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Fighting alongside the Corellian rebels, Han and Leia are locked in a war against their son Jacen, who grows more powerful and more dangerous with each passing day. Nothing can stop Jacen’s determination to bring peace with a glorious Galactic Alliance victory–whatever the price.
While Luke grieves the loss of his beloved wife and deals with his guilt over killing the wrong person in retaliation, Jaina, Jag, and Zekk hunt for the real assassin, unaware that the culprit commands Sith powers that can cloud their minds and misdirect their attacks–and even turn them back on themselves.
As Luke and Ben Skywalker struggle to find their place among the chaos, Jacen, shunned by friends and family, launches an invasion to rescue the only person still loyal to him. But with the battle raging on, and the galaxy growing more turbulent and riotous, there’s no question that it is Jacen who is most wanted: dead or alive.
While Luke grieves the loss of his beloved wife and deals with his guilt over killing the wrong person in retaliation, Jaina, Jag, and Zekk hunt for the real assassin, unaware that the culprit commands Sith powers that can cloud their minds and misdirect their attacks–and even turn them back on themselves.
As Luke and Ben Skywalker struggle to find their place among the chaos, Jacen, shunned by friends and family, launches an invasion to rescue the only person still loyal to him. But with the battle raging on, and the galaxy growing more turbulent and riotous, there’s no question that it is Jacen who is most wanted: dead or alive.
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 27, 2007
106 people are currently reading
2722 people want to read
About the author
Aaron Allston
174 books374 followersAaron Dale Allston was an American game designer and author of many science fiction books, notably Star Wars novels. His works as a game designer include game supplements for role-playing games, several of which served to establish the basis for products and subsequent development of TSR's Dungeons & Dragons game setting Mystara. His later works as a novelist include those of the X-Wing series: Wraith Squadron, Iron Fist, Solo Command, Starfighters of Adumar, and Mercy Kill. He wrote two entries in the New Jedi Order series: Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream and Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand. Allston wrote three of the nine Legacy of the Force novels: Betrayal, Exile, and Fury, and three of the nine Fate of the Jedi novels: Outcast, Backlash, and Conviction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 135 reviews
May 27, 2019
Exciting and fun; can't wait for the epic conclusion!
February 17, 2021
Even better the second time around. This was my 2nd time reading it since it came out 11 years ago!
This book was totally packed with action from beginning to end.
#FIRE
UPDATE: 1/26/2021
I'm re-reading for the 3rd time. I've seemed to have forgotten what occurred in this book. So I'm refreshing my memory before proceeding to book 8.
Completed 2/16
Yup! Still a great novel! :) Diving into book 8 tomorrow
This book was totally packed with action from beginning to end.
#FIRE
UPDATE: 1/26/2021
I'm re-reading for the 3rd time. I've seemed to have forgotten what occurred in this book. So I'm refreshing my memory before proceeding to book 8.
Completed 2/16
Yup! Still a great novel! :) Diving into book 8 tomorrow
April 24, 2020
Allston is the weakest author of the three who are alternating books in this series. While the action and plot are better than many of the SW books previous to it, this still was an OK, but not great novel.
July 29, 2021
Kashyyk’s forests are still burning. Jacen Solo (who disowns that name as he now goes by Darth Caedus) rages from the betrayal of Tenel Ka, the woman he once loved. Now, in order to hurt her, he has kidnapped Allana, his secret love-child with her. Somewhere, deep in the black pit that was once his heart, he may have loved his daughter, but he is really only using her as leverage.
Luke is still grieving the loss of his wife, Mara Jade. Ben, who has been training with his father in the ways of the Jedi, has now come to a place where he no longer seethes with hatred toward Jacen. The student has now become the master, as he realizes that his father must snap out of his funk and lead the Jedis in the war against Jacen.
Caedus wants to take the war to Corellia. A plan is hatched to take over Centerpoint Station, which is potentially the most powerful weapon in the galaxy.
Han, Leia, Luke, et al are hatching a plan of their own. They’ve got to save a little princess and destroy a super weapon. Sound familiar?
Aaron Allston’s “Fury”, the seventh book in the Legacy of the Force series, builds up to the space battle that fans of this series have been waiting for, and it doesn’t disappoint.
Two more books left in this exciting series.
Luke is still grieving the loss of his wife, Mara Jade. Ben, who has been training with his father in the ways of the Jedi, has now come to a place where he no longer seethes with hatred toward Jacen. The student has now become the master, as he realizes that his father must snap out of his funk and lead the Jedis in the war against Jacen.
Caedus wants to take the war to Corellia. A plan is hatched to take over Centerpoint Station, which is potentially the most powerful weapon in the galaxy.
Han, Leia, Luke, et al are hatching a plan of their own. They’ve got to save a little princess and destroy a super weapon. Sound familiar?
Aaron Allston’s “Fury”, the seventh book in the Legacy of the Force series, builds up to the space battle that fans of this series have been waiting for, and it doesn’t disappoint.
Two more books left in this exciting series.
June 3, 2024
I'll push this to 3.5 stars. It's still a mixture of advancement and treading water that is driving me crazy, but the action & advancement quotient is heading in the right direction, and Leia gets some great moments.
June 15, 2023
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: book seven in the Legacy of the Force series, Fury by Aaron Allston.
SOME HISTORY:
Fury by Aaron Allston contains some exciting personal developments for the Calrissian family: Lando suddenly has to leave Kashyyyk because surprise! His wife Tendra is pregnant. For me (the reader), this was also surprising news, because Tendra and Lando have been together for decades and haven’t seemed interested in starting a family. Still, I was happy for them, but the timeline/chronology is a little iffy here. Lando is 70 at this point, and while Tendra is younger than him, she’s still in her fifties. Maybe Star Wars has ways of extending human fertility beyond our Earth standards? IDK.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
As with Inferno, I am mostly going into this read blind and trying to avoid as many spoilers as possible.
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
While the Jedi regroup and re-evaluate their next strategy on the sanctuary moon of Endor, the task force consisting of Jaina Solo, Zekk, and Jagged Fel continue to hunt down Alema Rar—who they believe is the real killer of Mara Jade Skywalker. As this galactic civil war between the Alliance and the Confederates rages on, Jacen plans to kidnap the only person he thinks is still loyal to him: his own child…
THE PLOT:
Compared to Inferno, which felt like very little action in the first half but then loads of action in the second, Fury felt a bit more consistently paced. There are a lot of plot elements, but they felt spread throughout the novel—whereas the previous novel heavily loaded the backend. We have Jacen’s kidnapping of his daughter Allana; a Jedi attempt to confront Jacen on Coruscant that (purposefully) fails; Han & Leia and Jaina & the Boys’ multiple encounters with Alema Rar; the Solo team sneaking onto Jacen’s flagship to get navigation info about Lumiya’s asteroid base; the Jedi in starfighters simultaneously confronting Jacen until they realize he has a child hostage; the Solo team finally confronting Alema Rar on the asteroid; and Tenel Ka (finally!) asking the Jedi for help in rescuing Allana.
The end of the book is this big climactic action in which Jacen attacks Centerpoint Station, the Jedi distract Jacen on his flagship while Han and Leia rescue Allana, and Centerpoint Station explodes due to Jedi sabotage. We end with Jaina realizing that she must be the one to confront her brother, and that she needs someone to teach her new tactics…
CHARACTERS:
Someone finally confronts Jaina about her obsessive attitude towards honing herself as the Sword of the Jedi—and it’s Jag. He points out that you can over sharpen a blade, and in focusing so heavily on being the Sword she’s forgetting about her responsibilities as a Jedi. His words sort of get through to her, although Jaina is still convinced that she’s the only person who can confront her brother. I appreciated that Jaina had plenty to do in this novel; that’s she’s too focused on what needs to be done to wallow in any of that relationship drama.
Meanwhile, Jag is obsessed with dealing with Alema Rar and restoring his family’s honor—but Leia points out to him that he’s acting like a man without anything tethering him to this galaxy. It’s like he sees Alema Rar as this final mission to complete, and then there’s no reason for him to live afterwards. I also liked that Jag was the one to kill Alema, and instead of a Jedi duel to the death it was a mercy kill—Alema has lost so much in these books, and Jag recognized that. During the final confrontation with Alema, it looks like Jag isn’t going to make it…but fortunately he pulls through, and Jag and Jaina are on much friendlier terms at the end. Zekk has a moment where he’s able to communicate with the Sith meditation sphere because of his dark side history (he convinces it to abandon Alema and return home), and then the dark side pool on Lumiya’s asteroid almost consumes him. But like Jag, he also snaps out of it.
Leia confronts Jacen on his Star Destroyer, but it’s just a delaying tactic—she’s trying to keep his attention away from the docking bay, and she’s realized that you can’t reason with Jacen at this point. Even if you sat Jacen down and showed him why his actions are wrong, his thinking is so warped at this point that he wouldn’t believe you. This is so sad to me, as part of what I loved about the Original Trilogy was how Luke’s love for his father brings him back to the light; seven books into the Legacy of the Force series, it seems like there’s nothing you could do or say to drag Jacen off this dark path.
Wedge and the Antilles family return here, although he doesn’t play as large of a role as he did in Betrayal or Exile. I think the Antilles family plotline is more meant to show us how people within both the Galactic Alliance and the Confederation are becoming disillusioned with this pointless war. Syal is on one side, her father is on another, and Tycho Celchu is trying to follow orders but also help them both. Events needlessly escalate, like when the Alliance drops asteroids on Commenor and the Confederates reciprocate by using biological weapons on Coruscant. The Civil War may have started out because of very specific grievances, but everything is murky now.
As the cover features Ben Skywalker pointing his lightsaber at someone, I thought that he would play a prominent role here…but he really doesn’t. He hangs out on the Jedi base on Endor’s sanctuary moon, he has a good conversation with his dad, and then he accompanies the Jedi decoy team when they storm Jacen’s lightsaber. Ben is not as focused on revenge as I expected from a title like Fury; going into the book, I thought that he would still be trying to carry out revenge against Jacen for his mother’s death. But while he still suspects Jacen, he doesn’t tell anyone about his suspicions, so instead we have another book where Luke is grieving her loss and Jaina and the boys are off on a wild goose chase after Alema Rar.
Luke’s plans for the Jedi are pretty cautious, but Luke’s M.O. has been “wait and see” for a while now. In Inferno, he was consumed by grief, trying to stick with the Alliance until he heard about Cal Omas’s death and switched sides. I expected a little more bombastic action in Fury, but Mara’s death is still so new that Luke’s still processing things. He sends a Jedi strike team to confront Jacen on Coruscant, Kyle Katarn is grievously wounded, and we find out that Luke never thought they’d succeed but instead wanted to plant a tracker on Jacen. They almost confront Jacen again during the Corellian ambush, until Luke senses a child hostage in his TIE fighter. Ben points out that Luke isn’t really living right now, Luke turns a little corner in the grief process, and then Tenel Ka requests that the Jedi please rescue her child.
In the previous book, Alema Rar went to the Sith world of Korriban and talked to a group calling themselves the One Sith. They’re mostly a teaser Easter Egg for the future generation Legacy comic, but they pop up briefly here to destroy Lumiya’s asteroid base and chase after the Sith meditation sphere.
Alema and Jacen then are the Big Bads of the book. Alema starts using Lumiya’s Force phantoms trick from Betrayal, projecting uninjured versions of herself anywhere the Solos go. (I wish we had seen a little more of Lumiya using phantoms after the first book, because it was an interesting idea, but it mostly fell off the radar.) Apparently it wasn’t one of Lumiya’s inherent skills, but instead something she could access thanks to the dark side energy suffusing the asteroid. I have to confess to not understanding the logistical stuff about the phantoms here—sometimes they are linked to a specific person, sometimes they are not—but I found it interesting that Alema always projects herself as she once was, as so much of her revenge journey was powered by her loss of health and beauty. Do I wish that Alema had died sooner, because I wasn’t interested in her and she was so underpowered compared to the rest of the Solos? Yeah, a bit. It always surprised me when she would escape from these standoffs, but in the end she was killed not with anger but with sadness and regret of how far she had fallen.
I think the loss of Tenel Ka’s loyalty was a huge blow to Jacen; he never realized that she might withdraw her support, and so his kidnapping of Allana feels like a way to both secure the only person he trusts as well as lash out at Tenel Ka. He uses Allana as a hostage to guarantee her mother’s good behavior (he threatens to kill Allana if Tenel Ka doesn’t withdraw her support from the Confederation), and I somewhat bought that threat. So much of what Jacen has done was “for Allana’s future,” but he’s also turned on the others around him in snap decisions. Jacen carts Allana around everywhere, but when she’s confronted with death and difficult situations he has no way of comforting her. In pursuing this Sith agenda, he’s lost so much of his humanity that he can’t sympathize with a frightened child and just does…nothing.
Jacen is still trying to work with Admiral Niathal, but I think it’s only a matter of time until he breaks away from her. Jacen needed Niathal in this diumverate because she held political and military power, but with his Sith battle meditation he now thinks that he can predict any outcome and win any battle. But in turn, Jacen has become predictable—as soon as the Corellians use Centerpoint Station against him, the Jedi know that he’ll try to attack the Station and use it for himself. There’s a very minor character here (a Lieutenant in the Galactic Alliance) who falls out of Jacen’s graces because she didn’t stop the Jedi from sneaking aboard his ship. He views her actions as a betrayal, and he kills her in front of everyone on the bridge. Earlier in the series, Jacen had a lot of support among the Alliance troops, but I wonder if that will start to fade as his behavior becomes more illogical and extreme. Vader ruled by fear, but fear also drove people away from the Empire in the end.
ISSUES:
I enjoyed Fury more than Inferno, and I definitely enjoyed it more than Sacrifice, but I did have some issues here. The first isn’t limited to just Fury but is more of a series-wide issue: I am constantly surprised by Tenel Ka’s inactivity here. Jacen sort of stalemates her, by kidnapping Allana and delivering an ultimatum of “do what I say or I’ll kill your daughter,” but I was surprised by how long it took her to tell the Jedi about her situation. I guess my understanding of Tenel Ka’s character is different than what the authors envisioned here—after the Young Jedi Knights books I have always seen her as that no-nonsense warrior princess, and even though her new role as Queen of Hapes means that she has obligations to more than just herself, she feels under-utilized here. I want her to change and mature, but she’s become a sadly static character.
I also feel like Jacen’s fighting abilities…well, they don’t seem consistent from book to book. He kills Nelani Dinn in Betrayal, but I felt like that was a combination of her being much less experienced than him plus a heavy dose of Surprise Murderous Intentions. When we get to Sacrifice, Mara beats the crap out of him, and he’s only able to kill her through trickery/poison. In Inferno, Luke is winning for the first half of the fight until Jacen gains the upper hand in the second, and I honestly think that Luke could have killed him if he hadn’t grabbed Ben and left. (Luke Skywalker is very much OP, and we have three books to go.) So when Kyle Katarn and the other Jedi confronted Jacen on Coruscant, I was not expecting Jacen to take Kyle out like that. Maybe this is my experience with the games peeking through, but I thought that Kyle would be a formidable opponent in a lightsaber duel—and instead, Jacen grievously wounds him way too easily.
It feels like there's this discontinuity between how powerful Jacen is and the constraints of the overarching series plot. From the New Jedi Order series, I never got the sense that Jacen was the ultimate fighter. He’s very skilled, but his strongest abilities lay elsewhere, and he didn’t even need a lightsaber to defeat Onimi in the end, just the sheer power of the Force. If anyone was the superior duelist, I would assume it to be Jaina; after all, Luke did prophecy that she was “the Sword of the Jedi.” Maybe that’s why Jaina hasn’t confronted Jacen yet? It just feels like Jacen's fighting skills ebb and flow based on the demands of the books, and I thought Kyle was better than that! (Also, if Jacen can defeat one Jedi Master, why not just throw all of them at him? Problem solved.)
Finally, this galactic civil war seems less “plotted out” than the Clone Wars. I suppose going into the Legacy of the Force series I expected major battles or offensives in each book, but that has not been the case—instead, we sometimes go an entire book or part of a book without a single battle. Maybe I noticed that here more so than other books because we had the aftermath of the Battle of Kashyyyk, the Battle of Commenor, the catastrophe on Ossus, the Corellian ambush against Jacen, and the Battle of Centerpoint Station all in the same book. We’re approaching the conclusion of the series, and the military stuff has escalated a lot.
IN CONCLUSION:
Fury contained a bunch of battles and confrontations evenly spaced throughout. There's a heavy focus on Jacen, as well as Jaina and company finally confronting Alema Rar, and after five books of inaction it's exciting to see the Jedi continuing to DO things and actually having a plan. I did feel like there were some assumptions you had to accept going into this book (the main one for me was that Tenel Ka could spend the majority of the book not doing anything to get her daughter back), but on the whole I felt like Fury was a pretty solid read.
Next up: book eight in the Legacy of the Force series, Revelation by Karen Traviss.
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/OuEMo9xlHdM
This week’s focus: book seven in the Legacy of the Force series, Fury by Aaron Allston.
SOME HISTORY:
Fury by Aaron Allston contains some exciting personal developments for the Calrissian family: Lando suddenly has to leave Kashyyyk because surprise! His wife Tendra is pregnant. For me (the reader), this was also surprising news, because Tendra and Lando have been together for decades and haven’t seemed interested in starting a family. Still, I was happy for them, but the timeline/chronology is a little iffy here. Lando is 70 at this point, and while Tendra is younger than him, she’s still in her fifties. Maybe Star Wars has ways of extending human fertility beyond our Earth standards? IDK.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
As with Inferno, I am mostly going into this read blind and trying to avoid as many spoilers as possible.
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
While the Jedi regroup and re-evaluate their next strategy on the sanctuary moon of Endor, the task force consisting of Jaina Solo, Zekk, and Jagged Fel continue to hunt down Alema Rar—who they believe is the real killer of Mara Jade Skywalker. As this galactic civil war between the Alliance and the Confederates rages on, Jacen plans to kidnap the only person he thinks is still loyal to him: his own child…
THE PLOT:
Compared to Inferno, which felt like very little action in the first half but then loads of action in the second, Fury felt a bit more consistently paced. There are a lot of plot elements, but they felt spread throughout the novel—whereas the previous novel heavily loaded the backend. We have Jacen’s kidnapping of his daughter Allana; a Jedi attempt to confront Jacen on Coruscant that (purposefully) fails; Han & Leia and Jaina & the Boys’ multiple encounters with Alema Rar; the Solo team sneaking onto Jacen’s flagship to get navigation info about Lumiya’s asteroid base; the Jedi in starfighters simultaneously confronting Jacen until they realize he has a child hostage; the Solo team finally confronting Alema Rar on the asteroid; and Tenel Ka (finally!) asking the Jedi for help in rescuing Allana.
The end of the book is this big climactic action in which Jacen attacks Centerpoint Station, the Jedi distract Jacen on his flagship while Han and Leia rescue Allana, and Centerpoint Station explodes due to Jedi sabotage. We end with Jaina realizing that she must be the one to confront her brother, and that she needs someone to teach her new tactics…
CHARACTERS:
Someone finally confronts Jaina about her obsessive attitude towards honing herself as the Sword of the Jedi—and it’s Jag. He points out that you can over sharpen a blade, and in focusing so heavily on being the Sword she’s forgetting about her responsibilities as a Jedi. His words sort of get through to her, although Jaina is still convinced that she’s the only person who can confront her brother. I appreciated that Jaina had plenty to do in this novel; that’s she’s too focused on what needs to be done to wallow in any of that relationship drama.
Meanwhile, Jag is obsessed with dealing with Alema Rar and restoring his family’s honor—but Leia points out to him that he’s acting like a man without anything tethering him to this galaxy. It’s like he sees Alema Rar as this final mission to complete, and then there’s no reason for him to live afterwards. I also liked that Jag was the one to kill Alema, and instead of a Jedi duel to the death it was a mercy kill—Alema has lost so much in these books, and Jag recognized that. During the final confrontation with Alema, it looks like Jag isn’t going to make it…but fortunately he pulls through, and Jag and Jaina are on much friendlier terms at the end. Zekk has a moment where he’s able to communicate with the Sith meditation sphere because of his dark side history (he convinces it to abandon Alema and return home), and then the dark side pool on Lumiya’s asteroid almost consumes him. But like Jag, he also snaps out of it.
Leia confronts Jacen on his Star Destroyer, but it’s just a delaying tactic—she’s trying to keep his attention away from the docking bay, and she’s realized that you can’t reason with Jacen at this point. Even if you sat Jacen down and showed him why his actions are wrong, his thinking is so warped at this point that he wouldn’t believe you. This is so sad to me, as part of what I loved about the Original Trilogy was how Luke’s love for his father brings him back to the light; seven books into the Legacy of the Force series, it seems like there’s nothing you could do or say to drag Jacen off this dark path.
Wedge and the Antilles family return here, although he doesn’t play as large of a role as he did in Betrayal or Exile. I think the Antilles family plotline is more meant to show us how people within both the Galactic Alliance and the Confederation are becoming disillusioned with this pointless war. Syal is on one side, her father is on another, and Tycho Celchu is trying to follow orders but also help them both. Events needlessly escalate, like when the Alliance drops asteroids on Commenor and the Confederates reciprocate by using biological weapons on Coruscant. The Civil War may have started out because of very specific grievances, but everything is murky now.
As the cover features Ben Skywalker pointing his lightsaber at someone, I thought that he would play a prominent role here…but he really doesn’t. He hangs out on the Jedi base on Endor’s sanctuary moon, he has a good conversation with his dad, and then he accompanies the Jedi decoy team when they storm Jacen’s lightsaber. Ben is not as focused on revenge as I expected from a title like Fury; going into the book, I thought that he would still be trying to carry out revenge against Jacen for his mother’s death. But while he still suspects Jacen, he doesn’t tell anyone about his suspicions, so instead we have another book where Luke is grieving her loss and Jaina and the boys are off on a wild goose chase after Alema Rar.
Luke’s plans for the Jedi are pretty cautious, but Luke’s M.O. has been “wait and see” for a while now. In Inferno, he was consumed by grief, trying to stick with the Alliance until he heard about Cal Omas’s death and switched sides. I expected a little more bombastic action in Fury, but Mara’s death is still so new that Luke’s still processing things. He sends a Jedi strike team to confront Jacen on Coruscant, Kyle Katarn is grievously wounded, and we find out that Luke never thought they’d succeed but instead wanted to plant a tracker on Jacen. They almost confront Jacen again during the Corellian ambush, until Luke senses a child hostage in his TIE fighter. Ben points out that Luke isn’t really living right now, Luke turns a little corner in the grief process, and then Tenel Ka requests that the Jedi please rescue her child.
In the previous book, Alema Rar went to the Sith world of Korriban and talked to a group calling themselves the One Sith. They’re mostly a teaser Easter Egg for the future generation Legacy comic, but they pop up briefly here to destroy Lumiya’s asteroid base and chase after the Sith meditation sphere.
Alema and Jacen then are the Big Bads of the book. Alema starts using Lumiya’s Force phantoms trick from Betrayal, projecting uninjured versions of herself anywhere the Solos go. (I wish we had seen a little more of Lumiya using phantoms after the first book, because it was an interesting idea, but it mostly fell off the radar.) Apparently it wasn’t one of Lumiya’s inherent skills, but instead something she could access thanks to the dark side energy suffusing the asteroid. I have to confess to not understanding the logistical stuff about the phantoms here—sometimes they are linked to a specific person, sometimes they are not—but I found it interesting that Alema always projects herself as she once was, as so much of her revenge journey was powered by her loss of health and beauty. Do I wish that Alema had died sooner, because I wasn’t interested in her and she was so underpowered compared to the rest of the Solos? Yeah, a bit. It always surprised me when she would escape from these standoffs, but in the end she was killed not with anger but with sadness and regret of how far she had fallen.
I think the loss of Tenel Ka’s loyalty was a huge blow to Jacen; he never realized that she might withdraw her support, and so his kidnapping of Allana feels like a way to both secure the only person he trusts as well as lash out at Tenel Ka. He uses Allana as a hostage to guarantee her mother’s good behavior (he threatens to kill Allana if Tenel Ka doesn’t withdraw her support from the Confederation), and I somewhat bought that threat. So much of what Jacen has done was “for Allana’s future,” but he’s also turned on the others around him in snap decisions. Jacen carts Allana around everywhere, but when she’s confronted with death and difficult situations he has no way of comforting her. In pursuing this Sith agenda, he’s lost so much of his humanity that he can’t sympathize with a frightened child and just does…nothing.
Jacen is still trying to work with Admiral Niathal, but I think it’s only a matter of time until he breaks away from her. Jacen needed Niathal in this diumverate because she held political and military power, but with his Sith battle meditation he now thinks that he can predict any outcome and win any battle. But in turn, Jacen has become predictable—as soon as the Corellians use Centerpoint Station against him, the Jedi know that he’ll try to attack the Station and use it for himself. There’s a very minor character here (a Lieutenant in the Galactic Alliance) who falls out of Jacen’s graces because she didn’t stop the Jedi from sneaking aboard his ship. He views her actions as a betrayal, and he kills her in front of everyone on the bridge. Earlier in the series, Jacen had a lot of support among the Alliance troops, but I wonder if that will start to fade as his behavior becomes more illogical and extreme. Vader ruled by fear, but fear also drove people away from the Empire in the end.
ISSUES:
I enjoyed Fury more than Inferno, and I definitely enjoyed it more than Sacrifice, but I did have some issues here. The first isn’t limited to just Fury but is more of a series-wide issue: I am constantly surprised by Tenel Ka’s inactivity here. Jacen sort of stalemates her, by kidnapping Allana and delivering an ultimatum of “do what I say or I’ll kill your daughter,” but I was surprised by how long it took her to tell the Jedi about her situation. I guess my understanding of Tenel Ka’s character is different than what the authors envisioned here—after the Young Jedi Knights books I have always seen her as that no-nonsense warrior princess, and even though her new role as Queen of Hapes means that she has obligations to more than just herself, she feels under-utilized here. I want her to change and mature, but she’s become a sadly static character.
I also feel like Jacen’s fighting abilities…well, they don’t seem consistent from book to book. He kills Nelani Dinn in Betrayal, but I felt like that was a combination of her being much less experienced than him plus a heavy dose of Surprise Murderous Intentions. When we get to Sacrifice, Mara beats the crap out of him, and he’s only able to kill her through trickery/poison. In Inferno, Luke is winning for the first half of the fight until Jacen gains the upper hand in the second, and I honestly think that Luke could have killed him if he hadn’t grabbed Ben and left. (Luke Skywalker is very much OP, and we have three books to go.) So when Kyle Katarn and the other Jedi confronted Jacen on Coruscant, I was not expecting Jacen to take Kyle out like that. Maybe this is my experience with the games peeking through, but I thought that Kyle would be a formidable opponent in a lightsaber duel—and instead, Jacen grievously wounds him way too easily.
It feels like there's this discontinuity between how powerful Jacen is and the constraints of the overarching series plot. From the New Jedi Order series, I never got the sense that Jacen was the ultimate fighter. He’s very skilled, but his strongest abilities lay elsewhere, and he didn’t even need a lightsaber to defeat Onimi in the end, just the sheer power of the Force. If anyone was the superior duelist, I would assume it to be Jaina; after all, Luke did prophecy that she was “the Sword of the Jedi.” Maybe that’s why Jaina hasn’t confronted Jacen yet? It just feels like Jacen's fighting skills ebb and flow based on the demands of the books, and I thought Kyle was better than that! (Also, if Jacen can defeat one Jedi Master, why not just throw all of them at him? Problem solved.)
Finally, this galactic civil war seems less “plotted out” than the Clone Wars. I suppose going into the Legacy of the Force series I expected major battles or offensives in each book, but that has not been the case—instead, we sometimes go an entire book or part of a book without a single battle. Maybe I noticed that here more so than other books because we had the aftermath of the Battle of Kashyyyk, the Battle of Commenor, the catastrophe on Ossus, the Corellian ambush against Jacen, and the Battle of Centerpoint Station all in the same book. We’re approaching the conclusion of the series, and the military stuff has escalated a lot.
IN CONCLUSION:
Fury contained a bunch of battles and confrontations evenly spaced throughout. There's a heavy focus on Jacen, as well as Jaina and company finally confronting Alema Rar, and after five books of inaction it's exciting to see the Jedi continuing to DO things and actually having a plan. I did feel like there were some assumptions you had to accept going into this book (the main one for me was that Tenel Ka could spend the majority of the book not doing anything to get her daughter back), but on the whole I felt like Fury was a pretty solid read.
Next up: book eight in the Legacy of the Force series, Revelation by Karen Traviss.
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/OuEMo9xlHdM
July 30, 2025
4,5 stars
quick read, i really like it but it should've been jaina on the cover. ben hardly did anything in this book
quick read, i really like it but it should've been jaina on the cover. ben hardly did anything in this book
April 29, 2022
My favorite of the series thus far. I had a lot of difficulty getting in to aspects of this series, because a lot of it did not feel like 'Star Wars' to me. This is the first book that I can say really captured the feel of the movies that made me want to be a Jedi as a kid. While there isn't as much in-depth character development as a Traviss novel, this book helps resolve so many floating plot lines, like the always aggravating Alema Rar and Jaina's aggravating "I don't want you to love me but I'll secretly admire you from afar" made that has been around since the first book in the series. Only two more to go in this series. I'm just happy there's plenty more Aaron Allston novels I have yet to read in this universe.
June 7, 2015
4.5 stars. The one major problem that I had was that the book seemed to have 2 climaxes, one being the showdown with Alema, the other being the rescue of Allana. It felt kind of weird, the Luke-Ben heart-to-heart felt like a falling action thing, and it's like your expecting the book to wind down, but no, they still have to rescue Allana and destroy centerpoint. Another thing, they taunt us by saying that Luke is going to ask Karrde for help. But Karrde is only mentioned. I would've like to see Karrde again.
We finally focus on Jaina, my favorite character. She's taken all the things I love about her though, and taking it to the extreme. I like that she's hard-working. I like that she's focused. But now she has reached the point where, as Zekk put it, "everything that makes her smile is the enemy." That's the dark side of those generally positive traits. Jag decides that she only learns through success and failure, which is why he does the trick with the beskar, to show that her enemies won't fight her in a nice, controlled enviroment. Also that she's so focused on being a good sword, that she's slowly losing sight of being a good jedi. Like Zekk, (although for entirely different reasons) I gain a lot of respect for Jag here, I wasn't very fond of him before, particularly in this series.
And then there's Jacen and Allana, and Luke and Ben. Luke, Ben, and Allana don't do much in terms of action, but I think that's all in all a good thing. I grouped them together because I feel there's a certain amount of the two father/child relationships being contrasted. it's difficult to do so because there's different contexts and different ages, but there's still examples, like when Jacen considers using the force to cause Allana's memories of Tenel-ka to fade, and I think, Luke would never do that. Both fathers care about their children, but Jacen is far more manipulative of Allana, although I suppose when you kidnap your child who doesn't know your her father because you're afraid her mother will tell her that you burned a planet, (among other things) and she won't like you anymore, of course you will be manipulative. The leader of the jedi and the master of the sith, (we're ignoring the One Sith for now) are very different not just as people, but as fathers as well. Which is important, because Jacen basically turns to the dark side to protect Allana.
Ben came perilously close to the dark side in the last book, (I'd consider him on the dark side) and now he's recovering. I'd like to say that even though vengeance is considered the huge reason to turn to the dark side, I wasn't as concerned with Ben's quest for revenge on Jacen as I was about how far he was willing to go to achieve his vengeance. The fact that it was his idea to burn the cities, (Jacen just said burn the forest) of Kashyyk. (I know he also recommended that Jacen have Jaina and the Solusars killed, but if he hadn't Jacen probably would've ordered the younglings killed and Ben probably figured Jaina and the Solusars could look after themselves.) Anyway, the point is that Ben, in the last book, became more like Jacen than he was in any other point in the series, including when he was Jacen's faithful puppy. Both Jacen and Ben had noble goals, (ok, Ben didn't have a noble goal, but it was one that we could get behind) but it the things they were doing to achieve it were what, in my opinion, what truly made what they were doing wrong.
OK, that should have probably gone in the inferno review. But the point is Ben is a character I really like, and yet, up until now, he hasn't been very likable. He's had a lot of pretty cringe-worthy moments. Now Ben is starting to become his own person, and a good person. He realizes how similar he was to Jacen in the last book, (which Jacen inadvertly pointed out by asking if Ben would sacrifice his mother to kill him) and he's very careful to NOT go down the same path Jacen went down. He finally did the Darth Vader homework, (which hasn't been mentioned since book 4 because that was the last book written by allston in the series before this one, I'm surprised Ben still remembers it) and is thinking a lot about what he's doing. So I don't think we have to worry about Ben being the next with any time soon.
There's also this part in the book where Jacen has a debate with his mother about the morality of his actions. Although it's a stalling tactic to give the others time to get info on Alema, to me the fact that Leia and Jacen were able to spend that much time debating it tells me that there is a little- very little- good in Jacen still. When someone spends that much effort and time defending their decisions, it usually means they are unsure of them themselves.
Then there's the showdown with Alema. Zekk faces his dark side, which he has suppressed since the young jedi knights books when he renounced the shadow academy. I know I shouldn't judge him for that moment, because the place is soaked in dark side energies, but he lost several points with me when he expressed his desire to make Jaina "his". It did make me wonder if Jacen was also influenced during Betrayal by the dark energy of the asteroid, although that doesn't give me much sympathy for him. Zekk chose to fight it, and Jacen's done several things afterward when he was not on the asteroid. And before, for that matter, even if he technically chose to become a sith on that asteroid, he did purposely start a war in the last series.
Alema tells Jaina that it's not a game anymore, to which Jaina responds with, "To me, it was never a game". Okay, I know that Alema's insane, but her main motive in this series is to make Luke and Leia suffer as much as possible. The fact that she describes it as a game makes me really hate her. Alema is obsessed with her appearance and the dark nest, and in the last book, she took part in feeding live prisoners to larvae. Here, she learns how to make a force phantom, which she uses to make herself primarily young and beautiful, and of course to go after Leia's entire family. (Except Jacen, because she thinks it's so delicious that he's turning to the dark side, and doesn't want to ruin that.) So yeah, even though she's insane, I didn't feel too sorry for her.
The moment in the end when Jag is wounded, I'm not to fond of the Jag/Zekk/Jaina love triangle, (although it's part in this series is very exaggerated by fans, we only actually see it in book 4 and this book) but I like this because it's clear that Jaina cares about Jag, and loves him as a friend, and in that moment, Jag isn't trying to push farther than that. It's the same thing with that scene at the end of Invincible. (I won't go into too much details because of spoilers.)
When they are preparing to rescue Allana, and Ben says he should be part of the diversion along with Luke and Saba. We as the reader have seen enough from Jacen's perspective to see how well this is with the way Jacen thinks. When he sees his mother has escaped earlier in the book, his first thought is that she's coming after Allana. But he is terrified that Luke will come after him, so when he sees Luke and Ben coming for him, his first thought is the danger to himself. And that is the only situation where this would be true. Luke responds by asking if Ben really would be pretending to be after revenge, and Ben says he isn't. Luke is unsure. When Ben is fighting they droids, he has some thought, (I can't remember what, and I'm too lazy to get the book) and realizes that that is something he came up with himself, Jacen's idea, or one of his parents'. And then when he does fight Jacen, he proves that he has, in fact, overcome his dark side, which for me, is what star wars has always been about. Not the struggle to defeat evil, but the struggle to fight the evil in oneself.
Leia, Han and Iella, meanwhile, go off to rescue Allana. Allana despite all the awesome toys Jacen got her, misses her home, and her mother, and goes with them. Han and Leia realize that Allana is their granddaughter, and we have a wonderful moment there.
Corran and Seyah go to destroy Centerpoint. About time, that thing should've been destroyed long ago. We don't see much of them actually destroying Centerpoint, but we see a lot of the Corellians who are on Centerpoint.
And now Jacen has truly reached his lowest moment. He has thought to himself, "I am at my lowest moment," many times, but no he has finally reached it. His sister had deserted him, (he tried to have her court martialed for not firing on a civilian, but Jacen sees it as her betraying him.) His parents had deserted him, (he had fired on them even though he knew them to be innocent and Jaina and Ben were aboard with them, but he still views them as having betrayed him) his aunt has deserted him (he had had plans to murder her son, but he still views her as having betrayed him) his cousin has deserted him (he had killed his mother, but he still acts like he was the one who had betrayed him) his uncle has deserted him (he had tried to manipulate his son into assassinating someone, and as far as Luke and Jacen knew, succeeded, but he still views Luke as having betrayed him) his lover has deserted him, (he had burned a planet, but he still sees it as her having betrayed him) but now, now his daughter has deserted him. The last person left who still loves him, (or at least that's what Jacen thinks, really Allana was the last person left who Jacen loved who still approved of him.) The one who was his last tie to humanity, has deserted him. (Like all the previous examples, Allana has a good reason, but Jacen still feels like he has been betrayed.) When Jacen starts talking like this, which he does often, I am always torn between irritation and pity. The irritation part is saying "Stop whining, your family didn't betray you, you betrayed it." The pity part is saying "Well, he probably doesn't like fighting his entire family anymore than his family likes fighting them." Of course, whenever you start feeling sorry for Jacen, he always has to do something to smash it. In this case, he snaps the neck of of one of his underlings with the force. It's very Vader-like. And later he manages to convince himself that even THAT, helped bring peace to the galaxy. So Jacen is either delusional, or believes exactly what he wants to believe. And he wants to believe that he is bringing peace to the galaxy,that HE is the one making the big sacrifices here for the greater good.
We finally focus on Jaina, my favorite character. She's taken all the things I love about her though, and taking it to the extreme. I like that she's hard-working. I like that she's focused. But now she has reached the point where, as Zekk put it, "everything that makes her smile is the enemy." That's the dark side of those generally positive traits. Jag decides that she only learns through success and failure, which is why he does the trick with the beskar, to show that her enemies won't fight her in a nice, controlled enviroment. Also that she's so focused on being a good sword, that she's slowly losing sight of being a good jedi. Like Zekk, (although for entirely different reasons) I gain a lot of respect for Jag here, I wasn't very fond of him before, particularly in this series.
And then there's Jacen and Allana, and Luke and Ben. Luke, Ben, and Allana don't do much in terms of action, but I think that's all in all a good thing. I grouped them together because I feel there's a certain amount of the two father/child relationships being contrasted. it's difficult to do so because there's different contexts and different ages, but there's still examples, like when Jacen considers using the force to cause Allana's memories of Tenel-ka to fade, and I think, Luke would never do that. Both fathers care about their children, but Jacen is far more manipulative of Allana, although I suppose when you kidnap your child who doesn't know your her father because you're afraid her mother will tell her that you burned a planet, (among other things) and she won't like you anymore, of course you will be manipulative. The leader of the jedi and the master of the sith, (we're ignoring the One Sith for now) are very different not just as people, but as fathers as well. Which is important, because Jacen basically turns to the dark side to protect Allana.
Ben came perilously close to the dark side in the last book, (I'd consider him on the dark side) and now he's recovering. I'd like to say that even though vengeance is considered the huge reason to turn to the dark side, I wasn't as concerned with Ben's quest for revenge on Jacen as I was about how far he was willing to go to achieve his vengeance. The fact that it was his idea to burn the cities, (Jacen just said burn the forest) of Kashyyk. (I know he also recommended that Jacen have Jaina and the Solusars killed, but if he hadn't Jacen probably would've ordered the younglings killed and Ben probably figured Jaina and the Solusars could look after themselves.) Anyway, the point is that Ben, in the last book, became more like Jacen than he was in any other point in the series, including when he was Jacen's faithful puppy. Both Jacen and Ben had noble goals, (ok, Ben didn't have a noble goal, but it was one that we could get behind) but it the things they were doing to achieve it were what, in my opinion, what truly made what they were doing wrong.
OK, that should have probably gone in the inferno review. But the point is Ben is a character I really like, and yet, up until now, he hasn't been very likable. He's had a lot of pretty cringe-worthy moments. Now Ben is starting to become his own person, and a good person. He realizes how similar he was to Jacen in the last book, (which Jacen inadvertly pointed out by asking if Ben would sacrifice his mother to kill him) and he's very careful to NOT go down the same path Jacen went down. He finally did the Darth Vader homework, (which hasn't been mentioned since book 4 because that was the last book written by allston in the series before this one, I'm surprised Ben still remembers it) and is thinking a lot about what he's doing. So I don't think we have to worry about Ben being the next with any time soon.
There's also this part in the book where Jacen has a debate with his mother about the morality of his actions. Although it's a stalling tactic to give the others time to get info on Alema, to me the fact that Leia and Jacen were able to spend that much time debating it tells me that there is a little- very little- good in Jacen still. When someone spends that much effort and time defending their decisions, it usually means they are unsure of them themselves.
Then there's the showdown with Alema. Zekk faces his dark side, which he has suppressed since the young jedi knights books when he renounced the shadow academy. I know I shouldn't judge him for that moment, because the place is soaked in dark side energies, but he lost several points with me when he expressed his desire to make Jaina "his". It did make me wonder if Jacen was also influenced during Betrayal by the dark energy of the asteroid, although that doesn't give me much sympathy for him. Zekk chose to fight it, and Jacen's done several things afterward when he was not on the asteroid. And before, for that matter, even if he technically chose to become a sith on that asteroid, he did purposely start a war in the last series.
Alema tells Jaina that it's not a game anymore, to which Jaina responds with, "To me, it was never a game". Okay, I know that Alema's insane, but her main motive in this series is to make Luke and Leia suffer as much as possible. The fact that she describes it as a game makes me really hate her. Alema is obsessed with her appearance and the dark nest, and in the last book, she took part in feeding live prisoners to larvae. Here, she learns how to make a force phantom, which she uses to make herself primarily young and beautiful, and of course to go after Leia's entire family. (Except Jacen, because she thinks it's so delicious that he's turning to the dark side, and doesn't want to ruin that.) So yeah, even though she's insane, I didn't feel too sorry for her.
The moment in the end when Jag is wounded, I'm not to fond of the Jag/Zekk/Jaina love triangle, (although it's part in this series is very exaggerated by fans, we only actually see it in book 4 and this book) but I like this because it's clear that Jaina cares about Jag, and loves him as a friend, and in that moment, Jag isn't trying to push farther than that. It's the same thing with that scene at the end of Invincible. (I won't go into too much details because of spoilers.)
When they are preparing to rescue Allana, and Ben says he should be part of the diversion along with Luke and Saba. We as the reader have seen enough from Jacen's perspective to see how well this is with the way Jacen thinks. When he sees his mother has escaped earlier in the book, his first thought is that she's coming after Allana. But he is terrified that Luke will come after him, so when he sees Luke and Ben coming for him, his first thought is the danger to himself. And that is the only situation where this would be true. Luke responds by asking if Ben really would be pretending to be after revenge, and Ben says he isn't. Luke is unsure. When Ben is fighting they droids, he has some thought, (I can't remember what, and I'm too lazy to get the book) and realizes that that is something he came up with himself, Jacen's idea, or one of his parents'. And then when he does fight Jacen, he proves that he has, in fact, overcome his dark side, which for me, is what star wars has always been about. Not the struggle to defeat evil, but the struggle to fight the evil in oneself.
Leia, Han and Iella, meanwhile, go off to rescue Allana. Allana despite all the awesome toys Jacen got her, misses her home, and her mother, and goes with them. Han and Leia realize that Allana is their granddaughter, and we have a wonderful moment there.
Corran and Seyah go to destroy Centerpoint. About time, that thing should've been destroyed long ago. We don't see much of them actually destroying Centerpoint, but we see a lot of the Corellians who are on Centerpoint.
And now Jacen has truly reached his lowest moment. He has thought to himself, "I am at my lowest moment," many times, but no he has finally reached it. His sister had deserted him, (he tried to have her court martialed for not firing on a civilian, but Jacen sees it as her betraying him.) His parents had deserted him, (he had fired on them even though he knew them to be innocent and Jaina and Ben were aboard with them, but he still views them as having betrayed him) his aunt has deserted him (he had had plans to murder her son, but he still views her as having betrayed him) his cousin has deserted him (he had killed his mother, but he still acts like he was the one who had betrayed him) his uncle has deserted him (he had tried to manipulate his son into assassinating someone, and as far as Luke and Jacen knew, succeeded, but he still views Luke as having betrayed him) his lover has deserted him, (he had burned a planet, but he still sees it as her having betrayed him) but now, now his daughter has deserted him. The last person left who still loves him, (or at least that's what Jacen thinks, really Allana was the last person left who Jacen loved who still approved of him.) The one who was his last tie to humanity, has deserted him. (Like all the previous examples, Allana has a good reason, but Jacen still feels like he has been betrayed.) When Jacen starts talking like this, which he does often, I am always torn between irritation and pity. The irritation part is saying "Stop whining, your family didn't betray you, you betrayed it." The pity part is saying "Well, he probably doesn't like fighting his entire family anymore than his family likes fighting them." Of course, whenever you start feeling sorry for Jacen, he always has to do something to smash it. In this case, he snaps the neck of of one of his underlings with the force. It's very Vader-like. And later he manages to convince himself that even THAT, helped bring peace to the galaxy. So Jacen is either delusional, or believes exactly what he wants to believe. And he wants to believe that he is bringing peace to the galaxy,that HE is the one making the big sacrifices here for the greater good.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 14, 2021
Nothing significantly happens in this book. I felt like they are trying to drag out this series at this point to reach nine books.
I like how Jason wants to be a good father, but doesn't know how to be a father.
I like how Jason wants to be a good father, but doesn't know how to be a father.
March 19, 2024
He was right, you know. It's like being murdered and surviving.
This was a nice surprise. Being honest, I despised Inferno, the previous book in this series. It was simply a stupidly problematic excuse of a story and put me off Star Wars for about a month immediately after reading it, and Sacrifice wasn't much better, either. Now, did Fury manage to redeem this series, bringing in on track with the NJO or even just making the previous novels worth it? Not quite. But is it at least a valiant attempt at bringing some cohesion to the ongoing narrative, drawing from all three authors' works to put a definite end to some lingering plot threads and ushering in the final act? That it is, and I can say I enjoyed my time with it overall.
Allston tried, he really did. As I already implied, there's a clear attempt at righting some wrongs here. Chief among them is how disjoined each author's books feel with one another. Allston would write about Corellians and the Second Galactic Civil War, Traviss about Mandos and Tony Blair, Denning about Hapans and Alema Rar. Fury is when everything finally comes together: we start the narrative on Kashyyyk, still experiencing the aftermath of Inferno, and are then immediately pushed forward in the Alema subplot with Jag Fel and Boba Fett's gift to the Solos - a plot strand first brought up in Sacrifice! - before reconvening with Caedus and swiftly being thrust into the ongoing War plotline. Yes, no more tunnel vision! It's great to read a book that feels like it is part of a bigger universe again.
Another few instances of damage control can be found in the realm of characterization. This goes from smaller things, like Han reminiscing on his son without the (for these books) usual and unthinking contempt, to an interesting character journey for Jagged Fel. I was a big fan of the character back in The New Jedi Order; he was a bit robotic at times, sure, but ultimately a great exhibit of that series' ability to birth a new generation of protagonists as well as the perfect foil to Jaina's more fierce spirit. Enter The Swarm War and its dedication to systematically destroy the man's life and character followed by early LOTF's directionless Jaina-Jag-Zekk love triangle and my good will had all but disappeared. Thankfully, however, Fury takes the time to delve into how the man ticks in a rather subdued manner, which is capped by a much more direct and definitive involvement in Alema Rar's subplot. One of my favorite scenes here is his verbal takedown of Jaina, which depending on one's inclination towards behinds the scenes drama could be interpreted as a calling out of her handling in the series so far...
Either way, there's one more character aspect I wish to highlight, and it's got to do with the legacy aspect of Legacy of the Force. So Allston introduced a bunch of new Jedi characters back in his first LOTF outing, and Exile rounded out the cast with the weirdly compelling Seha Dorvald. Fury picks up on all of that by giving most of them - Allston forgot Tiu Zax, the traitor! - something to do, and not just that, some other minor characters like Twool (a Jedi initiate from Dark Nest) and Tyria Sarkin of Wraith Squadron fame are brought back into the spotlight as well! This is exactly what the post-NJO needs, a revolving door of mostly younger characters that could one day (and already should have, let's be honest) take over the setting. Brand recognizability be damned, there's simply no way any ongoing fictional setting can survive if it's too unwilling to grant its graying heroes the rest they deserve. My only regret is that this novel does not represent the triumphant return of both Syal and Myri Antilles that I was hoping for, instead focusing exclusively on the former as in Betrayal, but you can't win everyone I suppose. Still, good stuff here, Allston.
Finally, I appreciate the return of the Second Galactic Civil War into the fold of the narrative, even if this is the first area where LOTF's innate storytelling flaws rear their ugly head again. How great it is to finally have some closure with Chekhov's Centerpoint Station. It is simply ridiculous that this has been a hanging thread ever since book one with how ingrained into the conflict at large it seemed there. On that note, the return of gloriously ridiculous author self-insert Dr. Toval Seyah is MUCH appreciated, as are some other returning faces on the Confederation's side such as the criminally underutilized Denjax Teppler and Turr Phennir. It is in said criminal lack of utilization, however, that I can't help but feel underwhelmed with some of the action here. I mean, it's the seventh entry in a nine-book cycle, and I don't really know anything much about the leaders of one of its two main factions. The multitude of political assassinations in LOTF could be seen as serving a thematic purpose, I suppose, but it ends up having the adverse effect of leaving the Confederation completely faceless. Now the onus is not on Allston but rather Traviss and especially Denning for not delving into the Confeds as a faction almost at all, but in the end that doesn't change the fact that the plot developments here do not land like they should. The war that spawned this story feels foreign to itself. Still, some of the original novel's pitch and the nuances that made it so compelling are preserved even until now, so despite all the trappings I did come out of this half overall satisfied.
If there's one main drawback to Allston's wild attempt at saving in one book what was mishandled in half a dozen it's that he did not have enough time and/or space to develop a lot of his ideas to a satisfying degree. Take the following subplot as an example: The Jedi Order send a team consisting of Jedi Master Kyle Katarn (Dark Forces, baby!), three Jedi Knights, and a Jedi Apprentice to capture or assassinate full-on series antagonist Darth Caedus. On the outset, this seems compelling. It's clear that Caedus won't lose this confrontation, so it allows him to show his threat-level as a villain while giving Katarn his first actual role in these books; furthermore, there's a secret final measure to the mission wherein the team's weakest member will also covertly plant a tracker on Jacen, making it a success even in failure. If you stop and think about it, however, it stops making sense - there's no reason given for why the team should include only one Jedi Master, so why not send in folks like Corran Horn, Kyp Durron, and Saba Sebatyne too if your ultimate goal is to neutralize Caedus? If the Jedi aren't actually supposed to nullify Jacen's threat level but rather go about the tracking business, then why are they genuinely fighting for their life instead of going about things in a more fittingly strategic manner? And I don't think Kyle was well-utilized, either. Allston goes out of his way to dedicate an entire chapter to the Jedi Masters having a lightsaber training session, but famed Jedi Battle Master Kyle Katarn simply... stands around, waiting for an opponent that would never arrive. Star Wars video game enthusiasts will know the character and his abilities, of course, but someone who got into the EU via Del Rey's novels will have no idea of any of that, so why not let him beat up on a heavyweight like Corran or Saba for a minute just to establish his place (and by extension prop up Caedus even more)? There's more of this kind of stuff littered throughout the novel, from weird non-sequiturs in characterization to further the plot (hello, Tycho...) to how Alema Rar, though still compelling, has less page presence here than other books relative to her narrative important. Even if she's still just as fun a screen presence as ever.
Nothing suffered as much as the narrative role of Ben Skywalker, however. For whatever reason, it is in this book that the LOTF series makes the decision to drop Ben as its central protagonist, instead building up Jaina for the role. What they are attempting here is obvious; Jacen and Jaina have been viewed as a pair throughout numerous previous Expanded Universe works, and I am sure that the concept of a duel between the twins went through most readers' heads at some point. The problem is that Jaina does not belong in this role. It's Ben who the previous six books put their attention towards, it's him who has a clearly defined and multifaceted relationship with this new Jacen. You cannot tell me that LOTF was not building towards having Ben in the protagonist role for its first two thirds. In Fury, however? He gets... maybe three or four scenes, has an admittedly decent heart to heart with his father, and does not accomplish much of anything. Jaina, on the other hand, has been criminally neglected up to this point, oftentimes relegated to C-plots at best, her characterization having been dumbed down to pondering what her title of "Sword of the Jedi" really means (spoiler: it's a meaningless one-liner from about 15 books ago), all the while being caught up in an insulting love triangle that diminishes everyone involved. Oh, but in this book we learn that Jaina's been working herself up because she totally has to fight against her brother soon for some reason, and in the final chapter she embarks on a journey to find her future teacher who's gonna show her how to fight like a real soldier, or something. It's impressive, the 180 in character focus Fury pulls right here. The way in which the final chapter directly ties into the next book implies to me that this change in direction was given a bit more thought by the LOTF team than most other things, but still, this just came out of nowhere. Fury's dedication to "saving" the series is to be commended, but it seems like it couldn't quite escape from itself.
My final point is dedicated to Jacen, who works a bit better than usual. Whereas Inferno perpetuated the portrayal of Jacen as an incompetent lunatic, Fury shows him as a threat to be reckoned with for the first time. The duel with Katarn and the other Jedi, as well as Jacen's kidnapping of his daughter Allana are both great showcases of this; in both scenes Caedus is in complete control of the situation, and the one time the opposing side does get the upper hand via the tracker is accomplished without degrading him for no reason. I even like his scenes with Allana, the only times in here where he feels even slightly charismatic. This Jacen is not an interesting character - he has still not regained the depth which LOTF 1 and 2 suggested - but at least the narrative does not take every opportunity to kneecap him for the pleasure (?) of the reader... At least, that's until we reach the very end, in which his plot of the day fails spectacularly and Allston regresses the character back to Exile with its Saturday Day Morning Cartoon villainy. "Nevil stared at him with--what? Fear? Anger? Obsequious acceptance? Caedus couldn't tell. The fishy folk were so hard to read, Mon Cals and Quarren alike. He didn't like them anymore." Once more Fury crumbles under the pressure of attempting to tell a good story.
Still, I do not dislike this book. Legacy of the Force: Fury is ultimately a decent novel at best, but has a lot of things going for it nonetheless. Good character work, a (mostly) focused story, and a genuine attempt to patch things up. I could see myself revisiting it at some point in the future, certainly alongside Betrayal.
I am scared of what comes next.
This was a nice surprise. Being honest, I despised Inferno, the previous book in this series. It was simply a stupidly problematic excuse of a story and put me off Star Wars for about a month immediately after reading it, and Sacrifice wasn't much better, either. Now, did Fury manage to redeem this series, bringing in on track with the NJO or even just making the previous novels worth it? Not quite. But is it at least a valiant attempt at bringing some cohesion to the ongoing narrative, drawing from all three authors' works to put a definite end to some lingering plot threads and ushering in the final act? That it is, and I can say I enjoyed my time with it overall.
Allston tried, he really did. As I already implied, there's a clear attempt at righting some wrongs here. Chief among them is how disjoined each author's books feel with one another. Allston would write about Corellians and the Second Galactic Civil War, Traviss about Mandos and Tony Blair, Denning about Hapans and Alema Rar. Fury is when everything finally comes together: we start the narrative on Kashyyyk, still experiencing the aftermath of Inferno, and are then immediately pushed forward in the Alema subplot with Jag Fel and Boba Fett's gift to the Solos - a plot strand first brought up in Sacrifice! - before reconvening with Caedus and swiftly being thrust into the ongoing War plotline. Yes, no more tunnel vision! It's great to read a book that feels like it is part of a bigger universe again.
Another few instances of damage control can be found in the realm of characterization. This goes from smaller things, like Han reminiscing on his son without the (for these books) usual and unthinking contempt, to an interesting character journey for Jagged Fel. I was a big fan of the character back in The New Jedi Order; he was a bit robotic at times, sure, but ultimately a great exhibit of that series' ability to birth a new generation of protagonists as well as the perfect foil to Jaina's more fierce spirit. Enter The Swarm War and its dedication to systematically destroy the man's life and character followed by early LOTF's directionless Jaina-Jag-Zekk love triangle and my good will had all but disappeared. Thankfully, however, Fury takes the time to delve into how the man ticks in a rather subdued manner, which is capped by a much more direct and definitive involvement in Alema Rar's subplot. One of my favorite scenes here is his verbal takedown of Jaina, which depending on one's inclination towards behinds the scenes drama could be interpreted as a calling out of her handling in the series so far...
Either way, there's one more character aspect I wish to highlight, and it's got to do with the legacy aspect of Legacy of the Force. So Allston introduced a bunch of new Jedi characters back in his first LOTF outing, and Exile rounded out the cast with the weirdly compelling Seha Dorvald. Fury picks up on all of that by giving most of them - Allston forgot Tiu Zax, the traitor! - something to do, and not just that, some other minor characters like Twool (a Jedi initiate from Dark Nest) and Tyria Sarkin of Wraith Squadron fame are brought back into the spotlight as well! This is exactly what the post-NJO needs, a revolving door of mostly younger characters that could one day (and already should have, let's be honest) take over the setting. Brand recognizability be damned, there's simply no way any ongoing fictional setting can survive if it's too unwilling to grant its graying heroes the rest they deserve. My only regret is that this novel does not represent the triumphant return of both Syal and Myri Antilles that I was hoping for, instead focusing exclusively on the former as in Betrayal, but you can't win everyone I suppose. Still, good stuff here, Allston.
Finally, I appreciate the return of the Second Galactic Civil War into the fold of the narrative, even if this is the first area where LOTF's innate storytelling flaws rear their ugly head again. How great it is to finally have some closure with Chekhov's Centerpoint Station. It is simply ridiculous that this has been a hanging thread ever since book one with how ingrained into the conflict at large it seemed there. On that note, the return of gloriously ridiculous author self-insert Dr. Toval Seyah is MUCH appreciated, as are some other returning faces on the Confederation's side such as the criminally underutilized Denjax Teppler and Turr Phennir. It is in said criminal lack of utilization, however, that I can't help but feel underwhelmed with some of the action here. I mean, it's the seventh entry in a nine-book cycle, and I don't really know anything much about the leaders of one of its two main factions. The multitude of political assassinations in LOTF could be seen as serving a thematic purpose, I suppose, but it ends up having the adverse effect of leaving the Confederation completely faceless. Now the onus is not on Allston but rather Traviss and especially Denning for not delving into the Confeds as a faction almost at all, but in the end that doesn't change the fact that the plot developments here do not land like they should. The war that spawned this story feels foreign to itself. Still, some of the original novel's pitch and the nuances that made it so compelling are preserved even until now, so despite all the trappings I did come out of this half overall satisfied.
If there's one main drawback to Allston's wild attempt at saving in one book what was mishandled in half a dozen it's that he did not have enough time and/or space to develop a lot of his ideas to a satisfying degree. Take the following subplot as an example: The Jedi Order send a team consisting of Jedi Master Kyle Katarn (Dark Forces, baby!), three Jedi Knights, and a Jedi Apprentice to capture or assassinate full-on series antagonist Darth Caedus. On the outset, this seems compelling. It's clear that Caedus won't lose this confrontation, so it allows him to show his threat-level as a villain while giving Katarn his first actual role in these books; furthermore, there's a secret final measure to the mission wherein the team's weakest member will also covertly plant a tracker on Jacen, making it a success even in failure. If you stop and think about it, however, it stops making sense - there's no reason given for why the team should include only one Jedi Master, so why not send in folks like Corran Horn, Kyp Durron, and Saba Sebatyne too if your ultimate goal is to neutralize Caedus? If the Jedi aren't actually supposed to nullify Jacen's threat level but rather go about the tracking business, then why are they genuinely fighting for their life instead of going about things in a more fittingly strategic manner? And I don't think Kyle was well-utilized, either. Allston goes out of his way to dedicate an entire chapter to the Jedi Masters having a lightsaber training session, but famed Jedi Battle Master Kyle Katarn simply... stands around, waiting for an opponent that would never arrive. Star Wars video game enthusiasts will know the character and his abilities, of course, but someone who got into the EU via Del Rey's novels will have no idea of any of that, so why not let him beat up on a heavyweight like Corran or Saba for a minute just to establish his place (and by extension prop up Caedus even more)? There's more of this kind of stuff littered throughout the novel, from weird non-sequiturs in characterization to further the plot (hello, Tycho...) to how Alema Rar, though still compelling, has less page presence here than other books relative to her narrative important. Even if she's still just as fun a screen presence as ever.
Nothing suffered as much as the narrative role of Ben Skywalker, however. For whatever reason, it is in this book that the LOTF series makes the decision to drop Ben as its central protagonist, instead building up Jaina for the role. What they are attempting here is obvious; Jacen and Jaina have been viewed as a pair throughout numerous previous Expanded Universe works, and I am sure that the concept of a duel between the twins went through most readers' heads at some point. The problem is that Jaina does not belong in this role. It's Ben who the previous six books put their attention towards, it's him who has a clearly defined and multifaceted relationship with this new Jacen. You cannot tell me that LOTF was not building towards having Ben in the protagonist role for its first two thirds. In Fury, however? He gets... maybe three or four scenes, has an admittedly decent heart to heart with his father, and does not accomplish much of anything. Jaina, on the other hand, has been criminally neglected up to this point, oftentimes relegated to C-plots at best, her characterization having been dumbed down to pondering what her title of "Sword of the Jedi" really means (spoiler: it's a meaningless one-liner from about 15 books ago), all the while being caught up in an insulting love triangle that diminishes everyone involved. Oh, but in this book we learn that Jaina's been working herself up because she totally has to fight against her brother soon for some reason, and in the final chapter she embarks on a journey to find her future teacher who's gonna show her how to fight like a real soldier, or something. It's impressive, the 180 in character focus Fury pulls right here. The way in which the final chapter directly ties into the next book implies to me that this change in direction was given a bit more thought by the LOTF team than most other things, but still, this just came out of nowhere. Fury's dedication to "saving" the series is to be commended, but it seems like it couldn't quite escape from itself.
My final point is dedicated to Jacen, who works a bit better than usual. Whereas Inferno perpetuated the portrayal of Jacen as an incompetent lunatic, Fury shows him as a threat to be reckoned with for the first time. The duel with Katarn and the other Jedi, as well as Jacen's kidnapping of his daughter Allana are both great showcases of this; in both scenes Caedus is in complete control of the situation, and the one time the opposing side does get the upper hand via the tracker is accomplished without degrading him for no reason. I even like his scenes with Allana, the only times in here where he feels even slightly charismatic. This Jacen is not an interesting character - he has still not regained the depth which LOTF 1 and 2 suggested - but at least the narrative does not take every opportunity to kneecap him for the pleasure (?) of the reader... At least, that's until we reach the very end, in which his plot of the day fails spectacularly and Allston regresses the character back to Exile with its Saturday Day Morning Cartoon villainy. "Nevil stared at him with--what? Fear? Anger? Obsequious acceptance? Caedus couldn't tell. The fishy folk were so hard to read, Mon Cals and Quarren alike. He didn't like them anymore." Once more Fury crumbles under the pressure of attempting to tell a good story.
Still, I do not dislike this book. Legacy of the Force: Fury is ultimately a decent novel at best, but has a lot of things going for it nonetheless. Good character work, a (mostly) focused story, and a genuine attempt to patch things up. I could see myself revisiting it at some point in the future, certainly alongside Betrayal.
I am scared of what comes next.
May 5, 2017
Personal Response
I liked this book because you think someone has to live to keep the series going but they make it unexpected ,like the main villain dies something not possible right ,but no they made a new villain with new and unique powers. Also I like it for the tense moments which it has a lot of.
Plot
First the Hapes Consortium withdraws from the Galactic Alliance which then after that Jacen decides to kidnap the Queen's daughter in exchange for the Hape's fleets back. After this Commenor was hit by an asteroid from a Galactic Alliance ship. They retaliated by spreading disease on the Galactic Alliance Home World of Coruscant. Then the Confederation wants peace so they send a delagation in ships ,but it is a trap and most of the vessels are killed by Centerpoint Station's main weapon. Then Jaina, Zekk, and Jag go to Lumiya's asteroid to kill Alema Rar. They succeed but Jag is badly injured and the Sith try to blow up the asteroid which succeeds but our heroes escape it. Then Jacen battles in the space around Corellia trying to take Centerpoint Station. The station fires leaving Jacens flagship the only one left with Jacen on it.
Recommendation
Iwould recommend this to boys but not girls because of the content in this book is very graphic and girls do not usually like graphic books. Boys are a lot more suited to this book because they usually like books with a lot of action in them.
I liked this book because you think someone has to live to keep the series going but they make it unexpected ,like the main villain dies something not possible right ,but no they made a new villain with new and unique powers. Also I like it for the tense moments which it has a lot of.
Plot
First the Hapes Consortium withdraws from the Galactic Alliance which then after that Jacen decides to kidnap the Queen's daughter in exchange for the Hape's fleets back. After this Commenor was hit by an asteroid from a Galactic Alliance ship. They retaliated by spreading disease on the Galactic Alliance Home World of Coruscant. Then the Confederation wants peace so they send a delagation in ships ,but it is a trap and most of the vessels are killed by Centerpoint Station's main weapon. Then Jaina, Zekk, and Jag go to Lumiya's asteroid to kill Alema Rar. They succeed but Jag is badly injured and the Sith try to blow up the asteroid which succeeds but our heroes escape it. Then Jacen battles in the space around Corellia trying to take Centerpoint Station. The station fires leaving Jacens flagship the only one left with Jacen on it.
Recommendation
Iwould recommend this to boys but not girls because of the content in this book is very graphic and girls do not usually like graphic books. Boys are a lot more suited to this book because they usually like books with a lot of action in them.
July 10, 2014
Ho hum...
The Galaxy is at war.
The Jedi are at odds with an evil Sith Lord (Darth Caedus, aka Jacen Solo)
Lots of far fetched scheming and plans...some go awry, some work out.
Aerial battles involving hundreds of ships (all shapes and sizes). Many killed, but not anyone of consequence.
It is a good thing I love Star Wars so much, but I do think I am going to take an extended break from reading anymore SW fiction for a bit as it all seems like the same issues and problems are rehashed over and over again. At least these long series (NJO, LotF, etc) are repetitive anyways. Maybe I will try to stick to trilogies and stand alone pieces. I will finish this series this summer, but that may take a while as I am not real interested in returning to it right now.
The Galaxy is at war.
The Jedi are at odds with an evil Sith Lord (Darth Caedus, aka Jacen Solo)
Lots of far fetched scheming and plans...some go awry, some work out.
Aerial battles involving hundreds of ships (all shapes and sizes). Many killed, but not anyone of consequence.
It is a good thing I love Star Wars so much, but I do think I am going to take an extended break from reading anymore SW fiction for a bit as it all seems like the same issues and problems are rehashed over and over again. At least these long series (NJO, LotF, etc) are repetitive anyways. Maybe I will try to stick to trilogies and stand alone pieces. I will finish this series this summer, but that may take a while as I am not real interested in returning to it right now.
January 25, 2023
Things are really ramping up in this series! Darth Caedus kidnaps his daughter and then has her re-kidnapped by his mom, which will undoubtedly set him on a messed up path. I really can't help but wish they had gone with some version of this story for the new movies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 11, 2020
Especially after the first 3 or so books, everything in this series feels either inevitable or completely drawn out.
January 18, 2023
Fury, the 7th installment of the Legacy of the Force series, manages to continue on the high note established in the novels directly preceding it. It focuses primarily on the individual characters sidestepping the ongoing war and the politics surrounding it a little. Naturally, this does not mean that Fury does not further the overarching plot as these elements still play a role. Plus, with Centerpoint Station being destroyed it includes a major, potentially balance-shifting event. Regardless, the war is not the driving factor of the story, which is an immersive read that is not quite as captivating as Sacrifice or Inferno, but very enjoyable nonetheless.
Initially, the main cast is scattered across the galaxy dealing with the after-effects of preceding events. While still brooding over his duel with Jacen and the implications of his son’s recent behavior, Luke – alongside the remainder of the Jedi order – is busy establishing a new temporary Jedi base on Endor. At the same time, Han and Leia are aiding the efforts aimed at putting out the fires on Kashyyyk caused by none other than their own son and his increasingly inhumane decisions. There they are accompanied by Jaina, Jag, and Zekk, who are preparing to hunt down and confront Alema for now, planning to eventually take on Jacen. Finally, Jacen has issues dealing with the rejection he has experienced at the hands of Tenel Ka and decides to kidnap his own daughter pursuing what appears to be a mixture of a political ploy and personal vengeance scheme. Of course, the whole main cast comes together eventually in a customary showdown.
Obviously, there is a lot going on and the parallel storylines demand that there be a constant back and forth between different settings. While those frequent switches contribute to keeping things interesting on the one hand, on the other hand these also add some confusion. Most prominently this is the case whenever there are pages interspersed that focus on seemingly irrelevant side characters, which felt especially out of place during the final confrontation (the last 100 pages or so). Personally, I think that some of these intermezzos could easily have been omitted, or at least shortened, and feel this novel would be more concise if it were a little shorter.
Content-wise, compared to the previous installments there is fewer aggravating behavior by the main characters for me to rant about. Of course, it is kind of weird that Tenel Ka does not seek out the Jedi immediately after her daughter is kidnapped. Also, Luke only being able to feel Allana’s presence when he is about to blast her to oblivion appears pretty un-masterly to me. But these are only very minor peculiarities, nothing that would warrant a proper rant.
As for Jacen, I keep being amazed by how the authors are still able to find ways in which he can stoop lower. Here, he not only kidnaps his own child, which already is a pretty drastic move, but he repeatedly considers tampering with Allana’s memories to make her forget her own mother, which would be unbelievably cruel. As if this weren’t enough, he now no longer only renounces his living family, but goes so far as to forsake his brother who died honorably. I’m curious to see what more atrocities Jacen has in store for us in the final two novels and I can’t help feeling that a lot of drama and even escalation of the war could have been prevented had Jacen not procreated (and, by extension, had his parents not done so).
Finally, I am a little sad to see Alema go. This is something I had never thought possible as she used to be an annoyance more than a real threat. Here, we see how far she has come as a Dark Side Force wielder. Her ability to create realistic and potentially lethal Force projections exhibits an adeptness to the likeness of her former master, Lumiya. Ultimately, she gives the heroes a real fight that is a lot of fun to read – so much so that her eventual death at the hands of Jag feels a little anticlimactic.
All in all, Fury is an engaging read and easily Allston’s best contribution to the series. While it does not completely manage to match the pace of its imminent predecessors, it offers a very enjoyable story with some interesting insights into the main characters. Furthermore, it sets the scene for the final two novels, which are certain to be an epic conclusion to the series.
Initially, the main cast is scattered across the galaxy dealing with the after-effects of preceding events. While still brooding over his duel with Jacen and the implications of his son’s recent behavior, Luke – alongside the remainder of the Jedi order – is busy establishing a new temporary Jedi base on Endor. At the same time, Han and Leia are aiding the efforts aimed at putting out the fires on Kashyyyk caused by none other than their own son and his increasingly inhumane decisions. There they are accompanied by Jaina, Jag, and Zekk, who are preparing to hunt down and confront Alema for now, planning to eventually take on Jacen. Finally, Jacen has issues dealing with the rejection he has experienced at the hands of Tenel Ka and decides to kidnap his own daughter pursuing what appears to be a mixture of a political ploy and personal vengeance scheme. Of course, the whole main cast comes together eventually in a customary showdown.
Obviously, there is a lot going on and the parallel storylines demand that there be a constant back and forth between different settings. While those frequent switches contribute to keeping things interesting on the one hand, on the other hand these also add some confusion. Most prominently this is the case whenever there are pages interspersed that focus on seemingly irrelevant side characters, which felt especially out of place during the final confrontation (the last 100 pages or so). Personally, I think that some of these intermezzos could easily have been omitted, or at least shortened, and feel this novel would be more concise if it were a little shorter.
Content-wise, compared to the previous installments there is fewer aggravating behavior by the main characters for me to rant about. Of course, it is kind of weird that Tenel Ka does not seek out the Jedi immediately after her daughter is kidnapped. Also, Luke only being able to feel Allana’s presence when he is about to blast her to oblivion appears pretty un-masterly to me. But these are only very minor peculiarities, nothing that would warrant a proper rant.
As for Jacen, I keep being amazed by how the authors are still able to find ways in which he can stoop lower. Here, he not only kidnaps his own child, which already is a pretty drastic move, but he repeatedly considers tampering with Allana’s memories to make her forget her own mother, which would be unbelievably cruel. As if this weren’t enough, he now no longer only renounces his living family, but goes so far as to forsake his brother who died honorably. I’m curious to see what more atrocities Jacen has in store for us in the final two novels and I can’t help feeling that a lot of drama and even escalation of the war could have been prevented had Jacen not procreated (and, by extension, had his parents not done so).
Finally, I am a little sad to see Alema go. This is something I had never thought possible as she used to be an annoyance more than a real threat. Here, we see how far she has come as a Dark Side Force wielder. Her ability to create realistic and potentially lethal Force projections exhibits an adeptness to the likeness of her former master, Lumiya. Ultimately, she gives the heroes a real fight that is a lot of fun to read – so much so that her eventual death at the hands of Jag feels a little anticlimactic.
All in all, Fury is an engaging read and easily Allston’s best contribution to the series. While it does not completely manage to match the pace of its imminent predecessors, it offers a very enjoyable story with some interesting insights into the main characters. Furthermore, it sets the scene for the final two novels, which are certain to be an epic conclusion to the series.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 29, 2018
Rating: 6.5/10
This Novel Feels Slow and Repeatable
Warning: This Review May Contain Spoilers
It is getting harder and harder to review the novels of the Legacy of the Force as an individual novel rather than a collective, as the further into the series the slower it feels. It is beginning to feel like the plot narrative between the Solo's and Skywalkers as the heroes, and the fallen Jacen Solo as a villian was meant to occur of say three-four books, stretched over instead to nine books. I just don't understand how all these Jedi Masters, and skilled Skywalker/Solo bloodlines continually meet and face Jacen and fail to kill, whilst Jacen has all the luck in the world to walk away alive despite the fact that the odds are heavily against me. As I reading, its hard to keep an objective mind, as this is just so frustrating, and detracting from the story. At this point, I just want the Jacen arc to end with the final fight. As up to this point the way it has been presented it has been too slow, both Jacen's story and how his family and the world around him is reacting.
This seems to be Fury's biggest weakness - there feels like there is formula repeated in each novel. Jacen does something dark/horrible/violent, everyone else spends the next 3/4 of the novel reacting, Jacen faces off against the heroes and then somehow the heroes always fail to defeat him or he manages to get away ready to be repeated in the next novel.
A positive of the novel of the novel, is Jacen, Darth Caedus' darkside presence is really starting to show as he kidnaps his daughter from Tenel Ka for her "betrayal" against him. And whilst it was great to finally see a member of the family finally realise Jacen has a child, it is also a frustration of the series, that no one has picked up on another presence with the Skywalker/Solo force presence before know, despite being in contact with both Jacen, Tenel Ka and Allanna before.
Ben Skywalker continues to be the highlight of the series, as a child forced to grow up as adult quickly and before time, having to come to grips with some very traumatic and dark issues. I like the continual struggle Ben has, as his feelings of anger and betrayal at Jacen for the murder of his mother. After all the struggles, Ben has had with his father, and after seeing the bonding moments with his mother, Mara, it was fantastic to finally see Ben and Luke have a father and son moment, with Ben being the one to reach out to him, and help him come to grips with Mara's death.
With Ben certainly being the continually highlight, the second best thing about this book was finally the demise of Alema Rar, a character who has managed to stay around for too many novels and series now. It was fantastic to finally see her annoying storyline come to an end, and the fact that it was not a jedi who was able to take her down.
It was good to have more of Jaina Solo in the novel, but there is still not enough of her in the novel considering it his her twin brother at the heart of all these dark deeds. I think the story should be solely focusing on Jaina, Ben and Jacen, and through them to interact with other characters, as at times there story feels disproportioned considering the plot to the minor characters.
Overall a well written book, but the overall plot of the series detracts from the story heavily will a feeling of dragging and slowness.
This Novel Feels Slow and Repeatable
Warning: This Review May Contain Spoilers
It is getting harder and harder to review the novels of the Legacy of the Force as an individual novel rather than a collective, as the further into the series the slower it feels. It is beginning to feel like the plot narrative between the Solo's and Skywalkers as the heroes, and the fallen Jacen Solo as a villian was meant to occur of say three-four books, stretched over instead to nine books. I just don't understand how all these Jedi Masters, and skilled Skywalker/Solo bloodlines continually meet and face Jacen and fail to kill, whilst Jacen has all the luck in the world to walk away alive despite the fact that the odds are heavily against me. As I reading, its hard to keep an objective mind, as this is just so frustrating, and detracting from the story. At this point, I just want the Jacen arc to end with the final fight. As up to this point the way it has been presented it has been too slow, both Jacen's story and how his family and the world around him is reacting.
This seems to be Fury's biggest weakness - there feels like there is formula repeated in each novel. Jacen does something dark/horrible/violent, everyone else spends the next 3/4 of the novel reacting, Jacen faces off against the heroes and then somehow the heroes always fail to defeat him or he manages to get away ready to be repeated in the next novel.
A positive of the novel of the novel, is Jacen, Darth Caedus' darkside presence is really starting to show as he kidnaps his daughter from Tenel Ka for her "betrayal" against him. And whilst it was great to finally see a member of the family finally realise Jacen has a child, it is also a frustration of the series, that no one has picked up on another presence with the Skywalker/Solo force presence before know, despite being in contact with both Jacen, Tenel Ka and Allanna before.
Ben Skywalker continues to be the highlight of the series, as a child forced to grow up as adult quickly and before time, having to come to grips with some very traumatic and dark issues. I like the continual struggle Ben has, as his feelings of anger and betrayal at Jacen for the murder of his mother. After all the struggles, Ben has had with his father, and after seeing the bonding moments with his mother, Mara, it was fantastic to finally see Ben and Luke have a father and son moment, with Ben being the one to reach out to him, and help him come to grips with Mara's death.
With Ben certainly being the continually highlight, the second best thing about this book was finally the demise of Alema Rar, a character who has managed to stay around for too many novels and series now. It was fantastic to finally see her annoying storyline come to an end, and the fact that it was not a jedi who was able to take her down.
It was good to have more of Jaina Solo in the novel, but there is still not enough of her in the novel considering it his her twin brother at the heart of all these dark deeds. I think the story should be solely focusing on Jaina, Ben and Jacen, and through them to interact with other characters, as at times there story feels disproportioned considering the plot to the minor characters.
Overall a well written book, but the overall plot of the series detracts from the story heavily will a feeling of dragging and slowness.
April 11, 2018
So far the entire Legacy of the Force books have been based on misunderstandings and characters acting out of character. It's getting harder to believe these books are going the way they are. Jacen hasn't done much that was actually wrong. Burning Kashyyyk? Wrong. Killing that officer at the end of this book? Wrong. Refusing to engage in nepotism despite fierce pushing from his family? Right. If you think about it it's his own family and friends that are driving Jacen to be what he is.
"What's that? You aren't going to play by the rules of nepotism? You're going to be a fair leader? What is wrong with you why won't you let your family slide?"
"You used a routine interrogation tactic and it just so happened the person had a brain anomaly that no one could have predicted and she died? You tortured her to death and I no longer call you son."
"You fired on known war criminals? How could you!"
"You caught the chief of state committing treason and replaced him with yourself? How could you do this you horrible person taking down a legit government that I no longer side with anyway because I think Corellia shouldn't have to play by the rules."
And so on and so on, and he only had to kill Mara in self defense. He tortured Ben because it was the same torture that helped him out in the long run, and to someone who wasn't a tortured pow maybe it doesn't make sense, but I can see how it would to him.
I still think the entire problem could have been solved if Jacen and Tenal Ka had just told Han and Leia about Allana from the beginning. As if those two couldn't keep a secret, you know? I think having Han and Leia in the know would have taken a lot of stress off both of them, but especially Jacen and his need to do anything to prevent Allana from experiencing what he went through.
I also think a lot of it could have been avoided if Han hadn't suddenly gained a "Corellia or nothing" attitude.
btw what is up with Corellia? "I don't want to pool my military sources with the rest of the galaxy but the minute I need help I'm sure gonna call in help form the pool" It's like those people who don't want to pay taxes then expect the fire department to respond when their house is on fire.
"What's that? You aren't going to play by the rules of nepotism? You're going to be a fair leader? What is wrong with you why won't you let your family slide?"
"You used a routine interrogation tactic and it just so happened the person had a brain anomaly that no one could have predicted and she died? You tortured her to death and I no longer call you son."
"You fired on known war criminals? How could you!"
"You caught the chief of state committing treason and replaced him with yourself? How could you do this you horrible person taking down a legit government that I no longer side with anyway because I think Corellia shouldn't have to play by the rules."
And so on and so on, and he only had to kill Mara in self defense. He tortured Ben because it was the same torture that helped him out in the long run, and to someone who wasn't a tortured pow maybe it doesn't make sense, but I can see how it would to him.
I still think the entire problem could have been solved if Jacen and Tenal Ka had just told Han and Leia about Allana from the beginning. As if those two couldn't keep a secret, you know? I think having Han and Leia in the know would have taken a lot of stress off both of them, but especially Jacen and his need to do anything to prevent Allana from experiencing what he went through.
I also think a lot of it could have been avoided if Han hadn't suddenly gained a "Corellia or nothing" attitude.
btw what is up with Corellia? "I don't want to pool my military sources with the rest of the galaxy but the minute I need help I'm sure gonna call in help form the pool" It's like those people who don't want to pay taxes then expect the fire department to respond when their house is on fire.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 27, 2021
I was reading through some of the other reviews of this novel and I see that some of my fellow readers believe that Aaron Allston was the weakest writer who worked on this series. I still think that Denning was the weakest, but I've been mad at him since Star by Star so badly tried my patience. Allston at least has a feel for the characters, and his action and pacing are excellent.
In this installment, Jacen (aka Darth Caedus) really leans into his Sith-iness, consolidating his power over the Galactic Alliance, Force-choking subordinates, and taking it to his enemies, hard. There are a lot of plot threads in this series, and Allston does his best to balance them all out. His pacing remains better than most of his colleagues. Here, he leads us to one major set-piece about halfway through the novel, a wild fight between Caedus and multiple Jedi, including Kyle Katarn. That sequence is genuinely exciting, especially when you realize the whole melee is a tactical diversion. There are several more large action sequences near the end of the novel, of varying quality.
The two largest threads cutting through the book are the search for Alema Rar, still believed by many to be the killer of Mara Jade, and Jacen kidnapping his daughter Allana, followed by a Jedi rescue attempt. Allston's focus on those two through-lines makes this a little more focused than some of the other entries in the series, and as someone else has said, his use of humor and action undercut some of the worst of the melodrama. And Allston, like Karen Traviss, is one of the better Star Wars authors at dealing with strategies and tactics, so the action propels this book from start to finish.
Fury proves to be a competent, entertaining, entry. Nonetheless, I still feel that the entire Legacy of the Force series could have been shorter. There are enough extraneous plot threads in the sequence, and sufficient redundancies, that I keep wishing for the authors to cut to the chase. I think this should have been a six or seven book series maximum. Looking forward to finishing it and getting back to some standalone novels.
In this installment, Jacen (aka Darth Caedus) really leans into his Sith-iness, consolidating his power over the Galactic Alliance, Force-choking subordinates, and taking it to his enemies, hard. There are a lot of plot threads in this series, and Allston does his best to balance them all out. His pacing remains better than most of his colleagues. Here, he leads us to one major set-piece about halfway through the novel, a wild fight between Caedus and multiple Jedi, including Kyle Katarn. That sequence is genuinely exciting, especially when you realize the whole melee is a tactical diversion. There are several more large action sequences near the end of the novel, of varying quality.
The two largest threads cutting through the book are the search for Alema Rar, still believed by many to be the killer of Mara Jade, and Jacen kidnapping his daughter Allana, followed by a Jedi rescue attempt. Allston's focus on those two through-lines makes this a little more focused than some of the other entries in the series, and as someone else has said, his use of humor and action undercut some of the worst of the melodrama. And Allston, like Karen Traviss, is one of the better Star Wars authors at dealing with strategies and tactics, so the action propels this book from start to finish.
Fury proves to be a competent, entertaining, entry. Nonetheless, I still feel that the entire Legacy of the Force series could have been shorter. There are enough extraneous plot threads in the sequence, and sufficient redundancies, that I keep wishing for the authors to cut to the chase. I think this should have been a six or seven book series maximum. Looking forward to finishing it and getting back to some standalone novels.
March 13, 2025
I’m not sure what it is that changed in the recent Star Wars books I’ve read, but I’m really enjoying them lately. I actually texted my brother during this one that the way it’s framed, I can almost picture the scene transitions like the movie with the trademark wipe as you move from one chapter to the next.
I think what helped it most was honestly having a more focused cast to form the plot around. It’s really Jacen and then Han/Leia/Jaina/Jag/Zekk as the two threads being followed. There’s some Luke and Ben with the other Jedi, a little bit of Hapes, and a little Corellia, but it stays significantly more focused than other Star Wars books.
It’s also nice to have some characters working together and being open with each other again. I get that the first half of this series had to move all of the chess pieces around so they’d be in the right place for the finale, but that doesn’t make it any less tedious getting there.
The reason I took off a star is that the plot overall is still pretty rough. The fact that so many people are doubling down on terrible decisions and sacrificing people to the engines of war is heartbreaking. I think it reflects the real world, but it’s so exaggerated that it makes people who aren’t opposing the war or generally calling for a ceasefire look foolish. Even some of the Jedi’s decisions and some of the other decisive actions that could have been taken are thrown into stark contrast with the lives they could’ve saved if not for their precious “light side” morals.
That’s all relatively minor, in my opinion, though. It works in the galaxy of Star Wars, and it raises the stakes believably.
Also, I would’ve been so annoyed by the cliffhanger at the end if my copy didn’t include a preview chapter of the next book that tells you exactly where Jaina is going.
I think what helped it most was honestly having a more focused cast to form the plot around. It’s really Jacen and then Han/Leia/Jaina/Jag/Zekk as the two threads being followed. There’s some Luke and Ben with the other Jedi, a little bit of Hapes, and a little Corellia, but it stays significantly more focused than other Star Wars books.
It’s also nice to have some characters working together and being open with each other again. I get that the first half of this series had to move all of the chess pieces around so they’d be in the right place for the finale, but that doesn’t make it any less tedious getting there.
The reason I took off a star is that the plot overall is still pretty rough. The fact that so many people are doubling down on terrible decisions and sacrificing people to the engines of war is heartbreaking. I think it reflects the real world, but it’s so exaggerated that it makes people who aren’t opposing the war or generally calling for a ceasefire look foolish. Even some of the Jedi’s decisions and some of the other decisive actions that could have been taken are thrown into stark contrast with the lives they could’ve saved if not for their precious “light side” morals.
That’s all relatively minor, in my opinion, though. It works in the galaxy of Star Wars, and it raises the stakes believably.
Also, I would’ve been so annoyed by the cliffhanger at the end if my copy didn’t include a preview chapter of the next book that tells you exactly where Jaina is going.
April 6, 2025
I'll say this: Aaron Allston is responsible for the high points of the LOTF series. His writing is the most consistent out of the three authors and he alone seems to be the one who most gets the characters. The military/political aspects are strongest in his books, and especially him featuring some focus on Corellia, where this all began.
Also, THANK YOU for finally killing that worthless cockroach Alema Rae. God, she is like a bad penny: she just shows up and drags the story down immediately. She did absolutely nothing of note for the entire time, and had absolutely no impact on the plot whatsoever.
Caedus, now a full fledged supper villain, decides to kidnap his daughter Allana to teach Tenal Ka a lesson. Because nothing screams "fatherly love" like a little kidnapping. Remember the early books when he tried to claim he wasn't gonna be like Vader cause he wouldn't make the same mistakes? Welp.
Han, Leia, and the Jedi manage to completely humiliate Caedus over and over first by infiltrating his ship and stealing data from his shuttle to finda Alema, then doing it again to rescue Allana and destroy Centerpoint. At this point, he just comes across as impotent and a whiny bitch. Hey, just like Vader!
Anyway, he's spiraling out of control, Luke is done grieving for Mara, and the jedi rebels are back to being a pain in Caedus's ass while the Confederation continues to fight.
Also, THANK YOU for finally killing that worthless cockroach Alema Rae. God, she is like a bad penny: she just shows up and drags the story down immediately. She did absolutely nothing of note for the entire time, and had absolutely no impact on the plot whatsoever.
Caedus, now a full fledged supper villain, decides to kidnap his daughter Allana to teach Tenal Ka a lesson. Because nothing screams "fatherly love" like a little kidnapping. Remember the early books when he tried to claim he wasn't gonna be like Vader cause he wouldn't make the same mistakes? Welp.
Han, Leia, and the Jedi manage to completely humiliate Caedus over and over first by infiltrating his ship and stealing data from his shuttle to finda Alema, then doing it again to rescue Allana and destroy Centerpoint. At this point, he just comes across as impotent and a whiny bitch. Hey, just like Vader!
Anyway, he's spiraling out of control, Luke is done grieving for Mara, and the jedi rebels are back to being a pain in Caedus's ass while the Confederation continues to fight.
November 9, 2020
Refreshing to be back on an Allston book, even his worst are better than most of the books they're slotted alongside. A couple of lines in this book made me laugh out loud, and one character decision made me swear.
I burned through this fast and felt the writing balanced Caedus' fall and emotional reasoning with the overall melodrama well. Luke was an enjoyable character to read for the first time in a while, and I even enjoyed the Alema plot, which surprised me as I felt she hadn't really done much novel or interesting for a while.
As always, Allston comes in to a trash fire of plot threads and manages to balance a large cast with humour and a minimum of exposition to make something interesting happen.
Genuinely disapointed that I've now read all the Allston Star Wars novels, I'll have to see if there's anything else of his I should pick up, or just reread Wraith Squadron.
I burned through this fast and felt the writing balanced Caedus' fall and emotional reasoning with the overall melodrama well. Luke was an enjoyable character to read for the first time in a while, and I even enjoyed the Alema plot, which surprised me as I felt she hadn't really done much novel or interesting for a while.
As always, Allston comes in to a trash fire of plot threads and manages to balance a large cast with humour and a minimum of exposition to make something interesting happen.
Genuinely disapointed that I've now read all the Allston Star Wars novels, I'll have to see if there's anything else of his I should pick up, or just reread Wraith Squadron.
January 28, 2019
Another great entry in the Legacy of the Force series, this time by Aaron Allston.
I really enjoyed the interactions between Ben and Luke in this book. They're both recovering from Mara's death, and finally seem to get back to normal, or at leas was normal as things can be. Luke had many great moments of development as he realizes that he is too apathetic after what happened. Ben really is his own character now, having gone through a lot of terrible things to mature too quickly, like a lot of Star Wars characters.
Jane continues to rack up the bad deeds, as he kidnaps his daughter and threatens to kill her and kills his subordinates for failing him. He's a full-blown Sith lord now, and he really makes a good villain.
Jaina and Jag do more in this book than previous ones, hunting down Alema with Han, Leia, and Zekk. It's great to see them in action again, although they did do things in the last book. Alema herself is pretty well-written in this book to, and I actually felt some sympathy for her as she died.
This is the third-to-last book in the series, and things are really escalating, as they should be. Altogether a really good book.
I really enjoyed the interactions between Ben and Luke in this book. They're both recovering from Mara's death, and finally seem to get back to normal, or at leas was normal as things can be. Luke had many great moments of development as he realizes that he is too apathetic after what happened. Ben really is his own character now, having gone through a lot of terrible things to mature too quickly, like a lot of Star Wars characters.
Jane continues to rack up the bad deeds, as he kidnaps his daughter and threatens to kill her and kills his subordinates for failing him. He's a full-blown Sith lord now, and he really makes a good villain.
Jaina and Jag do more in this book than previous ones, hunting down Alema with Han, Leia, and Zekk. It's great to see them in action again, although they did do things in the last book. Alema herself is pretty well-written in this book to, and I actually felt some sympathy for her as she died.
This is the third-to-last book in the series, and things are really escalating, as they should be. Altogether a really good book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2025
I love reading Aaron Allston’s books since I always feel like I’m part of the action. This book didn’t disappoint.
In the aftermath of Centerpoint Station’s laser being used against the Galactic Alliance, in a trap for Jason, they have mounted a force has to take it under GA control. In the meantime the Jedi plan a dual counter. Destroy Centerpoint and remove it from play for both sides and rescue Allana from Jason, which will also release the Hapes Cluster to have more freedom of choice on who they support for the war. While Corellia has internal battles of power that hinder their progress in the war.
While Jason continues his evil slide deeper into the dark side he hasn’t openly become Darth Cadeus yet. He has admitted to Allana that he’s her father and she knows and accepts him. However there is still doubt as he has not used her safe code.
We see our favorite mix of heroes. Han, Leia, Luke, Wedge, Tycho, Ben, Jaina, Jag, a lot of the other Jedi. All so well blended in the story you don’t feel cheated. In the end, bittersweet, Han and Leia realize they have a new addition to the family.
In the aftermath of Centerpoint Station’s laser being used against the Galactic Alliance, in a trap for Jason, they have mounted a force has to take it under GA control. In the meantime the Jedi plan a dual counter. Destroy Centerpoint and remove it from play for both sides and rescue Allana from Jason, which will also release the Hapes Cluster to have more freedom of choice on who they support for the war. While Corellia has internal battles of power that hinder their progress in the war.
While Jason continues his evil slide deeper into the dark side he hasn’t openly become Darth Cadeus yet. He has admitted to Allana that he’s her father and she knows and accepts him. However there is still doubt as he has not used her safe code.
We see our favorite mix of heroes. Han, Leia, Luke, Wedge, Tycho, Ben, Jaina, Jag, a lot of the other Jedi. All so well blended in the story you don’t feel cheated. In the end, bittersweet, Han and Leia realize they have a new addition to the family.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 16, 2021
Now this is Star Wars again. Action. Pain. Loss. Hope. Cruelty. Love.
The series plot is really coming to fruition. All the character developments from previous novels are finally paying dividends. All coming together and working themselves into real (fictional) life scenarios.
The thrill is there again. Finally.
This book was a pleasure to read. It totally deserves its rating. You do need to read the previous books. All the Legacy of the Force series at least.
Having said that, this is a Star Wars book so it isn't worth reading if you are not a fan. It is a really enjoyable read but if you want serious sci-fi or you don't like Star Wars then don't bother. If you are looking for some fun, albeit with a sometimes dark and serious side, in the Star Wars universe then go for it.
The series plot is really coming to fruition. All the character developments from previous novels are finally paying dividends. All coming together and working themselves into real (fictional) life scenarios.
The thrill is there again. Finally.
This book was a pleasure to read. It totally deserves its rating. You do need to read the previous books. All the Legacy of the Force series at least.
Having said that, this is a Star Wars book so it isn't worth reading if you are not a fan. It is a really enjoyable read but if you want serious sci-fi or you don't like Star Wars then don't bother. If you are looking for some fun, albeit with a sometimes dark and serious side, in the Star Wars universe then go for it.
January 16, 2024
DNF @ 30%
I hate Aaron Allston's writing style. There's too much telling and not enough showing. I finally had enough after reading a line that said something like "things were very chaotic", when nothing was described that felt chaotic. With prose like that, how is this almost 400 pages? He uses exposition to shortcut important actions, but then blabbers on and on for meaningless details. All of the characters have the same voice. Every scene drags. This feels like Allston went into his second draft with the aim of reaching a higher word count and forgot to make the characters interesting. Leia and Jaina continue to get robbed of any good development and treatment.
After reading the Reader's Companion summary, I'm glad I put this down.
I hate Aaron Allston's writing style. There's too much telling and not enough showing. I finally had enough after reading a line that said something like "things were very chaotic", when nothing was described that felt chaotic. With prose like that, how is this almost 400 pages? He uses exposition to shortcut important actions, but then blabbers on and on for meaningless details. All of the characters have the same voice. Every scene drags. This feels like Allston went into his second draft with the aim of reaching a higher word count and forgot to make the characters interesting. Leia and Jaina continue to get robbed of any good development and treatment.
After reading the Reader's Companion summary, I'm glad I put this down.
January 5, 2021
While Luke and Ben try to cope with Mara’s death, Jaina, Jag and Zekk hunt for Alima Rar (the presumed killer of Mara). Alima discovers the Sith nest but is not what she expected. Jacen meanwhile grows weaker in my view - he makes sloppy mistakes, clearly needing still guidance, making silly moves and allowing people to slip his manipulation grip, turning him into the most hated person even by his family and loved ones.. To be honest I found the storyline of Jacen a bit weak and not properly evolved of how he got so drunk on power and arrogant to slip in such a way. Only because of this I give 3 stars. Otherwise was a good book.
February 15, 2021
Man merkt teilweise schon recht deutlich, dass die Reihe von drei unterschiedlichen Autoren geschrieben wurde.
Der Stil und die Handlungsschwerpunkte wechseln von Buch zu Buch.
So hat die Handlung rund um Boba Fett in diesem Teil komplett gefehlt.
Nach wie vor, eine spannende Star Wars Geschichte.
Ich habe mir nach dem letzten Buch einen größeren Fokus auf den inneren Zwiespalt in Ben gewünscht. Seine stetige Entwicklung in Richtung Dunkelheit in den ersten Teilen wurde nach dem Showdown über Kashyyyk rückgängig gemacht. Der als "Zorn" betitelte Teil dieser Reihe mit Ben auf dem Titelbild hatte mich hier einen interessanteren Mittelweg zwischen Licht und Dunkelheit vermuten lassen.
Der Stil und die Handlungsschwerpunkte wechseln von Buch zu Buch.
So hat die Handlung rund um Boba Fett in diesem Teil komplett gefehlt.
Nach wie vor, eine spannende Star Wars Geschichte.
Ich habe mir nach dem letzten Buch einen größeren Fokus auf den inneren Zwiespalt in Ben gewünscht. Seine stetige Entwicklung in Richtung Dunkelheit in den ersten Teilen wurde nach dem Showdown über Kashyyyk rückgängig gemacht. Der als "Zorn" betitelte Teil dieser Reihe mit Ben auf dem Titelbild hatte mich hier einen interessanteren Mittelweg zwischen Licht und Dunkelheit vermuten lassen.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 23, 2020
Jaina is finally doing something! But not in the best way. Yes, she is focused on training, as she is finally beginning to understand that she might have to kill her brother, who is now a full Sith Lord with Force powers far superior to most of them. But she is focusing obsesively in the usual Jedi fighting style, controlled and familiar. Thankfully, Jag is the one to show her that her enemies won't be fighting fair, so she has to get an edge, something that Jacen won't see coming.
Besides that, I enjoyed Ben, Tenel Ka, and, of course, the one and only Luke Skywalker.
Besides that, I enjoyed Ben, Tenel Ka, and, of course, the one and only Luke Skywalker.
December 19, 2021
The pre-showdown showdown, in which all the loose ends get wrapped up (Alema, Allana, Luke's confidence) before the calm before the storm, in the next book. Sitting between the great Inferno and Revelation it's a slight letdown, but a necessary one, as Allana and Jacen's ties are severed, Alema is brought to frontier justice, and Jacen kills Tebut, beginning to lose the support of his last allies - his troops. (Which he regains later, but only through fear.)
Have Jag, Jaina and Zekk finally figured it out? When will their drama end? Did you think there would be this many questions?
Have Jag, Jaina and Zekk finally figured it out? When will their drama end? Did you think there would be this many questions?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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