Review contains spoilers

A book dedicated to teachers in which Jacen Solo is tortured beyond belief? I'm on board.

I've never had a book dedicated to me before so that was kind of nice of Mr. Stover. Should I ever get the opportunity I'll try to return the favor.

First of all, "everything I tell you is a lie," so go read Traitor for yourselves. I liked the book. It answers the questions about where Jacen has been the last few months. I for one have enjoyed his absence. I had fun picturing the kinds of torture that the Yuuzhan Vong might be putting him through. Serves him right for being such a brat for the last few years. I'm off track already.

Okay, I can appreciate what Matthew Stover was trying to do with the comparisons between hyperspace and the atmosphere of pain, but I just don't think it really did anything to increase my understanding of what Jacen was going through. I found myself rushing through those chapter intros just to get back to the story.

I really enjoyed the focus on relatively few characters. It gave the author a chance to develop a character that until now I've grown to dislike. I've always thought that any character can be likeable if the author takes the time to let him evolve, even Jacen Solo.

Part of the reason I enjoyed Traitor so much was because of the student/teacher relationship between Vergere and Jacen. In many ways it reminded me of some of my own relationships, minus the physical torture. Page 19 has a wonderful line, "Is it what the teacher teaches or what the student learns?" The idea that the student is responsible for his or her own education is an important one for everyone to take away from this book. There are quite a few such lessons to take away from this book.

I frequently use Zen stories in my classroom to get my students to start thinking in different kinds of ways, so when Vergere said to Jacen, "You'll find no truth in me," I couldn't have been happier. She leaves the burden of truth solely on the student's shoulders, where it belongs. Filling a student's mind with one's own beliefs and philosophies is a dangerous thing. I'm glad she left it up to Jacen to find his own path and make his own choices.

It's a shame Anakin couldn't live to see his big brother figure some things out, but this book seems to turn Jacen into the kind of Jedi that Anakin was about to become. As a reader I'm torn about this. One the one hand, the NJO series desperately needs a Jedi like the one Jacen is now becoming, or the kind Anakin was about to, so I'm willing to make a leap here and accept the new Jacen. On the other hand, I have hated him so much for so long, and now he's the only Jedi that seems to know what's going on; I just don't know if I'm ready for that.

While on the subject of Anakin, I thought that his appearances throughout this book were very well handled. Be it hallucination, mind trick, or the Force, Jacen's conversations with Anakin showed a lot of growth. Jacen's self-pity, denial and lapses into childish stupidity are such classic examples of a person's resistance to emotional growth. I appreciate the way the author sprinkled these throughout the book, because these are just the kinds of things I see everyday. The touches of realism like that are what makes the book so much more believable for me.

Jacen's many awakenings were also well done. After every bout with unconsciousness, he is rewarded with a new sense of liberation. Liberation from pain, death, time, expectations, the Force. This may seem like too much growth for someone to undergo in one book, but if pain is a good teacher, Jacen had plenty of it to go around. Stover's characterization of Jacen perfectly embodies the part of the Jedi code that says, " ... there is knowledge."

Jacen can now influence the Yuuzhan Vong creatures through his "Vongsense." I think it's funny. I'm not much for fighting and war, so I rather like what Jacen has done to influence those creatures, like the world brain. Rather than destroy the new homeworld, formerly Coruscant, he convinces the world brain to make the world less than perfect and sometimes a little uncomfortable. I like that idea a lot better than the genocide the rest of the galaxy would like to see.

Stover writes, "The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it," but I think he describes it quite well when he finally says what I've been waiting years to hear someone in the Star Wars camp admit -- there is no dark side of the Force. Darkness comes from a person's motivations, not from some outside influence controlling his or her life. It's all about choices and personal responsibility. When Vergere is telling Jacen to search his feelings it brought me right back to the Emperor's throne room when he was trying to convert Luke. I like how subtle that was as opposed to some of the more blatant film references in the other Star Wars novels.

It's been hard to become connected to some of the characters and watch them grow only to see them die when you finally like them, even the Yuuzhan Vong. Ganner's exit is another classic example. Jacen gave him a crash course in what Vergere did to him; only he just pukes and gets scared. In some ways he understands himself better than Jacen does. In the end, fate finds a way and "the Ganner" becomes part of the Yuuzhan Vong mythos by taking his place as gatekeeper in the land of the dead. A grand exit for a warrior, even if it does remind me a little of the Black Knight from Monty Python.

The only thing I really had a hard time with in this book was Stover's switch from past to present tense in Jacen's slave rebellion scene. I can understand wanting it to stand out, or put the reader in the now, especially because it was Jacen fulfilling a vision from an earlier novel that seemed to go horribly wrong when he tried to free another group of slaves, but it was more distracting than anything else.

Overall, Traitor is pretty well written and it really sets up future authors to take Jacen in an entirely new direction. By no means is this the best book written in the New Jedi Order series, but it will give people a good deal to think about and it is a very fun, entertaining read.

(Nekhrun is a teacher who would like to dedicate this review to Matthew Stover.)

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