Lit Books LOTF - First Time Read Thread - No spoilers post-Invincible

I can understand that normal life stories would be kind of boring, but I wish they wouldn't keep doing these galactic war stories either. Or at least have Luke more in the Yoda/leader role rather than having him be on the frontlines so much of the time. Especially since then they have to keep coming up with excuses for why he doesn't just finish off Jacen earlier. Plot armor saved Jacen several times, and Mara's death was supposed to "taint" Luke so that he wouldn't be able to hold back against Jacen without going to the darkside or something, leaving Jaina to fight the final battle (meanwhile all those other Jedi Masters are off-screen doing something else).

At least Jaina's still in one piece (physically), even if she doesn't get as much screen time as she deserves.

 

Agreed totally. Yea, Luke's existence at the forefront continuously creates the problem for how to handle the bad guy since Luke is so OP at this point or the bad guy must be OP levels of Luke and that's always leaves the question of HOW?. If he is the mentor, then the next generation or other masters could lead the operations against the bad guys. Plot armor definitely saved Jacen and was one of the maddening things about this series. Luke should/could have easily dispatched him earlier I believe, and the Mara "taint" was a pathetic excuse to me bc it weakened his character for that to stop him, but send Jaina instead. I know it should be normal for her to be broken from what she had to do, but in a situation like the SW galaxy, I guess I'm just saddened that with her lack of use in the past, all they've done now to her is probably broken her with this action and what can/will they do with her now but sideline her again......

 

I am not sure that Luke should have dispatched him earlier, as the one thing Denning did well is have people run with their misconceptions and their understanding of half-truths which blurred the lines of what was really happening. I do agree that Luke's sending Jaina made him look weak...just as having a bunch of kids take on the Voxyn queen made him look incompentent.

 

Luke not wanting to kill Jacen in anger because he's worried about turning to the dark side is something I can buy.

But then he just has Jaina assassinate him in cold blood, and that apparently is ok.

Seems more than a little hypocritical of Luke.

 

All because Denning took charge, and wanted to make his debut novel the most important.
(Jaina never really went dark)

 

She came very close.

As for Vergere-I was always unhappy she was retconned into being a Sith acolyte and consider her lessons to Jacen essential in the defeat and redemption of the Yuuzhan Vong as well as Onimi in particular.

There are visisons and hints in LOTF of a dark Luke-if GM Luke Skywalker fell to the dark side he would make Sidious and Caedus look gentle in comparison-and Luke sending Jaina was at least in his own mind a way to avoid falling into darkness.

Though what was his plan in the event of Jaina's death or capture?

 

If Jaina failed, Luke would have hunted Caedus down himself and destroyed him. Which we know he could have without too much difficulty. What would have happened to Luke afterwards is another question. But I would guess he'd reunite the Galactic Alliance with an easily controlled puppet at the helm, similar to how he appointed Jag as the Remnant Head of State.

How galactic events would proceed after that is an interesting bit of speculation.

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Well I meant should have IU sense, like Jacen had done enough wrong to justify it. I do think that would shortened the series obviously which wouldn't have been a great thing (if they had found more real story to write, sadly a lot of what we got was filler or feet dragging.) Yes, it is the same as the Myrkr mission which I hate to this day, and is my least fav. moment in the entirety of SW. I almost hated Luke for that one.

Well, I get that's what we're supposed to take from Luke, but I don't buy it personally. Luke's whole OT thing is about being able to step up to the edge and withstand the dark and come to the light. I know it's his wife, but still.....Luke Skywalker should be able to control himself better especially at this point in his life if he was able to handle it as a 20 yr old. I'm not sure I personally say what the Jedi did to Jacen is assassinate in cold blood, it was a necessary mission for the safety of the galaxy, how else are you gonna get to Jacen and stop him? But, I do agree it's a bad look for Luke to send Jaina, he has to know how bad that would mess her up to have to do the job....it's dereliction of duty on his part......

Yes, it is the moment!!! Everything bad comes from this, Anakin's death, Jaina's brush with the dark side, Jacen's mess of a future, TDN trilogy, LOTF Jacen stuff, Tahiri's mess of a life w/o Anakin.....

I agree on the Jaina never went dark. It was like a bad weekend in Vegas.

I just don't buy that the real Luke would have went dark just for stopping Jacen from taking over the galaxy. Yes, the Luke in the book apparently would, IDK where the real Luke from before went.....and just saying, in his own mind might justify him to himself, doesn't justify the objective reality of his actions though and those were horrible....and good question at the end.... ​

Exactly, which would have just brought forth LOTF Luke's visions anyway, so good planning Luke, glad you lucked out with Jaina...hope she's not too messed up from this, but you're good at least....

 

Jaina asked to be the one to take down Jacen. She went to Fett on her own, before Luke decided he couldn't take Caedus down. She volunteered to kill her own brother and deliberately chose not to spare his life. If she had real reservations about it, she could have just turned away. It's not like Luke forced her to go after her own brother. It was her choice.

 

True and not true....everything you said is true, but in the end she decided to not go if the Masters didn't approve of her doing it....and they approved and even admitted that they had already been talking and decided they were going to send her, Luke first and foremost said so....I'm not even trying to absolve her of any responsibility in chosing to go here either, I'm just pointing out how Luke did also have a major hand in it....and on the deliberately chosing not to spare his life, what else was she to do? he was an unrepentant tyrant who was trying to seize control of the galaxy....

 

The Jedi master Murtaggh fell to the dark side after defeating the dark underlord. So there is precedent for Jedi falling after defeating their opponents.

 

It's not an argument that it can't happen, it's an argument that I don't buy Luke Skywalker falling.....based off his personal history from the OT and the main novels....

 

It is admittedly hard to believe-after all Luke is the grand master and has fought the dark side and the Sith and won-more than once.

But it is something Jacen foresees, and is hinted at elsewhere.

Luke for all his power isn't unbreakable or completely incorruptible.

A dark Luke especially in the LOTF era would be a terrifying force to behold.

 

on the Jacen foresees, to me so what, Jacen's vision could be wrong....."always in motion is the future" as Yoda says...but more than anything, I just think it'd be bad writing but right down Denning's alley

on Luke not being incorruptible....yes in reality, very low chance though as stated above even by you, and what a horrible concept, I wouldn't want that anyway

on the dark Luke.....yes he would be a beast....I just wouldn't be reading about it

 

Denning wasn't the first one who brought it up-the idea of a dark Luke was hinted at in Betrayal. Which was an Allston book.

 

Luke did fall in Legends - rather half-heartedly, but he had to be redeemed by Leia and a then-unborn Anakin Solo (see Dark Empire for more details).

As for the ripple effects of Star by Star ... I have a suspicion, based on a lot of not-so-circumstantial evidence (that is, the unnecessarily-gory and kriffed-up mess that is DNT to Crucible), that the "Denningverse" was a protracted critique of Anakin Solo dying at Myrkr.

Some have said that Anakin was on his way to "genociding" the Vong, or something to that effect.

Conquest was the complete refuting of such an idea.

Did Anakin hate the Vong? I never got that sense. He was a headstrong "hero"-worshipper before Conquest, true - more prone to action than planning, and that did eventually get him killed - but he wasn't some humanocentrist punk or out to exterminate the YV.

He reached out to Tahiri - admittedly, with the "ulterior motive" of loving her - and stood with Vua Rapuung against Mezhan Kwaad. Those aren't actions of a homicidal bigoted snot.

Jaina and Jacen - and Luke - all observe at different points, both before and after Anakin's death, that he was on the way to finding a way to include the YV in the Jedi perception of the Force; it's not that the Force had to grow, it was that the Jedi perceptions of it had to (through the lambent crystal, in Anakin's case).

Instead ... Anakin's character arc through the rest of the war got shuffled over to Jacen ... with less-than-stellar results.

Oh, Jacen ended the war ... by killing a brain-damaged, insane puppet-master who should've been tried instead of summarily executed.

(Yes, Jacen was defending himself in the final fight, but he had owned Onimi by that point; I'm also no fan of the idea that Onimi "judged himself," when Jacen had such power and control in the Force at that moment.)

Admittedly, I'm biased. I recognize there are times that character growth can be achieved through reactions to the death of another character.

Anakin Solo, however, was fridged for Jacen's development (and, to a lesser degree, Jaina's).

(Yes, the term originated from the brutally unnecessary killing of a girlfriend of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, but any character who gets thrown under the metaphorical plot bus in such a manner is equally wasted.)

When a Force-ghost of Anakin points out to Luke that the Order shouldn't have invested so much reliance and expectation on one Jedi, he's right. (Of course, that doesn't absolve Luke of all the hinkily weird stuff he pulls in DNT and onward, but one SkySolo at a time.)

More devastatingly, though, look at the fallout - Tahiri's entire character arc after TUF is ... wretched, while Jacen is left to drift in his own inability to decide/admit what he really wants out of life (I have a theory on that, but that's another post), and Jaina ... Jaina is broken by Myrkr, just differently, and she stumbles forward to become, at best, various leaders' Vader.

(She might offer to be the one who kills Jacen, but would she have done so had their connection not been shattered and the twins having grown so far apart in the intervening decade-plus?

None of this is to absolve the Jedi Council of failing to leash Luke - metaphorically, that is - and prevent the STUPIDITY of his power grab during DNT.

Either the collective IQ or collective maturity of characters like Corran Horn, Saba Sebatyne, Cilghal, and others was somehow afflicted with - what, Force Stupidity? between TUF and DNT. Cilghal was the only one whom, AFA I can see, had a smidgen of a spine to stand up to Luke (and when Jedi are torturing their own, they're not really being Jedi ... ).

Nobody should have to wear a "Daala was Right" T-shirt ... but Daala was (partially) right.

Sith were just messed-up Jedi, after all (at least originally; I'm not trying to ignore the Banites, but Vader was a Jedi before he fell).

Does that mean Luke was a Sith? ... I don't think he was by the time of LOTF, no. But he wasn't right, either.

No more than Caedus was; but Jacen's unique brand of brokenness is another post, I think.

Would Anakin's survival have driven the Order in a more positive direction? By itself, probably not ... but it would've challenged things.

Unchallenged Jedi orthodoxy, after all, leads to things like a room of talking heads who don't go out and track down Sith ... wait a minute ...

 

@OutsiderJediSam What are your thoughts about their not being any Yuuzhan Vong mentions in the series except the World Brain in Tempest and Embrace of Pain and SBS in Inferno?

 

I always preferred Jacen to Anakin. Jacen I think embodied what the Jedi should be-philosophical monks who can fight as opposed to Anakin's warrior knights who defeat the bad guys and keep peace.

It was Jacen who had this insight even in vector prime.

 

While I was not big on the Vong myself, and not a fan of NJO really, I do not like retcons at all so I was highly disappointed that there was no mentions and Corcuscant was reverted back after NJO made a point to say it'd take decades to fix.....

also, why I didn't like the grimdark of the Vong, the inclusion of them now might not have been so bad and could have driven some philosophical inquiries bridging them and the galaxy now that it's not longer them just being the evil warriors trying to destroy the galaxy...

 

Anakin Solo may have been the original intended hero of the NJO but the NJO would have been far worse from it had it been so.

Jacen on the other hand isn't a conventional hero-he's a philosopher and someone who asks questions, "navel gazes", and is willing to think.

Anakin's whole MO was action-beat the bad guy, save the damsel, blow up what needed to blow up, and rescue the hostages, etc... Standard heroic modus operandi.

Jacen wasn't like that-he would ask why is that necessary or more importantly is that what the Jedi are supposed to be?

 

I actually enjoy the "beat the bad guy"...standard heroic modus operandi...I think NJO would have been better with Anakin being the hero and was in fact worse bc of Jacen.....

 

Then you and I have very a different opinion on what to like in a protagonist. As I have said many many times I am a jacen fan and think he is the best character of the EU. Though I know you disagree.

 

I liked Jacen well enough before the NJO, but hated him for the first half. Its like if protestors forced their way into a war room in the middle of a battle (remember how Jacen distracting Anakin allowed Thracken to fire Centerpoint and accidentally wipe out a Hapan fleet?). Jedi shouldn't simply be superpowered warriors, but that was always one of NJO's big problems for me- what's so bad about defending the galaxy against a rampaging horde? Well, as long you don't do anything too bad, like torture someone or use Force lightning, but they needed a way to stall Luke for a while too.

It doesn't help that Anakin Solo had the standard young hero journey and he started the Jedi heresy and saved Tahiri, etc. Of course, since Del Rey just has to go for dark and edgy, they had Anakin die young rather than narrowly survive his recklessness and mature.

It worked out in the end, but then LotF subverted that happy ending, with making Jacen the villain and apparently Vergere only helped him as part of a Sith plot. And it all came from such a trustworthy source too. Sadly the rest of canon followed that Vergere is a Sith retcon. She was always... cryptic (and being long dead not like she can answer questions, not that she was that helpful when she was alive, and apparently her Force ghost doesn't count as a good thing anymore), but they had to ruin NJO's happy ending, as well as sweep away as much of it as possible (for instance, the World Brain randomly being killed back in... the third book, Tempest, I think?).

I don't want to see more Vong, I didn't mind them being off-screen in on Zonoma Sekot after the long NJO, but that doesn't also mean I want to see a restored prequel-era galaxy either. Yet DNT and LotF rolled back so much, and unlike NJO, no happy ending to show for it.

 

Agree with everything here!!! I couldn't stand Jacen for the first half of NJO, he was a teen who was doing exactly what you said. Like he was smarter/better than the rest of the Jedi Order combined....get over yourself Jacen....And also, I never understood why it was supposedly wrong of the Jedi to help defend the galaxy from invaders....I agree, it seemed mostly to elongate the series by sidelining Luke somehow....and there was nothing wrong with what Anakin did/was doing at all, like you say.....

EDIT: read ending part wrong, personally I'd been okay to see Zonmoa Sekot, that's where I'd have liked to seen part of LOTF take us to reintegrate the Vong