Nightsister falls into a carnivorous syren plant! So does Sirra! But don't worry, they pull her out. They leave the Nightsister inside, to be horrifically digested by an uppity plant. Sirra comes out with some syren fibers, which make her an adult or something. Because there's nothing to prove your worth like falling into a deadly plant and being pulled out by other people.

• Then they go and find Chewie and Jaina, who tried to follow them and help. Instead, Chewie fell and broke his leg. It's unclear why this means he couldn't go anywhere, since he's got three other limbs to climb trees with. Zekk showed up while they were gone, did his whole "I'm all dark side! Don't make me destroy you! Don't go to Yavin, we're going to attack it! I am dark! I will kill you if I see you again! Rarrrr!" routine, and just kind of wandered off.

• So they get Chewie back, and fix the ship, and set off to save the Academy! Rather than, like, just calling them up and mentioning they might get attacked.

• Stay tuned for the next book, when, I'm guessing, the Jedi Academy gets attacked or something. Epic confrontations may ensue.
•  

Part XXVI: Jedi Under Siege
In which our hero begs for help

• Have you noticed yet how relentlessly passive and pathetic our hero's role in the YJK books is?

• I have.

• So, KJA, capitalizing on his realization last book that the filler is less obvious in continuous action scenes, makes the whole book one big action scene. Regrettably, he was forced to set it on Yavin 4, but he mostly gets around this by not showing any actual (oh, the horror!) learning, just fighting.

• So, they land, and in a gigantic stroke of luck, no one's actually attacked in the stretch of time in which they elected to come warn Luke personally rather than just call and say, "Hey, attack coming." Jacen tells jokes to relieve the tension. He needs a better coping mechanism.

• Now I know why Luke didn't last very long as a general. His battle plan? KJA seems to be under the impression that Tionne and Luke are the only adults on the planet, which is really dumb (Abel put the lie to this anyway by putting Kyle there during the attack, and Kam and Corran were almost certainly there as well), so Luke . . . assigns Tenel Ka to teach the students ground combat tactics in like a five minute crash course. Not, like, Kyle "Combat instructor and general deity" Katarn. Or someone else who isn't a thirteen-year-old kid. Also, they probably shouldn't send a message to alert anyone to the fact that they might face an attack. Luke needs to know a nebulous "more" before such an action could be justified. It's unclear exactly what this "more" is. Jacen gets assigned to monitor communications. Finally, a role you can halfway justify putting a kid in. That's the last time we'll see that.

• Peckhum lands. The Shadow Academy shows up. Gee, they're jamming. A little too late for the distress message, don't you think, Master Dumbass? Anyway, rather than do the job Luke told him to do, Jacen makes Jaina do it and runs off to free his pets.

• Luke calls a council of war. Basically, this means that he gets a bunch of kids together and says, "Let's run and hide in the woods! Fight hard, even though I only saw fit to give weapons to my bestest favoritest students ever! Don't bother staying together. I'm not going to attempt to actually coordinate anything or take care of anyone. Don't die now, OK?"

• The Academy got shields set up just in this book, just for this attack. A commando TIE fighter slips inside the shields anyway and blows them up before the battle even begins, so we're left wondering why even bother. However, rather than use the fact that he's inside a TIE fighter to his advantage and just shoot the shield generator, the TIE pilot lands, gets out, and carefully places explosives to blow it up. Yes, that's so much more efficient and so much less risky. No Jedi shows up to stop him. No one appears to even care. Dammit, Skywalker, get on the ball.

• So now all the Special Favorite Jedi get more commando missions. Jacen is sent to take the Shadow Chaser and send that distress message. Whoops, the hangar's bombed and blocked in now. Oh, well, here's the Lightning Rod. Let's take that. Oh, good, Peckhum's here. He can fly her. At this point, Jacen's presence becomes wholly redundant and pointless, but he just goes along for the ride anyway. Let's face it; he's useless anyway. He's not going to do any more good on the ground. The other kids get various elite missions, like taking on a fully-powered Nightsister who's the Second Imperium's second-most-powerful Force user, or running into the middle of the field of fire to repair the thoroughly wrecked shield generator.

• Alright, I'm going to get Jacen's plot all out of the way in one go, because he's more useless than ever in this book and does absolutely nothing. They fly up. Second Imperium forces in orbit. Uh-oh. Jacen sends a grave all-channels distress message, then asks Peckhum, "How'd I do?" in a totally misplaced bit of flippancy. They go back to the surface. They get chased by a TIE. Uh-oh, it's Chuck Norris! Uhh, Norys, the big mean bully from the Lost Ones gang that we've spent way too much time watching Qorl bitch about for being insubordinate and wondering why the hell Qorl doesn't wash him out already (hilariously, Norys was a stormtrooper for the entire last two books, but all of a sudden he's a TIE pilot now). Norys is all "Ooooh, I'm a bully, I'm going to kill you now!" and they keep going, and then Qorl sees them, and gets all emo, and tells Norys to knock it off and focus on the main attack, and Norys is all "I'm going to tell you to #@$& off and otherwise be so grossly insubordinate that I'd be instantly shot in the good old days." And then Qorl thinks about how nice and polite and well-mannered TIE pilots were back in his day (no, seriously), and instantly shoots Norys in a move everyone should have seen coming, chief among them Norys. Oddly, Qorl feels really bad about this, as if this wasn't done all the time in his day, and as if it's somehow wrong to punish outright mutinous subordinates on the battlefield. Then, in a poorly-defined offscreen end to this poorly-designed plotline, the damaged ship crashes. Except it gets right back up again and goes to the Great Temple, where we'll meet it again.

• Meanwhile, Tenel and Lowie go attack the entire main landing force and Tamith Full-name Kai. Lowie beats up stormtroopers, and Tenel does some absolutely abysmal, horrid, god-awful trash-talking that's just positively shameful, and fighting ensues, and Tenel throws her weapon away to bring down a TIE bomber that crashes into the assault barge thing, and Tenel and Lowie jump away. Exciting.

• Meanwhile, Jaina goes to repair the smoldering duracrumbs of the shield generator, decides that's not going to work, and hits upon the idea of stealing the conveniently and highly coincidentally-placed sabotage TIE that the saboteur guy landed. So she takes it up, and shoots some TIEs, then realizes there are a lot more TIEs out there that come for her. So she runs away. In yet another KJA Logic-Defying Special, she stays even with the pursuers on her damped stealth engines. When she stops damping them, and starts running on full power just like all the other TIEs, she pulls way ahead of the pursuit. Yeah, figure that out. So then she flies up and away, to the NR fleet that Jacen summoned (plus, in a stroke of sheer badassness, Lando Calrissian's private fleet) IN HER TIE and acts all surprised when she gets shot at. Then she identifies herself, and Ackbar (it's always Ackbar leading these last-minute fleet rescues, never anyone else) lets her aboard, and she of course gives Ackbar the winning strategy against the SI fleet (turn their shields off).

• Luke starts to Battle Meditate the whole thing, which is awesome, but then gets a call from Brakiss challenging him to meet. So he leaves everyone in the battle behind (not that he was actively engaging in it anyway) and wanders off to meet Brakiss. They fight and stuff (great dialogue here too -- "Your words and your dark-side temptations have no effect on me," "Feel the calm, Brakiss. Let gentleness flow through you . . . peaceful, soothing."), and Luke makes his trademark half-assed redemption attempt, and Brakiss laughs him off and runs away.

• So basically, everybody loses, and the Shadow Academy takes itself out when Brakiss Palpatines the heck out of Glaringly Obviously Fake Even To A Seven-Year-Old Palpatine's Royal Guards (he drops his lightsaber out of his sleeve and cuts down two opponents inside a second. ROTS, you just got KJAnticipated) and discovers the scam, and one Guard runs away and blows up the Glaringly Obviously Going To Be This Station's End Because They're Mentioned In Every Book self-destruct explosives, and all is well.

• Except Zekk's still running around doing crap. He's all emo, and feels crushed, and betrayed, and he's still kind of dark-sidey (Brakiss was the only one who believed in me! I CAN'T COME BACK I'M LOST YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME!) but he's all disappointed and sad, so he goes off to try to stop the kids from going back into the Great Temple, which is rigged to blow. The saboteur guy set them up the bomb before being bitten by Jacen's crystal snake, so the inclusion of the snake doesn't serve the plot whatsoever. Zekk totally fails at warning; rather than saying, "There's a bomb inside!" he goes with the tried and true, absolutely clear "If you go inside you die! I won't let you inside!" angle. So Jaina talks to him, and he starts to attack her, and the writing sucks, because Zekk's totally set to fight Jaina and is still all hatey and dark-sidey, just standing in front of the door and only even in retrospect seeming even partially redeemed because Jaina decides he wanted to stop them from getting blown up. Their duel is interrupted by the landing of the Lightning Rod and blowing up of the top of the Temple.

• So, everyone's going to go up to Lando's bacta tanks, where they can get a happy ending. Tenel Ka makes a joke, which is . . . pretty momentous. Cheesy sitcom ending ensues.

• Tune in next week, when some other absurd threat emerges!

Part XXVII: Shards of Alderaan
In which our hero desecrates a mass gravesite

• So, they're rebuilding the Great Temple. And when I say they, I mean the kids. God, the unions must hate Skywalker.

• We get random action when some stuff collapses. Lowie and Tenel save Raynar, because lol, rich kids are helpless. However, he's not quite such a pompous rich kid anymore, because he got humiliated in the battle last book. That's right, kids. Remember: the only way to make rich people even marginally good people is to humiliate them.

• Jacen, being Jacen, runs after the scared ronto that caused the accident. He runs a long time. A really long time. Then he finds it. And it's scared. But it really, really wants to work. That's right. Beasts of burden want to work, so you don't have to worry about abusing them. They want to show how hard they can work. So Jacen talks with it in the Force, and it's all "Yes Massah! Right away, Massah!" and it goes back to work.

• Zekk wakes up from his DARK SIDE COMA. Seriously, that's what it is. Jacen's there when he wakes up, and happily goes on about how everything will be OK now. But Zekk, being emo, knows that he is WRONG. NOTHING WILL EVER BE RIGHT AGAIN. Because he went to the dark side, you see.

• Dammit, Han, can you go more than two books without showing up at the Academy?

• Raynar's dad went missing. Han breaks this news bluntly to Raynar with an absolute minimum of compassion. This will be the way all crushing personal news will be delivered throughout the rest of the book.

• We have an action scene with Boba Fett. Just to make some pointless filler action, and to disguise the fact that the book goes halfway through before the actual plot kicks in.

• So the kids do another A-team scene repairing the Lightning Rod. Then Tenel's parents get her a ship, and kids go A-team on that (for those of you wondering, Jaina is Hannibal, Lowie is Murdock, Jacen is Faceman, and Tenel is B.A.).

• Zekk, meanwhile, takes off in the Lightning Rod because he can't handle Jedi stuff. I wouldn't mention his story, since it's irrelevant to Jacen, except for the fact that this is too mockable to pass up. He goes to Ennth, his homeworld . . . where tidal forces destroy the entire planet's surface every eight years, on the dot. And people live there. They evacuate, and people stay too long and die, every eight years. Then they go back down and spend money to rebuild everything again. Knowing that it will be gone again in eight years. Why? Because it's home. Look, people rebuilding in New Orleans or something is one thing, because they can at least tell themselves that there won't be another hurricane like that in their lifetime. They can be fooling themselves, but they can actually justify it. These people? They know they're screwed, but they refuse to spend all the money and time they spend rebuilding into just building on a new planet. These are the stupidest people in the entire galaxy.

• Jacen pulls a critter out of some pipes or something, because we needed more filler.

• Han shows up again. God, find something to do. Anyway, Anakin's with him, because he likes puzzles lol and wants to put the Jigsaw Temple back together. Mommy's coming to celebrate her birthday in a few days. The kids want to get mom a present. They want to get her Alderaan. Well, a piece of Alderaan. Han, being a bad father, allows his fourteen-year-old kids to take off on their own with their friends to an area that's known for pirate activity. Seriously, they're the chief of state's kids. Where the hell is the Secret Service here? Can we at least get some Noghri?

• Jaina says, "What could possibly go wrong?" I believe her.

• They go and fly into this sacred graveyard, and just kind of putter around with an obligatory but minor sense of reverence, and land on a nice pure-metal chunk of planet core and cut a hunk out. This is probably against five billion government regulations.

• There is a baby exogorth on the asteroid. Because haha, we can't have an asteroid field without a space slug. Never!

• They leave, but get shot at. It's probably the Galactic Historical Park Rangers. They get chased through the asteroid field. Solo and the Wookiee copilot dodge into an asteroid hole to escape.

• Yeah, expect other obnoxiously blatant OT callbacks. Punch it, Lowie!

• They go all A-team again to fix the damage. They go to escape. They don't even get out of the hole before the Mysterious Pursuer shoots the cave in on them and traps them inside. They get sliced. They go outside the ship. Boba Fett shows up OMG! Except it's really Ailyn Vel! I wonder if Jacen will ever find this out? I wonder if he'll catch up with Vel again? Boba-Fett-who-isn't asks them where Bornan Thul is. Haha, that silly Fett misinterpreted the time they talked to Raynar on the comm and said they got what they came for! Haha, silly Fett. So the kids are like, "Haha, Silly Fett!" and Silly Fett is like, "Oh, well then, I bet your dad knows something. He just must." And Silly Fett walks away, and blows the cave-in back to cave-in-ness, and the kids are trapped again.

• So what do they do? If you said "A-team," you guessed right! If you said, "But 'A-Team' isn't a verb!" then you are wrong. Just wrong. Why don't you go read some blogs about organic spinach or something? We don't want you here.

• But Em Teedee searched Boba's records remotely, because the Rock Dragon is a magic ship with all the advanced equipment you could magically want, which pops out with full justification anytime you say the magic words "Ta'a Chume"! And Boba's hunting Bornan for Nolaa Tarkona! And Boba-who-isn't just sent a message to lure Han Solo here to save his kids!

• Jacen clears rubble and bonds with his pseudo-girlfriend. Then they break out again. And Not-Boba shoots them down. And OMG they're going to die! and then Zekk flies in out of nowhere and chases Boba Fett out of the system in his rustbucket. Wowzers, that Zekk is so amazing! Then Han shows up, and hauls the kids to safety. Remind me again why Han and his mini-warship couldn't just drive off Fett?

• Yay, happy reunion, except Zekk's randomly taking off to become a bounty hunter. Honestly, you know it's either that or smuggler. There just aren't that many cliche fringer jobs out there.

• They go back to Yavin, and happy birthday mom, here's a hunk of your dead planet! Leia is very happy, and talks about how the heart of Alderaan is passed on to her children.

• So Jacen has the heart of Alderaan? Does that mean he's going to become a philosophical pacifist?

• Tune in next week, when things probably Bornan Thul-related happen.
• Part XXVIII: Diversity Alliance
  In which our hero fights spiders
  
  
• So the kids are hanging out, after a conveniently offscreen day of Jedi training, and Jacen wanders around and finds Raynar in the woods. Making a conscious effort to be nice to the jerk rich kid because his dad is missing, Jacen's all "Awww" and he pities the rich kid and it's all very nice.

• Then they go back to the Temple, and Luke has a special message for Raynar from his mommy. She wants Raynar to come back to the super-secret migratory family fleet. Because, you see, she's convinced she can protect Raynar better than Luke Skywalker, Greatest Jedi Master Ever. She actually says that. To be fair, his Academy did kinda just get devastated by a bunch of incompetents from some puffed-up Imperialist rabble. Raynar doesn't want to go, because he wants to train and be a Jedi. Jacen, again having to consciously be nice to Raynar, suggests they all go off with him. And by now you should know who "they" are, since there's only one group of Super Special Favoritest Students Ever who get to wander off on bloody vacation anytime they ask to.

• Meanwhile, Nolaa Tarkona plots and stuff. You see, she's upset because Oola was enslaved, just like a lot of Twi'lek women are enslaved. By Twi'lek men, the galactic criminal underworld, and Hutts. In a clear and logically presented consequence of this anger, she decides that humans need to suffer so aliens everywhere can be free. She and her second-in-command spend a scene going through a list of alien species. Alphabetically. Giving horribly stereotyped and unflattering species traits and always ending with Nolaa deciding they should be recruited into the Diversity Alliance. Oh, did I mention that her second-in-command is a Shistavanen Wolfman? Who EATS HUMANS FOR LUNCH. Literally. He EATS RANDOM HUMANS ALIVE. FOR THE PURE HELL OF IT. We get a DESCRIPTION OF THE NOISES. We are subsequently treated to a delightful scene in which he NONCHALANTLY PICKS A BIT OF HUMAN FLESH OUT FROM BETWEEN HIS TEETH. This is so incredibly disturbing I don't even have words for it.

• Because having Jacen and the bunch just go would be too simple, we get some filler of them sitting around waiting to leave. We get Tenel POV about how much she enjoys Jacen's jokes, but refuses to tell him. She's a total jerkface. On the trip, Jacen and Raynar tell each other jokes to relax from worry over Bornan. Wow, humor used as a coping mechanism? I never thought I'd see that in a YJK book again.

• They go to the fleet, and meet the rich kid's rich and pompous family, consisting of a mom and an uncle. The mom is mostly OK, because moms are nice. But Tyko's a pompous ass, because rich men are pompous jackasses lol. The kids hang around, and do some water ceremony crap that bores the hell out of not only them, but the reader as well. Oh, those rich Alderaanians and their pompous hippie ceremonies!

• Then they go to the bridge, where they ever-so-coincidentally happen to be when they jump into hyperspace, and come out away from the rest of the fleet, facing a bounty hunter. Jacen, proving useful for a change, feels something wrong in the Force when Raynar and Aryn are taken to the secure cabin in the ship, and goes after them with Tenel. Ah. Aha. The crewman was a traitor trying to capture them for the bounty hunter who is his brother who wanted them to get to Bornan. They stop him. Jaina and Lowie use their magic Jedi targeting powers to blow away the enemy shipw where none of the professional gunners can.

• Then the kids hang out some more, and get ossberry ale from the Thuls, Presumably, Bornan disappeared because the feds nabbed him for serving minors. Bornan was last seen going to Kuar (a TOTJ reference? From KJA? NO WAY!). They decide to go look, because the New Republic's search team, headed by Han Solo, must just be incompetent, and Jacen has amazing logic skills: Tenel: "Kuar held a small measure of historic interest for me, since it is one of the ancient worlds conquered by Mandalorian warriors. A fearsome race of fighters. I have studied many of their legends." Jacen: "Hey, doesn't Boba Fett wear Mandalorian armor? And when he found us in the Alderaan system, he was looking for Bornan Thul."
  This is too dangerous for Raynar. The Thuls won't let him go. Because the rest aren't Thuls, no one gives a crap and they let them go.

• On the trip, Jacen worries that Tenel Ka will find him useless, like Dathomiri and Hapan women think of men. He really should have thought about this sooner, since he is. So he decides to prove his worth by . . . suggesting they list things they know about Bornan Thul in a convenient plot recap for the kids who didn't read the last book. Pretty much everyone else lists things, and Jacen is pretty much useless again.

• They go to Kuar and spend a ton of time scanning it. Since it's a dead world, there's really no place to start. Except, wait, let's look for landmarks. Oh, look, how convenient! The biggest landmark on the planet obviously must be the arena where Ulic fought Mandalore! Let's look there. This would be a totally awesome tie-in revisiting a totally awesome place, except for the fact that KJA is constitutionally incapable of referencing anything but TOTJ, so it just comes away looking lame.

• They poke around, and almost immediately find a message from Bornan Thul. Dangerous things are going on, and if he's captured ALL HUMANS WILL DIE!!!!!!!!!! Or something. So the kids poke around some more, and find some combat arachnids. They fight the giant spiders, but the giant spiders have plot invincibility, so they have to run. But they're trapped. And one grabs Tenel, and Jacen has a big heroic scene where he prepares to rush to her defense . . . and Raaba, Lowie's dead girlfriend, shows up and shoots the spider. Jacen gets robbed, and remains useless. And they run away. And then they get chased by more combat arachnids, because that last scene just didn't chew up enough pages. So they run across the chains. Man, Jacen is just like Ulic or something.

• Raaba's all moody and shy, and Tenel gives them an excuse to wander off by themselves. They sit and talk about how humans are bad, and she's joined the Diversity Alliance now. Lowie seems remarkably untroubled by the fact that his girlfriend is a racist, or that she's working for the person who wants really, really, badly to capture the guy they're trying to save, and talks with her about Bornan. They also talk about how she faked her death because she was ashamed she got injured, which is kind of weak. Also, she shaves her knees and crap like Sirra, because apparently they're Goth Wookiees together.

• Meanwhile, the kids sleep after Tenel Ka convinces Jacen that Lowie's probably not coming back that night.
  Because they'll want to catch up, or something. Is that a Hapan euphemism? The kids sleep outside . . . hi, combat arachnids? You couldn't just sleep in the ship? There's some talk about Tenel's glistening bare skin and her skimpy leather outfit. That's mentioned every damn book. Seriously, dude, cut it out.

• So Jacen goes and talks to Raaba, and finds out some guy named Fonterrat was there. He must have met with Bornan! How incredibly coincidental that this is the same guy Zekk's spent the other part of the book chasing around! Then Tyko randomly shows up. He's all shifty and demands they look around some more, because. Then IG-88 shows up while Jacen's watching Tenel Ka sleep and knowing things about the tension of her muscles he probably shouldn't. And he and his assassin droids shoot up the ships, and the kids and Tyko (Raaba got pissed when Tyko was badmouthing Tarkona and left, and haha pompous rich man didn't get it) run into some caves. Shockingly, there are combat arachnids here. So they fight the giant spiders, and the droids fight the giant spiders, and the droids grab Tyko and run off. This is sad.

• The kids go A-Team on their damaged ship, because nothing is ever irreparable. Then they take off to report in. Wow, we're through the whole book, and we know like one more thing than we did than we started! This investigation is really going somewhere!

• Stay tuned for our next adventure, when Zekk almost catches Bornan! The preview tells us so!
• Part XXIX: Delusions of Grandeur
  In which our hero almost gets to fly the ship
  
  
• Jacen shows up to invite Jaina to come see his gort egg hatch! This is super-exciting! It takes a minute, though, because Jaina is writing a love letter to Zekk or something, which basically just serves as a blatantly obvious recap of the last book. Oh, and they're sweet on each other, see! Just like Jacen and Tenel, we get the sentiment hammered into our heads all the time, but absolutely nothing comes of it.

• So Jacen and Tenel are looking at the egg. Yet more stuff about how Jacen subtly slides closer to Tenel. Their hands touch on the glass of the incubator. Dammit, kid, just make a move already! Lowie arrives by Tarzaning through the window. We get way too much time spent on them watching the egg. And watching. And watching.

• Prose of the day: "Click-click. Thunk. Clack."

• So a tiny critter we don't care about comes out of an egg. Surely this will have future plot relevance, right? Just like the crystal snake that always bites people but makes absolutely no difference? And by the way, Jacen later admits he has no idea how much care gorts need. So he's pretty much just winging it. Yeah, that's how you take care of animals. God, PETA is going to kick his ass.

• So Peckhum shows up. Old Peckhum. You have to say "old" before his name at least every other time you use it. He's got Raynar in the trunk. You remember that whole thing last book about mom being paranoid and wanting Raynar back? About him being safe there? Oh, well, uhh, we kinda need him for this book. So forget about it.

• So, basically, absolutely nothing happens in this book. Like, the entire first half is just the kids sitting around being a total waste of space while Zekk does stuff. So I'm going to talk about Zekk. He goes into a bar and gets two beers. And he meets a man who is obviously Bornan Thul is disguise. And it turns out he's Bornan Thul in disguise. Except he leaves before Zekk figures it out. He hired Zekk, the big bad bounty hunter, to deliver a message to the Bornaryn fleet and find Tyko.

• The kids go on a skyhopper ride in which they're all packed like sardines. Jacen and Tenel share a seat. They are suspiciously happy with this arrangement. They invited Raynar along, not because they actually like the jackass rich kid, but because they feel bad for him because his daddy is gone, so they "didn't have the heart to exclude him." Literally, they wanted to exclude him but couldn't. I'm so glad our kids are learning good values from this. Damn rich kids. But they have to come back in time to listen to Tionne recount the events of Golden Age of the Sith! IN STORES NOW! Then they all strip down and go swim in the river. Really, would it kill KJA to have them change into swimsuits instead of always swimming in their underwear? It makes me feel uncomfortable.

• Raaba randomly shows up while they're swimming, and she and Lowie have a ridiculous moment where they're running at each other across a field, except they're swimming across a river, and then Lowie totally randomly just runs off with her two days later. She wants to announce her survival on Kashyyyk.

• Since they're all sad that Lowie's gone, Luke buys them a new pet. Look at this one, it's got an extra set of legs! We'll name her Lusa!

• So Lusa shows up. And holy flying Sun King, she has no clothes. Not like Lowie, where he's all furry so no one cares until they're doing wrestling exercises. She's a centaur. Which means she has a human torso. Which KJA goes out of his way to describe is bare. Jaina hugs her, which I guess is supposed to be totally hot. Jacen's greeting? "'Hey, you've . . . um, changed.' He stumbled a bit over his words." Translation: "OMG BOOBS."

• All the Superfriends go to dinner with Lusa, plus Raynar, that rich jackass. Raynar spends the whole time staring at her boobs. No, I'm serious. "Raynar stared tongue-tied at the beautiful centaur girl." God, this is so pervy. Anyway, Lusa tells them about joining the Diversity Alliance, which is full of mean people who don't like humans.

• Zekk goes to Ziost, totally randomly (Gratuitous TOTJ Namedrop Counter: 2). He sends the message, and gets attacked by Dengar, and runs away. Well, isn't this just the Executor Bridge Class of 3 20th Class Reunion. Zekk's considering nabbing Bornan for the bounty and turning him over to Tarkona, because that would totally make his rep as a bounty hunter! Yeah, kid, that's how you deal with being totally OMG emo scarred by the dark side! Simply become amoral instead of actively immoral!

• Lowie, blah blah blah, I really don't care, so I'll just give you the Cliff Notes of the entire thing: he goes back to Kashyyyk, Raaba gives a Diversity Alliance speech, Lowie remains mildly uncomfortable with his wannabe girlfriend being a raving racist but pretty much just goes along with it for no real reason provided by the text, and goes with her and his sister to meet Nolaa Tarkona and join the Diversity Alliance. Because what's a little lunatic racism between friends, right? God, he's got it bad for her. Anyway, Nolaa is meanwhile plotting to kill the hell out of all humans with a magic virus that kills only humans. Yeah, I'm sure it'll just totally skip the Zeltrons and everything. The PERSON-EATING WOLFMAN shows up PICKING HUMAN OUT OF HIS TEETH again. Anyway, because she's an idiot children's villain, she uses her only sample of the plague, the location of the rest of which she does not know but Bornan has the location, and rather than having it studied so they could synthesize it, uses it on a random and pointless demonstration of "OMG aren't we so cool!" on a couple recruits who are getting in on the plan by killing the Royal Guard who escaped from the Shadow Academy (absurdly random intra-series connectivity FTL). Also, this is on Ryloth, so a random passing reference to Tott Doneeta is required (Gratuitous TOTJ Namedrop Counter: 3).

• Zekk still can't decide whether he wants to be an ethical person or a rich, famous scumbag. So he decides what better than to ask Boba Fett what to do? He goes to Tatooine (GAAAH RANDOM MOVIE PLANET APPEARANCE PLEASE GOD NO) and goes into Chalmun's (because there's no other cantina on the planet lol) and meets Bobailyn, and asks a blatantly transparent question about how maybe kinda, if you had a contract, and then there was another contract, and it was all like with money and stuff, and it maybe kinda sorta would require betraying your original employer just a little, like totally hypothetically, what would you do? And Bobailyn gives the perfect Boba Fett answer and says, "Both." Fill the first contract, and as soon as you're paid, take in the employer. Zekk likes this. That kid's an ass. Also, Zekk drinks a bunch more booze here.

• Jacen is doing lightsaber practice with Raynar. Except with stun-sticks. WHERE THE HELL WERE THEY FIVE BOOKS AGO? Anyway, Jacen's one of the best duelists at the Academy. You wouldn't know it, since everyone else is always saving his ass instead of the other way around. But he's one of the best. Which really isn't hard when he and three other students are the only ones in the place with lightsabers. Luke's such a nepotist. Raynar admires Lusa's boobs (I'm comforting myself with the idea that he's sweet on her because they're hanging out. Because if he's sweet on her because she's a horse from the waist down, I need to go find somewhere to vomit, please. Oh, wait. She's a fourteen-year-old horsegirl running around topless in a children's series. Yeah, I'm going to go vomit anyway). So Raynar and Lusa go on a walk. She's still edgy around humans, but Raynar takes her out to a waterfall and watches her swim around and shake herself dry. Yeah, there's no need to beware this perv.

• Anyway, Raynar decides he has to go to Mechis III and take care of Uncle Tyko's Amazing Droid Factory Funhouse (Gratuitous other-KJA-story-tie-in. Come on, man, how long until you let your wife take her turn tying into her work randomly? Surely you can cram Reegesk in somewhere). And of course, the Super Special Bunch get to go off on a random vacation with him. Why not? Luke is the worst principal ever. Finally, over halfway through the book, something remotely approaching a plot emerges for the Jedi kids.

• So they show up, and the jerk protocol droid tells them to go away, and they ignore it, and go to the office. Raynar thinks he's just going to run the totally automated planet, so they push some buttons and the intruder alarm goes off and guns come out of the ceiling. Dammit Luke, this is why you don't let a bunch of fourteen-year-old idiots wander around on their own trying to run a planet. So they chop up the guns and leave, but hey look, it's IG-88 (Tales of the Bounty Hunters, in stores now!)! And Tyko! Why, that ridiculously suspicious kidnapping attempt was just a hoax to draw out Bornan on the part of the pompous rich jackass guy. So he's pissed off, because now Bornan will never come! Exactly how someone totally unrelated arriving means Bornan will never come is not made clear. Anyway, we get a nice explanation of how he found IG-88A's body there, and a pointless recounting of Therefore I Am. Glorious Death Star takeover included. God, I still can't get over how dumb that was.

• Meanwhile, Zekk meets up with Bornan over his bounty. He's sent the message, but hasn't found Tyko yet, so the bounty isn't over. So he can't hurt Bornan, which he says to him when he lets on that he knows his secret identity. Nice going, dumbass. "No, don't worry, you're totally safe with me. I won't try to capture you until the next time I see you. I will be seeing you again, right?"

• The kids go and put some repulsors on Em Teedee. Then Zekk shows up, since he found clues in the assassin droids they left dead at Kuar (Gratuitous TOTJ Namedrop Counter: 4) that pointed him to Mechis III. And then Dengar shows up, because he tracked Zekk. And he assumed Bornan is in there. So he starts bombing the complex and demanding they come out. And Zekk and Jaina go off to distract him in the Lightning Rod while Jacen takes everyone else to escape in the Rock Dragon. Yay, the son of Solo finally gets to fly the ship! Oh, wait, Dengar lands anyway and holds them at gunpoint. And he wants Raynar to tell him where daddy is, or he's going to waste Jacen. Tenel Ka steps in front of Jacen, who has a lightsaber, and lights her lightsaber to protect him. OK, there's such a thing as having a strong female character, and then there's simply making your male lead the damsel in distress all the time. When was the last time Jacen actually did anything heroic? Seriously?

• The answer is: when he broke himself and Jaina out of the Shadow Academy singlehandedly. In the second book. That's right. Seven books ago. Seven books since he did a damn thing on his own that's in any way impressive or lead-character-ish.

• Anyway, IG-88 shows up and saves their butts, and Dengar runs away. And haha, all fun happy stuff now, because it's the end and no one's dead. Except, wait, they get a call from Lowie's parents that he left to go to the Diversity Alliance headquarters! OMG!

• Tune in for our next installment, when, if you're really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really lucky, you might actually get plot in the first half of the book.