Apocalypse

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi #9

by Troy Denning

There can be no surrender.There will be no mercy.It’s not just the future of the galaxy at stake—It’s the destiny of the Force. In the stunning finale of the epic Fate of the Jedi series, Jedi and Sith face off—with Coruscant as their battlefield. For the Sith, it’s the chance to restore their dominance over the galaxy that forgot them for so long. For Abeloth, it’s a giant step in her quest to conquer all life everywhere. For Luke Skywalker, it’s a call to arms to eradicate the Sith and their monstrous new master once and for all. In a planetwide strike, teams of Jedi Knights take the Sith infiltrators by swift and lethal surprise. But victory against the cunning and savage Abeloth, and the terrifying endgame she has planned, is anything but certain. And as Luke, Ben, Han, Leia, Jaina, Jag, and their allies close in, the devastating truth about the dark side incarnate will be exposed—and send shock waves through the Jedi Order, the galaxy, and the Force itself.Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years!

Genres: Star Wars, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Audiobook, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy

497 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Also known as Richard Awlinson.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Den...

Reviews

[Khurram · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is very very fast passed. With a battle going on in every chapter. I think there is more action going on in this book then the other 8 books of the series put together. Unlike another reviewer, I love the continuity in Star Wars, the fact the main stream book refer to things in the clone wars TV series as well as other book and in some cases even comics.

The story. A month has passed since the last book. The Jedi have made their plans to infiltrate and liberate Coruscant from Lost Tribe of the Sith. Once everyone is in place the action does not stop. However can even the Jedi, the GA marines, and the Empire defeat the Lost Tribe numbering in the thousands and Aboloth?

Aboloth's origin and purpose are explained. Tying to an arc from Clone wars season 3. We also finally get the answer as to what exactly Jason Solo saw that he was will to become Darth Caedus. The Dark man being hinted at since the last since the previous series (legacy of the force) finally makes his appearance. Then many questions are left unanswered for the next series. The sign of a good book if you are hungry for more as soon as it finishes despite being 445 pages.

The only thing I did not like was that authors seem to forget high level Jedi masters like Luke who have passed through the Dark side are more than capable of using force-lightning (their projection of it usually is green, but just as deadly) as well as the Sith they are also capable of blocking it the way Yoda did and Luke has in the past. They do not just use force projections to push people back. Also all the powers and new force abilities Luke added to his repertoire were not used again. Maybe they are saving that for next time. All in all a great ending to the series, and start of something new.

[Eric Allen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Star Wars
Fate of the Jedi
Book 9
Apocalypse

By Troy Denning

A Review by Eric Allen

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . or rather, an era that many of us have a hard time imagining in this day and age called the 70s, George Lucas created the most lucrative franchise in entertainment history, and has been cashing in on it ever since. I need not go into the ridiculous amount of toys, T-shirts, posters, video games, etc. that followed, as anyone that has not spent the last 35 years living in a cave has likely seen them, whether they are a fan or not. The better part of a decade after the final film in the trilogy was released, millions of fans cried out for a sequel, but George Lucas remained silent. Enter Timothy Zahn and Bantam books. They cut a deal with Lucas to produce a trilogy of books that came 5 years after the events of Return of the Jedi. These books are most commonly known, amongst fans, as the Thrawn Trilogy, though the trilogy itself has no official name. And so the Expanded Universe was born, a series of books that numbers now in the hundreds.

I was four years old the day my parents rented Star Wars for the first time. It was back in 1983, another time that people these days might have a hard time imagining, and Return of the Jedi had just come out in theaters. I was riveted from the first moment when the fanfare began playing. I couldn’t read yet, but the words floating through space were AWESOME. Then came the opening scene of a smaller ship being chased by that massive behemoth that just kept going as it flew by over the camera. I was hooked. My baptism into Nerdom had come. And when these books started coming out while I was in Junior High School I pounced on them, buying and reading every single one of them as they came out. At first, respected Sci-fi, Fantasy, and even comic book authors took to writing Star Wars novels, continuing the adventures of the characters that so many people knew and loved, and expanding on the universe in new and creative ways. Some of them were actually not bad. These authors include Timothy Zahn, Kevin J. Anderson, Barbara Hambly, Alan Dean Foster, Michael A. Stackpole, and several others. For those looking for recommendations amongst all the titles to choose from I would suggest starting with Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, or the Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson. Both are good starting points and mark points in the timeline where large and important events occur, and were written before a lot of the novels sandwiched between them and the more objectionable retcons that authors tried to introduce to the series with them. They also mark turning points in how the story is told. This is hard to explain, so check the books out and see for yourself if you’re interested. They can be found at most public libraries and are well worth the time for any Star Wars fan that’s looking to find a bit of the old magic.

By the late 90s Lucas had realized what a cash cow these Star Wars novels had become, and so created a new division of Lucasfilm called Lucasbooks. And so began the slow and painful degradation into utter mediocrity that followed, beginning with The New Jedi Order in 1999. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere… The respected authors, rightly, turned tail and fled as quickly as they could from this soulless abomination, and Lucasbooks contracted a few lesser known, and frankly not very good authors to take the helm. Several of these have basically become the pets of Lucasbooks and do nothing but churn out garbage with the Star Wars logo on it because it sells whether the story or the writing is any good. Each successive series that takes place after The New Jedi Order has been worse. The characters we all knew and loved are replaced with soulless stereotypes that repeat catch phrases and unimaginative one-liners. The words Damn and Hell, spoken in the movies and the earlier books, are replaced with completely ridiculous made-up curses that sound so incredibly awkward. The stories are repetitive and boring. The writing is just plain awful and lazy. And the entire premise falls apart, because how many dark lords can POSSIBLY rise up to take over the universe in a single man’s lifetime, SERIOUSLY!

Anyway, being cursed from that first moment when the Star Wars logo appeared on the screen to read any and all books Star Wars, I have come to the conclusion of the latest Star Wars book series: Fate of the Jedi and GOOD GOD was it horrible. The only thing that makes these books even remotely readable is not reading them at all. I instead got the audiobooks off of Audible.com for a pretty reasonable price. The producers of the Audiobooks just try so hard to recapture the magic of those first movies by adding sound effects, music, and finding narrators that can mimic the voices of the original actors remarkably well. They basically take material that is complete and utter garbage and make it at least superficially entertaining. I can’t imagine actually trying to read my way through these books, because each is remarkably worse than the last, both in the quality of the writing and characterization, and in the quality of the story.

And now, on with the review. I’m going to look at the Fate of the Jedi series as a whole here rather than just the final book, because a lot of the problems in this book are rooted in the previous eight books.

The Galactic Alliance is in the hands of the Sith, and the Jedi have fled Coruscant, whilst Abeloth, the powerful Dark Side entity has taken control of the Galactic Senate. That SOUNDS like a setup for one of the most epic books ever written, doesn’t it? Yeah, get ready for a whole lot of disappointment. In fact, that’s the word the best sums up every single Star Wars novel to be released since Lucasbooks was formed. Disappointment.

As much as I would like to give a detailed summary of the plot of this book, there really isn’t a plot of which to speak, so that is rather impossible. This book is made up of fight scene after fight scene as the Jedi, the Sith, and Abeloth duke it out for Coruscant, and NOTHING is resolved. And quite frankly, I found it to be rather boring. The Expanded Universe books have degraded to the point of the prequel movies in quality. There’s no story, no characterization, just ball-numbing action that goes on, and on, and on, and on, and there’s no tension at all because all of the characters are so god-like in power and ability that nothing can actually threaten them. Even the IMMORTAL Abeloth, and all of her power barely does much to any of them, and dies rather easily.

The Good? Um… No comment.

The Bad? Series that run as long as this one usually all have a common problem. They’ve already done everything, and they have to stretch to come up with anything new. All of the characters have stopped developing because the authors writing them seem to think there’s no need because previous authors have already done all of the character development possible. When you don’t care about and empathize with the characters, and watch them learn, grow, and strive to overcome adversity, action scenes become pointless. There’s no tension because the reader just really couldn’t care less what the outcome is because the characters are so bland. Tension, drama, and excitement come from caring about the characters and having a genuine interest in how they will overcome the obstacles standing in their path.

The writers responsible for these books, Aaron Alliston, Troy Denning, and Christie Golden seem to have decided amongst themselves that all of the characters have already developed as far as possible and no further development will ever be needed. Therefore, none of the characters developed a single bit in this series. Luke endlessly spews vacant platitudes, whilst everyone else cracks one-liners and catch phrases that are supposed to make us see them as human, rather than cardboard cutouts. They seem to have forgotten that you need an emotional connection with a character to be able to give a damn about them. This connection is made by seeing them rise above what faces them through epic internal and external struggle and personal realization. When you skip past that, anything that happens is meaningless. Whether your book is the first in a series or the two-hundredth, your main characters MUST develop as characters during the course of the story. If your main characters are old, worn out, and tired and you can’t see a way to develop them further, either choose a different character to write about or introduce a new one. If your characters don’t develop the reader has no reason to care about them, or any story that revolves around them.

The ugly? I typically hate made up curse words in stories. Most of the time they sound stupid and the author forgets to tell you WHY that word is a curse. Here’s an example of cursing done well in a book. Take a look at Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. The word Storm is used as a curse. The characters live in a world in which every couple of weeks there’s a ten-day storm so violent that stones and boulders are thrown about by the wind and the rain is driven so hard that it can actually cut flesh. Anyone outside during one of these storms dies. We know the reason that the word Storm is used as a curse because we are given the context for which it makes sense as a curse. We know the gravity of the word when it is used as a curse. When there’s no context given for a curse word, we have no reason to feel that this word is a curse word, and it just sounds silly. Like Blowa… what the hell (see what I did thar) does that mean? In what context is this word a curse word? Fierfeck? What’s that? Why should I be shocked that a character screams this? Because it’s in Italics with a bunch of exclamation points behind it? Criff? Is that supposed to be the analog of Christ in the Star Wars universe? I don’t know, BECAUSE IT’S NEVER EXPLAINED OR GIVEN A CONTEXT!!! When you don’t give us a context and a meaning for a curse word, we don’t know what it means and are not shocked by a character saying it, which is, by the way, THE ENTIRE POINT OF HAVING A CHARACTER CURSE!!! They just sound silly and nonsensical.

The made up curses in this series are doubly bad, they make no sense because they have no context, and it has already been established in the movies that Damn and Hell are curses that are used by the people in this universe. SO why in the hell (see what I did thar) are the characters making up new curses that sound silly and are completely meaningless to the reader when it’s already been established that these are NOT the curses of the people using them?

There are WAY too many characters in this series. And quite a few of them are included in it for no reason at all except for fan service. They serve no purpose to the plot, add extraneous plotlines that go nowhere, and basically just add padding to a series that already had more than enough padding without them. I don't care if Tesar has fans. Why was he in these books? His side story was completely unimportant and distracting from anything important. I can say the same for a great many other characters as well. If you have more characters than things to do, CUT OUT SOME FREAKING CHARACTERS!!! Don't make up something unimportant for them to do on the side.

This series suffers from a lot of the same problems as The Phantom Menace. Namely that the events are confusing, the multiple plot lines have little or nothing to do with one another, there are FAR too many characters, too much emphasis on action and too little emphasis on anything else, and most importantly THERE IS NO FREAKING PROTAGONIST!!! That’s right, there are plenty of characters in Fate of the Jedi, and a lot of them do things… but the story isn’t ABOUT any of them. The story does not center around anyone.

Now, I’m going to do something that I rarely do in a review. I’m going to break this bitch down and tell you how it SHOULD have been written to make it a real, readable story. Skip the next six paragraphs if you don’t care.

First of all, there needs to be a main protagonist, someone at the center of events, whom we follow as he or she develops and rises up to defeat the antagonist. The older characters are out, because they’ve become old, stale, and stereotypical. Let’s take Ben Skywalker and call him our protagonist, because he is at the center of everything. It is he whom Abeloth wants above all others, and this nugget of crucial information was completely ignored until the VERY LAST CHAPTER OF A NINE BOOK SERIES!!! Ben will discover that, as other Jedi his age are going insane all around him, he is special in some way, because he has remained untouched. There will be no waiting eight books for Abeloth to take control of the Lost Tribe of the Sith. She will, for convenience of plot, already be their leader, sending them out in search of the boy whom she can’t touch, because she’s waited for him for so very long. There, we have a clear protagonist, and a clear antagonist with real, tangible motives RIGHT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING.

Second, there are dozens of characters in this series that are completely pointless to this series and crammed in where they don’t belong because the writers seem to think that EVERYONE needs to be included somehow or else the fans will revolt. They clutter the story with plotlines that go nowhere, and subplots that are abandoned without resolution. Let me give you a couple of examples from nerdom. This would be like if all previous incarnations of Doctor Who kept popping up and getting in the way by doing things that were completely unimportant to the problems that the current Doctor was dealing with just to show the fans that they still exist somewhere out there. OR if all of the characters from the original Star Trek suddenly showed up and took over the Enterprise D from The Next Generation cast, while the TNG cast tries to keep on doing what they're doing. You do not need to include every single character that has ever appeared in a Star Wars novel to tell a good story. 90% of these characters were pointless and should not have been put into the books.

You can keep a few of the subplots about galactic strife, Luke and Ben being exiled, the Galactic Alliance turning against the Jedi, HOWEVER, every plot line needs to have a satisfying conclusion, none of them can be abandoned halfway through.

So, Ben is the one Abeloth is after, and his exiled father and he set out into the great unknown to find the reason that the Jedi are going insane. There’s none of this following Jacen’s back trail BS because that’s not important to the plot and ended up to be ultimately pointless in the end anyway. They discover the Sith, led by Abeloth and are chased all over creation by them, because, you know, they’re just two guys against an entire planet full of people. There’s no completely unbelievable two guys fighting off hundreds and winning because… the Force and stuff… because that’s just stupid and unrealistic. Tensions rise between the GA and the Jedi Order. The Sith infiltrate the GA government and outlaw all Jedi, and the whole temple siege thing with the Mandalorins can go on, but with the addition of Sith, with the Jedi holding out hope that their leader will return to help them in their hour of need. Seeing the situation on Coruscant, and knowing that running all over the galaxy chased by the Sith is not getting anyone anywhere, Luke breaks his exile and heads home as fast as he can.

Through all of this Ben is having visions of Abeloth, and she continually tempts him to come to her, join with her, and the Sith will be destroyed, the Jedi saved, and no one else will have to go insane or die. He can save everyone and surpass his father as the greatest Jedi that ever lived, if he would only but come to her. And Ben, being the son of the most famous Jedi ever, is desperately seeking for a way to live up to his father’s reputation instead of forever standing in his shadow, because, you know, he’s a HUMAN BEING and has EMOTIONS and MOTIVATIONS that cardboard doesn’t typically tend to possess. He wants to be a hero in his own rights so he can stop being known as that famous guy’s kid. He is somewhat skeptical of his father’s teachings and doesn’t really get what the big deal is behind all of the philosophy of the Jedi Order. He doesn’t really see the point to it all. He will give in to temptation, and be turned against the Jedi, attacking and almost killing his father who tries to stop him. Once he becomes Abeloth’s puppet he’ll realize, through seeing firsthand the horrors of what it means to be Sith, that his father was right, deny Abeloth what she wants, and defeat her with his newfound revelations giving him power and understanding of the Force that was previously unavailable to him. With Abeloth defeated, the Jedi are able to rise up against the Sith, with Ben leading the way to victory in place of his father, proving that he’s his father’s son, and a Jedi Knight in his own rights.

This will, of course, be a single book in length, because all of that irrelevant crap and characters will be cut out, and written by a single author, because trading off every novel to another author muddles the story, characters, and side stories horribly.

This series, and especially this last book in it, is completely awful. It’s badly written, confusing, clogged with needless characters, subplots that go nowhere, and lacks anything resembling character development. The quality of the story and the quality of the writing just aren’t there. There are some superficially exciting scenes, but I attribute the excitement I got from them to the nostalgia of having the original music and sound effects played over them in the audiobook versions. The excitement is very hollow because there’s no tension at all due to the fact that there are no real characters in this story. Just a bunch of emotionless pieces of wood dancing on the strings of Lucasbooks. There is no clear protagonist, no clear antagonist, and a whole lot of irrelevant crap shoved in to showcase characters that have nothing to do with the story because they just happen to be fan favorites. Lucasbooks needs to fire their current staff of writers and hire some people with real talent, fresh ideas, a new perspective on an old and, frankly, worn out series, and the balls to leave characters out when they are irrelevant to the story.

In conclusion, if I could give this series negative stars I would. The rating, unfortunately, does not show up with less than one on goodreads. Fate of the Jedi was a complete mess, churned out by untalented authors because they were the only ones willing to work for the pittance that Lucasbooks tosses to its writers. If you, like me, absolutely have to read these books for the sake of completion, unable to break the shackles of your fandom no matter how god-awful the storytelling becomes, I suggest the audiobook versions of this series. I was able to find them for quite cheap on audible.com with a membership, and I also saw them at my local library as well in CD format. While they do not fix the problems of the books themselves, the addition of music and sound effects from the original Star Wars films makes for a more enjoyable experience.

This book should have been called Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Anticlimactic, because that about sums it up in a word. Anticlimactic.

Check out my other reviews.

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 3 out of 5]

A weak and unsatisfying ending to a two-year series. It has its moments: a heroic death, a shocking betrayal, a long-awaited social event. But mostly it's overcooked pasta. The final battle with the big bad defines anti-climactic: I hadn't even realized the fight was over until a few pages into the next chapter. A key ally in that battle is left as a deus ex machina, and not in a tantalizing way, just as a convenient excuse for help and an annoying batch of loose ends.

Perhaps the best Expanded Universe character since Mara Jade, the Sith girl Vestara Khai, is ill-used. It's often not clear in Star Wars whether, when the Jedi are being their usual sanctimonious and awful selves, whether that's meant as critique or endorsement. Let's just say that neither Denning nor the Jedi Order did right by Vestara, and she deserved better.

The plot tie-in to a Clone Wars story arc is controversial: it did undercut the Lovecraftian horror of the villain, but I enjoyed the additional element of Luke having to clean up another of his father's childish, selfishness-induced messes.

The Fate of The Jedi series overall was better than its recent predecessors, but these long series are compromised by the uneven quality of multiple writers. Next time, give the whole thing to Christie Golden and do it right. And bring back Vestara.

[Jonathan Koan · Rating 5 out of 5]

While all of the entries have been good or great so far, Christie Golden's penultimate entry to the Fate 0f the Jedi series "Ascension" was truly next level storytelling, and catapulted it up to being one of my favorite Star Wars books now. Troy Denning's epic conclusion in Apocalypse had quite a lot to deliver, and deliver it does.

One thing that really works for this book is how dark and terrifying it is. Troy Denning's books have always been darker than the average Star Wars author's. However, because of what had been set up by Denning, Golden, and Allston in the previous installments of the series, the darkness and fear was palpable, and well realized.

Every plotline is given a good warp up here in this book. I think that Han and Leia probably are the two characters who get the shortest shrift in the FotJ series, but its understandable as other characters are becoming more important and more front and center.

Ben and Vestara continue to be one of the shining points in this series' cap, and while I really enjoyed what I got in this book, I wanted more! There was so much to their dynamic set up in Ascension, and I can't help but wonder if it was more last minute to change direction with their story here. I'll always be curious to see what could have happened with them in future EU/Legends projects.

I thought that the way that the main plot with Abeloth resolves was well written, and I continue to believe that Abeloth is one of, if not the most terrifying villain in Star Wars. I mean, Vader can be scary, but he's not a horror creature. Abeloth is through and through a horror villain, and there were times I was really worried about our main characters in this book.

This is the longest book in the series, and clocks in as one of the longest Star Wars books ever (along with Star by Star, Vision of the Future, and Lesser Evil. Interestingly, two entries by Troy Denning, two by Timothy Zahn). As such, this book has a little bloat to it, and could have been trimmed to condense a little. However, I feel it gives a more complete and satisfying ending than say the ending of the Legacy of the Force with Tory Denning's "Invicible".

There is a lot of connection to the Killik's and the Dark Nest Trilogy that Denning also wrote, but it actually demonstrated for me how weak and forgettable that trilogy is. If you haven't read that trilogy, you'll be filled in on the details without reading it, don't worry.

I also liked the Clone Wars tie-ins to the Mortis Arc. That was bold of Denning, and I'm surprised Lucasfilm and the story teams let him get away with it.

Overall, an excellent ending. Not the best of the series like "Ascension", but a solid conclusion and a great thematic finale to the EU line of books (there are still a few that technically take place afterwards, but you know what I mean). 9.3 out of 10!

[Dexcell · Rating 4 out of 5]

And that's a wrap, I'll read the final book Crucible another time. Going from Dark Nest all the way through to this book was quite a ride, and I enjoyed myself. It wasn't all perfect and dragged quite a bit at times, but it was overall very good. It really does suck that Disney discontinued the legends books. There's so many loose ends that we'll never see the end up now. Ah well.

The ending was definitely too dark though. Everything they went through and then Luke just resigns himself to an eternal war with the Sith due to Abeloth. Not a very upbeat ending, that's for sure.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

So if you've been following the last two nine book Star Wars series like I have, prepare to be disappointed in the conclusion of the Fate of the Jedi series.

I did enjoy some parts of Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi #9--Apocalypse by Troy Denning. For a book I didn't like much overall, I read it fairly quickly. So there was some good writing going on therein.

But as with all of the Star Wars series' I've read and reviewed, the first thing I think is "Why did they take so long to get to the karking point?" My use of Star Wars profanity is to indicate ironic tone, not actual intended usage. The answer? To sell more books and make more money. As before, I'd say this bloated, meandering nine book series could have been done in three good books by a good author...not that the Star Wars books often HAVE good authors (I'm looking at you, Aaron Allston...and trying not to fall asleep from just thinking about your dull books) on the payroll.

Though I think in this case, the author may not be the whole problem. I've never really hated or liked Troy Denning's work. In this case, I found him capable of involving me in the story and moving things along. Though I found his battle sequences hard to picture in my head because they lack enough basic descriptive elements (the exact opposite of the problem Timothy Zahn has) of where the battles are taking place and the exact movements of the characters. Every time there was a big fight, I knew I was going to be pulled out of the action because I couldn't quite get straight what was happening.

So after I asked myself why it took the three authors and their Lucas overlords so long to get to the point with this series, I asked myself "THIS was the point of the series?"

Originally, the question was--why are the Jedi going mad? The answer was Abeloth, an ill-defined spooky, emotionally needy tentacled beastie that is more evil and steeped in the Dark Side than thousands of Sith put together. Abeloth is kind of the Cthulhu of the Star Wars Universe, though I admit that's not the best analogy. As it turns out, Abeloth is hundreds of thousands of years old and is freed from her prison in times of strife. Her goal is to reshape the galaxy into a hive of chaos and upheaval. This forces sentient beings to imprison or defeat her rather than have the whole galaxy be mutated or destroyed by Abeloth. Of course, Abeloth is tough to fight. Not only is she the single most powerful Dark Side entity to date, she's thousands and thousands of years old, she's pretty much immortal, she absorbs the memories of the bodies she uses to house her essence and she can be in several different bodies at once.

But we never knew WHY Abeloth was doing what she was doing...and as it turns out, it wasn't anything that interesting. At least, in my opinion. So Abeloth takes over the Galactic Alliance, pits the Lost Tribe of the Sith against the Jedi, wrecks a lot of Coruscant with volcanic erruptions, and for what? To kidnap Ben Skywalker (son of Luke) and Vestra Khai (Sith cutie pie and Ben's girlfriend) to recreate her lost "family."

Allow me to explain. About two-thirds of the way through Apocalypse, we get some background information on Abeloth. Turns out she's a Force being, the missing "step mother" of a family of pure Force beings known only as The Ones (or possibly the Celestials, it's really not made too clear). Then we start hearing tales of Anakin and Obi-Wan during the Clone Wars and how they interacted with these "Ones" and that they all died--except at least one of them didn't. Confused yet? The whole thing becomes quite a mess. Instead of something interesting, we are fed some hazy creation myth with Abeloth being the metaphorical snake in the Edenic garden of the pure Force. There's the Father, who keeps the Balance of the Force, the Son who represents the Dark Side and the Daughter for the Light Side. Abeloth crashed their party, starting out as a servant, then seducing the Father and becoming a being of pure Force energy by swimming in a magic pool and drinking from a magic fountain. So Abeloth wants to recreate this "family" of "Ones" with herself in charge of the Balance of the Force (the job Anakin turned down)--with Ben representing the Light and Vestara representing the Dark. She wants them to drink and swim as she did (yup, there's a real pool and a real fountain) to change them into Force beings.

But if that's all Abeloth wanted--other than to feed herself on fear and despair--she took a truly circuitous path to doing so. Sure she's crazy and evil and hell bent on causing chaos, but Abeloth makes very little sense as a villain. Her goals are weird and her motives seem tacked on and not that compelling. Kinda seems like the Lucas folks were just making this one up as they went along.

So the fight to destroy Abeloth takes place on several fronts and costs a few minor characters their lives. Luke Skywalker ends up teaming with "The Son" (representing the Dark Side) to fight Abeloth in the bodiless realm of "Beyond Shadows." And let me tell you, it's hard to make an incorporeal battle interesting. Really hard. Jacen Solo (a.k.a. Darth Caedus) and Mara Jade both make cameo appearances in the spirit realm, but neither have much to contribute. Abeloth is killed, as much as any pure Force being can be killed. And Luke is grievously wounded, yet survives (of course).

We do finally find out whom Jacen Solo saw on the Throne of Balance...and his reason, supposedly...for turning to the Dark Side (which was the last straw in freeing Abeloth). At this point, I'm long past caring why Jacen turned evil. Even when he was evil, he was fairly banal. And the "revelation" of whom he saw on the Throne of Balance isn't too exciting by the time we get to it.

What else? Boba Fett gets to beat up on an avatar of Abeloth. Tahiri Veila gets a few fun things to do. Daala's storyline--which bloated several of the early books of this series--ends with a whimper, not a bang. And there's plenty of cute stuff with Allana/Amelia Solo and her pet nexu Anji for people who like that sort of thing.

Much of this book seems like a ruined punchline. Like someone started out telling a somewhat decent joke or story or whatever--and then someone else came along and ruins it. Who knows, maybe the Cult of Lucas piled on all this Joseph Campbell-ish / allegorical / creation myth nonsense upon the end of main story before the authors ever got to it.

So, yes, nine books later, and it ends with a wedding. Ta-da! Everything is back to normal. Sort of. Abeloth is defeated, probably. No one "important" died. Luke is wounded and weakened, true. Ben is older but wiser after freeing himself from Vestara, who was a true Sith after all. Jaina is coming into her own as the leader of the next generation of Jedi. "The Son" and Vestara Khai and the Sith Orb "Ship" are making sure the Sith and the Dark Side are on the rise all over the galaxy. And so on.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

And the crowd stands and cheers for the heroes who saved the galaxy again. Okay it sounds corny but it works in this one. After the devastating losses in the previous two large Star Wars series I was very relieved this one ended the way it did. Yes the war is not over but this battle is won. Overall this was a pretty superb series. It delves into some pretty whacky philosophy that reeks of religion but the return of the Sith was pretty cool. The battles were pretty epic and for once the Jedi were not presented as weaklings, I've always hated how easy it was to beat the Jedi in many of these books. Allana also gets to shine in this one and we see glimmers of what she will become although her future is still up in the air. I really can only hope she stays in the light and does not follow her father's course. The saddest part of the book is the almost loss of the Millennium Falcon, the ship that really is a character, but in the end the "old bucket of bolts" is saved. The irritating things in this particular book are the Killicks, such stupid characters that I really wish would go away and the fact that after all these years the public still can't trust the Jedi. Really they save the galaxy all the time and you still blame them. I think the galaxy needs a better public education system or the Jedi need better P.R. people. Nevertheless the book and the series was worth the investment.

[Meggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

For 2023, I decided to reread the post-NJO books set after the Dark Nest trilogy, especially as I abandoned the Legacy of the Force series after Sacrifice all the way back in 2007. This shakes out to the nine books of the Legacy of the Force series, the nine books of the Fate of the Jedi series, three standalone novels, and five short stories.

This week’s focus: the final book in the Fate of the Jedi series, Apocalypse by Troy Denning.

SOME HISTORY:

Star Wars: The Essential Reader's Companion reveals that the threat of Abeloth was planned from the very beginning of the Fate of the Jedi series, but her exact origins were kept undefined. Abeloth was meant to be a chaotic dark side entity who was imprisoned on her world by the Celestials sometime in the distant past. But in planning her origins reveal for the final book, Lucas Licensing reached out to Troy Denning about incorporating something that had happened in the third season of The Clone Wars animated series in January and February of 2011. Three episodes revealed the existence of a world called Mortis, that was home to three powerful Force users—and Abeloth’s origins bring Mortis into the post-NJO era. Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse by Troy Denning made it to number two on the New York Times bestseller list for the week of April 1, 2012, and was on the NYT list for three weeks.

MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:

All I knew going into Apocalypse was that somehow this book was going to resolve the conflict with both the Lost Tribe of the Sith and Abeloth, but I wasn’t sure how either of those confrontations were going to play out.

A BRIEF SUMMARY:

In the finale of the Fate of the Jedi series, Jedi and Sith face off with Coruscant as their battlefield. Teams of Jedi Knights take Sith infiltrators by swift and lethal surprise, but the tide of the conflict quickly turns against the Jedi and their allies—and Abeloth’s origins are revealed to be even wilder than anyone could imagine.

THE PLOT:

After letting the Sith take over Coruscant in Ascension, which I thought was an interesting move (≖_≖ ), Luke and the Jedi swoop back to retake the Galactic Alliance capital. There's a little detour in the beginning where Han and Leia and others rescue all the Jedi younglings and trainees from Ossus, but most of the book is focused on Coruscant and this fight to take out the Sith infiltrators, regain the Jedi Temple, and hopefully eliminate Abeloth once and for all. This proves to be much harder than originally imagined, and a lot of the book involves this unending attack on the Jedi Temple.

Outside of the Jedi assault: Jag is still facing off against Daala, and they end up agreeing to a ceasefire so that they can hold a general election for the leader of the Imperial Remnant. Three Jedi are dispatched to an ancient Killik hive to learn more about Abeloth’s origins. Finally, Abeloth doesn’t stay on Coruscant the whole book, so there’s a final showdown on her planet between Jaina and Ship, Abeloth and Luke and an unknown Sith, and also Abeloth and Vestara Khai and Ben.

CHARACTERS:

Compared to previous books, there’s much less political stuff in this combat-heavy novel. At the end of Ascension, Wynn Dorvan was taken captive by Rokari Kem/Abeloth and her Sith goons, and in this book we found out that they have been torturing him to get essential information for the Galactic Alliance. Dorvan holds out pretty well here—his mental state is not great, but he’s only leaked minor details. He’s also the first one (in this book) to realize that Abeloth can split herself between different bodies. Abeloth maneuvers him into killing her Rokari Kem body because non-Force sensitive bodies fall apart faster, and she escapes into the Jedi Temple computer core. (A skill she learned from Callista perhaps?) This definitely makes the assault on the Jedi Temple more difficult, but Dorvan is rescued soon thereafter by the Horn siblings. As the book ends, he’s the new Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance, and a good choice: he’s boring but competent, he’s hopefully gotten some therapy after this series, and he’s able to work with others and negotiate.

On the Imperial front, Abeloth commandeers the body of Lieutenant Pagorski (the officer who perjured herself at Tahiri’s trial) and shows up to support Daala. Tahiri senses that Pagorski/Abeloth is not what she seems, so Jag dispatches her to a moon linked with the Antemeridian sector Moff to take Pagorski out. He makes Tahiri a temporary Imperial Hand, which has a rather murky past but was still cool to see. Tahiri runs into Boba Fett, in search of the scientists who created the Fett-killer nanobots in Invincible, and they join forces. Tahiri kills Pagorski, fortunately before Abeloth is able to jump into her body, and Jag bombards the moon. This action leaks during the big Head of State debate, so Jag drops out of the race and Admiral Reige is ultimately elected Imperial Head of State.

(There was a throwaway line at one point, where Tahiri said that Jag could have been Emperor and Jag was like “absolutely not.” I’m pretty sure the Legacy comic confirmed that Jag was the first emperor of this new Empire, so maybe we would have eventually seen that play out. As it stands, Jag is well-rid of that terrible job.)

Most of the book focuses on the Jedi, though. In the beginning, they sneak back into Coruscant and strategically take out highly ranked members of the Lost Tribe of the Sith. However, the numbers are against them: there are 5,000 Sith on Coruscant, and considerably, considerably less Jedi. So after a rash of initial successes, we settle into this lengthy assault on the Jedi Temple. Admiral Bwua’tu provides the military brawn, and the Jedi provide their extra-sensory skills. Unfortunately Abeloth is prepared for them, and while the Jedi take out a lot of Sith it’s still disastrous for the good guys—and any civilians in the area.

This was one bit where I wish we had seen more of the individual Jedi losses, because the only named character who gets a death scene is Bazel “Barv” Warv. It’s a sad, heroic ending, protecting Allana and the Solos against a Sith attack, and Barv keeps getting up and fighting on through gruesome, grievous injuries. I wasn’t super interested in the new Jedi characters in the beginning of this series, but Barv’s death was moving, and I wish we had seen more individual examples of fatal bravery like Barv’s to really drive home how many losses the Jedi suffered in this assault.

Overall, the Jedi Temple assault was very lengthy and involved, and somewhat draining to read. The Jedi make their way inside, and are ambushed by Sith. Jysella and Valin and Ben make their way to the computer core, and they’re ambushed by Sith and Abeloth captures Ben. Luke and Corran and Jaina try to make their way towards the computer core, only to be ambushed by more Sith and Abeloth. They wound this body of Abeloth, but she escapes. Meanwhile, the Solos land the Millennium Falcon at the Jedi Temple because Allana had a vision of the Barabel hatchlings in danger, and they’re (you guessed it) ambushed by Sith. Jag rescues him, then Luke and Jaina chase after one Abeloth while Saba and Tahiri make their way towards the computer core. After that initial string of successes, which was exciting to read, the Jedi are on the back foot for almost the entire book, and it dragged for me. When Saba finally killed Abeloth in the computer core, I felt like yelling “it took you long enough!”

As the book begins, Vestara continues to side with the Jedi because she wants the High Lords removed and…well, she still likes Ben. She’s captured during that first Sith ambush, though, and escapes only to run into another group of Sith. She tells them that Amelia Solo is Allana the heir to the Hapan throne, and this felt like such a betrayal on Vestara’s part. She figured this out on her own—she wasn’t betraying a confidence—but I was saddened by how easily she reverted back to her former self. It’s probably realistic for where Vestara is right now (for a raised-from-infancy Sith, I don’t think it’s as easy as saying “I want to be a Jedi now” and immediately switching sides) but I wanted so much better for her.

Vestara’s best trait is that she recognizes Abeloth is pure evil and that she needs to be destroyed, but her actions were so frustrating to read. She loves Ben, but she’s willing to kill other Jedi for Ben, and she gives up Allana’s secret identity for a chance to save her own skin. Even when Ben and Vestara are facing off against Abeloth on her world, she’s drawn to the Font of Power despite its obvious dangers. You want Vestara to change and be redeemed, but there’s too much to overcome for her to do so.

While this huge assault is unfolding, the Jedi Order sends Raynar Thul, Tekli, and Lowbacca to an ancient Killik hive to try and learn more about Abeloth’s past and her weaknesses. In the Fate of the Jedi series, Raynar has been a very minor character: he was deeply damaged by his post-Star by Star experiences leading up into the Dark Nest trilogy, but he’s finally clawed his way back to being an individual again. But in going to this Killik hive, Raynar agrees to stay behind and join with this hive mind so that Tekli and Lowbacca can return to Coruscant with the Killik info. This absolutely broke my heart! Raynar is giving up his separate personality, weird as it is, for Abeloth’s origin story, and it crushed me.

What was Abeloth’s all-important origin story, then? She was a mortal servant to the Mortis trio of Father, Daughter, and Son, but as she aged she grew to covet their powers. So she drank from the Font of Power and swam in the Pool of Knowledge, and transformed into an eldritch chaos monster. After years of constant war, she’ll break out and wreak havoc across the galaxy until the Son and Daughter team up to imprison her again, but unfortunately the Father, Daughter, and Son are all dead after encountering Anakin Skywalker during the Clone Wars. The Son and Daughter had previously used the Killiks to imprison her on her world, but the Yuuzhan Vong invasion and Jacen’s downfall and the destruction of Centerpoint Station let her escape. If the Jedi want to destroy her, they won’t have the Mortis Ones to help.

Abeloth absconds to her world with Ben and Vestara, hoping to create her own version of the Mortis family, and Luke and Jaina follow them. The final showdown involves Ben and Vestara fighting each other and then teaming up against Abeloth; Jaina fighting Ship in the Jade Shadow; Luke spirit-traveling to Abeloth’s world to fight her with the aid of a strange Sith; and Saba and Tahiri sneaking up on the Jedi Temple computer core. Luke and the Sith are able to spiritually wound Abeloth, which lets Saba destroy the computer core Abeloth, which culminates in Ben and Vestara killing the final body of Abeloth.

Ben still loves Vestara, but she gives up on him and leaves in Ship (who cryptically hints that there are other Sith in the galaxy besides the Lost Tribe). Luke is very physically wounded after his spiritual battle, so Jaina brings Ben and him back to Coruscant. There, Luke dispatches ten Jedi Knights to try and find the Mortis obelisk, because Abeloth’s chaotic spirit is still out there and he wants the dagger of Mortis in reserve as an uber-MacGuffin for whenever Abeloth returns.

ISSUES:

My biggest issue with Apocalypse was that it concluded some things, but not everything. If you’re running the gambit from “nothing is resolved” to “everything is tied up,” Apocalypse is no The Unifying Force--a lot of things are left dangling for future stories. Abeloth is defeated for now, but we know her spirit is still out there; this is merely a lull in the Abeloth fight, not the finale. Vestara is not going to become a Jedi, as she’s now on the run with Ship. She’s not ready to embrace the light side, and who knows if she ever will be ready to do so. Luke sends a team of Jedi to bring Raynar back, but we never see him afterwards to make sure he’s OK. Jaina is promoted to Jedi Master and finally marries Jag, and Allana’s secret identity is now public knowledge.

It’s a pity, then, that we only got Mercy Kill and Crucible afterwards; Christie Golden was meant to write the Jaina-centric Sword of the Jedi trilogy and Troy Denning was tapped to write an unnamed trilogy, but after the buyout those books were canceled. The Fate of the Jedi series feels so inconclusive because of all those cancellations, but Del Rey and Lucasbooks had no idea that would be the case.

A minor quibble: the continuity flubs continued in Apocalypse, although less than in previous books. Wynn Dorvan said that Rokari Kem was from B’nish, but she was from Qaras. In multiple scenes, Tenel Ka is described as though she still has both arms, but she only has one. A few instances of names misspelled (like “Shryiiwook” instead of Shyriiwook).

And now that we've gotten Abeloth’s backstory….I don’t like it. I didn’t enjoy the Mortis episodes of The Clone Wars because they felt too woo-woo to me. I’m meant to believe that there’s a planet of immortal Force users, and they want Anakin to take over as the Father so he will “bring balance to the Force” but Anakin has visions of the future that freak him out so the Father wipes his memory and then the Son kills the Daughter and the Father mortally stabs himself and Anakin kills the Son? I think the Mortis episodes work OK as a myth or a parable that shows Anakin’s internal division playing out in this mystical way, but I’m not sure that I buy them as fact. Except when Tekli and Lowbacca return from the Killik hive with this origin story, Luke goes “oh yeah, Yoda told me about that on Dagobah.” ??? (The Doylist perspective is that the Mortis episodes came out in 2011 so it’s just retcons all around, but alas.)

Luke and co. say that Abeloth was the Mother, but why does there need to be a Mother? The Daughter is the light side, the Son is the dark side, the Father is the balance between the two—but then you add a Mother into the mix, and she’s corrupt and fallen and the embodiment of chaos? (≖_≖ ) I think I liked Abeloth better as this mysterious dark side entity that periodically broke out; I can see why they linked her with the Mortis trio for continuity reasons, but I don’t think it improves her story. I’m also not crazy about Luke dispatching Jedi on this MacGuffin search. If the Jedi get the dagger of Mortis, they can kill any immortal Force entity. That feels like a video game cheat code to me, and not a good precedent going forward—although I probably come down on the side of “no Force entities at all please,” so perhaps it’s best we didn’t get those sequels after Fate of the Jedi.

IN CONCLUSION:

Apocalypse starts off with a very suspenseful opening, in which the Jedi eliminate key Sith members left and right, but I found the endless assault on the Jedi Temple that followed a bit of a slog. (It’s a LOT of the book.) I was not thrilled about Abeloth’s origin story, and I wish that this final book in the series had been just a bit more conclusive. I'm glad that I finally read the Fate of the Jedi series, though, especially as I was able to read it with mostly unspoiled eyes. I liked aspects of it—primarily revisiting old worlds and old Force traditions—even if other aspects of the series did not work as well for me.


Next up: after thirteen years, we got a surprise tenth X-Wing novel! So first I’ll be reading a short story prequel, Roll of the Dice by Karen Miller.

My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/43lkZ_l4I2w

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still remember the day I picked up my first Star Wars book. It was a sunny afternoon on vacation in Florida and my grandma had offered to take me to the book store to go shopping. I was elated and spent nearly an hour browsing the small young adult section. Back in the days before Twilight, YA books usually got 1-2 shelves in average size bookstores, with most of the books skewing the the pre teen and under crowd. I was struggling to decide on a book, never one for quick decision making skills, when my mom came over with a plastic bag. She had already checked out and the contents of the bag were for me. I was frustrated, I'd wanted to pick out my own book. My grandmother was hungry and she and my mom couldn't deal with my indecision any longer. I huffed and puffed my way to the car, refusing to even open my present. As we drove away to the nearest Friendly's for lunch, my curiosity got the best of me. I pulled out my new book, a look of confusion clouding my face. The top of the book said "Star Wars". My mom looked back at me, excited to share what she had found. "This book is about Han and Leia's children!" I felt heat rush to my face and tears fill my eyes, I was so ecstatic and eager to read this new book. I read all through lunch and then holed up on my room, pouring through the pages until I fell asleep. The next 20 or so years were filled with the journey of the Solo twins and their friends. I came to know my favorite characters from the movies better than I knew myself.
Now, as I put down Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse, I know that journey has more or less ended. The curtain has closed on the Expanded Universe and despite heartfelt pleas from fans who dedicated their time and money over the years to this franchise, Disney knows it has a much larger audience out there.
Apocalypse serves as a fantastic end to the Fate of the Jedi series. This particular story arc has been hard to read, occasionally lacking the pace and direction of previous installments. The villain of Abeloth is ridiculous and over the top, so impossible to defeat that she's both terrifying and frustrating. Combined with numerous secondary story lines from Admiral Daala's return to the Lost Tribe of the Sith to the political rejection of the Jedi on Coruscant, it was hard to get a strong foothold. Ben has never been the most interesting character in my mind and his star crossed relationship with a young Sith girl didn't capture my emotions the way Jag and Jaina, Jacen and Tenel Ka or Tahiri and Anakin did.
Still, the series offered up an amazing amount of foreshadowing that left me chomping at the bit for the future. Allana Solo is one of the most exciting and compelling new characters and her position as heir to the Hapan throne and the Force visions of her future as Queen of the Jedi promised years of exciting material as she realized her destiny.
Jaina finally comes into her own in this series, finding balance and calm and direction. She is elevated to Jedi Master and the book (and the series) ends with her finally wedding her soul mate, Jagged Fel.
All in all, I saw some of my favorite characters rise, fall, and inevitably find their place. The series wasn't as groundbreaking and enthralling as The New Jedi Order, for example, but it was solid and contained a lot of good character development.
That being said, it's hard for me to look at it objectively. I had to pause numerous ones throughout the book, stumbling over my frustration as I kept thinking "but I'll never find out what happens!" It was a shadow hanging over every page. And so, I close this book with a heavy heart.
Like most Star Wars fans, the new movies have amazed and delighted me. Seeing familiar faces and meeting new incredible characters is exciting and magical. Disney has managed to capture what made the original trilogy so great while bringing newness and fresh ideas to the table.
And yet I can't help but be a little bitter. After so many years with the Expanded Universe, I don't want to say goodbye!
Would it be so terrible to continue these books alongside the "official" canon? I don't think it would, and I know there are those who agree with me. Even so, something tells me this will be the last we hear of Jaina Solo, Sword of the Jedi. This will be the end of Tahiri Veila, reformed Jedi Knight. I'll never know Bens destiny, or Allanas. Who becomes the next Grand Jedi Master after Luke? What happens to the Galactic Alliance? I'm not ready to let go of these questions and I'm not ready to stop longing for the answers.
All I can do is say thank you to all of the writers, editors, publishers, and fellow readers who made the Expanded Universe possible.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's taken me 4 years to get hold of this book and I read it in a day. The final installment of the Fate of the Jedi series starts an unspecified amount of time after the events of the previous book Ascension and throws us straight in as the Jedi attempt to infiltrate Coruscant without the Sith being alerted. Easier said than done. While this is going on, Raynar Thul is risking his sanity to get information from the Killiks about what exactly Abeloth is. There are a number of other strands, but I don't want to give spoilers.

Generally, the book is very engrossing - there is a lot happening and tension is high - the title of the book made me genuinely fearful for a number of characters and that continued as I read. There are also threads that examine deeper aspects of Force philosophy and these were more hit-and-miss - partly because it refers back to a Clone Wars-era incident that I had never heard of, with no footnote to guide the reader as to whether the incident was covered in another book, comic or TV episode. The debate about whether the Jedi mis-read the Prophecy was brought up in Episode III and has certainly been debated at length by fans, so it was interesting to see it brought up again here - although I appreciate such debates might not be to everyone's taste. For me, I liked the fact that the Jedi's view of the Force is being challenged - they are realising that just because their Order has existed for thousands of years, they still do not (and perhaps can never) know everything about it.

The other nitpick I will make - whose idea was it to name the "space marines"? That jarred with me as it tends to be used in video games for generic soldiers, not elite commando-types in the GFFA. But it's a fairly minor nitpick.

Overall, it's a tense final novel in the series - inevitably it makes me wish that the old "Legends" timeline had been allowed to continue in parallel to the new one - or at least until it linked up with the "Legacy" comics chronicling Cade Skywalker's era. Over the years of reading SW novels, Jaina, Corran and co have not only become as familiar as Luke, Leia and Han, but they have all come to feel like old friends. There's a sense of sadness that I'm coming towards the end of the old-canon novels and will only be able to speculate as to how things turned out for them all. At least now I can finally read "X-Wing: Mercy Kill" and "Crucible".

[T English · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read a few of the Star Wars books here and there, none of them really grabbed me the way this series of books did. I enjoyed the whole story. It was rich in Star Wars history/mythology from book 1 to book 9. While not every book was great, having 3 different authors tell the story through series can change the way some of the books flow and can alter their quality and effectiveness. But I can’t see one author doing the whole series of books in a 4 year period, and I know that not even the original trilogy had different authors for the novels.

The thing that struck me as most intriguing was that this series of books ties in to the Marvel comics of the 1980′s and the current Clone Wars TV series. I found this fun and it kept my attention as to what would happen as the books progressed. I also wondered what type of Star Wars Bible there must be for all the various writers and creators of these stories. I would love to have a peek into how Lucas Arts puts all the little pieces of the Star Wars Universe stories together, and I look forward to the next series which is left open at the end of this ninth book.

[elef · Rating 5 out of 5]

there's some parts i didn't like but considering the time period it was written i think it was normal for then... and i'm gonna be delusional and parent like jaina's inner peace comes from her being a jedi master now, not because she finally married with a man. and it's more makes sense it's being about rank of master because she did feel more humble alongside other masters. and i'm go glad she finally got what she deserved! suck it anakin skywalker AND jacen solo!

i'm little bit disappointed with vestara's plot but i already knew they wouldn't end up together and i still liked how her story ended up. i feel like it wouldn't have been so disappointment if legends wasn't cancelled bc it was highly implied that there was still good in her!

aside from these i LOVED how they changed the direction of legacy comics and save us from emperor jag and empress jaina!

tahiri's character development was so good too! and i'm SO GLAD my girl finally got her redemption arc! her team ups with jag, saba and even boba fett was so fun too!

i really liked little bit young jedi knights crumbs too! especially raynar's pov made me so emotional. denning even brought back lowie and tenel ka from the basement! i wish they had more scenes but i still liked it. same with the horn family too! they were one of my favorite part of the series.

one of my favorite factors was horror elements too. not only abeloth's weirdness but also the wild fight between sith and jedi was INTENSE. this series really worth the hype. it's so sad it's sidelined by legacy of the force because this one is so much better!

[Jay DeMoir · Rating 3 out of 5]

A weak and unsatisfying ending. I was so looking forward to something explosive but the final battle with Abeloth was hella anti-climactic. Like I hadn't even realized the fight was over until a few pages into the next chapter and that was disappointing.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fate of the Jedi series has ostensibly been a trilogy drawn out over nine books. Lacking forward momentum, and somewhat unfocused it never managed to unite all of its cohesive parts into a unified whole. At least not until the final volume Apocalypse. This isn’t quite enough to save this series and doesn’t make up for the haphazard mess the series was but at least makes for an exciting tale in its own right.


The Fate of the Jedi series is part of a greater editorial initiative that by my reckoning started with the New Jedi Order novels. These novels featured a unified threat in a new extragalactic species and was unfurled over the course of multiple duologies, trilogies, and stand alone novels. The New Jedi Order novels were followed by the Legacy of the Force novels which was another nine book series. Compared to the earlier New Republic era Star Wars novels there is what looks like a greater degree of editorial control over the Star Wars expanded universe. I can’t speak on the New Jedi Order or Legacy of the Force novels (I stopped reading after Vector Prime) but with The Fate of the Jedi novels the disparate plot threads seemed to distract from the series’ primary conflict lending the series an overall unfocused feel. Here is a sample of the major plots in The Fate of the Jedi:

The Lost Tribe of the Sith, a society of Sith descended from the occupants of a crashed Sith vessel.
The erosion of the Galactic Alliance, a government founded on idealistic principles once again sliding towards the totalitarian control that brought about the old Empire.
The distrust of the Jedi, political and public opinion of the Jedi has been severally damaged by the recent, and older, atrocities committed by the fallen Jedi of old.
The greater mysteries of the force, Luke attempts to explore the Force and its various adherents in order to better understand Jacen’s fall.
The Madness of the Jedi, several Jedi are developing sudden madness driving them into fits of violent paranoia.
Abeloth, tied to Luke’s exploration of the Force and the Jedi Madness the uber-powerful Abeloth provides the primary threat for most of the series.
Each book in the series focuses rather disparately one several of these plot threads. It is easy to appreciate the scope of what the authors and editors were attempting but by and large the interweaving of so many disparate plots only managed to dilute each and limit their emotional effects. Early in the series it is the Jedi Madness and distrust of the Government that is the most grating and once the source of the madness is revealed that plot thread is pretty much dropped.

For me it was Luke and Ben’s Galactic Tour of Force Mysteries that was the most engaging aspect of the series. Luke’s training with the Baran Do Sages, the Aing-Tii, and later his exploration Beyond Shadow were engaging and did much to deepen the lore of the Jedi and Force users in the expanded universe. Of course much was made early in the series of Luke learning to teleport objects with the force, a trick that was never used after its initial introduction. By and large had the series could have focused more on a Luke and Ben’s journey.

Tied to the exploration of the Force mysteries was the introduction of Abeloth. A being seemingly crafted out of the Dark Side of the force she was something ripped right out of a Lovecraft story. It shouldn’t come as a surprise how much I loved her as the villain. Between Luke’s exploration of the Force and Aboleth (and particularly the planet on which she was found) The Fate of the Jedi saw a greater emphasis on the fantastical and the mystical than previous entries in the Expanded Universe (at least in my experience). In Apocalypse, Troy Denning finally reveals Aboleth’s origins and actually manages to tie the mythology of the Star Wars novel’s with that of the current Clone Wars animated series. It’s a brilliant bit of synergy that actually leaves me interested in seeing what comes next.

It is a bit sad that the strongest novel in the series was the last. Truth be told new readers could probably read the summaries of the previous novels then jump straight into Apocalypse and still enjoy the novel greatly. I honestly don’t feel that my experience with the earlier novels greatly enhanced my reading of Apocalypse. In Apocalypse, Denning admirably does his best to draw together the different threads of the series into a unified conclusion. I was actually pleasantly surprised at just how successful he was at this task. It seems to me that the way the novel ends sets up less of an overarching major plot going forward. I definitely think the expanded universe would benefit from a return to smaller more focused series.

[DiscoSpacePanther · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with spreading over nine fat volumes a story that merits at most a three book trilogy is that you end up having to write paragraphs like this: "...allowing Workan to live was not an option. Vestara had realized back on the Sith world of Upekzar, when she had sacrificed Jedi Knight Natua Wan to the ancient Dream Singer in order to save Ben, that she would not be able to hide among the Jedi forever. And as a High Lord, Workan was bound by Sith custom to hunt down and slay Vestara for daring to kill High Lord Sarasu Taalon on Pydyr."
 
The above info-dump is necessary because the story has been strung out for so long with nothing really happening (aside from an endless horde of interchangeable Sith lining up to be dismembered) that the reader needs to be reminded of the single point of potential conflict from the previous story whose ramifications might carry over into this book. At least you don't have to worry about remembering any of the gobbledygook names, as none of the characters mentioned (besides foxy teen murderess Vestara and horny teen doofus Ben) had any real effect on the story whatsoever—each and every one of them was a disposable body placed on the page as nothing more than a lightsabre-sponge for one faction or another.

And then there are elements of the storytelling that didn’t work for me: The casual usage of the Force reduces the mystical energy field to nothing more than an arbitrary magic system to be used at the whim of any capable individual—it is effortless, inexhaustible, and can be used to slice and dice any opponent whenever and wherever the author feels like it. I think it misses the point of the concept, and is pretty corrosive to the coherence of the Legends continuity.

Why does Denning keep using the word “mugwump”? What does a nineteenth century US political faction have to do with the Star Wars galaxy?

Regarding the plot—this book has the task of tying up all the loose ends from the previous eight books in the sequence. To do this it takes one of my most loathed aspects of the Star Wars Legends Expanded Universe, the Killiks, and makes them integral to the solution. Which means that, in order to fully understand the Fate of the Jedi series, you should also have read Troy Denning’s previous lacklustre Dark Nest trilogy.

For me, this has been a big failing of this series—tying together too many aspects I dislike of the Legends continuity and trying to make a compelling, consistent and coherent story. I’m not keen on Barbara Hambly’s Planet of Twilight, so talk of Nam Chorios, tsils, drochs and Moff Getelles leaves me cold. I thought Kevin J Anderson’s Jedi Academy trilogy was banal, juvenile, poorly written and replete with cartoonish characters, so I have no investment in the continuing adventures of war criminal and incompetent Natasi Daala. The same goes for John Jackson Miller’s Lost Tribe of the Sith—a set of poorly conceived comic-book villains who have such a ludicrous society and ideology that they have no business surviving and thriving for five thousand years on an isolated world, let alone emerging onto the galactic scene and immediately being able to seize control of Coruscant under the noses of the Jedi. I found Troy Denning’s Dark Nest trilogy to be distasteful and needlessly complex without being intriguing, so callbacks to joiners and Killiks rubs me up the wrong way. I felt that Jacen Solo’s fall to the Dark Side and the introduction of his daughter, Allana, in the Legacy of the Force series was cheap, dull and an overworking of an already overworked theme in Star Wars—having much of Fate of the Jedi built on this shaky foundation doesn’t help.

And there is something peculiar going on with the final novel in a nine book sequence when it fails to satisfactorily wrap up the major plot threads from the rest of the series, which is what happens in Apocalypse. The big bad is defeated, yes—but they’ve been defeated before and there is nothing but a publishing contract for nine books that indicates that this defeat is any more final than any of the others. Not only that, it includes an unnamed and unexplained ally to aid in the victory, and gives us but the smallest echo of a whisper of a clue as to who they might actually be or represent. They are pulled from a hat, like a particularly egregious rabbit. Also, whilst one romantic/ideological conflict is resolved, the other (and more emphasised) one is not—in fact, it is explicitly teased as being ripe for continuation. This is frustrating, and drains some of the goodwill that this book had earned by hinting that a final conclusion might be reached. It is unashamedly corporate novel writing, and I don’t like it. I feel this book is a weak pseudo-ending to the arc and, whilst enjoyable in places, only merits at most 3 stars out of 5.

Fate of the Jedi includes so many of the worst aspects of the Legends Expanded Universe (and even some that have made it into the Disney canon, like the Force Wielders of Mortis) that I find it incredibly difficult to love, or even like. It is like getting a bowl of stew from your favourite restaurant where every single ingredient turns out to be something you don’t really enjoy, and where the whole is even less than the sum of its parts.

This is probably why, regardless of the average scores I’ve given these books individually, the entire series merits no more than 2 stars out of 5 for me. It’s definitely not worthy of my own personal head-canon. I’m glad I’ve read it, but I can’t recommend it to anyone but die-hard Legends completionists.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was by far the worst book in the series...and it came at the conclusion of a 9 book series....WHY?! Many have already noted how it mashes the ending and leaves you unsatisfied, so I will just agree and give this book a rating and move on. In a word, MEH.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I missed reading about these "old" favorite characters. This book is worth reading if you are a Star Wars fan, even if you haven't read the previous books in this series.

[kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing as always im glad jaina got her happy ending its what she deserved

[Msr2d2 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nijaki finał nijakiej serii. Legendarni (i w sumie już emerytowani) bohaterowie Starej Trylogii raz jeszcze ratują galaktykę. Tym razem przed złem (zieeew...) wyciągniętym z najgłupszych odcinków Wojen Klonów. Całość zostaje doprawiona dwoma romansami gimbazjalnymi, potyczkami politycznymi na poziomie kłócących się przedszkolaków, na siłę wciśniętym wprowadzeniem do komiksowej serii Dziedzictwo i masą innej kiepskiej drobnicy z arcynudnym procesem sądowym na czele.

Ale czego można się spodziewać po tasiemcu pisanym przez ludzi, którzy najczęściej żyją z pisania takich tasiemców spod różnych znanych marek (i pod batem zleceniodawcy, akcjonariuszy itd.)?

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

So finally get to the end of this series...which seems to have taken a bit of a detour from its original intention. It's surprising, and it's full of great character work...but it's also too long, has too many characters to keep track of, and set something up that was unfortunately never fully realized (a series of graphic novels notwithstanding). While it ends happily with Jaina Solo's wedding (and I laughed that she had to "almost drag her father down the aisle with her"), it sets up a future darkness that is a bit tiring. I'm glad I made it to the end, but I wish the journey had been a bit more satisfying.

[Adam Kiewel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a brilliant conclusion to the series. At a certain point it became impossible to put down, it was incredible writing, big reveals and plot points, ect. It might be my favorite book if not for a few minor flaws such as;

Vestaras writing. Vestara has been one of the best characters in star wars throughout this series. But in this finale the way she was written was a little off. It was like they threw away what had been built up over the last 8 books.

The change in definition of balance in the force. You could say it's just the characters interpretations, but I'm not the biggest fan of the sudden change in force philosophy. This is especially true considering how they mentioned that some things only delayed the inevitable.

[Cal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely forgot to catalog this one on time! Finished it a few months back--oops.

Anyway...

Outstanding finisher to a great series! I am so thrilled I came back to this series as an adult, especially considering all the political material this series had. I am not the biggest fan of the main villain, however it did make for an interesting read! There are lots of things to love about this series. I'd recommend it to any fan of the EU!

[Ryan Wild · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final volume in the series, and one of the final glimpses of Luke Skywalker as the character he was always meant to be. Explosive, packed with action, and paced in a way that reads like the trench run of A New Hope, this book wraps the series in a way that makes me long for a return to the original EU. A stellar saga written by 3 phenomenal authors.

[Kacper]

Pierwsza świadomie kupiona książkach nad Bałtykiem w jakimś namiocie z tanimi książkami, nic z niej nie pamiętam

[Zachary Twitty]

,

[DJuana Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now see why other readers of this series complained about the end. There were so many things happening throughout the story line. When we get to this book, it was obvious that the writers were ready to end it. In some instances the threads of the story fell flat. They could have done more to draw out and explain things. All the other books had longer chapters and more chapters. I believe the last book should have had at least 40 chapters to finish the story in style. They cut things short, which was disappointing. And we STILL don't know the real "fate of the Jedi."

Overall, because I love the Star Wars saga, I liked it. I just wanted more!

[Kaine · Rating 1 out of 5]

FATE OF THE JEDI #9: APOCALYPSE

The latest novel in the Fate of the Jedi series, "APOCALYPSE,” by Troy Denning. The last novel, the grand finale, and possibly one of the worst SW novels. It's even worse than the previous volume, “Ascension”, which basically destroyed all the plots and left just a bunch of random stories that we see in this book.

The story is basically nothing but action. In the last novel, we see how the Sith of the Lost Tribe have infiltrated Coruscant and the government and are taking control of it. The position of Chief of State is now occupied by Abeloth. The Jedi have left the planet because Luke had the plan to make a large part of the Sith gather at the same point to fight against them and defeat them. Now almost two months later, the Jedi come and launch a major attack against the Sith. And so the novel begins, right in the middle of the action, we start with several Jedi infiltrating Coruscant, they go through the Spaceport, and there are customs agents there who are actually Sith.

How the Jedi kill the Sith is also ridiculous. There's a scene where Corran Horn is operating some kind of crane and drops something heavy on a Sith. There is also another scene where the Jedi kill a Sith infiltrator who was posing as a reporter and spreading that the Jedi are drug dealers from a Drug cartel. Luke is called the overlord of the Jedi Spice Cartel and it is said that the Jedi are selling spice to finance their own covert operations, including attempts to subvert the abolitionist organization known as Freedom Flight to destabilize the Galactic Alliance by overthrowing legitimate governments along the entire galactic rim.

And that's where we come to a brilliant moment. When the Jedi are infiltrating Coruscant at the beginning of the book, Luke sees a man with tattoos at the Spaceport. He first thinks that he might be a member of The Lost Tribe, but he notices all the features and tattoos on him, so he quickly dismisses that idea. Luke ignores him for the moment but is already aware of his presence and continues his great attack on the Jedi Temple which spans 300 pages. First, they send a warning message before starting his attack: “SURRENDER OR DIE. DECIDE NOW.” In a single day, the Jedi have managed to kill approximately 1,000 Sith of the 6,000 who originally arrived on the planet in those two months. The Jedi fight the Sith throughout 300 pages. That is the plot on Coruscant.

The other part of the novel presents us with two plots. In the Imperial Remnant, Jagged Fel and his bodyguard Tahiri Veila are able to stop Abeloth’s attempts to meddle with Imperial politics by destroying another of her avatars. Jag capitalizes on this event to maneuver himself out of his position, leaving Vitor Reige as the Imperial Head of State. Jag and Tahiri depart the Empire to help their Jedi allies on Coruscant.

The following story is about Raynar Thul, Lowbacca, Tekli, and C-3PO investigating a Killik colony in search of answers to Abeloth's origins and how to defeat it. They meet and discuss the situation with Thuruht, the planet's former hive. They learn that Abeloth was imprisoned by Thuruht in the distant past, using Centerpoint Station, but now that she has emerged again, the Killiks believe that the end of times has come and hope that Raynar will want to become a Joiner again. to bring the Force to the Hive to once again imprison Abeloth. Thuruht tells them that over 100,000 years ago, there was a family of Force users known as The Ones (the Father, Son, and Daughter), who embodied the Force (the Balance of Dark and Light, Dark and the Light, respectively). In some way they are Celestials, but at the same time not, but “The Ones are what Celestials become.” Then the book comes out with that cliché excuse of “it is beyond the understanding of Mere Mortals” to answer something that they have no idea how to explain. It's nonsense and all the backstory of the Celestials that we already know is just that they are an ancient race who are also known as the Architects and that they have created a lot in the galaxy, such as Centerpoint Station, the Corellian System and even the barrier that surrounds the Star Wars galaxy that prevents intergalactic travel.
The problem is, that it's obvious that all of this was inserted at the last minute because we know they couldn't think of a way to explain Abeloth's origin, as you can see here
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsEU/c...

Things get worse because the Killik give no coherent explanations and only say that The Ones are beings that are neither outside nor inside the Force but exist in both (more or less), just like the Celestials (and even They can be Celestial). They came out of a geyser as representations or manifestations of the Force itself. The son drank from the Fountain and became the avatar of the dark side. The daughter bathed in the Pool of Knowledge and became the avatar of the light side. While the father became someone who represented balance. They lived on the planet of Abeloth in the Maw, protecting the Fountain of Power and the Pool of Knowledge with their great power. They were joined by a mortal woman, Abeloth, who was his servant. Eventually, the Father and Abeloth fell in love and she became the Mother. With the other three seemingly immortal or at least surprisingly long-lived and Abeloth/Mother being mortal, she aged while they did not. To increase her own power and remain with them, she drank from the Fountain and swam in the Pool, but it transformed her into the creature she is today: the opposite of the Father, Abeloth, the Bringer of Chaos. The Ones left Abeloth behind after locking her up and moving to this Monolith that appears in TCW. Apparently, there are times when Abeloth breaks free and the Daughter and Son team up to relock her and that's why they subjugated the Killik so they could build Center Point Station and contain her inside the Maw or something. Thuruht also says that any time the flow of time is altered or played with (as Jacen Solo did when he saw the Dark Man in his vision on the world of Abeloth and became Darth Caedus in a quest to prevent the Dark Side from taking hold). take over the galaxy), Abeloth is freed from whatever prison she was contained in to create destruction and bring about a new Order where the galaxy starts over from scratch or something like that. Raynar stays behind to become a Joiner, allowing the Force to spread within the hive so he can reparations (for centuries) to once again contain Abeloth, while the rest of the team leaves to inform Luke and the other Jedi of what they have learned. Raynar's character got better in this series, it got more interesting and now we're going around in circles again, all character arcs or development are thrown out for some reason and we're back where we started.

In another minor plot, The Hapans, led by Queen Mother Tenel Ka, along with Han Solo, Leia Organa Solo, and Allana Solo, assist the Jedi with the evacuation of their students on Ossus. Tenel Ka survives an assassination attempt by the Sith, who are still determined to prevent her or her descendants from sitting on the Throne of Balance, as suggested by the vision in the Force witnessed by Lord Taalon. Allana has a vision of Tesar Sebatyne and the other Barabels at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant being attacked by Sith. Allana must warn them. When Han and Leia refuse to let her go, they head to Coruscant on the Millennium Falcon to join the efforts there and have Bazel Warv (who also knows where the Barabels are) warn them. Allana, however, sneaks aboard anyway. Two stories are found because Vesta Khai, fleeing from the Sith who intends to capture her (instead of killing her), seeks safety, and heads to the Solos. When cornered outside, she reveals Allana's true identity to the Sith, stating that she is on a mission to infiltrate the Jedi ranks to take down the future Jedi Queen from Sarasu Taalon's vision on Abeloth's world in the Maw. Unfortunately, when the door opens, the Falcon is revealed, including Allana, and Vestara is forced to save herself by joining the Sith. Vestara throws a grenade just as the melee begins, intending not to harm anyone, but the grenade deflects and destroys the Falcon's cockpit, preventing her escape from the world. Vestara disappears during the fray and Bazel dies trying to buy time for Leia, Allana, Han, and others to escape. And here, Denning is kind of trying to tell you an epic moment similar to Ganner Rhysode's Last Stand from The New Jedi Order: Traitor. The epic scene that we are trying to describe is that the Jedi Bazel continues fighting, while he is attacked by multiple shots and lightsabers that cut off parts of his brain, head, and arms, all while Han, Leia, Allana look on as if It was the most heroic sacrifice of all time... Then, while nine-year-old Allana is watching her best friend being brutally killed, she has a little moment where we should feel sorry for her, right? Well, who cares? Allana is only nine years old and she pulls out a blaster and kills a dozen Sith. Leia tells her something like “It's okay that you have to kill people in self-defense, the ends justify the means”. Allana's character in this book also becomes terrible, she behaves like a spoiled child and princess who then kills people.

We also see Ben Skywalker being captured. Abeloth reunites him with Vestara (Ben understands did not willingly betray the Jedi), and they are both sent to Abeloth's world in the Maw. Luke and the other Jedi in the Temple are extracted after fighting for three days against the Sith, where they even clashed with one of Abeloth's avatars. They have a Council meeting while Abeloth uses his abilities to cause massive earthquakes on Coruscant to create panic and terror because apparently Abeloth feeds on fear. They talk about what has happened so far and discuss how the mysterious man with tattoos that Luke saw at the beginning at the Spaceport is keeping an eye on all Sith vs Jedi battles, but they decide to ignore it for the moment. Lowbacca, Tekli, and C-3PO tell the Jedi everything they discovered about Abeloth and Luke says that he had heard about The Ones before. Luke tells them that when was training with Yoda on Dagobah during Ep. V, the old green master told him that Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi had visited the world of Mortis (Ahsoka is never mentioned by the way) where they found these three beings. Luke knew about the Mortis story for 40 years, he just never mentioned it because Luke in this book is brain-dead and a complete idiot. The easy answer is to say that he is a Retcon, but here they try to give you the explanation that he thought Yoda was joking or that it is some kind of parable, or that no real story actually happened and it is something symbolic…. Fuck off, why do you make a connection like that if you don't know how to explain it. They discover thatAbeloth is trying to recreate The Ones family with herself as Mother, Ben as Son (but this time on the light side), Vestara as Daughter (but this time on the Dark side) and, if she could have captured Luke, he would have been the new Father. So Abeloth fell in love with Luke or something...

Jag travels to Coruscant and uses an Imperial ship to take Tahiri, Saba, and a team inside the Jedi Temple, so they can remove the computer core into which Abeloth has passed his essence since he learned this ability from Callista. Meanwhile, Ben and Vestara are on Abeloth's planet in the Maw, where Abeloth tempts them with the power of the Dark Side from the Power Source and the Pool of Knowledge. Jaina and Luke have chased Ship. While Jaina remains awake and aware of how to deal with Ship. Luke goes to “Beyond Shadows” to confront the spiritual version of Abeloth. He hopes to eliminate all versions of Abeloth quickly enough to destroy her forever, or at least send her into retreat for centuries to come. Once in “Beyond Shadows,” Luke speaks and asks for help from the spirits of Mara Jade and Jacen Solo at the Lake of Apparitions, and their interactions are terrifying. He then encounters the tattooed man from the beginning, who is the "Dark Man" from Luke's visions when Jacen became a Sith Lord. This Dark Man is also who Jacen had originally seen sitting on the Throne of Balance. His name is never mentioned, but we know that the Dark Man is Darth Krayt.

Krayt appears for some reason, knows about Abeloth, and in some unexplained way, manages to enter “Beyond Shadows”. He tells Luke that he has spies infiltrated among the Jedi and that the Sith are Legion. Luke does not believe him and deduces from his tattoos and features that this Sith is not part of the Lost Tribe. The Order of Krayt, the One Sith, should be hiding out on Korriban right now without interfering or attracting much attention according to the Legacy Comics, but here they imply that Luke now knows that other Sith exist besides the Lost Tribe. The Jedi actually visited Korriban in the last book. The One Sith was not even mentioned in any way and now just like that, we see their leader revealing himself to Luke.

Luke and Krayt team up to fight Abeloth in the most gruesome, anticlimactic fight of all time. They just grab and push each other. Luke even loses an eye in this fight, Abeloth shoves his tentacles into his face and busts out his fucking right eye, which is never mentioned again. And the fight just consists of Abeloth using his tentacles to open Luke and Krayt's chests, while they are draining her of everything his power in the Force. Then Krayt and Luke succeed together and defeat Abeloth. Neither of them has any more energy left, and Krayt says that Jacen may have changed the future, but maybe he only delayed the inevitable, which is Krayt's rise to power. And that's it, Krayt leaves and that was his cameo.

Luke stays to talk to Jacen and complains about him for not telling him about the Dark Man and that they both could have avoided that future. It also tells him to Jacen that his actions were what freed Abeloth. Jacen claims that the Dark Man had nothing to do with his decision to become Sith, but rather it was seeing his daughter Allana serving at Krayt's side in that future that caused him to turn evil. This all doesn't add up because Jacen had this vision before the Dark Nest Trilogy before his daughter even was born. Nothing is explained here. It is not said at least that, Jacen had the vision where he saw this woman standing next to the dark man, which worried him, and then later when his daughter was born he realized that she was a future version of his daughter and that reason to avoid that future. This Retcon doesn't fit. It doesn't

At the Jedi Temple, Tahiri's team is able to extract Abeloth from the core and destroy that body (using her ability) to see the future and trick her into taking physical form, and then allow Saba to kill her. In the world of Abeloth, Ben, and Vestara resist the temptations of power as much as they can and fight Korelei (Abeloth), brutally killing her, with Ben shattering her skull with a rock pillar and Vestara throwing a Force beam powered by the area's Dark Side aura. With Abeloth dead, Ship stops attacking Jaina over the world. While Luke fights in “Beyond Shadows,” Jaina settles on the planet and takes Ben on board to take care of Luke. Vestara remains outside her and Jaina has no intention of taking her aboard except as a prisoner, given what Vestara did in the conflict at the Falcon landing site. When she realizes that she is about to be taken prisoner, Vestara accepts an offer from Ship to be taken to the One Sith, rather than return to the Lost Tribe. She escapes from Jaina and flees aboard Ship. The fight with Abeloth seems to be over, but the volcanic eruptions that Abeloth caused on Coruscant cause citizen losses to run into the billions. Luke recovers from the fight with Abeloth and speaks with the Jedi masters and Wynn Dorvan, who was initially freed from his captivity by Abeloth thanks to Valin and Jysella Horn when they made their raid on the Jedi Temple. Wynn Dorvan is the only good character left and I'm glad he's Chief of State. The only other thing I would have liked was to see the Galactic Alliance completely destroyed because they are complete assholes, worse than the New Republic under Borsk Fey'lya. Luke talks to all of them about Abeloth and how he defeated her, but Kyp and Kyle inform him that apparently Abeloth was not completely defeated and that a tentacle appeared to two Jedi Knights. Luke realizes that his father failed in his decision not to become the Guardian of Balance by not staying on Mortis to preserve the balance of the force and now it must be the Sith and Jedi who must bring this balance, even if that means they are at war for all eternity.

Luke orders them to rescue Raynar of the Killik Hive and with the threat of Abeloth returning one day, sends teams to search the galaxy in hopes of finding the Mortis Monolith and securing the Dagger of Mortis, which may be the only thing that can truly destroy Abeloth like he did. with the Daughter and Father when Anakin was on Mortis decades ago. The Jedi withdraw from Coruscant because now they are hated by the entire galaxy. The public believes Sith propaganda that the Jedi are drug dealers and that all the destruction on Coruscant is the product of a battle between two rival cartels for control of the spice trade, and the Jedi Order now has to withdraw from Shedu Maad, in the Hapes Consortium. Allana Solo is forced to reveal her true identity as the daughter of Tenel Ka and Jacen Solo now that her identity is known to the Sith. Still, with thousands of Sith threatening the galaxy and an apocalyptic entity ready to return at any moment, Jaina and Jag get married even though the entire galaxy it's fucked. And that, I guess, is our happy ending...

One of the worst books of all time, I don't remember seeing so many inconsistencies and contradictions in anything SW. That whole Throne of Balance thing was apparently a way to retcon the Chosen One prophecy and say that Allana Solo is the true Chosen One, as you can see here https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsEU/c...

This latest book feels like a completely different story than the other books in the series.
The rating whether it is a -10/10, -100/10, or whatever, nothing matters at this point.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this has to do with the entire series but was noticable in this book is there is a lot of action/information skipped that requires you to catch up. **spoiler coming**

For instance, the 8th book ended with Abeloth taking over the guise of the Head of State, the Sith taking control of the Jedi Temple, and the Jedi leaving Coruscant. The 9th book starts off a month later in the middle of the reinsertion of Jedi into Coruscant for a surprise attack. I understand that you wouldn't necessarily want the 9th book to start right where the 8th left off but the way it was written, it was a bit confusing as to what had happened in the interim. Another example had to do with several of the battle sequences in the Jedi temple such as Ben's capture and Valin/Jysella's escape. You are left with them entiring the computer core and then nothing. The next time they appear, it's several days later, Ben is held hostage and Valin/Jysella are outside the temple. Denning did a poor job of going back and covering how this happened and leaves the reader wondering about what took place in the gap period. Not every minute of the action needs to be covered in narrative but a good summary, such as those in the Harry Potter books where Rowling summarizes what happens during the months where nothing is really going on before picking up the story again, would be better than almost skipping it entirely.

Speaking of Rowling, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it was a bit awkward to read a Harry Potter specific reference in a Star Wars book. On at least two occasions, Ben or Han uses the curse of calling someone a Mugwump (as in Albus Dumbledore is described as 'Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards'). That didn't feel quite right to have that reference in there and completely killed the story and pacing for me when it first happened.

I can say that the book was action packed from beginning to end but some of the battle sequences weren't always clearly described. Combined with the skipping action, that made things a little hard to follow. Overall, the book and series were fine. There were a few things that were left unresolved which I think was done just to set up future story arcs. I'm a little disappointed in Vestra since I had high hopes for her. There were several instances where it made you think that a major character was going to die and I wanted to read on to find out if this was the next Chewbacca.

[S. Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

All Sith are Jedi but not all Jedi are Sith... Are are they? How a force user handles their emotions.

I’d like to start by saying that is a great space fantasy action book.

I don’t mind reading one part in the middle of a series, especially if it’s an audiobook from the public library. My main criteria is that the book has its own plot with a beginning and an ending. Denning satisfied that requirement in Apocalypse.

The reason I didn’t award more stars is a difference in opinion about Jedi and Sith and their emotions. Perhaps I’ve missed something in the series that takes the New Jedi Order into a comfort zone with the force that the film characters, and Dark Horse Comics Dawn of the Jedi graphic novels don’t go. So I guess I’m only taking a snapshot of Denning’s work with Star Wars and forming an opinion.

In defense of that opinion, the title start with Star Wars, I drink coffee from a Darth Vader mug and dress my toddler up like an Eewok when its NOT Halloween. Some of my earliest childhood memories are babysitters putting a VHS tape of Return of the Jedi on to watch. Jedi master their emotions, Sith cultivate power within their passion, I know that better than the Pledge of Allegiance. It wasn’t always inaccurate, and the Jedi often overcame their dilemma.

People who meditate often enjoy a bit of isolation from the immediacy of emotion, it’s still there, but more in the background, allowing their rational thoughts to prevail. Anakin never mastered his emotions, that led to his turn to Sith. Luke was baited into anger in The Empire Strikes Back, but he lost that fight, and went back into training. Then in Return of the Jedi, Luke had mastered his emotions and was able to enact a plan that eventually succeeded in rescuing Anakin back from the dark side (SPOILER ALERT!).

Like I said, aside from that, which sat funny with me, this was a very fun adventure story. One Jedi made a valiant sacrifice that made me weepy. Luke, Leah, and Han all play pretty good roles and I think Denning portrayed them very well.

The plot revolves around political intrigue that gives a galaxy far, far away a very close to home feel.

This story does not follow the events in episode 7. I’m okay with that. I wonder how the careers of writers like Mr. Denning will be impacted by the new films. Did their access to Star Wars license change? I’m curious, but not enough to research. Please share a link or answer in the comments if you know.

[logankstewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cotton candy is not filling, but it is good. The same goes for Krispy Kreme donuts. Eating these things is like eating a magical ball of fluffy, sugary goodness that, when finished, leaves me satisfied/dissatisfied and hungry for more. Did I enjoy the donut? Heck yeah. Could it have been better? Definitely.

Say you've got a Krispy Kreme glazed donut in one hand and a box full of long johns from a local bakery in the other. It is universally acknowledged that a Krispy Kreme glazed donut is near perfect, that it is impossible to eat only one, and that they have amphetamines in them so they keep pulling you back in. They are lighter than air and if you rub the glaze on a wound you're instantly healed. However, my local bakery, Rolling Pin, has the one up on Krispy Kreme. See, Krispy Kreme is "near perfect"; Rolling Pin is paramount to living a happy and fulfilled life. Rolling Pin produces truly divine creations, from their glazed donuts to their famous long johns.

STAR WARS books are like Krispy Kreme donuts. This one, the conclusion to yet another nine-book series, was probably the best in the box of, er, donuts, but it still suffered from the same problems the others did. Chiefly, they weren't Rolling Pin donuts. I'm confident that this entire series would have been dramatically better if it were a trilogy and if most of the "conclusions" had been at least hinted at somewhere prior to the last half of the last book. A lot of it just came across as being made up on the spot.

That was my major gripe. We have eight-and-a-half books of repetitive exposition with so much build up that there's no way to wrap it all up satisfactorily with just half a book. What's more, a lot of the characters really don't grow, and there's not a lot of surprises.

That said, Apocalypse was at least more action filled than the rest of the series combined. There is a lot going on all across the galaxy and the book read very quickly.

I love STAR WARS. I suppose I always will. I enjoy the light, fluffy goodness of a Krispy Kreme donut, too. I suppose I always will. Nevertheless, I prefer Rolling Pin any day. Does that mean I'll turn away a Krispy Kreme? Not likely, but I'm always going to be disappointed in the back of my mind, knowing that there's something better out there.