Allies

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi #5

by Christie Golden, Marc Thompson (Narrator)

What began as a quest for truth has become a struggle for survival for Luke Skywalker and his son, Ben. They have used the secrets of the Mindwalkers to transcend their own bodies and speak with the spirits of the fallen, risking their very lives in the process. They have faced a team of Sith assassins and beaten the odds to destroy them. And now the death squad's sole survivor, Sith apprentice Vestara Khai, has summoned an entire fleet of Sith frigates to engage the embattled father and son. But the dark warriors come bearing a surprising proposition that will bring Jedi and Sith together in an unprecedented alliance against an evil more ancient and alien than they can imagine.
While the Skywalkers and their Sith allies set off on their joint mission into the treacherous web of black holes that is the Maw, Han and Leia Solo risk arrest and worse to aid the Jedi imprisoned back on Coruscant. Tyrannical Chief of State Natasi Daala has issued orders that will open a permanent schism between her government and the Jedi Order--a schism that could turn all Jedi into renegades and wanted criminals.
But it is in the depths of the Maw that the future of the galaxy will be decided. For there the Skywalkers and their Sith allies will engage a true monster in battle, and Luke will come face-to-face with a staggering truth. "From the Hardcover edition."

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

13 pages, Audio CD

First published February 9, 2012

About the author

Award-winning author Christie Golden has written over thirty novels and several short stories in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. She has over a million books in print.

2009 will see no fewer than three novels published. First out in late April will be a World of Warcraft novel, Athas: Rise of the Lich King. This is the first Warcraft novel to appear in hardcover. Fans of the young paladin who fell so far from grace will get to read his definitive story.

In June, Golden’s first Star Wars novel, also a hardcover, sees print. Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi—Omen is the second in a nine-book series she is co-authoring with Aaron Allston and Troy Denning. Also in June comes the conclusion of Golden’s StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga with the release of Twlight, the third book in the series. The first two are Firstborn and Shadow Hunters.

2004 saw the launch of an original fantasy series called The Final Dance, from LUNA Books. The first novel in the series, On Fire's Wings, was published in July of that year. The second, In Stone’s Clasp , came out in September of 2005. With In Stone’s Clasp, Golden won the Colorado Author’s League Top Hand Award for Best Genre Novel for the second time. The third book, Under Sea’s Shadow, is available only as an e-book

Golden is also the author of two original fantasy novels from Ace Books, King's Man and Thief and Instrument of Fate, which made the 1996 Nebula Preliminary Ballot. Under the pen name of Jadrien Bell, she wrote a historical fantasy thriller entitled A.D. 999, which won the Colorado Author's League Top Hand Award for Best Genre Novel of 1999.

Golden launched the TSR Ravenloft line in 1991 with her first novel, the highly successful Vampire of the Mists , which introduced elven vampire Jander Sunstar. Golden followed up Vampire with Dance of the Dead and The Enemy Within . In September of 2006, fifteen years to the month, The Ravenloft Covenant: Vampire of the Mists enabled Jander Sunstar to reach a whole new audience.

Other projects include a slew of Star Trek novels, among them The Murdered Sun , Marooned , and Seven of Nine , and "The Dark Matters Trilogy," Cloak and Dagger , Ghost Dance and Shadow of Heaven .

The Voyager novel relaunch, which includes Homecoming and The Farther Shore , were bestsellers and were the fastest-selling Trek novels of 2003. Golden continued writing VOYAGER novels even though the show went off the air, and enjoyed exploring the creative freedom that gave her in the two-parter called Spirit Walk, which includes Old Wounds and Enemy of my Enemy .

Golden has also written the novelization of Steven Spielberg's Invasion America and an original "prequel," On The Run , both of which received high praise from producer Harve Bennett. On The Run, a combination medical thriller and science fiction adventure, even prompted Bennett to invite Golden to assist in crafting the second season of the show, if it was renewed.

Golden lives in Loveland, Colorado, with her artist husband and their two cats.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Allies" is another disappointing entry in the "Fate fo the Jedi" series for mostly the same reasons the rest of the books have been subpar, with the added disadvantage of being written by Christie Golden, whose knack for writing the young-adult tone is as uncanny as it is annoying.

To get the gist of things, you really have to examine "Allies" from both the macro- and the micro-level.

Looking at the big picture, this entire series frustrates because of its elementary complexity and scope. For instance, the previous multi-novel arc (the rather impressive and intricately plotted "Legacy of the Force") featured an over-arching plot centered around Jacen Solo's gradual descent into the temptations of the dark-side. Each novel upped the stakes a bit as Jacen took baby-steps to accomplish what he rationalized as justifiable goals, each novel building on the last until he finally hit a tipping point, tumbled down the slippery slope and descended past the point of no return.

The new series seems like it wants to accomplish a similar goal, with a handful of storylines that are hit upon in each novel, but where the previous series offered each novel as the next rung on a ladder to the climax, "Fate of the Jedi" offers novels that feel like we're walking on a treadmill to nowhere. The main bad guy, for instance, is Abeloth, the mysterious entity causing all the z-list Jedi to go crazy (nothing raises the stakes like sacrificing a red-shirt!). But it took three entire novels just to find Abeloth! And had the journey to find her been interesting, that wouldn't have been a problem. The problem was that nothing in any of those novels had anything at all to do with Abeloth! The plots of the those novels was basically: 1) somebody points out that Abeloth is a threat to the ENTIRE GALAXY based on z-list Jedi going crazy. 2) Luke sets out to find her, but keeps pausing in his quest to have a completely unrelated adventure on the planet of the week. 3) repeat.

Even after we met her in part 3 of this series, Aaron Allston spent the entirely of volume 4 having an adventure on Dathomir without even mentioning Abeloth! Granted, we do finally meet her in person in #5, but whether it was bad plotting by the 'Fate of the Jedi' braintrust, or bad writing by Christie Golden (probably a little of both), the confrontation is pretty anti-climactic, to say the least. One is left with the feeling that Abeloth's role in things isn't quite wrapped up, not because of any ominous foreshadowing, but because they can't possibly have spent five novels hunting her down to have her story end like that.

Remember all those old Bantam one-off novels? "Darksaber", "Planet of Twilight", "Children of the Jedi"... They got old real fast because no matter how hard they tried to convince you that the villain was some menace to the entire galaxy, you knew that within 300 pages or so, Luke, Leia, Han, and Lando would always meet up in the last few chapters and put the kibosh on the nefarious master-plan and the re-set button would be conveniently hit in time for the next novel.

That's how "Fate of the Jedi" feels, only instead of everything being wrapped up by novel's end, the current powers-that-be have decided to stretch things out into NINE novels! Because wouldn't it have been great if "Planet of Twilight" had been 2,700 pages long!!

So that's the big-picture problem. Even within this frame-work, Troy Denning was able to wring out an almost readable book with volume 3. "Allies", unfortunately has the black-hole of characterization and subtly who is Christie Golden at the helm. And with her come many many many little nit-picky problems which, instead of distracting from the over-arching issues (like Denning managed to do), rather highlight them. There be SPOILERS below...

1) Golden sucks at culture building
Karen Traviss did an incredible job developing the culture of the Mandelorians over the course of seven or so novels taking place in different time periods. Christie Golden apparently has been tasked with a similar remit, this time with the Kasheri Sith. Both of her novels have featured them quite heavily, and one of her original characters, Vestara, is allegedly important to plot. But Golden sucks at creating believable characters, much less an entire culture. Her Sith are comprised entirely of Lucius Malfoy-like back-biting malcontents. The cartoonish over-the-top Malfoy evilness is fine for the cartoonish universe of 'Harry Potter', but in the Star Wars universe (which plays a bit more gritty and realistic, inasfar as that's possible in a sci-fi space epic) it just comes across as infantile. At every turn, Golden tries to impress with all of their supposed Machiavellian scheming which always boils down to: 'I'm evil and I'll kill and betray people to get ahead'. She's doing a clinic in writing one-dimensional characters. She includes some strange attempts at trying to make them seem noble and cultured and refined. I keep feeling like I'm supposed to have a grudging respect for her Sith, but again, their mustache-twirling keeps getting in the way of their supposed nobility.

2) Golden does excellent pre-teen melodrama
Christie Golden couldn't create a believable character if she followed an actual person around all day with a video-camera and just published the transcripts. Every single person is a stock-cliche that is eye-rolling in their flatness. The worst victim this time around is Luke Skywalker himself who seems to have thrown all diplomacy and tact out the window and instead acts like a petulent child throughout the novel. There are a couple of great drinking games you could play with "Allies", one of which is to do a shot every time Luke turns to Gavar Khai or his daughter and tells them how much he thinks they suck. He practically ends every sentence of conversation with them with, "Oh, and by the way, I think you're an asshole".

The other victims are Jaina and Jag. As nonsensical and out-of-character as their whole engagement plot has been, Golden handles the 'Boy Loses Girl' phase of the romance with all the deftness of an airline worker tossing a suitcase onto a conveyer belt. Golden spends an entire chapter giving us the details of the Klatooinian judicial system by way of a weird and superfluous trial (more on that later), but dedicates a single sentence to the build-up of Jaina deciding to call off the engagement. Seriously. See page 132: they're quarreling (which they do pretty non-stop in the other books as well) then at the bottom of the page, "Jaina froze, like a statue, for a long moment." And that's pretty much it. She tosses his ring back to him, and its over. Why now? Because in pre-teen novels and episodes of Disney Channel fluff, girls ramp up emotionally and overreact at the drop of a hat, and 'pre-teen' is how Christie Golden rolls.

And don't get me started on how unbalanced a character Daala has become. Its laughable how incongruous her conversations are with her chief-of-staff about how she's trying to do the right thing with her actual actions. In the last novel, a possibly intresting dynamic arose between Daala and the Imperial Moffs manaeuvering to oust her from the presidency. Daala seemed to realize that she needed to win the public over to her side if she was going to maintain any semblence of power. So naturally, even though the public seem to be softening up their opinions of the Jedi (which is a somewhat arbitrary move in itself, as several novels were spent demonstrating why the public were super-pissed at the Jedi) Troy Denning had Daala send Mandalorians to attack the Jedi Temple to retrieve the crazy Jedi, which completely backfired. Daala's master plan to win public support by doing something everyone would hate turned out, in hindsight, to be a bad master plan. The next logical step, then, in Golden's eye, is to have Daala do the same exact thing again, only this time adding in the unnecessary murder of an innocent to further piss off and alienate the public. All the while, Daala has somber conversations with her aide wondering why everything is going so wrong. (commence eye-rolling).

3) The planet-of-the-week subplot has reached a new low
As pointless as it felt to visit Dathomir, or Kessel, or the Kathol Rift in the last few novels, the visit to Klatooine reached new levels of stupid. To begin with, the reason they went there in the first place had nothing to do with the plot, but was just a stalling mechanism. Literally! Luke comes up with a nonsensical plan to team up with the Sith, but needs to borrow a ship from Lando for vague and arbitrary reasons. Lando says it will take a while to get the ship prepped for the ill-defined mission, so Luke and Ben and Vestara and her evil dad go hang out on Klatooine until the ship is ready. So going to the planet is already an eye-rolling exercise in wheel-spinning.

But then things get really stupid. The comically evil Sith decide that they want to steal a famous planetary landmark that is the hub of a political treaty that dates back Twenty Five Thousand Years!!! That's right, 25 and three zeros! Golden even italicized it once for emphasis! Apparently, the treaty in question keeps the Klatooinians enslaved to the Hutts, who have agreed to protect the afore mentioned planetary landmark, a big glass/stone fountain. But in a plot contrivance that would be at home in an episode of Pokemon, no one is allowed to bring any kind of modern technology with a several kilometer radius of the fountain. Not even the people protecting it! Therefore, this massively important fountain which is crucial to the existence of a treaty that has lasted for twenty five thousand years!! is being guarded by people weilding spears and nets (I'm not making that up). Oh, and there was also a wall built around it, but someone knocked a hole in that by driving a speeder-bike into it.

Naturally, when the Sith show up to debase the fountain, they can't stop laughing at how stupid this all is, and have zero trouble sheering off a piece of the strange glass/rock to take back to their evil mother-ship. And naturally, even though this odd arrangment has apparently worked for twenty five thousand years!!, the Sith wreck everything on their first half-hearted try, and throw all of Klatooine into a planetary riot.

And then there is the aforementioned chapter where Lando and Jaina have to serve as mediators in a trial that determines that 1) the Hutts who were supposed to be protecting the fountain didn't do a very good job, and 2) the Sith are evil. Well no shit.

4) "I see your point."
In lieu of writing a plot that logically leads from one thing happening to another, Golden resorts to the short-cut tactic she used in "Omen". It basically goes like this:

Character 1: I've drawn this very odd assumption that doesn't really fit the evidence in front of me but is necessary for the plot to move forward.

Character 2: But that doesn't really fit the evidence we have in front of us.

Character 1: That's true, but if you don't believe me, the plot can't move forward.

Character 2: I see your point.

Seriously, that's drinking game number two. Do a shot every time a character says some variation on the phrase, "I see your point".

5) Christie Golden expects the reader to "see the point"
* Example #1: Golden has characters going to drastic measures to prove how horrible a threat Abeloth is. They practically rend their flesh and gnash their teeth they're so troubled. But what has Abeloth actually done? The back cover of the book reads: "Only one thing could unite the forces of the Jedi and the Sith: an enemy far vaster--and deadlier--than both." And what could spell vast and deadly evil more than that random Jedi we made up last chapter going crazy and having to be locked up! Oh, the terror!! What unspeakable act will Abeloth commit next? Well, she almost kills the new Jedi companion that we just made up last novel, but when she hears Luke and Ben coming, she runs away and hides in a cave! EVIL!!!! Abeloth could possibly be the single most impotent threat to the galaxy ever created in the Star Wars universe.

* Example #2: Luke and Ben agree to team-up with the Sith because...um, because...Wait. Why did they team up again? There is an extremely hazy conversation about this early on between Luke and Gavar Khai, the main Sith we deal with in "Allies". Partly, it seems the alliance hinges on how horrible Abeloth is, with Khai mourning the way his Sith younglings are going crazy just like the Jedi. We have a common enemy, so we should work together. That kind of makes sense. Only it doesn't seem Luke actually believes Khai, what with the Sith being all evil liars, and when Khai indeed reveals that he was lying all along, Luke doesn't seem all that surprised. So maybe Luke is just using the Sith as a means to an end? Maybe Abeloth is so horrible, that even if the Sith are lying about their motivations, the benefits of teaming up with them outweigh the risks? Maybe? Except Luke pretty much defeats Abeloth by himself by stabbing her once during a fight. The Sith play zero part in the 'climax' of the story.

Reader: But Ms. Golden, you say this alliance is important in that it will facilitate the defeat of the Greatest Threat The Galaxy Has Ever Known!! But based on events in the book, the Sith contribute nothing to Abeloth's downfall.

Christie Golden: That might be true, but without the alliance, the title of this book, "Allies", would make no sense, and we'd just have to skip over this whole book and get straight to the next one.

Reader: I see your point.

6) The Star Wars EU apparently has a Black History Month
Completely out of left field, Golden inserts a clunky "Underground Railroad" subplot. There have been subplots in storylines past where oru heroes fight slavers and free downtrodden captives. But Golden's lack of subtly makes this feel like a very special episode of Star Wars.

* * *

I can't imagine anyone is still reading my review at this point. If you are, you win a cookie. It's just that everything about "The Fate of the Jedi" series and choosing Christie Golden as one of its authors is so monumentally wrong-headed that it brings out the best/worst in me (depending on your point of view).

Good God, I can't wait for this series to be over so we can start over with something new, fresh, and hopefully, containing logic and purpose.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should refer everyone to my past reviews of the Star Wars books I've read because I can't really say anything different about them. The audios are highly entertaining. I love Luke, who was the MC in this one. It also had Han and Leia making appearances and love them too.

I also like the relationship between Luke and his son, Ben. Overall, I enjoyed this one too.

[Khurram · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. There is a resolution to one of the main problems facing the Jedi. Being the fifth book in the set this is a welcomed step forward. New problems arise, and new enemies are introduced. I also like that fact that this book cover other issues in the Star Wars universe the biggest being slavery. I have to say even the political scenarios were done quite well.

At the end of the last book, lifting off from Dathomir Luke, band and their prisoner Vestara Khai are surrounded by the lost tribe of the Sith's armada. However the tribe have not come to destroy the Skywalkers they would like to form an alliance against the ancient darkside being then have names Abeloth living in the cluster of the Black holes called the Maw. Abeloth seem to have a personal connection with Luke. Back on Coruscant, more Jedi "snap" and Daala want them brought under GA arrest to make a statement. Even if this means making a deal with the Mandalorans, which cannot help but end in death. Also the journalist community are getting more forceful about the issue of slavery and a new element is added known as the Freedom Flight. Also Tahiri's trail begins, can even brilliant but eccentric lawyer help her.

Other books in the series talk about mention in passing about the attraction between Ben and Vestara, golden make this the main theme of the story, and the teenage soldier boy / Jedi resist the forbidden fruit of a beautiful Sith apprentice. Even this was done well; there is a lot of hurt feeling and mistrust, but an undeniable attraction there. It is funny how similar and sometimes different their parents feel about it. All this and then Luke in lightsaber action again. Great book. I think it was the best of the series so far.

[Jonathan Koan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another fantastic installment in the Fate of the Jedi series. The action here is terrific, it is my favorite use of the Luke plotline, and the way that Luke and Ben have to team up with the Lost Tribe of the Sith is really cool and believable!

I loved the whole coruscant storyline as always, and I just feel so viscerally angry at Daala, which I think is a good thing. And the whole trial plotline was written very well. That cliffhanger...whoo boy!

I have many other thoughts that I won't say because of spoilers (I might include them in my youtube review), but my, oh my, does this book set up an interesting future!

Overall, a great book! 9 out of 10!

[Ryan Wild · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, a capable entry into the series. Threads begin to come together as the tapestry that is this series draws to its intriguing crescendo. The character development, the twists, and the final note of this book make for the next entry to be the most exciting yet as things march inexorably forward in the story line.

[Jay DeMoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than the previous novel in the series! loved the action and the progress of the story. This was really good. I'm looking forward to book 6!

[Adam Bourke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing I can say about this fifth book is that it's a reassuring size. The last one by Golden was a bit thinner than the rest of the series, but this one isn't. As for the story, it's much better than the first three in the series.

As I often do, I'll start by discussing the characters, and in particular with my favourite character - Vestara. Vestara is a Sith apprentice, a bad guy by definition, but I find that I can't help but like her, can't help but want her plans to succeed. As in the previous book, we don't see an awful lot of scenes from her point of view, but if anything this makes her character more interesting, and the rare chapter that is from her perspective an exciting glimpse into her life.

And one of the ways we get to explore Vestara is through Ben, and his interactions with her, which are both interesting and amusing. I must admit to really enjoying their scenes together. However, some of his moods and ideas about things switch rapidly and are often unexplained. However, this is much more true of Luke - quite a major character. He just seemed a bit too vague a character. One minute he hated the Sith, the next he was agreeing with them - even with strange ideas that I don't see why anyone would agree with. So it's a little strange that I found the other Sith in general to be quite good characters. None of them were as major characters as Luke, Ben or Vestara, but I felt that they were done really well - particularly the High Lord and Vestara's Father.

This whole paragraph is a spoiler, so look away now if you don't want to know anything. Daala gets the Mandalorians to siege the Jedi Temple. As a political move, this is pretty silly. People kind of like the Jedi, and kind of dislike the Mandalorians. I can see why she want to do it for her own pet hate of the Jedi, but I always thought of her as more level headed than that.

I'm not really liking the character that Daala is becoming, and the whole thing about the trials of Tahiri and Niathal are kind of tedious. it was interesting at first, and Tahiri's lawyer is an interesting character, but it just seems that it's going on for an awful long time. I don't mind reading it, it's not that bad, but I don't look forwards to those sections. I had been hoping it would have been cleared up by the end of this book, but it hasn't. In fact, it seems to be one of the few things that weren't.

The ending seemed a bit strange to me. It all happened quite fast, but it felt like the story was pretty much over. There was still the trial as mentioned a moment ago, and a brief scene with two people pretending to be jedi which made no difference to the story but suggests another, but the main story arcs seem to have vanished. Except the characters disagree. I'm not really sure where the story can go from here.

It was an improvement on the first three books, but not as good as the fourth. The main body of the book was good, and I really liked Vestara, but the ending was a bit too final. There's another four books to go, but not an awful lot of story to go with them. But it's made the series as a whole that little bit better, and it was fun to read - so if you don't mind a slow start, this series is looking better all the time.

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than the previous book by this author.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series is so much better than the Disney reboot....already on book 6!!!!

[Meggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

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

This week’s focus: the fifth book in the Fate of the Jedi series, Allies by Christie Golden.

SOME HISTORY:

​​One of the best new characters to come out of 1978's Star Wars: Holiday Special was Ackmena the nighttime bartender at Chalman’s Cantina in Mos Eisley, portrayed by the fabulous Bea Arthur. She wards off the advances of a customer, and she gets everyone to leave for the Imperial curfew by breaking out into song and dance. That could have been the last we saw of Ackmena, but she appears (out of nowhere!) in Allies: she became a performer during the intervening decades, and now she’s returned to Tatooine and works for Freedom Flight, the GFFA version of the Underground Railroad. Fate of the Jedi: Allies by Christie Golden made it to number eight on the New York Times bestseller list for the week of June 13, 2010, and was on the list for two weeks.

MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:

Going into Allies, all I knew was that Luke and Ben Skywalker wanted to go back to the Maw to confront Abeloth, and the title “Allies” implied that they might find themselves on the same side as some unexpected folks.

A BRIEF SUMMARY:

As the difficult situation between the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance on Coruscant only continues to worsen, Luke Skywalker and his son Ben are confronted with strange new partners in the form of Vestara Khai’s people, the Lost Tribe of the Sith. The Sith say that Abeloth is also affecting their younglings, but can the Skywalkers trust these newfound allies?

ODYSSEY ELEMENTS:

I didn't notice anything new here in regard to Fate of the Jedi reusing elements from The Odyssey; the navigation to Abeloth’s planet in the mall is very difficult, so maybe shades of Scylla and Charybdis again…but we've seen that in almost every book thus far.

THE PLOT:

Picking up where the cliffhanger left off at the end of Backlash, the Sith fleet confronts the Skywalker as they try to leave Dathomir. But they don’t want to attack—they want to ally with the Skywalkers, as the Sith claim that Abeloth is affecting their younglings as well. Luke agrees that they can accompany the Jade Shadow to the Maw, but they need to meet up with Lando at Klatooine first so they can use his old asteroid buster ship for easier/safer navigation.

Vestara meets back up with her dad, and he suggests that she seduce Ben Skywalker to the dark side. Ben and Vestara are maybe becoming friends, as Ben doesn’t yet know about her ulterior motives. Back on Coruscant, Daala’s attempt to open negotiations with the Jedi seems to have completely failed and we’re back to square one. Daala sends Mandalorian mercenaries to besiege the Jedi Temple, and they kill a Jedi apprentice who comes out to negotiate. Jaina runs to Jag seeking help from the Imperial Remnant, but instead they break up—and so she runs off to help her Uncle Luke instead.

While the Skywalkers and Sith kill time on Klatooine, we get the first inkling of this left-field subplot about the galaxy rising up against the present horrors of slavery. In the case of the Klatooinians, they’ve been enslaved to the Hutts for 25,000 years because the Hutts agreed to protect the priceless Fountain of the Ancients. Dyon Stadd goes mad (since he spent time as a kid in the Maw Shelter), and runs towards the Fountain of the Ancients; fortunately Ben and Vestara stop him. But then the Sith get the brilliant idea to steal the glass from the Fountain, and chaos ensues on Klatooine. The Klatooinians ask Jaina and Lando to judge if the Hutts were to blame, and they rule no—but the slavery uprising still happens, and it spreads to other worlds as well.

The Skywalker/Sith alliance finally sets out for the Maw, and they land on Abeloth’s planet. Luke and the Sith leaders mind walk to that river of the dead, Luke talks to Mara’s spirit again, and one of the Sith gets dragged into the river by vengeful spirits. Vestara lets Dyon Stadd go to lead them to Abeloth, and when they confront her, they find that Abeloth has taken the body (and spirit?) of Callista, Luke’s long-lost ex. A fight ensues, the Sith temporarily turn on the Skywalkers, Vestara is injured, but Luke is able to kill Abeloth.

CHARACTERS:

After broaching negotiations with the Jedi in the previous book and using Han and Leia as a go-between, Daala swings back towards not being a nuanced character and delivers an ultimatum: give me the mad Jedi, or these Mandalorian mercenaries will attack the Jedi temple. If Daala’s worried about her public image and is aware that people are twisting the narrative against her, why would she ever do this? They don’t just hold the Jedi temple hostage, they publicly kill a teenager and leave her body on the stairs! I was also surprised by Daala coming down on the side of “planets can continue to perpetuate slavery for now, I have bigger problems” when Daala in Darksaber was trying to open the Empire up to women and non-humans and be more inclusive. Having her be the viewpoint character for the pro-slavery side boggles me, and I would not have chosen her as the character to espouse those views.

I thought the Jedi Masters’ behavior towards Kani Asari (Kenth’s assistant) was juvenile and rude. Supposedly Han started it by calling her “KP” (“Kenth’s pet), but then others like Kyp start doing it too. How old are you guys?? I can understand feeling anger and resentment towards Kenth’s overly cautious approach to the situation, but taking your frustrations out on a padawan who has no power over this situation is childish behavior, and I expected better of them.

I feel like Kenth is stuck between a rock and a hard place, though. He can’t bring up any concessions without the other Masters jumping down his throat, and it reiterates to me that he’s the wrong person to lead the Jedi Order at this time. But is anyone other than Luke? They’re completely dysfunctional, and instead of stepping up and being leaders, they squabble and argue about everything.

Jaina and Jag’s sudden break-up was super frustrating to me. If I know that Jag is Mr. Imperial Honor and is limited by his political role, why would Jaina ever think he would dispatch an Imperial fleet to the Skywalkers? To a certain extent, this felt like drama for the sake of drama, as charting the course of Jaina and Jag’s relationship over the books is they get together (New Jedi Order), they break up (post-NJO), Jag loses everything (the Swarm War), they become friends again (Legacy of the Force), they get back together (post-LotF), and now they’re in a committed relationship barreling along towards marriage but THIS is when Jaina realizes they have different priorities? (I thought Jaina knew this!!) In typical impulsive Jaina fashion, she runs off to help Luke but he doesn’t really need her help. Even Lando is side-eyeing her actions here.

That slavery plotline really comes out of left-field. The only foreshadowing that we got seemed to be the Jedi Knight very concerned about the state of slavery in the galaxy in Backlash. Referring back to Star Wars: The Essential Reader's Companion, I found that this was not in the original plan for the series, but came up as something the Jedi could rally behind while the authors were working on the books. This definitely feels like a subplot added late in planning, but I’ll address that in the Issues.

Over on the Jedi/Sith alliance: Luke agrees to an alliance immediately, but he tells Ben that he doesn’t trust the Sith and this is the easiest way to keep them under surveillance. Fair enough! I hoped that the Skywalkers working with the Sith would give the Jedi a chance to evangelize/show the Sith how much better the light side is, but that approach only seems to work on Vestara…and it’s working on Vestara very gradually. Most of the book is Ben and Vestara talking, and working together, and building an uneasy friendship. If push came to shove, I’m not sure that Vestara would be willing or able to kill either of the Skywalkers at this point, but fortunately it never gets to that point. Once Luke learns what Vestara and her dad discussed about Ben, he warns his son. Ben is much more standoffish with Vestara afterwards, and that clearly bothers her.

Almost in a reverse of Abyss, we spend more time with Ben and Vestara until the alliance arrives on Abeloth’s planet—and then it’s all Luke-related revelations. We finally get an ending for Callista post-Planet of Twilight, and it’s the saddest thing I could have imagined. Callista was still searching for the Force and for meaning; she found Abeloth, and now she’s been consumed by this evil being. I think Luke wanting to return to the river of the dead also shows us how much he hasn’t gotten over Mara’s death. Years later, he still wants to talk with his wife one more time.

The Sith have this vague idea that they can use Abeloth, but once Lord Taalon confronts her he has to realize that’s a no-go. She was trapped on her planet for a reason—Sinkhole Station, the Maw, and maybe even Kessel were designed to keep her hidden away, and she is so needy and hungry for power. She has this urge to consume and dominate, and I don’t think she’s dead at the end of Allies. That was way too easy, and I expect this eldritch monster to claw her way back to the land of the living somehow.

ISSUES:

There were so many editing errors in Allies! Characters' names were repeatedly misspelled, like “Dyon Stad” instead of Dyon Stadd and “Kyp Durran” instead of Kyp Durron. At one point Asylum Block was spelled “Asylym.” In Chapter Sixteen, Luke gets the translation of Vestara and Gavar’s conversation from Threepio, asks Ben for a private moment…then gets the translation from Threepio a second time. The slavery subplot details how the elephantine Chevin have been enslaving the humanoid Chev for years, but the name of the slavers and the slaves are constantly mixed up. This has happened before (Tresina Lobi was a Chev Jedi, but in Destiny's Way she’s described as though she’s a Chevin), but it’s very important in a subplot about the horrors of slavery that you know who’s oppressing who.

Second, Allies had a young adult feel to the story, especially in the scenes with Ben and Vestara. It didn’t feel as teenage as Omen had, but I feel like the prominence of Ben and Vestara’s characters here (they’re sixteen-year-olds who maybe/sort of have feelings about the other) led to the story having a more juvenile tone. I wouldn’t want to do away with Ben and Vestara’s scenes, because I love Ben—he’s such a good kid!--and Vestara is the most interesting of these new Sith to me. She’s smart and eager, and reluctantly receptive to what the Skywalkers say, and I want the best for her. But their interactions do have a tinge of YA-novel tone to them.

The climax here—the Skywalkers and Sith face off against Abeloth, and Luke apparently kills her—was incredibly anti-climatic, and also felt lacking in urgency like I noted in my Backlash review. There’s no way that was Abeloth’s actual death, because it was so underwhelming.

But most egregious, that slave uprising subplot really got cranked up to 11 here. It hadn’t been effectively foreshadowed in any of the previous books, and I wish it had. If the slave uprising had been part of the narrative from book one, I think it would have worked a lot better for me. This is obviously a consequence of multiple authors working on a series, and someone goes “wouldn’t it be a cool idea if…?” and next thing you know, Freedom Flight is rescuing slaves and the Devaronian reporter is bringing this plight to the public view and the Jedi are considering whether to align themselves with the slaves and Daala is using Mandalorians to put down uprisings. Okay, but that makes Daala much less three-dimensional than other books, which tried to balance her crazy Law and Order stance with a little more nuance, and it really bubbles up out of nowhere. (Lack of foreshadowing notwithstanding, It works better for me than how Padme tries to stop slavery on Tatooine in Queen's Shadow--Padme, don’t buy slaves and free them! That’s just encouraging people to sell more slaves!)

IN CONCLUSION:

Allies sees the Skywalkers making new and surprising allies to confront Abeloth. She seems to be defeated for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes back. Her apparent death leads to the young Jedi regaining their sanity, which was a welcome development as I felt like that plotline had gone on long enough! I like Ben and Vestara and the dynamic developing between them, and I hope Jaina figures out her relationship drama soon as Jaina and Jag’s on-again off-again rollercoaster is too much drama for me. This book felt like a combination of left-field plots (the slavery uprisings) and anti-climatic standoffs (Luke and the Sith vs. Abeloth), but I'll be interested to see how this stalemate between Daala and the Jedi Order is resolved.


Next up: the sixth book in the Fate of the Jedi series, Vortex by Troy Denning.

My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/OCtyUp_VfsU

[Marcelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was actually better than the previous one by Christie Golden's quill. She's not very good with fight scenes, but that's hardly the point in «Allies».

In this book, we see the unease alliance between Luke Skywalker and the Lost Tribe of the Sith, the only way both parties found to fight the grand-villain of this entire series, the dark-side monster Abeloth. We finally discover why is that creature so interested in Luke and how is it maddening the jedi that spent time in Shelter during their youth.

There are a lot of goodies in this book. Golden was the first author to depict the mad jedi as paranoid — really paranoid. Until now, we heard they being qualified as paranoid, but we hadn't seen a true paranoid behavior. In «Allies» we finally saw it.

This is the main story-line, but there's also the second story-line, the one about the GA-Jedi crisis. At first, the author inserts a story-line about slavery and slave liberators that seem not to fit in the story at all. But it all cleverly comes together by two-thirds into the novel, even involving the Skywalkers story-line, to coalesce in the escalation of the crisis in the GA.

We see a lot more of Chief of State Natasi Daala — a deep character, that's doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. It's hard not to understand her, even if the reader knows she's utterly wrong. Such a well-made character!

Other character that I found myself enjoying very much is Daala's assistant, Wynn Dorvan. He's as well made as any other characters we saw so far, and his another character that's torn between duty and conscience. I hope to see more of Dorvan in the coming books.

«Allies» ends in a two-pronged cliffhanger that's going to make me bite my nails 'til December, when the next book, «Vortex», comes out from under Troy Denning's pen.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not quite sure how Christie Golden has managed it, but when tasked with writing some of the most exciting action of any book I’ve read so far, not only has she written so exceptionally well, she has also introduced less action-oriented plots, new characters and stories, and managed not at all to detract away from the main plot.

If you cannot tell, this was an impeccable novel, and it may sound crazy to some, but I think this may be one of my all time favourite Star Wars novels, yes, even up there with my favourite of Zahn’s work.

The Jedi and Sith allied, a romance budding between Sith Apprentice Vestara Khai, and Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker, the powerful, mysterious threat of Abeloth is to be revealed properly, and here, everything changes!

The Sith propose an alliance with Luke and Ben Skywalker, a mutual goal to stop the mysterious Abeloth. But of course, this doesn’t stop the treachery of the Sith. Gavar Khai, Vestara’s father, demands she seduce Ben, either to turn him, or use him to the Sith’s advantage.

However, what is not helpful to them at all, is that Vestara actually kinda likes Ben. Attracted to each other, the teens try to work out their differences throughout the novel, forming a sort of Romeo and Juliet style romance, and even drawing comparison to Luke’s own romance with Mara Jade Skywalker.

Of course, there is a contrast to the famous “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” scene, which, according to my GCSE Literature teacher, actually means, “Why are you Romeo?” as in, why is a Montague? His family being the reason he and Juliet cannot be together, Vestara yearns in bed at one point in the book in her head something along the lines of, “Why couldn’t Ben be born Sith?”

It’s great as Vestara’s manipulation tangles with her actual feelings that are starting to bubble, and Ben manoeuvres around his feelings for Vestara, wanting just to experience love as a teenager for once, and try to ignore her… questionable morals and beliefs.

Love is complex, you don’t always fall for the right people, but you fall for them anyway, and love them for who they are, and while I wouldn’t go as far as to say they love each other yet, they are starting to feel a true affection for each other, and it is confusing Vestara especially, but Ben is not swayed once he learns about her plan to seduce and turn him. He is, and always will be, a Jedi.

Christie Golden clearly has a few favourite side characters, and I do not blame her whatsoever. Needmo, the seemingly only reliable and honest newshost has lots of great plot in this book, especially Madhi, the journalist, and her focus on slavery.

She has a great little story where she wins a slave and frees him, hiring him as a proper worker, and highlighting the troubles with a society that has “good” slavery. As nicely treated as those “slaves” are, as the freed one puts it, a cage is still a cage.

Dorvan, who works for Daala, is also a particularly good character. While loyal to Daala, he doesn’t really agree with her, and is trying his best to sort things out between the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance, even if it doesn’t work.

Whilst the Jedi and Sith work their way to Abeloth, there is tension simmering on Coruscant between the Galactic Alliance and the Jedi, as Daala hires Mandalorians to begin a siege on the Jedi Temple.

This whole plot is extremely tense as while no battle occurs, the political drama is especially good here, something I have previously critiqued, and we flicker back and forth between Daala and the Jedi as developments happen.

Mainly, however, Kenth Hamner shines. I love Kenth in this series, he isn’t perfect, but the man is trying to live up to Luke Skywalker as Acting-Grand Master of the New Jedi Order, and also has the immense task of trying to sort things out between the increasingly power hungry Chief of State Daala, and the crippled Jedi.

Daala is absolutely going too far. While she raises many points I can sympathise with, as a citizen in this galaxy, I, too, might sometimes worry about giving Jedi too much power when Sith like Caedus emerge from them, but what she allows to happen and justifies is appalling.

Kenth Hamner’s assistant, unarmed, innocent, is murdered by a Mandalorian.

This shit fucking shocked me. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening, and it was so horrible, I loved seeing how the Masters treated it. Kenth’s anger finally bursting was amazing, but I love how, as they said, this didn’t scare the Jedi, it only strengthened their resolve.

“I’m staring at the body of a girl who was murdered by the heartless bastard you picked to lead the siege.” - Kenth Hamner.

In the midst of all this, as Luke, Ben, Vestara and the Sith travel to the Maw to find Abeloth’s planet, Jaina seeks help from Jag, and, unable to get it, makes the decision that they will always be pulled apart by their duties, always on opposite ends, and ends the engagement.

I was really upset about this, but I get it, and… spoilers… I know it doesn’t last!

Another awesome subplot, was the continuation of Tahiri’s trial, which was heartbreaking as it was inspiring and hopeful. She gets so close to winning the Jury’s favour, and there was a particularly beautiful moment, which I considered to be the most wonderfully written, and most gorgeous scene since The Unifying Force.

Han and Leia visit the incarcerated Tahiri Veila, to tell her of Luke and Ben’s meeting with the deceased Anakin Solo, of his words of wisdom, and of his love for her that he still feels after all this time.

I cried reading Anakin’s death all the way back in Star By Star, I cried writing about it in my review, I cried writing about it in my video essay, I almost teared up talking about it, and damn it, I cried at this too!

“He was her first and only love, her best friend, and he had been ripped from her far, far too soon.”

Tahiri’s lawyer, Eramuth Bwua'tu, was a really sweet and fun character, a really clever lawyer, but also a surprisingly kind and trustworthy Bothan, with odd fashion and a lot of charm, he was a really loveable character, and his relationship with Tahiri throughout the novel is also a highlight.

In the midst of all the craziness at the Temple, there was another beautiful moment as, while the corpse still lay at the Temple, Raynar Thul, in a strange show of respect, decided to eat his lunch in front of the Mandalorians, in the same spot he does each day, clearly ready for them to kill him.

But Dorvan makes sure to be there on time, and eats with Raynar so he can’t be shot, and it’s an amazingly well written moment as it is so strange, so bizarre, so heartbreaking, but also so inspiring, it’s a strange but great form of protest, and it says so much about the complexity of the characters of this series, of Raynar and of Dorvan. I loved it!

“Love was a powerful thing. It had built and shattered empires, shaped the history of billions, and of two.”

Throughout these books, Luke and Ben have felt the presence of Mara on the Jade Shadow, holding Luke in bed, comforting them in their sadness, making them feel not so alone.

As soon as Luke began feeling her in bed, I had my suspicions. But I was still shocked to learn the truth. And disturbed.

Abeloth.

For some strange reason, Abeloth wants Luke Skywalker, she fixates on him, goes after his son, his family, but she wants him.

Retreating from an attempt to consume Dyon on her planet, Luke, about twenty Sith, Vestara and Ben pursue her, into a beautiful sort of arena with towering pillars of stone, where Luke finally gets a good look at her, and he sees…

Callista Ming…

Throughout the novels, Abeloth has appeared to many with thick, curly dark hair, but often with short, blonde hair, both the appearances of Callista in either her first, or second life.

Somehow, when Callista abandoned using the Force, and left Luke, this thing, Abeloth, has taken her, perverted her, and they have become one. Needy, desperate, lonely, she seeks out Luke and attempts to turn him into something like her. Whatever that is...

It’s really tragic, and has managed to make me love a character I used to hate, Callista, and turn a story I used to hate into something truly genius and so, so dark and sickening.

There’s an unnerving, creepy moment where she turns to Abeloth, her tentacles and horrible teeth all showing, furious that she had waited all that time, and Luke had forsaken her, and wants to hurt him most, lunging at Ben Skywalker.

But her arrogance, her focus on Luke, means she forgets the Sith, the Nightsister spell casted around them, but only momentarily…

This leads to… maybe my favourite, or one of my favourite battles in all of Star Wars!

The EU just keeps on giving ‘em to me…

As the Sith, for a moment, join with Abeloth and turn on Luke, suddenly, as Ben is distracted helping a poisoned Vestara, has to fight twenty Sith, Nightsister magic, and Abeloth. And in an amazing show of power, of how far Luke Skywalker has come, Ben watches, amazed.

“Despite the odds, his father was winning.”

Gavar Khai, Vestara’s father, tries to use Ben’s anger to turn him, taunting him, but I love this moment, as this instead does the opposite, Ben has heard all this before, from Caedus, and instead it only makes him more resolute in his purpose, as a Jedi Knight.

When Abeloth knocks everyone out with more Force craziness, she escapes to feed on Dyon, but it is a trick. Luke sees right through it, killing her, and saving Dyon.

I was hopeful at first, but in searching for an image for this review, and reading the dramatis personae for the next novel, I’m pretty certain Abeloth still lives, as the entity she was. But Callista is dead, and I felt incredibly sorry for Luke finding out what his old lover had become.

I love how they showed the feelings you have for someone you may no longer be with, but from a relationship that did not end with animosity. Mara is Luke’s love, the mother to his son, but he still loves Callista, of course he does, not like he loves Mara, and he could never be with her in that way again, but I love how they captured those feelings.

A relationship lost, that cannot work any longer, but perhaps could’ve once, a long time ago…

To bring Callista back for such a sick, twisted story is the perfect way of making such a boring character, from such an awful story, into a magnificent character, and making an even more fabulous story. I cannot credit the writing of this enough.

Poor Nek Bwua'tu, and poor Tahiri!

It seems Tahiri is done for, and Nek is killed by people pretending to be mad Jedi, which, as he is a lover of Daala, is only going to make things worse, and Tahiri, whose story inspired so much hope throughout the novel, is utterly hopeless again!

The one light of hope is that the Jedi are cured, and the Sith of Kesh are very different, and are going to work with Luke to uncover the truth about Abeloth, to learn more about her.

I have a light, small hope that these Sith may be able to change, or some at least. Especially since my rather naive google search showed me that Krayt will feature later, and more Abeloth. Damn fucking google searches…

So, overall… I was just terribly shocked at how fabulously written this book was.

Christie Golden managed to make the least entertaining and interesting plots gripping, and made me not skim and actually read every word for plots I might often skip if written by the other two authors of the series.

The action was some of the best in all of Star Wars novels, and she was also treated to writing a remarkably exciting part of the series, capturing all of the excitement and ferocity wonderfully.

I feel like a video essay, rather than an Instagram review, would better serve this book, as I can go on and on about the magnitude of exceptional writing here, and how good the story truly is of this book.

My hopes for the series have risen after the last two books lowered in quality a bit for me, and for someone who rarely gives very high ratings, who, whilst positive, is hesitant to give the higher ratings for most novels, you may be very shocked at how much I really loved this book…

I cannot think of any issues I had with the book, from both of the Bwua’tu characters, Tahiri, the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance, the Sith, Abeloth, and the Skywalkers, even Han and Leia Solo, and even Allana and her pet, Anji, Christie Golden was on peak form, and the book just blew me away with every single page entertaining me so much…

Fuck.

A masterpiece, there… I said it.

A masterpiece to me!

10/10

[Andrew Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

continues the story, but lots of editing mistakes and poor quality of writing

[elef · Rating 5 out of 5]

i think this is the best book of this series so far. i LOVED golden's writing. she wrote characters so well that i felt like one of them when i was reading each povs. i also love how she explored more of sith society and i think she's the only writer who makes them interesting to me so far. luke's team up with them was so good too. there's no need to say how much i enjoy vestara and ben's relationship. it was so fun to read! and ableoth's writing was such an interesting concept too. she kinda reminds me sirens and its what got me interested. i really wonder if it's all over and we have to deal with daala during the rest of the series or she somehow find a way to survive. AND TAHIRI. i'm so glad my girl finally written by a woman after so long. i loved her chapters. i think those were my favorite ones. especially i cried while reading 11th chapter. AND i feel i was actually her and being accused of killing paellon myself during last chapter. it was so brilliantly written. i can't wait to read her other books!

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I write this, I am reading the Fate of the Jedi series for the first time, and in chronological order. I find it curious that my favourite two books of the series so far are the ones from Christie Golden.

As the title (and blurb) suggests, Luke and Ben Skywalker form an unlikely alliance with members of the Lost Tribe of the Sith. Golden writes some wonderful tension in the scenes with the Skywalkers and the Sith characters. Meanwhile, there is a courtroom drama, as Tahiri Veila is tried for the unlawful killing of Gilad Pellaeon, which is also suitably dramatic and well written.

The best thing about Allies for me is that it does a great job of regaining some of the momentum which was lost by Abyss and Backlash, both of which were a little slower and less compelling than the opening two entries in this series (Outcast and Omen). Suddenly I am back in a place where I can't wait to see how the series progresses.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I have a confession: series books {a.k.a. a book like Allies} are my guilty pleasure. I don't read as many as I used to and I don't read as many series as I used to, but my love of "Star Wars" knows no bounds and so therefore, I gobble up any and everything related to that long ago and far away galaxy.

It's been a while since a "Star Wars" EU series has captured my attention like Fate of the Jedi. I'll admit that I missed some of the Yuzhan Vong hoopla (I have always believed that aliens belong in the Star Trek 'verse, not SW), but when I found out that the end of the series featured a showdown between Solo twins, Jacen and Jaina, I quickly got up to speed. Because not only am I sucker for Star Wars, but I am a huge sap for Han and Leia's kids, and Luke & Mara's son, Ben. Which is probably another reason why I am so digging FOTJ.

The premise of the series is interesting and different from other EU works. Instead of being worshipped like a demigod by the powers in charge, Luke Skywalker has been banished, cut off from the Jedi Temple and the universe at large by dictator--er, leader--of the Galatica Alliance, Admiral Natasi Daala. (Yeah, she's a chick and she's ex-Imperial. This ain't your mama's Star Wars.)

The series begins with Luke and Ben leaving Coruscant, deciding to travel the galaxy together, while being forced to leave behind their family, including Leia, Han, Jaina, and Jacen's illegitimate daughter, Amelia. (Babies out of wedlock? What would George say?) But, I digress, for many of these events happened during the whole Yuzhan Vong series.

Let me get back to Star Wars: FOTJ Allies. This book finds Ben and Luke in the soup, forced to ally with Sith (Yeah, those Sith.) and find and destroy an ancient creature that someway, somehow is causing Jedi the galaxy over to go crazy. Not a little bit crazy either, but batshit, I-think-the-moon-just-winked-at-me crazy. Meanwhile, Daala is warring with the Jedi in a pissing contest for control that would make Palpatine proud. This of course means, Han and Leia are alternately Prime Suspects No. 1 and 2 for anything that appears to go against the GA, appears to aid the Jedi or might involve Luke getting illicit help from his former students.

But where FOTJ and Allies in particular really shine, is in the illustration of the relationships. Gone are the semi-uncomfortable realization that you once kissed your sister, replaced with complex emotions. These characters grieve and struggle to find meaning in a galaxy that constantly disappoints and amazes them, just as we all do. While Han and Leia deal every day with the fact that both of their sons met early deaths, Jaina must also deal with being the last surviving Solo offspring, the Sword of the Jedi, and oh yeah, the fiancee of the GA's top military leader. She must also contend with the fact that her Jedi ways and her boyfriend's ex-Imperial leanings don't always mesh and may end up costing her love in the name of family loyalty.

And then there's Luke. Another confession for you: He's my favorite original Star Wars character. I love Han and I love Han-and-Leia, but I have always had a special place in my heart for Luke, an orphaned farm boy on a distant planet dreaming of something more. And for the most part I have been quite pleased with how the EU has treated young Skywalker, especially Timothy Zahn's Star Wars: Heir to the Empire series, which is still the shining achievement in established trilogy EU (in my opinion).

And I loved Luke and Mara Jade together. I loved it when they had a son and I loved it when they named him Ben. I thought it was even more interesting when this son, while he was just a toddler, but already strong in the Force, eschewed his father's and his family's legacy, afraid of what wielding such power might mean. What an interesting place to put our hero, looking at his own child who wants nothing to do with the family business.

Luckily, Ben came around and he is now quite the Force user. But along the way, he lost his mother and Luke lost a wife. And this is something that Allies brings to the fore so very well. In a twist I won't reveal, Mara comes back to help both her boys and it's Luke reaction to seeing her again that resonated deeply with this particular reader. The knowledge that Mara is gone, but can never really be dead (because she is now one with the Force) is at once the greatest gift and the harshest cruelty.

Perhaps the best part is that Allies set up a hell of an ending that has left me eager to get my hands on the next book in the series, Vortex. I've had some luck recently reading series of books that have made me anxious to read the next and that is such a gift as a reader, and so enviable as a writer. I for one am immensely glad that the Star Wars EU is still alive and well. And that all of our intrepid heroes still are too.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave "Allies," by Christie Golden, a marginal third star for this fifth book of the "Fate of the Jedi" series. It's not bad for what it is, but the narrative heavy lifting is slow and not that gripping.

For example, the book spins it's metaphorical wheels waiting for Lando Calrissian to bring his asteroid hunting ship to where Luke and the Sith (in an tenuous alliance to fight Abeloth) are waiting. A lot does happen on Klatooine while they're waiting for Lando, but I get the feeling that the things that happened there are mostly filler to reinforce the lesser themes and characters.

Like most of the books in this series, there are a few things going on, but not a lot gets resolved.

Though I will point out that, yes, Abeloth is dealt with in this book. And the "mad Jedi" are cured.

So Luke and the "lost tribe" of the Sith go off to confront Abeloth. It's a LOT more about the journey than the actual battle, however.

But this is a book of over 400 pages (in paperback form) and the "fight" with Abeloth is kept to about fifty pages towards the end of the book. After the ENDLESS build-up of the previous books, I was filled with a severe sense of anti-climax.

Oh, yes, there's a large "twist" once Luke Skywalker confornts Abeloth. Abeloth may or may not be someone from Luke's past. I only happened to know who the person in question is because I read a truly lousy Star Wars novel called "Darksaber." Unless you're a die-hard Star Wars fan who reads every novel in the series, don't expect to be shocked or thrilled (or interested?) in who Abeloth may or may not "be."

And from looking at the blurbs written about the other books in this series (which I probably won't be reading until they come out in paperback form) the quest to find out what Abeloth was and why she was doing what she was doing is going to remain one focus of this series. Doesn't sound that exciting to me.

The "relationship" of Vestara Khai and Ben Skywalker seems to be going forward by slow degrees. It's a mirror of his father's attraction to the once evil Mara Jade, whom he ended up marrying. Mara Jade makes a quick afterlife appearance in "Allies," but the moment is not as poignant as it was before.

Daala is coming slowly unhinged in her vendetta against the Jedi and her quest to keep power. Her use of the Madalorians to blockade the Jedi Temple and her considering using the Mandos to stop anti-slavery revolts across the galaxy shows she is a tyrant in the making.

Though she doesn't have much to do other than be cute and precocious, Allana and her pet Nexu still have a fair amount of story time. Han and Leia have to balance helping the Jedi with raising their granddaughter. Jaina Solo and Jagged Fel are finding that duty and romance are not a good mix, which has been heavily foreshadowed to this point.

And a lot of time is spent on the subject of slavery. In case you didn't know, slavery is bad. The author doesn't seem to assume the reader knows this and a lot of time is spent hammering that theme home. And it looks like that theme will be a recurring one as we go forward.

Though I will say that reading one of the leaden, paint by numbers Star Wars books about the Yuuzhan Vong war makes this "Fate of the Jedi" series seem a LOT better by comparison.

[Oliver · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Compassion is for those who deserve it,” Luke said.

I'll get to that infamous line in a moment. For now, I'm just stunned by the state this novel was allowed to be published in. Allies is not a terrible book, mind you; with better form, I'd maybe even argue it's a more solid read than Omen was. What we did get, however, primarily represents how much Del Rey had stopped caring about the SWEU by the beginning of the 2010s.

I read the opening chapter a few weeks ago and put the book down in kind. This is perhaps the single worst opening chapter of any SW novel, rife with typos, punctuation mistakes, and poor phrasing, made up of surface-level plotting as well as sketchy SW movie references and a tell-don't-show mode of storytelling. I don't want to exonerate Golden here; this is her book, and her writing ability, which continues to be subpar throughout the volume. That Kyp Durron is referred to as "Kyp Durran" about half a dozen times throughout reeks of unfamiliarity with the setting and should have never been allowed to have happened in a 2010 SW release (see the difference between an "error" and a "mistake"...). That the narration compares Luke's eyeing of Vestara to that of Wuher, the guy from the SW77 Cantina, vis-a-vis himself is the type of awkward tie-in hackery you'd expect from a 1993 Kevin J. Anderson effort. Allies is just not a good book. On the other hand, why was it allowed to happen? Did anyone actually bother to look over the script pre-release? This was a hardback release, mind you; people paid real money for this in 2010. I'm just so disappointed by Del Rey's continued fall post-2005.

This quality control issue intersects quite well (poorly?) with Fate of the Jedi's overall problems. Now, Allies has more meat to it than both its direct predecessor and Golden's prior effort. But only barely. I can basically recap what I'd already said about the other books: crazy Jedi running amok, Tahiri on trial, Jaina on Jag's lap, Han&Leia&Allana ineffective, Luke & Ben on their odyssey, the Jedi on Coruscant threatened by Daala, Daala still in office. Most of these do get furthered, to be fair, one or two of them are even presumably solved, but none of it constitutes a proper plotline within this book. Take Tahiri's trial: It's bolstered by a really fun new lawyer character, the almost John Quincy Adams-esque Eramuth Bwua'tu, and Tahiri even has a small epiphany in what is the book's best scene, a moment of pure emotion - but then one hundred pages we're back in the courtroom, and bit of evidence is shown, and the entire book's developments are basically reset. You could have made this into a more focused character piece ending on the former scene, or given it more focus and ended with whatever the next book will show, but taken together, Allies feels not even like a television episode, but maybe three quarters of one, or one and a third. It doesn't add up to a whole "statement" of fiction. The same goes for Daala, and the Jedi on Coruscant, and even the Han/Leia/Allana side, though Golden seems to have mercifully at least given up on the latter and simply relegated them to c. scenes in total.

Jaina and Jag... We've spent the last four books without much of a role for Jaina. For all intents and purposes, she was eclipsed by even Jag in terms of relevance. The one constant was that they were a couple, and they were going to get married. Now they've ended their engagement, and Jaina goes on to exclusively define herself as "Sword of the Jedi". So we've lost even this one subplot, however reductive it may have been. I'll admit, there was something nostalgic about seeing Jaina leave Coruscant for the first time in this series (!) and do some field work again, but it doesn't amount to anything. I'm just continuously appalled by how little Jaina has to do in these books.

Right, the Luke quote. So Backlash ended on Luke, Ben, and Vestara being intercepted by a bunch of Lost Tribe Sith, and in here we find out they want a truce to try and overcome Abeloth together. This is not a terrible idea, and there are some fun scenes littered throughout. Allies in fact has Ben and Vestara become romantically interested practically out of nowhere, and it's fine. The problem here is that Luke and Ben are still stuck in the post-NJO and thus lack any morals. Or rather, they revert back to their pre-FOTJ selves, since they were quite fun in the first three books at least. Sith are Sith, and are thus from the core of their being evil, and do not deserve compassion even after dying in a freak accident. This is the type of Machiavellian Luke you would expect Denning to write in DNT or LOTF, but no, it's Golden. Now, nobody has actually read FOTJ, but among those who have, the "compassion is for those who deserve it" line has become rightly infamous. It's just amazing how far Luke has fallen after The New Jedi Order. He's unrecognizable from the hero we followed in that series, in Bantam, and in the movies.

The book's climax brings us back to the setting of Abyss, and I'm unsure why. In terms of plot, it makes sense; after the spontaneous memory holing of Backlash, everyone now remembers who Abeloth is and they return to investigate. But it's really just poorly paced and makes you wonder why we couldn't have skipped all of book 4 and most of this one and just started this plot right here. As a continuation of that book, it fares somewhat poorly. We're retracing our steps and confronting Abeloth on her planet, and then she dies but, realistically, does not. At least the Crazy Jedi are cured now. What's notable here is that Abeloth takes on the form of Luke's former flame Callista Ming (LOL), a whole can of worms that makes me want to read on just to qualify why and how it relates to Luke in the grand scheme. Stylistically, I have to commend Troy Denning (yes, really), given how much style went into his depiction of Abeloth, her planet, and the Sinkhole Station. Golden just does that, but with much less commitment and without unique imagery of her own. So what are we left with? Well, things happen, but in a sort of generically mediocre way. FOTJ should have probably been a trilogy.

Is it all doom and gloom, then? No, most of the novel is kind of okay. The mistakes are what they are, and Golden's style never becomes "good", but it mostly works. The book in all never becomes offensively bad like LOTF, and I found it less frustrating than Backlash. I do like how the different plotlines intersect. It's all quite simple, as though you're reading a YA novel, but it gives the experience some cohesive glue. I did like Tahiri's lawyer. Perhaps the most promising development is the slavery revolt plot, which was teased in the prior volume and now comes into focus: As a result of Daala's shenanigans and the galaxy's changed status quo following the Yuuzhan Vong War, enslaved or otherwise diminished cultures around the galaxy are rising up against oppressors. We get the POV of Klatooine and its denizens, a bulldog-like species used as guards by Jabba in ROTJ. They've historically been employed as servants by the Hutts of their own designs, but now the youth are questioning their relationship. Very solid, intersects well with both Coruscant and Luke & Ben, and has some real potential. Even the journalism angle is revisited here, and really, the slavery plot seems like it could be what glues everything together in the end. On the other hand, what doesn't make an appearance is the Imperial conspiracy plot we'd just been introduced to. Ah, Aaron Allston and having his Imperial subplots be ignored by his co-authors. Still, I do hope the few accomplishments that were made in the earlier stories, and this new slavery angle, will come together to provide more focused storytelling in FOTJ's second half.

In the end, I'm mostly surprised by how much I don't care about a lot of this. The editing fails are shameful, but otherwise FOTJ just fails to elicit much of a response in me. It's neither fun and good like NJO nor actively terrible and destructive like LOTF; it's just kind of... noise. Middling books made to "contribute" to an even more middling series. It seems Del Rey's apathy has infected me, as well.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a Star Wars nerd it pained me to have to plow through this book. It pains me still knowing that there will be one more entry in this arc by Golden (and her editor). The preceding entry by Allston was, to me, the best so far in this arc. Then this. Ugh.

I'll be ranting for a bit. Probably powered by the pent-up nerd-rage from Lucas' prequel trilogy.

In the words of Grand Moff Tarkin, "...you may fire when ready."


1. Gilad Pellaeon is a pretty major character of the expanded universe. He's also dead now. Died a hero, in fact. On pages 401-402, his name is spelled "Pallaeon". Then magically reverts back to "Pellaeon" on page 404.


2. A supporting character was introduced in Allston's book. His name was Dyon Stadd. In this entire book, his name appeared as Dyon Stad.


3. Why is the term "carte blanche" being used in the Star Wars universe?


4. Two quotes here to try to make sense of:

Page 129, "For thousands of years, his people, the Chevin, had enslaved a humanoid race known as the Chev."

Page 170, "The dawn is breaking for this city, but there is still not much light being shone on the institution of slavery that has continued without change for thousands of years on this planet, where the Chevs have enslaved the Chevins."


5. Pretty much every time a Sith female's face was mentioned it was, "her beautiful face", "her perfect face", "her lovely face", and so on. Yes, I understand. The Sith are a good looking people. Edward Cullen was that pretty too.


6. Spelling mistakes appeared every so often. Faccade. Naiive. Retored.


7. Forcing romance into every possible situation. The most ridiculous to me was Ben noticing how good sworn enemy Vestara's body feels against him as they're on a speeder being shot at by numerous security guards while trying to stop an insane Jedi from breaking a 25,000 (?) year old treaty. The whole Ben and Vestara angle was very irritating. They were not the only ones either. Han & Leia. Jag & Jaina. Luke & Mara. All guilty. Even some supporting characters. The only one I forgive is the Tahiri-Anakin story in the courtroom.


8. Daala seemed very rash and unstable. In this book nothing she did made sense to me. Reminded me very much of Joffrey Baratheon.


The story itself (if you take out the romance) wasn't bad at all. The alliance of Jedi and Sith was very interesting. Tahiri's legal proceedings were as well. And the whole slavery issue was well done. Wynn Dorvan continues to fascinate me as a character. His lunch date with Raynar Thul during the Mandalorian seige almost brought a tear to my eye. That's another thing Golden did well. Pulling on my emotions. But not with forced love.

I'm done now. My first Star Wars novel review and it wasn't very positive. :(

[Kasc · Rating 3 out of 5]

With Allies the Fate of the Jedi series finally picks up some pace but, surprisingly, as the novel concludes the direction the rest of this series will take is left wide open.

Fresh off a little side-quest on Dathomir, Luke now partners with none other than a bunch of Sith hoping to beat a common foe, Abeloth, together. Luke’s desire to conquer her stems from the notion that she has somehow caused the madness that has been befalling more and more young Jedi. For the Sith taking revenge for the many among their ranks that Abeloth has slain in their recent run-in with her would seem to be an understandable motivation for pursuing this unusual alliance. However, the Sith being Sith they pretend their young have also been falling victim to the madness such that their motivation would seem to align exactly with that of Luke when their true objective is to recruit Abeloth to then conquer the galaxy reinforced by her extraordinary power. While preparing to return to the Maw – this time with the aid of one of Lando’s ships, Luke and Ben are still accompanied by Vestara Khai, the Sith they captured in the previous novel, who now acts as collateral to encourage the Sith to stick to their word. Roughly Ben’s age, witty, and attractive, it does not take long for Ben to inevitably develop a fling for her – one that is reciprocated but that Vestara is trying to exploit for the Sith’s gain. Everything boils down to a final encounter with Abeloth during which she is slain and which, of course, is made more difficult than it needs to be by the inevitable Sith betrayal. Now all that is left to do is to investigate what exactly made Abeloth so powerful and how she connects to the recent issues.
As the Skywalkers are busy elsewhere, things are heating up at the very heart of the Galactic Alliance. The government, led by Chief of State Daala, is continuing to handle the Jedi with a hard hand. Making use of hired Mandalorian mercenaries once more, Daala lays siege on the Jedi temple demanding that any crazed Jedi be relinquished to the Galactic Alliance. Naturally the Jedi refuse and, due to the disproportionate severity of the Mandalorians’ actions, the ongoing anti-Jedi sentiment in the public now gradually tilts back. In the end, with Abeloth’s demise the issue of the mysterious disease appears to have resolved itself. How this bodes for the damaged relationship between the Jedi and the Alliance remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Tahiri has been on trial for killing Admiral Pellaeon, a crime she committed while serving Jacen/Darth Caedus. Hers is an interesting case in essence revolving around the question of blame. Should it be put on Tahiri, the one who actually pulled the trigger, or Jacen, the one whom she was serving and who, if only indirectly, ordered her to dispose of Pellaeon? Tahiri’s advocate Eramuth, a very likeable Bothan, tries to play the angle of Jacen exploiting Tahiri’s sorrow over Anakin’s death. The probability that this proves successful given the presentation of very incriminating evidence at the hands of prosecution does not seem to be very high. So, as Allies concludes, Tahiri is preparing for the worst.
As for Chief of State Daala, generally, things are not looking up. She has been facing a steady decline of public support and simultaneously an imminent loss of control having to witnesses more and more enslaved species across the galaxy stand up against their oppressors. This freedom movement has slowly been gaining traction and it seems that the way Daala handles it will determine the future direction of her political career.

While Allies is faster paced than its predecessor and really advances the central story lines of the series it still lacks in the respect that there is no real sense of a major overarching conflict that could severely impact the status quo. I had assumed that Abeloth was being built up to be this potential game changer. Now with her dead (I have my doubts she is truly gone), all bets are off and I have no idea where this series is headed next. Sure, not everything is resolves at this point, but it seems that all lose threads could be wrapped up pretty easily and I am left wondering which storyline could possibly carry the remaining four installments in this series.
For me, Allies is a decent read with a bunch of interesting settings, e.g. Klatooine with its systemic slavery and almost religious worship of a natural landmark, or Abeloth’s creepy home planet. It also offers some food for thought relating to the Tahiri case and its moral implications. Regardless, as usual there are some things that I take issue with and, interestingly, all of these relate to the significance that is attributed to different romantical relationships.
For one, there is Ben’s attraction towards Vestara. Beside the fact that his falling for her was predictable from the moment the two ended up in the same place together the whole “forbidden love between Jedi and Sith” trope is pushed a bit too heavily for what is in my opinion an insignificant budding teenage romance as of now. I find it funny though how much Ben resembles his father in his clumsy attempts at flirtation, but more on Luke later.
For another, I still think that the Tahiri-Anakin relationship is constantly made into something bigger than it truly was. Everyone keeps referring to it as if the two were soulmates destined to be together when in fact they were – just like Ben and Vestara – two teenagers that were attracted to one another. No one can ever know how this would have turned out. So, everyone assuming Tahiri would have become the Solo’s daughter in law and Eramuth building his defense on a heartbreak that dates back 10+ years before the crime Tahiri is being tried for just seems a bit much.
Finally, the big reveal that Abeloth is Callista (or at least contains her somehow) and that her still fervent love for Luke is what sparks her interest in him is so ridiculous I had to put the book down for a moment when I read it. As I recall it, Luke and Callista’s relationship was weird (Luke fell in love with a computer – wtf), brief, and clumsy. Granted the latter is true for all of Luke’s romantic exploits – even the onset of his relationship with Mara. His relationship with Callista ended in a very strange way with Luke spending an entire novel searching for her and, once he found her, she just jetted off never to be seen again and Luke was perfectly fine with that. Personally, I did not think Callista would ever play any significant role again (good riddance), so having her name randomly pop up here was a surprise. Here we get to see the wise, experienced Grand Master of the Jedi grieve for a brief, insignificant romance of his youth, which is as ridiculous as it sounds. Of course, I am curious where this Callista connection comes from, but I could easily have done without this crazy twist.

All in all, Allies is a decent read. It has an easy to follow, reasonably paced plot that ties some lose ends together but leaves me wondering where this series is going to head next. Despite some grievances and an absolutely ludicrous apparent conclusion to the Abeloth story arc, I liked it better than Backlash and am keen to see what Vortex has in store.

[Ithlilian · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are aspects of this series that I enjoy less than others, plot lines that interest me more than others, and direction changes that remind me of hallows versus horcruxes, but all in all this is still an enjoyable series. The characters are entertaining and the banter is not shoved down our throats too much, so that's definitely a plus, but like the other novels this is broken up into separate stories that all somewhat relate and will eventually affect each other.

If you didn't know it already Ben has a thing for the Sith girl. No spoilers there because they shove it down your throat pretty much the entire time. We get it. Oh and Sith are bad and will probably betray you. Shocking, I know. So we have Luke and Ben running around a planet with some Sith for awhile, no one trusting each other, yet being forced to work together. I had almost no interest there because we knew how it was going to end for the most part.

Then we have the trial of the ex-Sith which is decently compelling and has some character development that is welcome. However, the whole he still loves me I can finally move on thing was a bit sickening.

Daala is being very emperor-like and comes off as crazy next to the Jedi, yet I can understand some of where she is coming from. What good is a senate against the might of these magic wielding renegades that just do whatever they want? Do the readers conveniently forget that Jedi are randomly killing people? The Solos do, yet we are supposed to dislike Daala and side with the Jedi? Ok.

Then slavery, it's bad, and the series is going to focus on it. They just now decided that. Yay? I can see how they are using it to add fuel to the Daala is crazy Jedi do whatever they want fire but I have a hard time caring when it is introduced more than halfway through the series.

Oh well, the stories are still interesting, interesting things keep happening, the characters are not cardboard and I am content to continue.

[Cal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now this was a cover.

Same song and dance as most of the rest of the series. I am reinvigorated after reading these synopsis, I can still remember what it felt like to delve into these books on Nook. I had gone from NJO to Legacy to these, and I just feel that at that time in my life, I was Star Wars EU'd out...I would seriously love to revisit these.

UPDATE:

So I'm keeping the rating the same. This book was like the sequels for me--high highs and low lows. Some really cool moments, and some horrendous ones too. There were a handful of times when I couldn't believe how goofily things were being described...like it wasn't Star Wars at all. Most of the highs for me had not much to do with actual Star Wars content, and more to do with how emotionally they were written, which is a credit to Christie Golden. It makes sense to me why everyone fawned over the relationship novel that was Dark Disciple. This book, although it was pivotal in this series, doesn't really have me that excited to move forward, which is what must've happened the first time around. I'm to the point where I think I'll finish the series just to accomplish that, which I am not proud of. I have so much good stuff waiting to be read, and this material just feels "ehh" to me. I am excited to read the next in the series because I just met Troy Denning, spoke with him about this series, and he signed my copy of Vortex. Had I known he was going to be at the convention, I would've brought Star by Star lol.

[Kaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

FATE OF THE JEDI #5: ALLIES

Up to this point, FOTJ is still a solid series. Although you still see a lot of filler and other annoying and boring things. We continue to get good stuff with the main story of Luke, Ben, Abeloth, and the Sith which is by far the most interesting thing in the book series.

We also continue to see more of the political plot on Coruscant with Daala and the Jedi. At this point, this plot is very boring because all you want is to see more of the main story and these pauses to see what is happening on Coruscant slow down the story. It also doesn't help that we now have the Tahiri trial plot, and another subplot involving a galaxy-wide slave Uprising. There are many stories!

It all starts right after the fourth book
It starts right where the Jade Shadow is surrounded by Sith Ships. They receive a transmission from High Lord Sarasu Taalon, who is a Keshiri referenced in “Omen”, where it is mentioned that there is a Keshiri member in the Circle of Lords. Lord Taalon proposes an alliance with Luke and Ben to confront Abeloth because several Sith apprentices suffer from the same psychosis as the young Jedi Knights. Luke accepts but realizes that Ben and Vestara are attracted to each other. Vestara's father, Gavar Khai, also realizes this and tells Vestara to manipulate Ben. He also reveals that the whole thing about crazy Sith apprentices is a lie and that they plan to betray the Skywalkers once Abeloth is captured, or destroyed if they cannot control it. Luke cannot understand their Keshiri language and records a conversation to send to C-3PO for translation.
The Jade Shadow and the Sith then set out for the planet Klatooine to meet with Lando Calrissian, who agreed to lend them an asteroid tug, the Rockhound, to venture into the Maw.

Luke sends Ben and Vestara to the surface to acquire supplies and asks Dyon Stadd to keep an eye on them. Dyon is suddenly affected by the psychosis that drives the Jedi mad and flees in the direction of the Fountain of the Hutt Ancients. This fountain is a natural formation that serves as a contract from 25,000 years ago. This contract is that the Hutts would protect this Fountain and all the Klatoonians and Niktos would serve them as slaves. The Fountain is successfully defended thanks to Vestara and Ben, who work together and we see how there is a type of romance between the two. The story continues and they travel to the Maw. The Sith leave two Ships behind to meet Lando, who has not yet arrived. The two ships remain in orbit and follow Lord Taalon's orders to take samples from the Fountain to create weapons with that material that becomes increasingly harder. This was a little weird because Lord Taalon just looks at the Fountain on a hologram or something and sends several Sith to collect samples. This backfires because the Sith are captured and half of that group is executed.

The whole Fountain thing causes an uproar among the Klatooinians and several uprisings. Lando and Jaina Solo arrive on Klatooine and help as neutral witnesses and decide that the Hutts have not broken the Vontor Treaty, which would thereby free the Klatooinians and others from slavery. The blame falls on the Sith and the group that was captured is executed. This does not prevent the Klatooinian uprisings from continuing, and this spreads throughout the galaxy, where other enslaved cultures driven by the 'Freedom Flight' movement begin to create destabilization on several planets.

Lando finally reunites with Luke and gives him the spaceship, Rockhound. On their journey they discover that the Sinkhole station has been destroyed and a Sith ship is also destroyed when it collides with some debris, reducing the group. They arrive at Abeloth's world, but before going to find her, Luke and several Sith use Mind Walking to go to "Beyond Shadows" and find out where Abeloth may be. In Beyond Shadows a Sith falls into the Lake of Oblivion and dies. Luke talks to Mara again and she tells him that the presence Luke was feeling all this time was Abeloth. Vestara frees Dyon and this allows them to meet Abeloth. The Sith and Jedi confront Abeloth, who takes on a physical form resembling Callista, a former Luke's girlfriend. Despite her appearance, Luke and the Sith fight her, the Sith betray the Skywalkers at one point in the fight. Meanwhile Jaina, in her StealthX, engages Ship above the planet. Abeloth attempts to possess Dyon's body, but Luke stabs her in the chest with his lightsaber and Abeloth dies. With Abeloth's death, Ship disappears, and the meditation vessel launches away from the Maw toward an unknown location. Also, Abeloth's "apparently" death seems to end the psychosis that drove the Jedi crazy and they begin to recover.

That's the main plot and I think this is pretty good. It's fun and I liked that whole thing about the Sith and the Jedi working together. The battle with Abeloth is also very good and has great moments. I just didn't like the part where Callista appeared and where we discovered what happened to her after the last time we saw her. Apparently, on her journey to regain her connection to the Force, Callista traveled to the world of Abeloth and was absorbed. I don't know why they brought this character back, it was very anticlimactic when she just shows up and Luke is surprised to see her. I guess it should be a big reveal or a big moment, but it's just dumb. Luke’s reaction is horrible too, he just stands there saying “Oh my Callie, my Callie.” He then blames Abeloth for everything that happened to Jacen and they're basically saying here that it was because of Abeloth that Jacen turned evil and that's just nonsense.

Well, then let's go where the book falls apart with the whole plot of politics on Coruscant and the Jedi. At the same time as the main plot is happening, several Mandalorians besiege the Jedi Temple and ask that two new Jedi who have gone mad be handed over to them. A Jedi assistant to Grand Master Kenth Hammner goes out to try to negotiate but the Mandalorian leader kills her. The audience is angry and obviously, the Jedi are too. Actually, this scene is well done. There is yet another moment where we see Daala's assistant, Wynn Dorvan, who has adopted the habit of having lunch on the steps of the Jedi Temple with Raynar Thul. Dorvan realizes that Rayanar will be killed when he exits the steps of the Jedi Temple and arrives to prevent him from being killed. He eventually gets the Jedi to take the body of the girl who was murdered and Dorvan is simply brilliant, one of the best characters in this series.

There is a part where Jaina asks Jagged Fel for help to go to Luke and Ben's aid. Jag refuses and they break up their relationship. Again, silly, pointless drama between Jaina and Jag like in “Abyss.” We then follow Tahiri's trial where she has a new Bothan lawyer, Eramuth Bwua'tu sent by Jagged Fel. We also see Admiral Nek Bwua'tu (Eramuth Bwua'tu's nephew) speaking with Kenth Hammner and agreeing that he will give his support to the Jedi so they can help Luke on his mission. Admiral Nek Bwua'tu, who is a Bothan, is apparently the lover of Chief of State Daala, so he seeks to convince her to change her aggressive tactics against the Jedi but is unable to convince her to cancel the Mandalorian Siege to the Jedi Temple. Their romance, their engagement, and their entire story are garbage. It seems like it's a fanfiction
Returning home, Nek is attacked by two crazed Jedi. He realizes that they cannot be Jedi as he can fend off their attacks and kills one of them. But his arm is cut off and he ends up unconscious due to his injuries.

Finally, Tahiri's trial continues and reaches a decisive point.
The negotiation is just boring and Tahiri stands her ground at first after Han and Leia tell her how Luke saw Anakin Solo in “Beyond Shadows” where he told them he still loved Tahiri and blah blah blah. Their trial consists of Tahiri trying to prove that Jacen manipulated her and there's even a scene where they imply that Jacen and Tahiri were lovers and ahhhhh.
It's a shame that the novel ended with this plot of Tahiri's trial, it took away great pace from the story when we all already know that Tahiri is guilty of murdering Gilad Pellaeon, so there is no mystery or anything to generate interest. In the last chapter, we see some shocking revelations when an audio containing the last conversation between Tahiri and Pellaeon, before Pellaeon was murdered. The audio clearly shows how Tahiri is guilty and the story ends in suspense... The truth is that no, or not for me at least, it was boring and we already knew how Tahiri killed Pellaeon.

There are still good moments and it's just entertaining, but there's too much filler and it's the weakest novel in the series so far. The main plot with Luke, Ben, Abeloth, and the Sith is the only thing that keeps the story going, but the drop in quality is already being felt.

[Leo Matoush · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's hard not to knock most of the books in this series for the whole Admiral Daala as Chief of State thing. That whole storyline doesn't work for me. The rebuilding of the Mando's make sense given Boba Fett's popularity. Unfortunately the Mando's don't really help the story either. Everything around her to this point has been way too predictable and frustratingly unconvincing.
I actually had less of a problem with Luke's interactions with the Sith. I haven't been a fan of the Abeloth stuff though, feels too much like the end scenes of the Dark Forces games where the bad guys had super powers that made them invincible unless you ran around and triggered things right. At least in Dark Forces you can forgive that since that's just how boss battles in video games work. That doesn't work for me in narrative fiction.
The series does seem to be setting up the deteriorating conditions that lead into the Legacy comics.

As I may have said about previous books in the series, Luke and Ben's story line's been interesting, but otherwise I still feel like I'm slogging through to find out what happens without much enjoyment of the story itself.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the plot developments and of course the characters, but found Golden's writing style lacking. I had to read too many sentences over to crystallize their meaning.

I have read every Star Wars novel I know about up to this point, and this is the 1st time I have felt taken advantage of— like I am mainly helping to keep Skywalker Ranch well manicured.

It would be better for all readers, I think, if the 9 books of The Fate of the Jedi where distilled into 1 big novel or a trilogy, all written by 1 author.

Still I love living in this universe...

[David Collier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sith and Jedi Allies? Woah! This book wraps up a bunch of stuff from the previous books. Not sure where they are going from here.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

I keep wanting to like this series more than I do. It has plenty of action, a number of intriguing subplots, and some of my favorite Legends characters. But the overarching plot structure creaks and groans quite a bit. I know that the editors of the EU at this time really liked these multi-novel, multi-author series, but in this case the actual skeleton of the idea, the bones of the story, seems suspect. And there seems to be a LOT of filler.

Picking up where Fate of the Jedi: Backlash left off, Allies sees Luke and Ben make an alliance with High Lord Sarasu Taalon of the Sith to fight the Force entity known as Abeloth. Luke has now come to believe that Abeloth is behind the psychosis that the Jedi face, and the Sith say that their apprentices are experiencing the same thing. However, the Sith are lying. For them, the joint effort to travel to the Maw and confront Abeloth has more to do with revenge and the desire to understand the power that she represents - and perhaps to possess it.

The plot of this book, like many others in this series, becomes overly convoluted. Luke engages in stalling tactics so that Lando can show up with a mining ship that will help them enter the Maw safely. They delay at Klatooine, but during their layover some of the Jedi and Sith get in trouble by violating local laws, a complete tangent from the main plot. There is also a subplot about slavery that seems somewhat arbitrary. Meanwhile, back on Coruscant, the Jedi Temple is still under siege by Mandalorians, and Tahiri Veila remains on trial. These subplots move forward slowly, and fill more pages. Vestara Khai is encouraged to see if she can seduce Ben to the Dark Side, adding another complication to the story.

Eventually, Luke, Ben, and the Sith make it to the remains of Sinkhole Station and confront Abeloth. Naturally, the Sith try to betray the Jedi during the battle, but Luke is on to them.

This book reminds me of a church potluck. There are a lot of tasty dishes here, and I enjoy many of the ideas and plot threads, on their own merits. But the entirety feels like less than the sum of the parts. The pieces never seem to be coalescing into a meaningful whole. My sense is that the master planners of the Fate of the Jedi series were determined to have another nine-book arc to follow the Legacy of the Force series, and so would go along with just about anything to keep stretching the narrative out. This appetite for content leads segments like Backlash and Allies, stuck in the middle of the sequence, to feel incredibly inconsequential.

Of course, this one presents a confrontation with a super-powerful Force entity, which should be the big bad of the whole series. That should make this installment incredibly important, as we see the major villain in all their glory for the first time. But when Luke and his team destroy her so easily, one wonders what the point is. Is the series over now? What comes next? The tension and the stakes of the entire series seems to have been cut off.

This is probably a 2.5 star book. I enjoyed it in the moment, but like the aforementioned church potluck, it won't be memorable or satisfying long term. I am hoping that Denning, Allston, and Golden sort this out and bring the series to a satisfying conclusion, but I am not holding my breath.

[Rob Whaley · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a move absolutely no one saw coming, Luke Skywalker has ended up teaming with members of the Lost Tribe of the Sith to track down and destroy Abeloth. This ends up having massive ramifications for the galaxy. Both sides touch down on Klatooine, the home of the Klatooinian species that has been serving the hutts for thousands of years. While Ben and Vestara Khai get to know each other, some of the Sith conspire to steal part of an ancient fountain connected to the hutts. Long story short, some of the sith are killed and Klatooine falls into anarchy as the people call for breaking off all relations with the hutts.

In a move absolutely everyone saw coming, Daala decides to stop being not-nice with the jedi and just go straight up Palpatine. Daala, or TB as I've grown to calling her (thanks to inspiration from Han and Kyp for their nickname for another character) [aka Tarkin's Bitch], uses the mandalorians to lay siege to the jedi temple and demands that they surrender the remaining crazy jedi. To show they mean business (and to show that the mandos are kriffing bastards with no honor [cough cough Karen Traviss]), they end up killing a young apprentice, thus royally pissing off the rest of the order. Luckily, Han and Leia manage to find a small opening into the temple and that they can use rodents to transport supplies inside to help them wait out the siege.

Meanwhile, Jaina manages to break out before the siege and travels to join Lando in helping Luke at the Maw. They, Luke, and the sith converge onto Abeloth's planet deep in the Maw. While fighting her, Luke is temporarily tricked by a vision of Callista (ugh), his ex. Luckily, he manages to see through it and is able to seemingly kill Abeloth.

Tahiri's trial doesn't go well though. Although she does enlist the help of Eramuth Bwua'tu, a renowned Bothan attorney, her case goes downhill fast when footage is shown of her assassinating Palleon.

This was a pretty good read. It was fast paced, good mix of action and suspense, and included a few good statements about the government's lack of urgency regarding the issue of slavery in the galaxy, and the role of the media (especially poignant in the post-9/11 society). Wheras the LOTF series seemed to take a more positive (or at the very least neutral) stance towards fascism and dictatorships, FOTJ is more critical and is willing to make meta statements about the media's fall into sensationalism and innuendos while failing their duties to act as watchdogs for the public. Plus, I'm actually digging the Abeloth storyline. I'm not a fan of the more Sith deal, but I'm willing to put up with it if it means more of her and the Lovecraftian Horror she brings. *shudders*

Plus, I love how this book was such a massive refutation of Karen Traviss's mando books by showing them being nothing more than glorified stormtroopers gunning down a defenseless jedi and acting like thugs. Plus Jaina doesn't ever mention her training with Boba Fett or how they "helped" stop Darth Caedus. It's obvious that this is Christie, Aaron Allston, Troy Denning, and Lucasfilm sending a clear message to Traviss, who also at around this time famously quit Lucasfilm for not liking what Lucas did with the Mandalorians in TCW. Couldn't have happened to a better woman.

[DiscoSpacePanther · Rating 4 out of 5]

In spite of the dubious quality of the writing of Fate of the Jedi: Allies, I found myself really enjoying this book.

Perhaps I’ve just been drawn into the overarching Fate of the Jedi plot line, but it has become a fun rollercoaster ride that is entertaining enough for me to be able to ignore how the tale is told. Furthermore, I think the author shows a little bit more inventiveness in their storytelling than some of the newer Star Wars novels, which definitely makes me feel more positively inclined towards it.

For example, compare this book with the recently released new canon Star Wars novel Queen’s Shadow that covers some of the same themes. In that book we have lots of tepid discussion about how evil slavery is, followed by a ridiculous plan to purchase slaves with the intent of setting them free (a ludicrous plan that perversely incentivises slave-taking in the first place). Whereas is this story, crudely written though it is, there are passages written from a slave’s point of view where, instead of being passive objects of pity, the slaves are actually taking some agency for themselves and fighting back against their enslavers.

I’m not going to let it get away completely with dodgy writing, though, so here are some examples:

1. A quote from the text regarding Vestara, “Even though she was a Sith, and had by her own admission killed in cold blood, there was an innocence about her”. Hmm—there is something pretty incongruous there, and I think it falls into the category of telling rather than allowing the user to deduce it from the characterisation. It comes across as rather first-draft -ish.
2. Another super-cheesy quote, “Luke clicked off and leaned back in the chair, and wondered what sort of mischief his teenage son and the teenage Sith girl had gotten themselves into.” This rather minimises the threat that Sith represent, and is far lighter in tone than the material probably warrants.
3. Sloppy editing, including the repeated misspelling of Kyp Durron as “Kyp Durran”.
4. It never ceases to dismay me when an author is a science fiction or fantasy universe has a trial, and then trots out the same old tired “Objection!”, “Overruled” clichés of the American justice system. Why bother setting your novel in a galaxy far, far away if you are going to make it read as if it was taking place in Alabama? Sometimes I don’t think that authors realise how parochial it makes their works, not to mention how lacking in imagination.

These flaws are part of the fun, though—they certainly aren’t killing my Star Wars joy.

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as the otherwise boring Fate of the Jedi series goes, Allies isn’t strictly horrible, and it’s better than the first 3 or 4, but now, 5 books into a series that spans nine novels, I’m left wondering what the point of it all is.

This series, which has been mostly useless other than to further the plots of Ben Solo and the rest of the spin off characters from Anderson’s Young Jedi Knights and Children of the Jedi stuff hasn’t really gone anywhere. Even now that the Jedi and Sith have confronted each other, worked together, and then, surprise, surprise, fought each other for the upteenth time, it just feels like things are wallowing around and pages are just being taken up for the sake of making things longer. Case in point: Luke and Ben’s journey to Klatooine and the Maw, which, like every other book in this series, just wastes time with nothing being resolved.

I’ll give it to Golden for at least making things move a little faster than previous books. There is a bit more action in Allies than others up to this point and, even if it feels like wasted time, at least things are slowly feeling like they’re coming to a conclusion (even if it’s not for another freaking 4 books). And the cliffhanger at the end of the last chapter makes me want to see how Tahiri is gonna get outta this one.

Unfortunately I’m too far into this series now to give up. With 4 books left, I’m more than 1/2 way so I can’t give up now. My only hope (heh heh) is that things finally start to come together and I won’t feel like I wasted so much time stuck in this otherwise bland set of novels.