Spoiler-Free Review

Go out and buy this book. Right now. I mean it. Go! What the heck are you waiting for?

The Real Review (major spoilers)

I don't know where to start in describing this book. First off ... after Rebirth, I was feeling so good about the series ... it seemed to me that the New Republic had passed its darkest moment and was now going to begin to turn the tide, starting with the symbolic rebirth of the galaxy with Ben Skywalker. I was so wrong it's not even funny. The novel opens with a few brutal scenes ... a new creature (the voxyn) is rampaging around the galaxy. It's a bred Jedi hunter with lots of nasty abilities, and has been shaped from a vornskr, which means it can hunt using the Force ... no doubt courtesy of our old pal Nen Yim, who sadly doesn't appear in this book. We watch as voxyn take out a few Jedi (and plenty more off camera) real quick, and by that time I was already getting a sneaking suspicion that the high I was on post-Rebirth was about to come crashing down. And I was right, too. By the end of the book, I'd seen the fall of Coruscant, Jaina falling to the Dark Side, Borsk dying a hero's death, Vergere's very strange return (she remains a wild card, perhaps a crucial one) ... and, oh yeah, one small thing.

I saw Anakin die.

Those of you who haven't read the book yet will be glad to know that he goes out in a way befitting a true Jedi Knight ... already mortally wounded and without the time to enter a healing trance, he becomes a pure conduit to the Force. He actually glows (his cells are breaking down, unable to contain the energy), and the power surging through him is incredible. He senses the Vong clear as day, and that's just for starters. Too soon, though, his body cannot contain the ravishing energy of the Light, his glow dims, then fades, and Anakin Solo is no more. It's a great scene.

Of course, there are plenty of questions, and I guess that's really why I needed to write this ... the first one being why Anakin? I kinda knew going in that not all of the Solo kids would live through their really dumb plan (better plan: figure out voxyns are coming from Myrkyr, send fleet to wipe the place clean of any life whatsoever, made much simpler when worldship discovered and fleet can just blow that up. Alternative plan: get Kyp to drag out the Sun Crusher for one last ride ... it's still there, people!), but I was hoping so much that it would be Jacen. He's pissed me off time and time again until the point where I would have made the Vong who killed him my personal hero. But Anakin?

This throws everybody for a loop, and for good reason ... they were setting Anakin up to be the next Luke. He had the prowess, the raw Force skill, the charisma, all of it. Heck, he even got the girl. He alone could sense the Vong.

Of course, Del Ray was probably planning on it. Chewie's death pierced the bubble of invulnerability surrounding all of the main characters -- when Mara got sick, I was worried she'd die. Every time anybody went into battle against really bad odds, I felt the tension. It was great. Anakin's death pierces the secondary bubble I had started to set up. Anakin wouldn't die -- too much of the plot revolved around him! Heck, on my list of people that I thought were gonna croak it in this war, he'd be at the very bottom, with Tahiri nipping at his heels, what with all that talk in Edge of Victory about how the two of them are greater than the sum of their parts and all. His death shows us, in the most brutal fashion possible, that everyone in the books is in the crosshairs. Next time Luke and Mara go out into battle without shields (they do that in this one), they might just orphan Ben.

Needless to say this has all sorts of effects. Primarily, the grief over her brother's death breaks Jaina's emotional shell. She gives into her anger and turns to the Dark Side ... this is very, very bad. Skywalker Jedi (Vader, Luke, Leia, Jaina, Jacen, Anakin, and Ben) are exceptionally strong in the Force. Vader was strong enough to wipe out the Jedi, nobody has touched Luke's level since he refounded the Jedi, and the Solo kids were far and away the most powerful of the new generation, with Anakin standing way, way by himself at the top. Now with Jaina on the Dark Side, the only people who can really combat her are Luke and Jacen. Luke's got his own problems, and it's more dramatic the other way ... Jacen will have to face her. You see why I'm so worried?

Also, let's talk about Tahiri. While a very interesting character, and probably crucial due to her Vong memories, she was Anakin's Girlfriend. We never saw her away from his side, except for when she was a prisoner. What will be done with her now? She'd better not just fade off, but she really has no identity without Anakin. Also, I felt greatly cheated that we didn't get to see her reaction to his death. Will this turn her to the Dark Side as well? Remember Anakin's vision.

And now, with Ben an infant, Anakin dead, and Jaina Dark, I've got to pin my hopes on Jacen. It's a bitter pill. He's got to get his head straight and become the hero the galaxy needs ... the hero that his brother was.

By the way, there's some very interesting foreshadowing going on with the Yuuzhan Vong superstitions. Apparently, twins are very rare in Vong culture, and when they arise, one always kills the other and then leads the Vong to great things. Dread Lord Shimrra was the most recent twin. Combined with Jaina's fall to the Dark Side by the end of the book, this definitely promises that Jacen and Jaina will eventually face each other, with the fate of the galaxy no doubt at stake.

In the non-Jedi action, the book really doesn't let down either. The Vong finally strike Coruscant, resulting in a huge pitched battle for the New Republic's capital. And, once again, I started thinking "oh, okay, this is when the swing towards the good guys start ... they'll stop them at Coruscant, that'll turn the tide." I should have known better. Coruscant falls. Borsk Fey'lya, by the way, redeems himself throughout this book, but no more so in the way he dies. He refuses to evacuate, sets a thermal detonator to his heartbeat, and demands to surrender to Tsavong Lah. Unfortunately, the warmaster sees through the plan and has Fey'lya killed. He does take 25,000 Vong with him, though, and dies as the sort of person he should have been all along. Viqi Shesh is unmasked as well, and I wasn't quite sure if she survived or not, and after rereading that section again and again, I still can't tell ... but if she did, she won't be welcome in either New Republic or Vong space. Good riddance.

I just can't get over how good this book was. This ends on a note reminiscent of how Empire ended ... this time it's Han and Leia standing off on the sidelines, helpless, as their two surviving children are plunged into even greater peril.

This has to be the down point ... I've got to be right. Quite frankly, if things get any worse, I think Ben Skywalker will grow up speaking Vong.

The Light Side (spoilers)

• Luke and Mara being parents. We see Luke singing nursery rhymes to himself, imagining Ben in his arms. At the climactic battle, Mara doesn't care one way or another for Coruscant but will not let the Vong one meter closer to her son. And both Luke and Mara are constantly guarding against feeling fear, anger, or hate even for a second, because they know that Ben will sense it. It's a great touch to see the added stresses of being Jedi parents to a son who's already very strong in the Force.
• Borsk Fey'lya. He finally acted like one of the good guys. I'll actually miss the annoying jerk.
• Technology advancing, on both sides. Civilization never innovates quicker than in wartime, and yet we've seen the same static weaponry from both the Vong and the New Republic. Finally, we start seeing some new stuff. Interdictor Star Destroyers (named the Mon Mothma and Elegos A'Kla, nice touches), XJ-3 X-wings with grab proof shields and stutter-fire lasers designed to defeat dovin basals, the jamming of a yammosk's communications -- they all make their inaugural appearances in this book. The Vong only have one new toy, the voxyn, which is apparently wiped out by the end of the book.
• Tsavong Lah and Vergere playing dejarik (the hologame Luke and Chewie played on the Falcon back in ANH) on an organically grown board. Apparently, dejarik is this galaxy's version of chess. It's a neat touch.
• Han and Leia's reaction to Anakin's death. Leia collapses, screaming in the hallway when she feels it, and Han begins blasting everything in sight when she manages to tell him what has happened, forcing the Noghri guards to wrestle his gun away. You could feel their grief.

Dark Side:

• All the voxyn are cloned from a single queen voxyn, and inexpertly at that, because they rapidly degenerate, meaning that without the queen, the Vong can't make any new voxyn. Excuse me? This is the Yuuzhan Vong we're talking about, right? The race that genetically creates whatever it wants and clones long extinct creatures from the shaper's memories? It rings utterly false in a book that does everything else so right.
• No Nen Yim. Not fair, not fair at all!

Like I said at the beginning of the review, this is the best Star Wars novel I've ever read. If you haven't done so already, go out and buy it. Now. I mean it.

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