Star Wars: Agents of Chaos

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order #4-5

by James Luceno

As Hero's Trial begins, the New Republic reels beneath the ongoing onslaught of the alien Yuuzhan Vong, leaving dozens of worlds shattered or enslaved. The Jedi Knights themselves are not immune to defeat, as these dark times have already claimed one and then another of their number. Even brave Chewbacca was lost, dying as heroically as he lived, and leaving Han Solo to carry on the battle alone. And fight on he does, until a chance discovery reveals a diabolical conspiracy that threatens to destroy the Jedi forever...unless Han can find a way to stop it.

Jedi Eclipse finds Luke Skywalker doing his best to keep the quarreling Jedi Knights from splitting apart, taking the New Republic's only hope with them. Meanwhile, Han Solo continues his own battles, trying desperately to thwart the enemy's schemes, a challenge that may prove to be his greatest...or his last.

Genres: Star Wars, Science Fiction

480 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

James Luceno is a New York Times bestselling author, best known for his novels and reference books connected with the Star Wars franchise and the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and novelisations of the Robotech animated television series. He lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and youngest child.

He has co-written many books with Brian Daley as Jack McKinney.

Reviews

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Luceno’s not my favorite SW author—I feel like generally speaking he doesn’t get as into the characters’ heads as some of the other authors, though this was much better in that respect than his other books I’ve read. But even so, this duology was enjoyable, Mara’s in remission, Han’s still a mess, I still don’t like Thrackan, REALLY don’t like Fey’lya, and things in the galaxy are getting progressively worse. I wish there’d been more of the kids and Luke and Mara, I kind of felt like they got forgotten about a lot of the time. But we did finally get more of Han than we’ve seen since Vector Prime, since instead of going out drinking, he’s going out nearly getting himself killed. And he did make up with Anakin...but he’s got some work to do on his relationship with Leia. The Skywalker/Solo family is such a mess. Also, the first was definitely better than the second. I liked the bits with Centerpoint and the part about Hapes (though he definitely could have done a lot more with that), but a lot of it was just following random refugees. Just in general, I feel like half the time Luceno forgets he’s writing a novel and not a volume of galactic history. Much more so in his prequel era books, but still. I’d much rather read Denning, or Zahn, or Stackpole, or Anderson even with his blob races. (Or Jude Watson, but I’m not sure how fair it is to bring in a children’s author with all the nostalgia for comparison.)

[Darlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am steering this up to almost a 4.5, but not quite. It's a bit too long and had a few other minor issues (like a bunch of political talk) that make it less than perfect.

This book combines books 4 and 5 (or 4 and 6 depending on which reading list you read) of the New Jedi Order series. Both books featured Han Solo heavily. I actually liked the Han and Droma storyline. I also found the story about Skidder and the Yammosk interesting. Still, I have a long way to go before I get to the end of the series.