1206 replies to this topic

[The Legonater]

Brickdoctor, on 18 March 2012 - 07:15 AM, said:

Spoiler

I haven't read the book yet, but I happened to look at some spoilers while browsing Wookieepedia and I found out that Mortis returns...in Fate of the Jedi, of all places. Abeloth is, in fact, the Mother and one of the Ones (and, as such, has origins as mysterious as Father, Son, and Daughter), and the Jedi go off trying to find the Dagger of Mortis in case she ever returns. Apparently, Son and Daughter had defeated Abeloth/Mother each previous time she had escaped from whatever prison was holding her. In retrospect, I guess it makes sense. Good Father, bad Son, good Daughter - it figures that there would be a bad Mother out there somewhere. Still too much magic and extreme power for my tastes, though.

So... does this make CW make sense? No, I don't think it does. Rather, I think it leaves CW as weird as it was before, and pulls Fate of the Jedi further down from its already low (in my opinion) quality. I find myself missing the days when I didn't know of the earliest history of the Star Wars universe. No Celestials, (Centerpoint station still seems pretty good, though) no Rakatans, no Killiks, no Mortis. I guess ignorance, in this case, really is bliss.

On a more optimistic note, I'm now hoping that Filoni was actually referring to FotJ when he said we'd see Mortis again, and that that storyline won't be making another CW appearance.

Well that's stupid.

I can't say I'm the biggest fan of FotJ either, but at least it was okay for the most part. Now it just seems stupid, and has a direct connection to TCW. I guess it had to happen eventually...

As for your other note, I totally agree. I miss the days when the books where about simple squadrons defeating the Empire, rather than mystical forces no one seems understand- including the authors.

[Flipz]

Well, Rakatans are pretty decent as well, at least from what I know of them in the original Knights of the Old Republic game.  But yeah, I had a sneaking suspicion FotJ was gonna tie in to other media, and this just goes to show it's tied into more than one.  (FotJ is setting up stuff for the epic comic book series Legacy, which, along with the similarly epic Knights of the Old Republic comic book series, was cancelled to make way for...you guessed it...TCW.

You know, when I first saw the early parts of TCW, I thought it was going to redeem the Prequel Trilogy.  And I guess it has, in a way.  Just not the way I expected. *cough*PrequelsarenolongertheworstpartofStarWars*cough*   In all seriousness, TCW started off promising, and then just suddenly collapsed under itself.

In other news, I just finished reading Crosscurrent...I've gotta say, meh.  If this is Jaden Korr, then I'm not even going to bother with the last installment of the Jedi Knight video game series. The whole thing set up to be interesting, but the plot moved like a bantha through quicksand and by the end I was just wishing it was over sooner.  It's by no means worse than Millennium Falcon, or worse, Tempest from Legacy of the Force , but in the end it's just rather useless.  It doesn't affect anyone or anything, and there's too much failed Force Unleashed knock-offs to be worthwhile.

TFU was great.  Really, it was, it was an interesting story wrapped around an interesting concept and bogged down by a wooden voice performance and cutscenes (at least in the Wii version).  The book was no Timothy Zahn or Karen Traviss work, but it was still good.  The bad thing about TFU was, every author and his brother decided they had to one-up Galen Marek afterwards, leading to the unsympathetic mass of overpowered super-jedi we see in TCW and FotJ.  TFU kept the franchise relatively mainstream in between Revenge of the Sith and TCW, but at the same time it marked the final point in which the Star Wars franchise remained on the good side of the proverbial shark.  I am convinced that, after the end of TFU, Palpatine went to the nearest aquatic world, found a shark, and Force-Lightninged it until it came back to life.

[The Legonater]

Flipz, on 18 March 2012 - 08:35 PM, said:

It's by no means worse than Millennium Falcon, or worse, Tempest from Legacy of the Force , but in the end it's just rather useless.  

What was wrong with Millennium Falcon or Tempest from Legacy of the Force?

[Flipz]

The Legonater, on 18 March 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

What was wrong with Millennium Falcon or Tempest from Legacy of the Force?

Millennium Falcon was an immensely interesting read...right up until they reach the last planet, the one with the Yuuzhan Vong stuff on it.  The plot just runs headfirst into a brick wall, trips over its own two feet, and falls straight off a cliff...and ends in a whimper.  It's...just...GRAH!  SO MUCH WASTED PLOT POTENTIAL!

As for Tempest...it was written by Troy Denning.  'Nuff said.

[Fred Daniel Yam]

Millenium Falcon wasn't bad at all and neither was Crosscurrent. Although IMO Coruscant Nights and Knight Errant were heaps better.

[The Legonater]

Flipz, on 18 March 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

Millennium Falcon was an immensely interesting read...right up until they reach the last planet, the one with the Yuuzhan Vong stuff on it.  The plot just runs headfirst into a brick wall, trips over its own two feet, and falls straight off a cliff...and ends in a whimper.  It's...just...GRAH!  SO MUCH WASTED PLOT POTENTIAL!

As for Tempest...it was written by Troy Denning.  'Nuff said.

Frankly, I found the ending okay. It wasn't exactly mind-blowing, but in my opinion it's better than you're making it out to be.

As for Troy Denning... that I agree with. I found Tempest's plot was okay, but I've never been very impressed with Troy Denning's writing. Though he seems to do good at space battles (The Hapan Fleet battle in Tempest and the torching in Inferno were both amazing) and 3P0 dialogue (Yeah, I know, that's a small thing, but it's just something I picked up on).

VolcanicPanik, on 18 March 2012 - 09:07 PM, said:

Millenium Falcon wasn't bad at all and neither was Crosscurrent. Although IMO Coruscant Nights and Knight Errant were heaps better.

The only one of those I've read is Millenium Falcon, but from what I've heard of the plot, Crosscurrent sounds awful. Seriously- Star Wars and time travel just don't mix.

Edited by The Legonater, 19 March 2012 - 01:04 AM.

[Flipz]

The Legonater, on 19 March 2012 - 01:03 AM, said:

Frankly, I found the ending okay. It wasn't exactly mind-blowing, but in my opinion it's better than you're making it out to be.

As for Troy Denning... that I agree with. I found Tempest's plot was okay, but I've never been very impressed with Troy Denning's writing. Though he seems to do good at space battles (The Hapan Fleet battle in Tempest and the torching in Inferno were both amazing) and 3P0 dialogue (Yeah, I know, that's a small thing, but it's just something I picked up on).




The only one of those I've read is Millenium Falcon, but from what I've heard of the plot, Crosscurrent sounds awful. Seriously- Star Wars and time travel just don't mix.

This great superweapon that these senators thought would take down a corrupt dictator (and Sith Lord) was a freaking statue/plaque?!  That was my initial reaction.  The one guy who followed the Solos in tried to explain it, but it was a huge letdown for me.  It would have been more satisfying if the vault had been completely empty and the whole quest had been a complete waste of time, IMO.

I liked Ben's brush with darkness in Inferno, and that is the last good thing you will hear me say about a Troy Denning book.

The time-travel was actually handled pretty well (it makes sense if you've studied the way hyperdrives are supposed to work, there's been previous documented cases of ordinary citizens messing with the temporal shielding on their hyperdrive and stranding themselves hundreds of years in the future).  It's the lignan bit and the overall slowness of the plot that I didn't like.

[Brickdoctor]

The Legonater, on 19 March 2012 - 01:03 AM, said:

The only one of those I've read is Millenium Falcon, but from what I've heard of the plot, Crosscurrent sounds awful. Seriously- Star Wars and time travel just don't mix.

Haven't read it either, but I agree. Time travel is something a series has to be built around (as in Back to the Future) and not added to. (as in the 2009 Star Trek, which wasn't that bad, but still seemed a little confusing)

Flipz, on 19 March 2012 - 04:09 AM, said:

This great superweapon that these senators thought would take down a corrupt dictator (and Sith Lord) was a freaking statue/plaque?!  That was my initial reaction.  The one guy who followed the Solos in tried to explain it, but it was a huge letdown for me.  It would have been more satisfying if the vault had been completely empty and the whole quest had been a complete waste of time, IMO.

If I remember correctly, it was a giant chunk of precious metal. Even if it failed as a psychological object to rally around, it could still provide some much-needed funds for the Rebellion. (though it turned out to be a fake)

[Flipz]

Brickdoctor, on 19 March 2012 - 04:37 AM, said:

Haven't read it either, but I agree. Time travel is something a series has to be built around (as in Back to the Future) and not added to. (as in the 2009 Star Trek, which wasn't that bad, but still seemed a little confusing)

If I remember correctly, it was a giant chunk of precious metal. Even if it failed as a psychological object to rally around, it could still provide some much-needed funds for the Rebellion. (though it turned out to be a fake)

http://starwars.wiki...tivistic_shield

^Explains why this particular case of time-travel didn't bother me.  Note that it references a real-world effect of near-light velocities that is often conveniently glossed over in most science fiction.  Also of note is that the time travel is both one-way and forward, which means it's roughly the equivalent of someone being stuck in a slab of carbonite for a few centuries or some sith lord's evil artifact being buried for thousands of years before being uncovered and used to return the sith to life (neither of which, when done well, are bad plot points).

As for the second part...well, I just re-read that bit.  If the plan had been to sell it for funding for the Rebellion, that might have made a bit of sense, but he specifically states that it was meant purely for use as a motivational symbol.  Hmm, didn't the Marek family crest do that well enough?  (The Republic Group wouldn't have known that in-story, but from a meta standpoint it was common knowledge by that point, and an author should have known even better than most that that plot point had already been used and would seem stale if used again.)  It was a great, GREAT story that was let down by a rushed and nonsensical climax.  Add to that the fact that the ending ties into the beginnings of the atrocity that is FotJ, and you've got an ironclad recipe for disappointment.

[The Legonater]

Brickdoctor, on 19 March 2012 - 04:37 AM, said:

Haven't read it either, but I agree. Time travel is something a series has to be built around (as in Back to the Future) and not added to. (as in the 2009 Star Trek, which wasn't that bad, but still seemed a little confusing)

Apun first watching it, the 2009 Star Trek was confusing, until Leanord Nemoy came in. What gets me is that people ignore the fact this wasn't technically the real Star Trek universe and claim that everything is ruined.

Flipz, on 19 March 2012 - 05:02 AM, said:

Also of note is that the time travel is both one-way and forward.

[Mr Man]

The Legonater, on 19 March 2012 - 10:53 PM, said:

Apun first watching it, the 2009 Star Trek was confusing, until Leanord Nemoy came in. What gets me is that people ignore the fact this wasn't technically the real Star Trek universe and claim that everything is ruined.

It is 100% the 'Star Trek Universe', just an alternate one that Enterprise is set in, as opposed to the 'main' one that TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, and VOY are set in.

[Brickdoctor]

I just finished Darth Plagueis, so I thought I'd do a short review similar to what I do with CW episodes:

Spoiler

The book is more of a summary that a single adventure. It spans nearly five generations of Sith, from Plagueis' killing of Darth Tenebrous to Sidious' decision to turn Dooku and Anakin to the Dark Side. Ultimately, the book seems to be more about Sidious than it does about Plagueis - for example, I had hoped for a detailed account of Plagueis' creation of Anakin (which is confirmed once and for all in the book), but we get a couple recounts and flashbacks later in the plot that mostly focus on the Sith's realization that they had created the Chosen One, instead of the creation itself. That creation apparently takes place during a decades-long period during which Plagueis exiled himself to one of Muunilist's moons to devote himself to study of midi-chlorians (midi-chlorian haters, the cells do, expectedly, have a large role in the book), and we don't even get a full chapter describing that period. Instead, we see the rise of the Palpatine in galactic politics.

I thought that the book was a little too graphic in its gory details. I don't need to know that a droid can hear pulmonary arteries bursting in order to picture a being being Force-pushed into a wall in my mind.

There are many, many references to other books and their characters. I didn't keep count or do extensive research, but I picked out ancestors with the names of Tarkin, Valorum, Hill, Teem, Naberrie and Sienar, among others; there was interaction with Gardulla the Hutt, Jabba the Hutt, Count Dooku, Sifo-Dyas, Finis Valorum and more; and characters such as C'baoth make minor appearances. Despite not really being the focus, Plagueis does survive until just before Palpatine's election to the Chancellorship, so we do get to see his opinions of Darth Maul and his involvement in the events of Menace. There're a lot of things that we previously were told were Sidious' doing or had no idea that they were even Sith-influenced that turn out to be Plagueis doing. I'm not sure if that's overly coincidental or a very impressive display of just how much the Sith had done to make all the pieces fall into the right places.

In contrast to Plagueis, we do see a lot of character development for Palpatine. We first meet him as a rebellious seventeen-year-old on Naboo, who has been kicked out of multiple private universities and is an avid airspeeder racer. Those things bugged me, because it always seemed like Palpatine would be the kind to bide his time and stay within the good graces of other beings, waiting until he was beloved by everyone else to try to get what he wanted. I guess it serves to show how much potential had to be harnessed by Plagueis to turn the Palpatine of seventeen years into Darth Sidious of Sith and the OT. I had really hoped to see more of Sidious' training under Plagueis, but, for the majority of the book, they seem to turn their attention to separate things: Sidious as Palpatine becoming prominent in politics, while Plagueis concentrates on study of life and the Force and only steps in to advise Sidious once in a while. I realize that Sidious is supposed to become more powerful than Plagueis, but the book isn't called, "Darth Sidious". I found myself rooting for Plagueis early in the book, and then left with nothing to read about the character. That being said, it was interesting to view Sidious as the apprentice, not the master; I just think that that should have been saved for another book while this one concentrated on the titular character.

Overall, this seemed like a summary to tie together all the different stories from just before Menace and fill in some of the holes, only from the point of view of the Sith. It seemed more like an explanation than it did a standalone novel. I think some of the plot might have seemed a lot more vague to me had I not read books such as Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter (that, by the way, is an excellent example of how a book concentrating on a Sith should be written, in my opinion) and the Darth Bane series. I find it to be more like a collection of short stories, especially since the book tries to cram summaries of the events of so many other publications into 368 pages.

[simonjedi]

Spoiler

RE: Plagueis being alive in TPM..

Honestly I think it's kina stupid. In RotS you get the idea that palpatine is really old and he killed his master ages ago. But being killed less than 15 years ago is kinda a poor 'legend to tell people'

The only other thing I don't like the sound of (and it's a problem in general) is the constant name drops. It makes the universe seem really small because everything seem to happen to the same like 8 people

I did read the first 4 chapters of 'Milllenium Falcon' before I realised I'd have to read LotF to care about what happens in 60% of the book, and I'm not doing that because it's LotF. Although literally the first chapter makes the Falcon into a ~*MAGICAL*~ ship so that ruined it early.

[Brickadeer]

Brickdoctor, on 27 March 2012 - 06:18 AM, said:

I just finished Darth Plagueis, so I thought I'd do a short review similar to what I do with CW episodes:

[review]

Thanks! I asked myself whether I should read this book in order to get more information about Plagueis. Well. Apparently not.

[Clone O'Patra]

Brickadeer, on 27 March 2012 - 07:15 PM, said:

Thanks! I asked myself whether I should read this book in order to get more information about Plagueis. Well. Apparently not.

You might as well read the Wookiepedia article.  Just make sure to hold on to your soul; I've found myself reading about Star Wars things for hours on end on the site.

[Brickdoctor]

Clone O, on 27 March 2012 - 07:17 PM, said:

You might as well read the Wookiepedia article.

Agreed. You'll get pretty much the same amount of information, and Wookieepedia has links all over the place to make it even easier to look up the gazillion different other publications that the book tries to tie together.

[Flipz]

simonjedi, on 27 March 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

The only other thing I don't like the sound of (and it's a problem in general) is the constant name drops. It makes the universe seem really small because everything seem to happen to the same like 8 people

Agreed.  One of the things that makes the EU so interesting is that there are literally thousands of characters, with developed backstories and characterization, that one can follow.  Tying it all together, while tempting, is a mistake.  Legacy of the Force pulled it off well because it was broken up between different books, it was done logically (i.e. Wedge would be involved more when Corellia was the focus of the war, Pellaeon would show up when the Empire was approached, etc.), and, unless Troy Denning was on a character-mutilating spree* writing, non-Force characters actually did something besides being backdrop scenery for the rest of the cast.

*Ignore the strikethrough text, I'm just ticked off about how Denning wrote Invincible.  The plot points were fine, but his writing is completely unlikeable, and the characters were completely off (aside from the Hapans, who got ignored for the rest of the series that he didn't write).  Seriously, if I ever meet the man, I will challenge him to a lightsaber duel, with the bet being that if I win he never touches the Mandalorians, ever again.

[Sir_Basil_Ashton]

Clone O, on 27 March 2012 - 07:17 PM, said:

You might as well read the Wookiepedia article.  Just make sure to hold on to your soul; I've found myself reading about Star Wars things for hours on end on the site.

I avoid Wookiepedia for this reason. I've lost many hours of sleep because I had to know something and one page leads to 3-5 pages, leads to 9-15 pages, and it never ends.

[The Legonater]

Flipz, on 28 March 2012 - 07:24 AM, said:

*Ignore the strikethrough text, I'm just ticked off about how Denning wrote Invincible.  The plot points were fine, but his writing is completely unlikeable, and the characters were completely off (aside from the Hapans, who got ignored for the rest of the series that he didn't write).  Seriously, if I ever meet the man, I will challenge him to a lightsaber duel, with the bet being that if I win he never touches the Mandalorians, ever again.

Ditto on Denning. He really messed up a lot of charecters. Though, it should be noted that besides Invincible, Traviss wrote anything to do with Mandolore.

Personally, Revelation would have been a much better ending than Invincible, if done right. Revelation had one of the best and most incredible space battles I've ever seen. It has a lot of personaly challenges for allt he charecters. Invincible was just... odd. Nothing really seemed to work. That might be a result of Denning writhing, but in the end it just, really seemed like a series of poorly done battles stitched together.

[Brickadeer]

Clone O, on 27 March 2012 - 07:17 PM, said:

You might as well read the Wookiepedia article.  Just make sure to hold on to your soul; I've found myself reading about Star Wars things for hours on end on the site.

Thanks. I did. I have to admit that I don't like "The Rule of Two", the fact that he tried to manipulate the medichlorians instead of the force, and, well, pretty much everything that was described in the article. I liked Plagueis much better when he just was a name mentioned in RoTS. Sometimes, when I'm in a bad mood, the authors of the EU remind me of an army of anti-Midas (whatever the plural may be), turning everything they touch into something I'd not exactly call "gold". (No offense meant.)

Edited by Brickadeer, 29 March 2012 - 05:33 PM.

[Clone O'Patra]

Brickadeer, on 29 March 2012 - 05:30 PM, said:

Sometimes, when I'm in a bad mood, the authors of the EU remind me of an army of anti-Midas (whatever the plural may be), turning everything they touch into something I'd not exactly call "gold". (No offense meant.)

That's how I feel about George Lucas and The Clone Wars all the time   There's so much EU writing that not all of it can be good, but every so often it's fun.

What do you mean by "the rule of two?" Are you just talking about it as it relates to Plagueis, or are you talking about the Darth Bane novel with that name?

[Brickadeer]

Clone O, on 29 March 2012 - 05:41 PM, said:

That's how I feel about George Lucas and The Clone Wars all the time   There's so much EU writing that not all of it can be good, but every so often it's fun.

What do you mean by "the rule of two?" Are you just talking about it as it relates to Plagueis, or are you talking about the Darth Bane novel with that name?

I mean the general rule that there can only be two Siths at one time. It feels so unnatural. Plus, it is practically offset by the fact that there are apprentices of the Siths.

I know that the rule was meant to preserve the Sith and prevent extinction. But it appears to me that when a student killed the master and is the only Sith left, that comes pretty close to extinction.

Edited by Brickadeer, 29 March 2012 - 06:05 PM.

[Flipz]

The Legonater, on 29 March 2012 - 03:52 AM, said:

Ditto on Denning. He really messed up a lot of charecters. Though, it should be noted that besides Invincible, Traviss wrote anything to do with Mandolore.

I know, that's why Denning should never touch Mandalorians again.  Traviss did it right.  Denning didn't.

Overall, Denning just can't write.  Period.  Maybe that's too harsh, but it's the truth.  Unless it's necessary to read through a series that I actually like (the way it was with Legacy of the Force), I will never read one of his novels again.

[Legocrazy81]

Next Sunday, April 15th, the show "Inside West Coast Customs" with be doing up a VW Jetta Vader style. The channel is called Velocity. I don't know...this show may be on only in the USA, but I'm sure it'll be on the net in no time. Just throwing it out there. The car looks like it's going to be pretty cool.

[Brickdoctor]

So I just finished Apocalypse, and...wow, I have so much to say about this book. Not much of it good, I'm afraid.

Spoiler

I'm going to get straight to the point: the main revelation of the book is that Abeloth is one of the Ones. Those of you who watch TCW know that the Ones were three individuals representing parts of the Force: Daughter, the Light Side; Son, the Dark Side; and Father, the Keeper of Balance. According to the Killiks, the Ones were the masters and architects of the galaxy, what the Celestials became...sort of. It's all mixed up. (on a similar note, a Killik relief in the book confirms what was previously the widely accepted theory that the Corellian system was assembled using Centerpoint Station) Abeloth was apparently originally a mortal who was a servant to the Ones who took the role of Mother, and, envying their agelessness, she drank from the Font of Power and swam in the Pool of Knowledge. (which are both physical Dark Side nexuses and parts of the realm 'beyond shadows', which is more like a magical spiritual thing than any sort of sci-fi fantasy Force thing, in my opinion) This took place on Abeloth's Planet, in the middle of the Maw, where all the Ones originally lived. Discovering what Abeloth had done, the other Ones abandoned her, ordered the Killiks to construct the Maw to trap her, and moved to the Mortis monolith.

All this is both told in the book by the Killiks, but it's also revealed that Yoda apparently told Luke during the latter's training on Dagobah of Obi-Wan and Anakin's encounter with Mortis and the Ones during the Clone Wars, which seems to me like a very lazy way of linking the two series together than the author (writers?) didn't put too much thought into. The Jedi eventually report to Luke that the Killiks say that Abeloth is the Bringer of Chaos (the Destructor of Keshiri legend) who escapes every several thousand years to plunge the galaxy into an apocalypse and usher in a new era. Each time that happens, the Son and Daughter order the Killiks to reconstruct everything and build Abeloth a prison. Unfortunately, as TCW watchers know, the other three Ones were slain on Mortis during the Clone Wars, so the Jedi won't be able to get the Killiks to reconstruct stuff. At the end of the book, Luke sends ten Jedi out to search for the Mortis monolith and the Dagger of Mortis (a 'Force-imbued' dagger that can kill the Ones permanently, which, in my opinion, is just a really stupid magical artifact out of a fantasy video game that TCW writers decided to throw in. [or were told by Lucas to throw in, which wouldn't surprise me])

Luke tells the Jedi that the Father had asked Anakin to take his place as the Keeper of Balance, and the latter refused, and in that story arc the three original Ones were killed. Abeloth apparently wants to recreate the Ones, only with herself in the Father's place, taking Ben Skywalker and Vestara Khai and trying to make them drink from the Font of Power to become the Son of Light and Daughter of Darkness, respectively. (so now we have a magical font and a magical pool to give power and a magical dagger to kill those powerful beings   ) Eventually, Abeloth's avatars are killed. One is killed by Tahiri Veila and Boba Fett. (Fett, by the way, is rescued by Tahiri from a webbed plant thing, which makes Fett look very not-so-badass in this book ) Another is killed by Saba Sebatyne when the Jedi, ah, sinks her fangs into the neck of a visual representation of a virtual Abeloth living inside the Jedi Temple's computer core. (it doesn't make sense to me, either ) Another is killed by Ben and Vestara in the Maw, when Vestara draws on the Dark Side power of the Font of Power (not drinking from it, just drawing on it) to overcome Abeloth.

The final avatar is killed 'beyond shadow' by Luke and an unidentified individual who wears spiked armor and has tattoos radiating from his eyes, which I suspected and Wookieepedia confirms is Darth Krayt/A'Sharad Hett. (personally, the whole story of Hett living for centuries and becoming the Sith Emperor and main antagonist of the Legacy comics series has always annoyed me and seemed like another attempt to mold a somewhat popular EU character into a badass Dark Side user, sort of like Quinlan Vos, who, for the record, I have never been a huge fan of, but that's all my personal preference) It is also revealed that Krayt is the dark figure that Jacen Solo saw on the Throne of Balance, but Jacen tells Luke (while 'beyond shadows', talking from the Magical-Fantasy-Pool-of-Taking-Unnecessary-Effort-to-Contact-the-Dead-Instead-of-Trying-to-Contact- a-Force-Ghost/Spirit-Thingy that he turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Caedus not because of the figure sitting on the throne, but because he saw Allana Solo standing next to the throne. Luke tells Jacen that by altering the future, he released Abeloth. (that makes no sense to me, either) Krayt tells Jacen that he didn't alter the future, but that he just delayed it. (Krayt, as we know, turns out to be right, since he becomes the ruler of the galaxy in Legacy)

I'm beginning to kind of see where the whole Ones thing is going: (and this is all pure speculation on my part, for now) Anakin, as the Chosen One, was taken to Mortis and offered the position of Keeper of Balance among the Ones. He was given the opportunity to bring true balance to the Force, and he refused. He remains the Chosen One only in the sense of the Jedi prophecy. The Jedi legend of the Chosen One states that the Force is a light-side power, but that the Dark Side corrupts it, and the Chosen One brings balance by eliminating the Sith. In that sense, Anakin fulfills the prophecy when he kills Palpatine during the Battle of Endor, but that's only a very temporary restoration of balance, and he doesn't ever bring true balance to the Force. I really have no idea whether any of this is connected to the Throne of Balance. Seriously, it's all mixed up and very confusing. The current version of the vision of the Throne of Balance, by the way, as seen by Luke during Fate of the Jedi, shows Allana Solo sitting on the Throne as a Jedi Queen.

Anyways, moving past all the Force-magic stuff, the book has a couple other major occurrences: there is an attempted assassination of Allana by Vestara, which involves a thermal detonator blowing off the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. At the end of the book, the cockpit is replaced and Denning makes extra effort to mention the new adjustable seats in the cockpit, which, I think, is a very subtle way of showing that the galaxy has moved on from the death of Chewbacca. The Wookiee-sized copilot's seat that was a constant reminder of Chewbacca is now form-fitting and appropriate for humans. I kind of liked the moving on, even if Chewie, like Mara, was a character that should never have been killed off by anything other than old age, in my opinion, but what I didn't like was blowing up the cockpit in the first place. It's the Millennium Falcon. You don't tamper with it. (other than the sensor dish, of course, which you are free to knock off or blow up whenever you want)

Also, by the end of the book, Vestara has accepted the fact that she is a Sith and Ben is a Jedi, and she leaves in Ship to find other Sith. Me, I say, "good riddance". Their teenage romance annoyed me. I can't put my finger on the reason, but it always seemed to me that it wasn't portrayed realistically. I'm also glad that she's gone, at least for now, because I was afraid that the writers would try to change her into the next Mara Jade, who, like all those things TCW has tried to create new versions of, simply cannot be replaced.

Additionally, the Jedi end up at odds with the government again, and end up leaving Coruscant again. I'm rather tired of all the political stuff surrounding the Jedi - another reason I think the OT was better: the Senate only exists for half of one of its movies. We do know the Jedi are based on Ossus by the time of Legacy, though, so it's a good time to start the transition, though I think that this is going to the make the Jedi into more of a secluded group focused on things that are going to delve even deeper in the almost-magical elements which I despise in Star Wars.

And, finally, the book ends with the marriage of Jaina to Jagged Fel, who leaves his job as Imperial Head of State. That's probably the one thing in the entire book which I had no real problems with. (I can't make a real judgment on how their romance was portrayed, since I never finished Legacy of the Force)

As a whole, the book was one big revelation that basically was there to tie up all the loose ends of the mysteries presented by the previous books of the series. Personally, I feel that a lot of the motives weren't really explained that well, and there was way too much of the almost-magical stuff included as an answer to all the mystery. It's like they decided to make all these characters go off to discover the greatest mysteries of the universe, and then just decided to say at the end, "magic did it!", which is an excuse, not an explanation. Furthermore, do we really need to know about all these magical Force-beings and Force-places and ancient species who constructed the universe? When all I knew was the OT, Jedi were special. The Force was special. The Force was not magic. The Force seemed unique to Star Wars. Now, not only are there thousands of not very special Jedi and planets full of not very special Sith, but neither is even that powerful compared to all these greater species that keep being introduced. Some mysteries are better left unexplained. When I first read the Corellian Trilogy, Centerpoint Station represented technology of ages past. Now, it's nothing more than a simple tool of magical beings whose powers are such that they near the status of gods. Star Wars, yes, is sci-fi fantasy, not pure sci-fi, but that doesn't mean that all the technology should be dwarfed by magical powers. I don't need to know all the mysteries of the Star Wars universe and the Force. Characters can be special without the Force and without having magical, god-like powers. Han Solo is special. Chewbacca was special. Boba Fett was special. The droid duo is special. Leia was special before anyone knew she was Force-sensitive. And this is not just an OT thing, because I think that the entire storyline of the six movies made a reasonable amount of sense from a scientific point of view such that it remained clearly a part of the sci-fi genre. Some elements of Star Wars to me nowadays seem like pure magical fantasy, just with spaceships.

We don't need magical powers in Star Wars. To me, this book seems like writers decided to take all the things TCW did wrong and try to apply them to an adult, post-OT novel. Unfortunately, it appears that Star Wars is heading further and further into the magical realm of things. The end of the book clearly hints that Mortis is coming back, very possibly as the primary plot point of the next major post-OT novel series. I didn't finish New Jedi Order because the Yuuzhan Vong didn't really interest me. I didn't finish Legacy of the Force because I had no desire to read about Jacen's fall and Mara's death. But I know one thing, and that is that if Mortis returns as the central plot point of the next novel series, it will be the first post-OT novel series that I will have no desire whatsoever to ever begin reading.

Oh, and this book has Squibs.