Gabri_Jade posted:Well, from all I've seen, I'm in a very small minority with my opinion of this book. I thought it was almost unrelentingly terrible. I'll try to keep my reasons for this reasonably brief: Odd man out I might be, but I rate this book a heartfelt 1 out of 10.
Gabri_Jade posted:Well, from all I've seen, I'm in a very small minority with my opinion of this book. I thought it was almost unrelentingly terrible. I'll try to keep my reasons for this reasonably brief: The Good I had a really hard time finding anything I liked in this book, but as short as this list is, I honestly went back and scoured the book looking for something I enjoyed. This is what I came up with: - Luke being willing to risk Ben if that's what needed doing, and the fact that he was written as looking like it was killing him to do so. I disagree that that was what needed doing, but if it was, Luke would ultimately be willing to make even that sacrifice. And at least he was shown to be experiencing some emotion over it. - A measure of affection was shown between the Skywalkers and the Solos. There have been points in this series where I felt they might as well have been strangers; it was nice to see them mostly acting like a family. - The J/J 'ship would appear to be the winner of the perpetual Jaina love triangle. I don't like the dragged-out, grudging way it was done, but I do like Jag best, so that's a positive. - Allana's not dead. The Bad - Contradictions. So many contradictions. Jaina decides dispassionately that she must kill Caedus, then reflects on how he deserves to be hated as a traitor and killing him is a personal act of outrage and reprisal. Luke can't go after Caedus because he's tainted by the dark side; it might be too personal and he'll fall - but it's all right for Jaina, for whom it's even more personal, and even though she fully expects to be tainted by the dark side in doing so. Jacen thinks that Luke now knows for sure who killed Mara - except that as far as the reader knows, Jacen doesn't know that; it was confirmed for Luke by the smuggled information from Shevu in Revelation. If Jacen knew about that, it was never mentioned onscreen. Mandalorians would never leave a fallen comrade; yes, they would, without even thinking twice. Mandalorians hate Jedi for the way they treated the clones; Mandalorians don't mind following Jedi because they made pretty good generals back in the day. Jaina is not an assassin - while she's on a mission of assassination. Jaina ignores wounded (actually scrambles over them) in order to not show weakness before Boba Fett; Jaina refuses to become so ruthless as a Mandalorian because she's a Jedi. Han considers Daala to be a conniver only out for herself - but when she's given leadership over the entire galaxy's political system, he says we should give her a chance. Almost every time I turned a page, I was confronted by another contradiction. - I don't buy Luke's strategies. I love how he risked the lives of his son, sister, and niece on a vision he had, because if he had seen it, "Caedus could have too." Well, gee, Luke, Caedus could have seen a lot of things. I'm not convinced of the plausibility of his method of meddling with Caedus's visions, and the narrative gives me little reason to believe in it save that the author tells me that's what's happening. Luke's illusions to shield Jaina were supposedly to throw Caedus off balance - but not only have we already seen how Luke can wipe the floor with Caedus, Luke's visions say that he'd win such a battle. So how exactly is it a good thing to get Caedus all hyped up to fight someone who's actually stronger than Jaina? Am I really expected to believe that those five weeks of Mandalorian commando training give her enough of an edge over Luke's powers to make this strategy worthwhile? All of this is possible, sure, but I saw a number of problems with the logic, and few reasons to believe it. - For such a short book, this narrative was remarkably padded with unnecessary information. Leia and Jaina's rescue attempt for Ben accomplished nothing and could have been deleted. Trista and Taryn were completely unnecessary; existing characters could have been used more effectively. Boba Fett and Mirta had far too much of the narrative devoted to them. Luke's illusions seemed mostly pointless; they weren't used at all in the final confrontation between Jaina and Caedus. Nothing at all involving shatterpoint turned out to have any real bearing on the plot. Jacen's use of it, Luke's knowledge of it, Jaina's tutoring in the technique - none of it played any real role. Every last word could have been deleted. Much of the dialogue could have been tightened up. Lots of fat should have been trimmed here. - I thought the characterization was pretty iffy. Luke is cold, manipulative, and ruthless. Han's primary contribution is inappropriate jokes at inappropriate times (Sith-blood solvent? Our next kids? Darth-in-chief? Shut up, Han), along with his usual Denning-written insistence that he's not old. Leia spends an awful lot of time on innuendo and flirting for a woman in the middle of a war and knowingly facing the imminent assassination of her son by her daughter. Jaina is overly intimidated by Caedus and seems to spend half the book as Luke's pawn, not the Sword of the Jedi. Ben is a typical "I know better than all of you" teenager, and the adults around him just swallow it. Tahiri's characterization toward the end had no more foundation than did her foray into Sithdom in the first place. Caedus himself mostly bored me. I don't ask unremitting savagery from my Sith Lords, but something more than slightly unbalanced emo-ness would be nice. - We continue LotF's seeming general fuzziness on exactly what the dark side of the Force is, as well as its effect on people. For Luke, the dark side is basically treated like the event horizon of a black hole: if he goes one step too far, he'll be inexorably sucked into the darkness no matter what he thinks or does, even against his will. For others, well, not so much. Luke's irrevocably tainted not so much because he killed Lumiya, who was admittedly a serious threat to others, but because he allowed a moment's personal vengeance to influence the killing. Stupid mistake, sure (though very human, considering he thought she'd murdered his wife), but that one emotional slip is a permanent stain that influences everything he later does and hobbles his future actions? Odd, considering that his fourteen-year-old son, who's made some real stupid mistakes himself in this series, is spoken of as being so far in the light side that he'd be tortured to death rather than turn. (But his sixty-year-old father, with vastly more experience in the light, apparently has no choice in the matter; the dark side is waiting like a closet monster to snatch him for its own?) Meanwhile, Tahiri can literally torture people to death and still be redeemed. I don't argue that Ben and Tahiri's actions are redeemable; I do argue that Luke's are not. Especially since, if we were really going to look at the dark side like that, Luke blew his chances long, long ago - with DE, if not with his cutting off of Darth Vader's hand in hatred in RotJ. - Jaina is the only one of all the Skywalkers and Solos to give a moment's thought to Caedus even potentially being redeemable, and she doesn't give it much more than that moment's thought. My heart was not set on Caedus being redeemed, by any means, but all these descendants of Anakin Skywalker and no one thought that redemption was even an option? - The Ben/Tahiri scene. Completely and totally inappropriate, to put it mildly. - Daala. Yes, even this plot development could have been handled well. No, this most definitely was not the way to do it. I see no logical reason for her to be the "only acceptable choice", and I see no logical reason for people to cheer her appointment. - So incredibly much was left out. The entire war that's been at the base of pretty much everything that's happened for eight books? That was resigned to a handful of brief paragraphs and an epilogue. Did we actually see anything about Niathal's ultimate fate? Wedge and company weren't even mentioned. We still don't even know what happened to Tycho. Nothing is said of Tahiri's fate - not even her potential fate. What happened to those Sith tassels back in Betrayal? What happened on Kashyyyk? Zekk's complete disappearance is more than a little bit pointless. What about those Sith that we ran into back in Inferno? And that's just scratching the surface. If all that was ultimately going to matter in this series was Jacen and only Jacen, then I've kind of wasted my time reading about all those other characters and situations, haven't I? - Just plain shoddy writing. My personal favorite example is, "Leia finally explained, 'I don't know how to explain it.'" She finally explained that she didn't know how to explain. You have got to be kidding me. A number of eye-catching words and phrases are repeated either too often or in quick succession. Character description was lacking; I got very tired of seeing characters' eyes "flash" and their jaws drop. There were plenty of poorly done metaphors and similes. The dialogue often sounds like a pair of old ladies out for high tea. Italics everywhere - 95% of this book's italics could have been deleted. The narrative is overly rushed all the way through. Far too many movie references that had nothing to do with the narrative. Same for all the Killek references. Jedi use the Force for every last little thing in their lives - they don't even bother to raise their voices, they just use the Force to speak over other people. Am I mistaken, or did we only get the POVs of Jaina, Caedus, Ben, and Han? Would have been nice to see the thoughts of Luke, or Tahiri, or Leia, or Tenel Ka at some point; as it is, it feels rather narrow in scope for the conclusion of a nine book series. - Trista and Taryn. There was no reason for them to be there at all. Everything they did could have been accomplished by existing characters, or new secondary OCs with far less of the narrative devoted to them. And almost everything about them made little or no sense. They're Tenel Ka's cousins - that no one's ever heard about and no one on Hapes even knows exist, even though our main characters have known Tenel Ka her whole life and Hapan royals and half-royals are always under the spotlight. Ben and Jaina both instantly think that they must be very close relatives of Tenel Ka because of the amazing resemblance, but apparently no one on Hapes is that bright. What makes them most useful is that no one knows they're Tenel Ka's cousins, but they tell Ben that little fact less than five minutes after they meet him for no reason at all. - Unnecessary Force techniques. Yes, I know Jacen spent five years learning all sorts of mystical things. That doesn't change the fact that both flow-walking and the Nightsister blood trail are little more than narrative Rube Goldberg devices. There are easier ways for a Force-user to alter memories, and tracking could be done not only with existing Force applications, but with simple critical thought and deductive reasoning. And although it's been a while since I read Shatterpoint, I'm pretty sure that Mace's particular shatterpoint talent didn't involve physical objects. In the first few pages of the book, Mace said, "Simply put, when I look at you through the Force, I see where you break." Where you break, not your armor. I don't mind that a Jedi could find the shatterpoint within physical objects. I do mind that this is spoken of as being part of Mace's talent. (If I'm wrong about that, I rescind this comment - though even then, I'd say this is a vastly more banal definition of shatterpoint than what I remember from the original book.) - Allana. Why did Tenel Ka give her up again? Tenel Ka did quite a good job of raising and protecting Allana, and was shown to be completely devoted to her. Caedus was the primary threat who breached Tenel Ka's security, and he was not only kind of a special case, being a Sith Lord, but he's dead now. All those other plots are nothing more than a day in the life of a Hapan noble, and they were smacked down pretty thoroughly. Tenel Ka is well used to those, and can handle it. Instead, for no reason I can see save a ridiculous narrative substitute for Han and Leia's lost child, she's handed over to her grandparents to be raised. This little bitty girl, in one fell swoop, loses her mother, the only way of life she's ever known, her eventual throne, her appearance, her name, and even her identity - and the reader is apparently supposed to feel joy over this. Um, not quite. - It was all boring. That's a personal call, of course, and maybe I really am the only one who felt that way. But I was thoroughly bored for most of this book. It came out May 13. It has 299 pages. It's the conclusion of a nine book series that I've been following for two years. I finished it on May 25. It took me nearly two weeks. At one point, I set the book down and didn't pick it up at all for five days. Nor did I eventually pick it up again because I wanted to; I did so out of a sense of duty, that I couldn't really judge the book or the series without seeing it through to the end. Well, I finally made it. And personally, I saw almost nothing that made it worth the journey. Odd man out I might be, but I rate this book a heartfelt 1 out of 10.
