They say it's darkest before the dawn, but the New Republic's still got miles to go before they sleep -- and it's already pitch black out there ...

Star Wars: Agents of Chaos II - Jedi Eclipse by James Luceno is the second installment of the Agents of Chaos duology, part of the overall New Jedi Order series that will continue until at least 2002.

Spoiler-Free Review

Okay, first, what's with the cover? It looks like Han and Supreme Commander Tsavong Lah are allies here, and I hope I do not spoil the story for you by saying this scene does not take place in the book. I do like the portrayal of the amphistaph/snake thingie. But, where's the rest of Han's arm? Is it behind some smoke or a rock or something? This cover just didn't do anything for me.

After wading through the complexity of this book and trying to come up with a brief plot summary, I am exhausted. A lot happens in this book. I was expecting to follow Han and Droma most of the way, but we actually get more of Leia this time. Combined with a substantial quantity of Yuuhzan Vong, Hutts, Ryns, Hapans, Corellians, New Republic politicians and military, and a handful of Jedi, Luceno was trying to juggle too many plot threads. Have you ever seen the act where a guy juggles a knife, a bowling ball, and a raw egg? This felt a lot like that: uneven and a bit awkward, but astounding nonetheless. It follows some characters closely (Leia, Han), while giving us little or nothing of others that might have been more interesting (the Jedi, Rogue Squadron). I liked the space battles in this one, and the portrayal of the Vong is chilling. The brief interaction at the end between Han and Leia is on character, but all too fleeting. The only false note for me, besides a few incredible coincidences, has to do with a stupid decision Anakin makes that had me pulling my hair out.

In the end, I felt the book kept us in a holding pattern, not really advancing any one plot thread too much in the overall story. A whole lot of stuff happened, but very little of it seemed significant, at least on the surface. Certain characters are maneuvering their way into positions where they can take advantage of future events. It will be interesting to see where the story takes us next in Kathy Tyers's upcoming contribution to the NJO, Balance Point.

Overall, I'll give this one a B. You could safely skip it and not miss much, but it was an enjoyable read. This concludes the spoiler-free section of my review. As with my other reviews, I'll give you a plot summary, then tell you what I liked in The Light Side and what I didn't in The Dark Side.

Plot Summary (heavy spoilers)

There's a lot I've left out, but this is the gist of it. As the story opens, Leia is helping a crowd of galactic refugees on Gyndine. She manages to get four of Droma's Ryn clanmates onto the last transport, but six others are left behind with the unfortunates who are scooped up by the Vong. Also staying behind is Jedi Wurth Skidder, who deliberately allows himself to be captured. Skidder ends up on a nursery ship (the Creche) tending a young yammosk ( a Vong War Coordinator), along with Droma's clanmates and Han's buddies Roa and Fasgo, captured in the previous book. The Hutts have forged a truce with the Vong, but they betray it by telling Talon Karrde where he can find Skidder. Karrde takes the news to Kyp Durron, who, along with his "Dozen" starfighters and Ganner Rhysode, go to Kalarba to rescue Skidder. They damage the Creche, and it flees to hyperspace, but not before they get a fix on its destination: the ship-building planet Fondor.

Meanwhile, Han and Droma are still searching for Roa and Fasgo. Leia tells them about Droma's clanmates who have been settled on Ruan. But Han gets there too late; the Ryn have escaped Ruan, paying for their passage by forging transport documents for well-off refugees. Using the excuse that Droma is also a Ryn, the Ruan authorities arrest Droma as part of the forgery conspiracy. Han ends up rescuing Droma by trading favors with a bunch of disenfranchised droids. After a long chase through fields and ditches, Han and Droma escape the planet. They follow the trail of the Ryn's transport ship, which was supposed to be headed for Abregado-rae, but has really jumped for Fondor.

At the same time, Leia goes to the Hapes Consortium (home of her erstwhile suitor Prince Isolder) to ask for help in fighting the Vong. Isolder and his allies want to help, but another planetary leader, Archon Thane, is against getting involved. Thane insults Leia, causing Isolder to challenge him to a duel. They end up betting their votes on the outcome, and Isolder wins. Leia is plagued by vague visions of disaster and tries to dissuade Isolder from coming at the last moment, but he insists.

The New Republic military, along with the Advisory Council, cook up a plan to trap the Vong. Their intelligence suggests that the next major Vong target will be either Bothawui or Corellia. Commodore Brand maneuvers behind the scenes to make sure most of the Fleet goes to protect Bothawui. His plan is to make Corellia look defenseless, while secretly re-activating the superweapon called Centerpoint Station and using it to create a giant interdiction field. Once the Vong are trapped in the Corellian system, the Fleet will jump in and pound them to pieces. Because Anakin was the one who originally "bonded" with Centerpoint (back in the Corellian Trilogy novels), he is sent to help re-activate it, and Jacen goes along. The fleet of Hapan Battle Dragons and other ships is sent to Commenor, their mission to prevent the Vong from fleeing the New Republic's trap. Meanwhile, Senator Viqi Shesh of the Advisory Council is making secret deals of her own with the Hutts.

Han and Droma arrive at Fondor and discover that the refugees from Ruan have been abandoned on an unused orbital shipyard. While they are trying to rescue the refugees, the Yuuhzan Vong fleet attacks. They emerge from hyperspace and obliterate the NR Star Destroyers under construction there. The New Republic tries to get the Fleet from Bothawui to Fondor, but the Vong have seeded all the hyperspace lanes between the two planets with mines and traps. The NR calls in the Hapan fleet. Leia watches the battle from Isolder's flagship. The damaged Creche is at Fondor as well, having fled from Kalarba, and soon Kyp's Dozen arrive, hot on the nursery ship's trail. Kyp and Ganner manage to get onto the ship and cut their way through their Vong enemies to Skidder, but he is too far gone, and they leave him. They kill the yammosk, and rescue the other prisoners off the Creche as the huge battle rages around them.

On Centerpoint, Anakin has re-activated the Station. He has a symbiosis with it that allows him to sense the distant targets at Fondor with uncanny accuracy. Thracken Sal-Solo, Han's cousin and a Corellian leader, wants Anakin to use the Station's star-bursting weapon to kill the Vong, but Jacen argues that would be aggressive, something a Jedi should not do. Anakin wavers. Finally, Sal-Solo grabs the controls and pulls the trigger. A massive beam shoots all the way to Fondor and fries half the Vong fleet. Due to Sal-Solo's lack of symbiosis with the weapon, however, it also takes out part of a moon and about 75 percent of the Hapan fleet as well. Leia watches in horror as her vision of fire and death comes true.

Afterwards, Isolder goes back to Hapes and a divided Consortium. Anakin and Jacen are still arguing about Jedi philosophy. Droma leaves Han to reunite with his clanmates. Han and Leia are barely speaking. She plans on going to Duro, while he remains on Abregado-rae, wondering what to do with himself. Senator Viqi Shesh, having escaped censure for her under-the-table dealings with the Hutts, meets with Hutt liaison Pedric Cuf, who is really the Yuuhzan Vong provocateur, Nom Anor. She makes it clear she is willing to betray the New Republic if they will help her consolidate her power.

The Light Side (spoilers)

• As in the previous book, Luceno includes plenty of characters and places from previous Star Wars stories. I thought he did a better job this time in integrating them into the novel without throttling my suspension of disbelief. The use of Centerpoint Station was a brilliant idea. It's an interesting challenge for the fans to try to guess what other allies and gizmos are going to spring from the woodwork in the next installments.
• Luceno still starts most of his scenes from a far-removed point of view, but it didn't bother me as much in the first one. The space battles were more engaging, too, probably because we saw them from Han's and Leia's points of view this time. I had no trouble at all picturing the scenes and understanding what was happening.
• The more we find out about the Vong -- new critters, new ceremonies, new strategies, etc. -- the more formidable they seem. They appear to have more savvy about New Republic politics that the Senators themselves. Luceno continues to flesh out the Vong, giving us fire-breathers, a new type of armor, a new type of ship, an incubator for giant dovin basals, and other cool stuff. They also manage to accomplish quite a bit in this story -- turned the Hutts against each other, weakened the Senate, demoralized the refugees, destroyed most of the Hapan fleet, severely damaged the New Republic's ability to replenish damaged capital ships, and blunted the impact of the Jedi.
• The droids Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio are practically non-existent in this story. That counts as a plus in my opinion. (I've got a four-year-old if I want to listen to inane whining.)
• Han gets to do a bit of fancy flying. It's great to see him actually doing something finally. And he doesn't get maudlin about Chewie once!
• Kyp is much less of a jerk in this story. He's actually quite brave and resourceful, humble even, and he's toned down his rebellious attitude. To Karrde (regarding Luke), he says, "We don't see eye to eye on some things, but there's no rift. He approved my coming here." Ganner, too, has lost his bragadoccio. Jacen, on the other hand ... [grrh]
• Cool picture: a Hutt wading into a fight and knocking aside a bunch of Yuuhzan Vong warriors like they were bowling pins.
• At last, Borsk Fey'lya's political power has been shaken. I'd rather see his head on a pike, but this is a start.

The Dark Side (spoilers)

• I rarely feel completely outclassed when it comes to vocabulary, but Luceno had me digging out the dictionary way too often. I suppose some folks might find his penchant for obscure words a learning experience; I just find it annoying. A few examples: page 1, "crepuscular"; page 2, "mephitic"; page 3, "equipoise"; page 4, "tenebrous."
• Because so many events are jammed into this story, the characterization suffers. We don't really get inside the heads of most of the players: Kyp Durron, Ganner Rhysode, Talon Karrde, Wurth Skidder, the Ryns, Prince Isolder ... no one except the traitorous Senator, Viqi Shesh, about whom I couldn't care less. Even Han and Leia's thoughts are rarely described. Instead, the story reads like a screenplay, mostly dialogue and stage direction. I could have used less of the Prince Isolder political speeches/duels subplot and a bit more introspection from Anakin, Skidder, heck, even the Hutts.
• Along those same lines, we don't get inside the heads of the Yuuhzan Vong much in this one, despite having several scenes with them, alone and interacting with the Hutts. I thought Luceno could have given us more with the same amount of words. Compared to some other NJO novels, the Vong in this one seemed watered down.
• Some of the action sequences seemed rushed, too. Compare the duel between Corran Horn and Shedao Shai at the end of Dark Tide: Ruin, then read the fight scene in this one with Kyp, Ganner and Deak versus a whole ship full of Yuuhzan Vong -- there's a huge difference in the level of detail. In the first example, I was there. In this one, I felt I was reading the Cliff's Notes -- except for a brief bit with Kyp at the end.
• I don't understand why Kyp and company don't try harder to rescue Wurth, or at least put him out of his misery. Instead they leave him in agony to die a slow death? This doesn't seem true to their characters.
• Missing in action: Luke, Mara, Corran, Rogue Squadron. If I were to name the characters I am most interested in, these would be at the top of the list, and none of them (except a cameo by Luke) appeared at all.
• For a novel in the New Jedi Order, with the word "Jedi" as part of the title, the Jedi had very little to do in this story. Did we even see a lightsaber blade in this one? I can only remember a single brief scene. The one Jedi who could have made a true difference in the outcome of events let his craven brother talk him out of it, resulting in the senseless deaths of thousands, if not millions. At least Kyp "Genocide" Durron was trying to kill the bad guys when he blew up Carida. What was Anakin doing? Contemplating his navel. Maybe this isn't the author's fault, but Luceno hasn't helped me to understand how Luke can condone Jacen's continued waffling. (Oh, yeah, wait. Maybe it's because none of the other authors could explain Luke's own waffling....)
• The coincidence of everybody ending up together on the Creche, then everybody ending up at Fondor, stretched my credulity a bit too thin. In such a huge galaxy, what are the odds that Droma's sister, Han's friend Roa, and a missing Jedi all end up in the same puddle of goo?
• I missed the wisecracking humor between Han and Droma. There was a bit of that here, but not nearly as much as in the previous book.
• An inconsistency: throughout these stories, it's been hammered home that nobody recognizes Droma's species because they are so rare. Even the immigration folks don't know what he is. Yet wherever the Ryn go, they are looked upon with suspicion. Why? If nobody knows what they are, how can they simultaneously be afraid of their "gypsy" ways? Check out page 81 for an example of this.
• Being ignorant about the military, I had a hard time understanding where Commodore Brand fit into the hierarchy. It wasn't clear to me whether he reported to an Admiral, a Brigadier General, the Senate, Military Intelligence, or what. And I didn't have a clear picture of what his role was, what forces he was in charge of, etc.

General Comments

These aren't really criticisms, just things I'd like to point out.

• There was a lot of speculation after the last book that Vergere's tears would provide Mara only a temporary cure, but at least so far she appears to be doing fine. I wonder what she and Luke are doing while the rest of the galaxy is falling apart?
• Now that Han's finished his little lark and Droma has gone back to his family, what's stopping him from returning to Leia? His hostility toward her seems unfounded to me. I'll be interested to see what the writers have in store for those two.
• Okay, what other weapons and allies can we dig up for future books? We still have the Chiss, the Bakurans (are they still around?), Baron Fel, the Imperial Remnant ... come to the Echo Station message boards and tell us your ideas.

Coming Next

Balance Point by Kathy Tyers is due out in hardback on October 31, 2000.

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