The JC Lit Reviews Special: DARK NEST I: THE JOINER KING (spoilers)

Good review, JJS, though I disagree with you about that chapter.

ATimson, where the heck is your review?

 

Many seem so determined to think Jacen will fall, that they don?t even notice that it was Mara who used the Force Lighting, and Cilghal who tortured her patient. Jacen did nothing but stun a guard, and toy with a holo readout. Let?s keep things in perspective.

I agree with this, too. I don't see anything in the book that leads me to believe Jacen is going to go to "teh dark sied!!1!1"...

 

I believe it's possible, based on the fact that he spent the past five years on a personal agenda. He gained these new found powers that Luke and the others found out accidentally, when Leia told him that Jacen showed her the crash.

He's getting too powerful IMO. And with power comes some sort of attitude (look at Cal and we liked him during NJO)ego, whatever you call it. That makes him susceptible to fall.

I'm hoping he does because I'm not pleased that he used Tenel Ka. I love the two together and had always hoped they would come together a some point. But Hive or not, he spent the night with her for a fleet.

And besides, Jaina's all creepy now, why can't he be? It might be wishful thinking on my part but it would definitely make for a good read.

 

I'm hoping he does because I'm not pleased that he used Tenel Ka. I love the two together and had always hoped they would come together a some point. But Hive or not, he spent the night with her for a fleet.

I agree. definite moral issues.

One the book:

the book as a whole was pretty good. i was disappointed that J/J weren't together but i think it will end up that way.

han and leia were great, so in character.
luke and mara were great.

the Killiks: creepy. i don't like them at all.

I was a little disappointed in ben, he annoyed me slightly, but maybe he'll get better as he gets older.

overall...7.3 out of 10.

 

Counting 24 ratings: 194.8/24 = 8.12

 

Very good book, didn't think that it was going to be any good. My expectations were surpassed. Mastadge, pencil me in for a 9.95/10. Good book!

 

Denning is definitely one of the best star wars authors, and TJK helps support that assertion. I was disturbed by the book for 3 reasons. It was disturbing to see the young hero's from the NJO taken over so easily and completely by the nest. Luke was even challenged by their power. It was also disturbing to see luke, mara, and cilgal use the dark side. I was pretty much in favor of verger's force view, but now i'm not. I think after seeing rots i was much more convinced of the power of the dark side. Sure a person's actions may make the use of the force good or bad, but after a while the dark side just takes over. I think the jedi are all walking a slippery slope here. The last thing that disturbed me was jacen. I don't think he's going to become a sith lord, but i can see him becoming a gray jedi. He wields great power and he defintely does his own thing. We also don't know how much power he has. Rayner says that no one can controle jacen (or something similar to that), does luke fall into that catagory? I liked the fact that the book disturbed me. I also like the way the characters were writen. The big 3 were well done and tarfang and juun were also cool. Ben was pretty enjoyable also. It was great when he told jaina that she was in trouble. Hell that brings up 2 new things that disturb me also, the fact that ben may be a dark nest joiner and the fact that he has cut himself off from the force. On a side note, i hope the joiner properties where off, the jaina and zek thing was getting on my nerves. Oh and sabs was awesome! leia made a freat choice for a master.

8.9

 

Counting 26 ratings: 213.65/26 = 8.22

 

Debating whether or not to bother with this one. From the sounds of it, something bad is gonna go down with the Jedi later in the trilogy that will put them back on the course to the true meaning of the Force and away from Vergere's Potentium crap. Jedi definitely aren't supposed to torture people.

 

I'd bother with it. The torture is a necessary evil and they see it and handle it as such, and this book is sort of laying the groundwork for 11 more SW novels. . .

 

But they're bloody JEDI! If American soldiers and captains of the Starship Enterprise aren't supposed to torture people, why Jedi?

 

Great book. The characterizations were all done very well (particulary Han and Leia).

Ben Skywalker is an interesting character. It's great to see his admiration of his uncle Han and rejection of the Force. It makes him unique and individual instead of a carbon copy of one of the Solo children.

I give it an 8.5/10.

 

Lola64: I'm hoping he does because I'm not pleased that he used Tenel Ka. I love the two together and had always hoped they would come together a some point. But Hive or not, he spent the night with her for a fleet.

Tenel Ka asked him to. I could also point out that they might not have even had sex, because all Tenel Ka wanted to do was piss off her suitors with the implications of it. Though that one might be a weak argument, as there?s no evidence either way.

But I think it is most important to notice that Tenel Ka asked him to. She knew what she was asking. If it was a one night stand, so be it. I personally got the feeling she would have given him the fleet either way, though. This was more a request than a condition, IMO.

Kudzu: But they're bloody JEDI! If American soldiers and captains of the Starship Enterprise aren't supposed to torture people, why Jedi?

On principle, that argument makes sense, and there might have been innumerable other ways of accomplishing what they did. The problem is they didn?t have the time to try innumerable other things; they needed to get the job done then, and this was the only conclusive way to do it. It certainly wasn?t an option they liked.

Go ahead and read it. I really don?t think it?s as bad as it sounds.

 

Ben Skywalker is an interesting character. It's great to see his admiration of his uncle Han and rejection of the Force. It makes him unique and individual instead of a carbon copy of one of the Solo children.

Of course he's not a carbon copy - he's only got one gamete of Solobrat DNA...

Hold that thought.

***

Up to about the midpoint of The Joiner King, this review was going to start with one word: "Wow."

Now... I'm not so sure; but I think that's the idea, though.

Ostensibly, TJK is about assimilation and absorbtion, about the effacement of humanity and individual distinctiveness that it entails...

But in reality, it's about discord, fractures, and wounds that won't heal. The Killiks' expansionist desire to absorb individuality is in itself a response to the trauma of the war with the Yuuzhan Vong, a result of their assimilation of both Dark and Light Force users... seen in terms of their own development, they're becoming significantly *less* mindless, less self-contained and self-confident...

But TJK is less about Killiks than it is about human beings. The opening establishes that the basic patterns of the civilization that defines the Galaxy in social terms, and the bonds between the Star Warriors themselves, have been broken. The Jedi, and the various organs of the Alliance, seem prisoners not merely of circumstances, but of a set of agendas forged in the white heat of the end of the war - the scene is one of discord and haphazard rebuilding amid the ruins. Alongside this, the gulf between the generations is absolutely fundamental, reflected in both the physical seperation of Han, Luke, Leia, Mara and the other veterans from the Young Jedi Knights for the first half of the book, and also in their very differing psychological architectures.

This is, in many senses, a twenty-first century Star Wars. The younger "heroes" - now in their midtwenties - are caught in a sworl of relativism and confusion that Han and Leia explicitly contrast in dialogue with the idealism of their own youth - which also seved as a form of psychological armour that has enabled them to weather two Galaxy-rending wars.

And then there's the explicit psychological element. Alongside the questions of light and dark - on which Luke Skywalker, for one, seems to have lost his way - the book uses the interplay of conscious thoughts and unconscious urges as a deliberate theme, and one not merely limited to the Killik social structure. We cannot - must not trust the characters' rationalizations for their own actions any more...

More fundamentally, the novel explores human individuality and how it reacts not merely with an obvious method of "social control" like Killik hive-minds, but how it struggles to interface with training, community, ideology, and other things that any society takes for granted as part of its fabric - but Denning doesn't seem to offer an answer, and I don't think he wants to, or needs to...

Ultimately, all of this creates a sense of unsettlement that is further emphasied by the utter alienness of Killik society and architecture - bizarre alien geometries, mostly in low-gravity or zero-gee. I suspect that the confused and unfulfilling chaos of some of the battles was meant to underscore the same idea as well, but if I have one serious and clear-cut criticism of TJK, it's that some of the combat sequences didn't seem well-integrated into the overall flow and action of the novel - adjuncts to the plot rather than part of it. Perhaps that's deliberate, or perhaps I just read them too fast. Denning's previous SW novels have definately grown even richer for me on rereading...

Of course, twenty-first century or not, this is still Star Wars, and we get several impressive battle sequences and lots of cool new toys - a new breed of Victory-class Star Destroyers which the Chiss seem to have inherited from the Empire of the Hand, and the latest X-wing variants, the StealthX and the XJ5 "ChaseX" with their R9 astromechs. A scene where two Ishi Tib g

 

It just sounds like the stage is being set for Jacen going too far, then Luke seeing what following the Potentium has done to his nephew and reigns back on the "Yeah, feel free to use the dark side, because it was just a figment of the entire Old Jedi Order's imagination - and my imagination for the thirty years of my life between my departure from Tatooine and the aftermath of the Battles of Yuuzhan'tar and Zonama Sekot, too!" idiocy. Just from the sounds of it, it seems like the book is implying that the Jedi aren't acting the way they should be...peaceable Cilghal torturing a patient for information, Mara using Force Lightning, Jacen fooling around with the Force for his own amusement (hypocrite!), Luke having his moral compass go blurry? Zoinks! Hopefully everything will be back to normal by LotF. And maybe, just maybe, someone will kill Jacen.

 

Dude, read the book first. Make judgments afterwards. You?re not going to get a clear picture from anyone but yourself.

The very fact that your under the impression that it?s Jacen who?s going too far proves that you really need to read the book. The few people who do think that after actually reading the book have clearly read too much into it, IMO, and are overlooking a number of other characters who are on a far more worrisome path.

Mara using Force Lighting shouldn?t surprise many people. She was trained by Palpatine. If Luke says using the Dark Side sparingly is okay, she is going to be throwing a couple bolts of lighting around. She?s far from the only Jedi to have done so and not fall to the Dark Side because of it. Also, there didn?t seem to be much malice involved with it either; it was just a Dark Side technique that she used when she might not have needed to.

As far as Cilghal, she didn?t torture the creature for interrogation purposes. For lack of a better term, it was a scientific experiment that really couldn?t have been done a better way without the pain involved. Had the sentient bug been replaced by a non-sentient rodent, there really wouldn?t have even been an issue worth discussing here.

 

I wonder if there will ever be stories set in the five year time period between NJO and DN, because Troy sets down some definites that might be be contradicted: It?s been over a year ( or sometimes five years ) since anyone has seen?.Jacen, Tahiri, Tekli, Kam, Tionne, Jaina, etc.

The center of government and the Jedi Temple is back on Coruscant. The NJO shook things up, but now they want to reset everything. Now is the perfect time to move on and enter a new era. Move the capital. Move the temple. We?ve explored Coruscant plenty already.


The Jedi are darksiders now. Luke says at one point that modern Jedi embrace the light side and the dark side. HuH? I can expect this from Kyp or Jacen, but Luke and Mara and Corran? They have always been at the forefront of arguing against the dark side. But in this novel, Luke force chokes, Mara hurls lightning and Luke excuses it with a times-they-are-a-changin? attitude.

 

The very fact that your under the impression that it?s Jacen who?s going too far proves that you really need to read the book. The few people who do think that after actually reading the book have clearly read too much into it, IMO, and are overlooking a number of other characters who are on a far more worrisome path.

I'm not saying that because of what he does, but because of the foreshadowing that I've heard (the "none of his light" stuff). Not to mention that the Pink Chicken gave him the full brainwash treatment back in NJO, and I've read those particular books many times over.

 

Yes, well such ?foreshadowing? means almost nothing. That ?foreshadowing? came from a character who essentially said the exact same thing of Luke, even when he did ?have the light?. Akanah isn?t exactly a proponent of the Jedi, regardless of how they view the Force. And again, Jacen was the one who seemed to deal with the new philosophy the best. Almost everyone else didn?t quite seem to get it on the same level, or outright misused it (hence why it?s going to evolve through the trilogy).

Read it yourself, or don?t prejudge it. You aren?t going to get an accurate representation of a four hundred forty three page book from a few three paragraph reviews in this forum.

 

Oy, this is gonna be a long one but here goes:

Wicked book. Very well written, and not just as a SW novel, but as a novel in itself. The pacing was just right, not jumping ahead to fast, not lingering too long in needless moments, and just enough mystery to keep everyone waiting for more. Good action, good dialogue, good times all around.
And now the main parts:
Luke: THIS is how Luke Skywalker should be written. Strong, confident, utterly sincere, morally sound, and youthfully wise; he's more of a big brother to the Jedi than a detached "Grand Master". People complain about "character assasination", but if anything, this novel gives them the Luke they thought was absent from NJO (which he wasn't). His confusion and uncertainty over the direction some Jedi are taking just goes to emphasize that he is still the extreme "Light" end in the Force spectrum.

Mara: Never cared for her much, but I certainly don't hate her like a lot of people seem to. That being said, she acted perfectly in character, as an arrogant, brash, and to a certain extent selfish Jedi, so for me, she was pretty enjoyable. And the fight with Gorog just made me smile; the entire time, I couldn't help but picture Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Han: Again, totally perfect in his portrayal. A borderline jerk that you can't help but love. His insecurity over his age is a good angle, and I'm sure it'll be developed throughout the trilogy. And the "I hate bugs" thing was awesome.

Leia: Same story. The fight with Alema was one of the most exciting scenes in the book, and her decision to "officially" become a Jedi is the perfect and logical progression for someone who wants to make a difference but can't stand being tied down to a faulty political structure.

Ben: I have to admit, I wasn't sure what to expect from him. Either he was going to be a total brat, or your typical boring "prodigal son". But I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was both fun and totally natural; he integrated into the "lifestyles" of the heroes perfectly, without seeming forced in there. As for his neglect of the Force, well, more on that shortly.

Jaina: NJO killed her character for me almost beyond redemption but so far she's actually bearable (and yes, I know I'm being hypocritical ) Her assimilation into the hive was inevitable, seeing as how she's always been a bit of a tool, whether for the Jedi, the military, or the government, with no actual personality beyond the dictates of her mission. So having her become a Joiner was only natural

And now to the character we all can't get enough of, Jacen:
THIS is the Jacen Solo that we should have had from TR onward. He has become the ultimate Force user in the galaxy. He is confident almost to the point of arrogance, decisive in his choices and unrepentive in his actions. He's fun and relaxed, which is always nice, and a total bad-a$$ without even trying. While the other Jedi all go to the either extreme in their commitment to this new Order, he seems to be the only one that gets it, or at least the only one with the faculties to sort out its truth.
And yes, he is becoming extremely and frighteningly powerful, but this is required for what he will come to represent. As someone else put it, he will never be Jedi and he will never be a Sith; he'll inhabit the area in between, the balance point between the two to keep everything in check. In this regard, he is becoming very much like Anakin Skywalker, or the way that Anakin should have been, the perfect balance between personal desire and fealty to the a cause, ie: the Force. The unease felt towards him by the other characters stems from their natural incapability of understanding this, as the people of the GFFA have always seen things in black and white. Luke seems to be the only one capable of accepting this.
Mara's fear and mistrust of Jacen is another interesting point. She scorns his views and ambivalent use of the Force, yet she goes on to use BLUE lightning, drawing feelings of anger and revenge. She is suspicious of his intentions and her inability to sp

 

i give it a 9

this book was awesome. i love what's happened to jacen, he has now become my favorite character. this light/dark argument is over-stated, but will probably come into play later. for now, i read and enjoy!

 

I just realized who all these Jacen descriptions are reminding me of...

Q, from Star Trek.

Oh dear.

 

Don't forget his Vulcan nerve pinch

 

And the Killik...they're like the Borg! Does this mean that the Jedi are now the equivalent of Section 31?