Legacy of the force not worthy!

If he would have had all the cunning of Palpatine and the viciousness of Vader, he wouldn't have died such a pitiful death. He really should have had those attributes though, as it might have made LotF a meaningful enterprise, unlike it was when they made him a weak, raving maniac who just went from one defeat to the next.

 

i enjoyed all the books as well
and actually thought Invincible was pretty good

yes there were things that could have been better
but overall i enjoyed it

 

Her death would have left a better taste if she wouldn't have reminded me of that wingman in Charlie Sheen's first Top Gun spoof, whatever it name was. She could have gone through the novel with "I'm going to die" written on her forehead, it was that obvious.

And in the end, our new Sith Lord couldn't even beat her in the battle. A weak attempt to appease her fans, and we had to endure the same with Katarn later who had to be hit by a speeder for Jacen to take him down, because of course Jacen couldn't be powerful enough to beat either of them without cheating. I wish DR would be as scared of us Anakin Solo fans and cater to us in the same manner.

 

Not to mention that everyone knew she was going to die in the novel months beforehand. I think it was hard not to know this even if you did not want to be spoiled. A novel titled Sacrifice featuring an illustration of Mara Jade. Hmmm.

So maybe it's possible this influenced your perception of the "obviousness" of her death?

But despite that I "knew," (again, who didn't?), I was able to separate that from the story.

Similarly, we knew what was going to happen all through the prequels. Does that detract from the story? For me it didn't (and I can only speak for myself).

It's the story that counts, not the outcome of the story.

And I thought the story in Sacrifice was fantastic. The final Mara/Jacen fight scene was fierce and brutal. Great writing. And Mara's death scene...the image of her sitting there opening and closing her hand as her body was dying was very vivid. I could practically see it.

 

I've gotten 3 books of worthy material from LotF & then that's only parts of those 3 books, carefully paperclipped sections seperating the good from the really really bad. It all comes down to about a good book & a half of slightly disjointed Mandalorian history that I'll treasure until my last days.

I've been wanting to split the binders & rip the souls out of those books in order to make what I like into one sorta thickish Mando fun book but my HC Sacrifice pages would be too big.

It's a shame that most SW EU fans, according to this thread, found absolutely nothing worthy within this whole 9 book series. I almost feel ashamed knowing you've all been cheated completely, while I've got like 300ish pages of good stuff that's worth reading again & again.

Mando love FTW!

 

are the parts you liked all the mando stuff? or is there other stuff you liked about the story too
just curious

i thought the mando stuff was ok, i just felt it really had nothing to do with the Legacy of the Force series

it really should have been its own seperate trilogy or book about boba finding that clone or whatever

it felt completely outside the rest of the story going on
reading those books heavy on the mando stuff, it just didnt seem to fit in with the rest of the series, and to be honest, it felt like it wasnt even trying to

 

It's quite frustrating that the series ended the Solo name. It wasn't done particularly well either IMHO which didn't help.

In the NJO we lost Chewie and Anakin but their deaths, while tragic, were handled pretty well and did a huge mind job on you (primarily Anakin's for me).

The concept was good but they tried to clean things up too much by killing Jacen rather than having them deal with a repentent wife-of-Skywalker murderer or an insane Caedus who has had his connection to the Force blocked but manages to escape and heads off to the unknown regions. There's more anticipation developed by something like that rather than an easy cop-out of death.

In all, he chose the Sith too easily and was murdered too easily, all for the sake of the Sith comeback, which just happens to be a distraction anyway!

 

see i dont think he chose the sith too easily, i think that part could have made sense
Jacen has always wanted to learn more and more and is never satisfied, so its not surprising that he would be intrigued by Sith teachings
and him thinking he can go Sith without it corrupting him actually fits his charactor pretty well

i think they didnt take any of it far enough though
just having Jacen pretty much go insane was the easy way out in my opinion
he should have been openly exploring Sith teachings, and trying to talk other jedi into it
or at least defending himself for exploring them
if he thought what he was doing was ok, he should have been more open about it

there could have been scenes with him and Luke, where Luke asks him about what he is doing, and Jacen tries to explain but of course couldnt convince Luke
all the jedi would then turn their back on Jacen
but everything would be out in the open, since he honestly believes this is the right path for the Jedi to take

a jedi going Sith for what he thinks are intellectual reasons would be very interesting if done right

 

Of course I read other stuff that was mildly interesting. It was cool how Jagged killed Alema, it was weird how the COS threw himself on Ben's blade or how he assasinated the Corellian prez, Maras' death was a cop-out & cheat, Natasi Daala's experimental weapons of mass destruction were cool, nice to see Lumiya kill Jacen's worldbrain, & Luke losing it over Mara's death, Katarn got cut up pretty good...but I really care very little about any of that.

I wanted to know what it was like to see Boba Fett hunt someone again, what the Mando's did with their free time, what were the fates of Sintas Vel & Fenn Shysa, if the Fett's & the Solos can work together to finally get rid of Thracken Sal Solo, what it is about the Mandalorian fighting style that lets them defeat most enemies, whatever happened to Darman, Venku, Etian, Bardan, Kal & the rest, if Sintas would run away from a family she barely knew or embrace the love of all those around her, if Baltan Carid was all talk, what is the nature of Beviin's gay relationship & how he can cope in a society that hates Jedi like Venku & Gotab but also openly accepts him & his lover, did Daala & Fett really do the nasty & why nobody likes the Mandoboys & why they don't care.

It was more than I could ever hope for. A Solid gold bomb! A lemon slice wrapped around a gold brick smashing into my brain. Good stuff man, give me some more!

 

i get that, and i did find the mando stuff pretty interesting

i just dont understand where it fit into the LotF story line
i dont think Jaina got any training at all that did anything in her fights with jacen
and it seemed to cut to the mandos at times and they really had little to do with the overall Caedus storyline

everything you mention above is really Mando specific and didnt have anything to do with anyone else in the story

which is fine
i just felt it didnt need to be in the series, and would have been much better as a stand alone book or 2

 

I almost forgot about Jacen accusing his cape of treachery for spying on him, that was right out of left field & quite funny too.

I see your point Marmy & it's why I want to put all the Mando parts of LotF into it's own book & then booteg sell it & make loads of cash. Legecy of the Fett's get it right here for 1 dollar! I'd buy that...

 

A double post, so instead I give you...

EXPLOSIVO!!!!!!!

Explosivo Lyrics
Artist(Band):Tenacious D

Climb upon my faithful steed,
Then we gonna ride,
gonna smoke some weed.
Climb upon my big-ass steed,
And ride, ride, ride.

Eeeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee,
What's the name of the song,
Explosivo!
Don't know what it's about,
But it's good to go.
What's the name of my girlfriend
I don't know,
But she's built like the $#@!
And she's good to go, go,
She's good to go,
She's good to go.

We are fuelled by Satan,
Yes we're schooled by Satan.
Fuelled by Satan!
Writin' those tasty riffs
just as fast as we can.
Schooled by Satan!

We were the inventors
of the cosmic astral code.
We've come to blow you away,
We've come to blow your nose.
We've come to &^%$#@( blow,
We've come to blow the show.
We've come to &^%$#@( blow,
You know it, you know it!

Eeeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eee-eee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee,
What's the name of the song,
Explosivo!
Don't know what it's about
But it's good to go, riddle-ah!

[spoken]
I am not one of you. I come from a ancient time.
I am known as The Kicker of Elves!

(something is said in the wild guitar playing):
I am also known as 'The Ancient Crusher!'

Explosivo.

& as a bonus, let's have some "DEAD CATS"!!!!

Dead Cats, Dead Rats Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Doors

Dead cats, dead rats
Can?t see what they were at, all right
Dead cat in a top hat, wow
Sucking on the young man?s blood
Wishing he could come, yeah
Sucking on the soldier?s brain
Wishing it would be the same

Dead cat, dead rat
Can?t you see what they were at?
Fat cat in a top hat
Thinks he?s an aristocrat
Thinks he can kill and slaughter
Thinks he can shoot my daughter

Yeah right! oh yeah!
Oh right! yeeah!

Dead cats, dead rats
Think they?re an aristocrat
Crap, now that?s crap!

 

It was well worth losing Jacen simply because Jacen Solo is an utter disaster of a character as both heroe & villian he is an utter failure both in universe and from a literary standpoint aside from the fact that he is just incomprehensibly boring & uninteresting on every level. Losing mara however was not worth the price to repair the damage done to the franchise by making Jacen the series lead over the big 3.

Also I can't stand Mando's. Boba Fett is an evil monster. He's paid to kill people. People who are mostly innocent. There is nothing good about him, his life or his ethics. That man is utterly & purely evil. LOTF doesnt understand this for some odd reason.

 

No, she didn't. She had a few decade's worth of life left in her before JINO killed her. Do you honestly think that Mara can't do anything in those years? Heck, just being 'herself' would've been enough.

Killing someone like she was killed it the worst kind of killing. Well, barring Lusa/Lyric's death.

 

jacen was a missed opportunity
his turn to the dark side could have been handled so much better, and really would have been a fitting end for his charactor if they had done it right

i still wish they had taken this mysterious 5 year journey of his and turned that into his sith apprenticeship
then he could have come back, no one would know where he was and what he was doing (like they dont now), except it could have been building towards something, instead of just being a reason for the DNT to be 5 years after the NJO

i dont get why no one seemed to really question where he was when he suddenly came back
that should have been a major point of the plot, yet it seemed to be a throwaway fact for how jacen suddenly can do a couple new things

losing mara was fine with me, as her charactor seemed to have run its course
i dont know what she would have contributed as an old lady

 

The problem with Jacen is that his journey towards becoming the "hero" of the vong war was handled just as badly as his fall to darkside. He is a hero who's never done anything heroic and a hero that contributed nothing at all towards the overthrow of the enemy as his only hero moment in the entire 19 part series happened after the war was over. I agree on his 5 year journey. It was missed oportunity. It seems to have been used as a plot device to re-boot his character into into the strong capable figure he wasn't but should have been in TUF. As in DNT & LOTF he's mysteriously one of the best fighters & pilots in the galaxy when in NJO he was the worst duelist i nthe entire saga and such a bad pilot he wasn't capable of flying combat missions of any kind, one of the only jedi to do so in that series. Instead we have Jacen coming back from his 5 year journey as an utterly evil darksider and noone questions it and the only thing we got on why & how he got that way is 1 paragraph on how jaina felt him changing into someone she didn't like or know. WE didnt need DNT, that was pointless fluff. What we needed was a trilogy on jacens travels to show how & why he changed so much because try as I might I Can't buy jacen as a powerful force user.

I wouldnt have minded losing MAra so much if it made sence but its not possible for Jacen to beat Mara jade in a fight, especially if shes hidden in the force when she stikes. Jacen solo has never, ever been able to hold his own in a fight. Ever, against anyone. He's not a fighter. Hes not good at that. NJO made that VERY clear. She was killed in such a cheap lame way. That novel was a discrace to her character as she would never EVER act the way that she did in that book. Ever.

 

That's interesting.

I found myself very much relating to him in LOTF. His being a loner. He certainly isn't perfect, but I find it endearing. It's like he is trying to work things out. He's working through his communication/love issues. He knows that he's not the greatest of people, and he's living with it, and working through it. He's on a journey of self-discovery. It is kind of sad that in many ways no one has ever lived up to his dad. I wouldn't wish that loneliness on anyone. I don't think I've read of anyone quite like him. I'd feel bereft without having had that perspective. He's like a facet of me.

 

I thought that once the series reached the end it was very good. The amazing books were Inferno and Fury. They alone were reason enough to read this series. Betrayal was very well done as well. Invincible was cool for the fight scenes. Bloodlines was ok. Tempest was good, I liked it. Exile...crap. Sacrifice...meh. Revelation was ok.

Overall, I thought the series did a very good job of making Jacen's character slowly slide into darkness, you see it with each passing book, how he is becoming a madman. That part was awesome. They didn't rush the turn to the dark side it was great.

 

thats true, they didnt rush it
it wasnt like, oh heres Lumiya, now i am insane
it was almost believable
i wish Jacen would have been given the chance to be an established sith more than he got though
other than that, his arc into madness was handled ok

Betrayal and Invincible i thought were really good EU books

 

I feel that LOTF was worth it for Jacen and Mara. Good times happen and bad times happpen, so just go with the flow. While I like Mara, she was getting in the way for a bit. Jacen's fall was well done, as was his death.

However, I don't think it was worth Pellaeon too

Overall it was a decent series, not the best but not the worst. I do agree that certain aspects could have been handled better, but lessons learned ( )for next time

 

Pellaeon was older (97 years previously, 92 in Revelation) than Mara's and Jacen's ages combined (89 years)...

 

I agree with you about a Jedi going Sith for intellectual reasons. Or maybe principle. I wish that the writers had looked at Dooku for as model for Jacen's fall instead of Palpatine or Vader. I think Dooku and Jacen are similiar in some respects, regarding both were highly respected Jedi, great duelist, perhaps thinking they were better than they actually were. Both also had some political skill and both seemed a bit aloof, removed. Better yet, perhaps they should've tried to model him after Exar Kun, who also fell because of his obssession for Sith knowledge.

I disagree with you about all the Jedi turning away from Jacen in your scenario. I think both the Yuuzhan Vong and Swarm Wars would've made some Jedi, particularly the younger ones who really had no experience with the Sith, might listen to him. Some might've actually joined Jacen and maybe he could've then had a few choices to pick his apprentice from, and that would've been interesting to see the reaction of the One Sith to that development. Two competing bands of Sith.

As for the series itself, I agree with many of you that it had some good and bad parts. I think Jacen's fall was mishandled. Though I like Mara, I wasn't that torn up by her death. In fact, I like how she fought Jacen, it was brutal and dirty, just like an Emperor's Hand would fight. However I don't like how she beat Jacen within an inch of his life. I also didn't like Jacen getting shot in the knee by a random Mandalorian, losing an arm in his first battle with Jaina, not killing Katarn, etc. The writers really went out of there way to depower this guy while telling us he was the baddest man in the galaxy.

As for the books, I enjoyed the first six. Thought Fury was a waste of space that totally made Jacen Snidley Whiplash. Revelations pulled back from that to some extent, but it made Jacen too talky and wanting to reveal his Sithness to everyone who would listen, in addition to shoehorning the Mandalorians once more into the narrative. How could Jacen be on the cover and this novel supposedly be about his big revelation (it reminds me of how well done both Palpatine's and Anakin's unmaskings were done), and the last fifty or so pages are about the Mandalorians. Invincible wasn't a bad book, but it shortchanged Jacen's character once again. It seemed like Caedus's development became another causualty of this series like the GFFA-Confed war.

It's a shame because I thought this book series could've really been awesome. They had nine books to tell a story that was really only limited by imagination. Unlike GL, they didn't have to worry about budgets or making things fit with the OT so much. LOTF was somewhat uncharted territory. They really didn't have to follow the Legacy comics if they didn't

 

Just adding a penny, but I still don't understand why at times Jacen seemed to become insane when he went to the dark side. Never really seen that in any other dark side user and to me was a bit confusing and lessened him as a villian. Plus I just hated the way he killed Mara, was such a cheap way to end that scene and just didn't accomplish making Jacen the baddest man in the galaxy. I wanted a cross between Vader and the Emperor and I got a cross between the Joker and Kueller.

On a side note I found it funny that Jacen spent so much time looking at his grandfather and trying to avoid the same mistakes that he saw in Anakin to become a better Sith Lord but by the end of the arc he wasn't fit to wipe Vader's boots.

Favorite books in the series,

Inferno,
Betrayal.
Fury,

Rest I can leave alone

 

He definately went off the deep end when he was using the darkside. The biggest example being the battle at Fondor when he was using Battle Awareness (or Meditation, not sure which).

There were some definate parallels between the prequel movies and the first 4/5 books.