Reviews Books The JC Lit Reviews Special: FATE OF THE JEDI: APOCALYPSE (Spoilers)

8/10

A good ending to the series providing some nice closure to several lingering plot lines, but the book struggles to bear the weight of the previous 18 books' missteps and can't take on the (seemingly) impossible task of justifying both LotF and FotJ.

 

6 /10

Firstly I want to say that having the final battle on Coruscant again was so uninspired and the volcanic destruction of the city was comical. Furthermore, I thought the action on Coruscant at the beginning of the novel dragged and became monotonous. That said I did like the Luke, Corran and Jaina team up and the mentions of the fights across the capital. However, seeing those would've been much more interesting than just hearing about them.
Of course Denning had to use his pet characters and that forever annoys me. The Barabels, Squibs and Killiks are some of my least favourite species so I wasn't pleased they turned up. Also the annoying nigh omnipotent Ship had another starring role, much to my dismay and amusement. However, Fett (someone whom I think has been portrayed incorrectly of late) was handled well, I'll give him that.
My favourite plotline was the Imperial election because, well, that was the least ridiculous of them all and I enjoy the politics of the Imperial Remnant. Daala was handled well and Jag's abstaining from the election was interesting, as was the establishment of a news network.

Terrible aspects:
-Mortis' connection was contrived, stupid and not even mildly interesting or worth the nine book wait.
-Why make an awesome continuity link with Dark Horse only to have it completely and utterly dumb? Krayt meets Luke, what a joke.

 

Average score: 121.35/17 = 7.14

 

7/10

Good:
-Jaina's promotion
-Krayt's appearance
-Most of the action
-Wynn Dorvan, a non-descript office weenie, standing up to sith lords and the beloved queen
-Raynar

Bad:
-This mortis crap
- Killiks ugh
- Raynar

I enjoyed most of this novel. I thought it was pretty good up unti lthey started talking about the Mortis crap from TCW. In and of itself, the mythology wasn't bad. However, the idea of a mystical excalibur that they have to find to kill abeloth for good is just...blah. I'm laying odds that the Mortis Blade is what Crucible is about.

Definitely not Denning's worst outing. It was a decent ending, and mostly wrapped everything up.

 

Average score: 128.35/18 = 7.13

 

6/10
Because of the ending

Jaina getting Mastery and getting married was good.

The way it ended with Vestara still upsets me. Than Ben and Jaina wanted to drug her and were all upset about the Falcon incident showed they lacked a sense of proportion considering she did a BIG part in killing off Abeloth(and not drinking from the Fountain of Power). That it had to end without mutual understanding was disheartening. She played her part in keeping the Apocalypse from being infinitely worse, which more than made up for her (forced) mistakes.

If she would have died fighting the sith (per Jedi morals) instead of tossing the grenade at the Falcon, the Sith still attack Falcon and the below happens.

With Vestara dead, Ben (already captured) would have been alone and helpless against Abeloth. And without Vestara to be a part of Abeloth's fantasy Celestial family, Abeloth may just have decided to use Ben as her next avatar. Abeloth would still be alive and multiplying thru the galaxy and billions more people would die. Luke would be clueless what to do and would finally snap, and the Balance of the Force would be destroyed.
On the other hand, if Vestara had been able to escape the sith by making it to the undercity, the same scenario as above would play out.

HERE IS THE WHOLE BALANCE OF THE FORCE KICKER (FOLLOW ME)


The only way Abeloth would be defeated was if Vestara ended up with Ben at the end // The only way Vestara could end up with Ben is if she lived but did not escape // The only way Ves could live without escaping was to "prove" her "loyalty" to the Sith //
The only way Ves could "prove" her "loyalty" to the Sith was to throw the grenade at the Falcon // The only way she could throw the grenade at the Falcon is if it was there in the hangar in the first place // The reason the Falcon was in the hangar instead of half a galaxy away is that Allana had a vision of her lizard friends in peril and was determined to save them.

ALLANA, THEREFORE, FULFILLED HER "THRONE OF BALANCE" DESTINY BY THE FALCON BEING IN THE HANGAR WHEN VESTARA ARRIVED AND SETTING THE CRUCIAL SEQUENCE IN MOTION

Just too bad Vestara got the bad rep for her part in a twist of fate. I dearly hope she gets some love from the authorsin the future.

 

Golden is writing SotJ, so if Ves makes an appearance in that she probably will!

 

Average score: 134.35/19 = 7.07

 

7/10

So I am on the late freight. I just finished the series. Golden did a good job, much better than her predecessor. Well there is really no comparison - she was leaps and bounds better as we didn't have all the contradictions from chapter to chapter. But this series was disappointing for content while remaining readable and exciting in bits.

More Jacen bashing - I do not understand the need for this. It was enough that his horrible parents, sister, nephew and uncle - all premo Jedi, didn't try as hard to save him as they did Thul. Jaina killed him, Luke tried, his father grew arrogance that Palpatine would have been proud of and eschewed him, his mother and Luke were simply portrayed as helpless and ridiculous - and then they ridicule him at every turn in this series. In each book they find more and more ways to heap all blame on him for the horrid state of the universe, as if that will make up for the horrid behavior of his shameful jedi family - but it is of course too late. What they determine now cannot stand as a reason for having treated him like Palpatine's son instead of the grandson of the chosen one.

I suppose the ending was just slick enough to make me forget all of that for a moment. Who would have thought Denning would have Jaina marry Abeloth? That threw me for a loop. When I read "Jagged Fel...looking back toward Jaina with a smile as wide as his face" I couldn't believe my eyes. But it makes sense. So Abeloth will be contained in Jag, married to Jaina and their children making up the rest of the Ones. That was a pretty cool twist.

Apart from that it was very difficult to enjoy because it was so female driven, with the females acting like males and I just couldn't get into it - again. I don't know what got into them to eliminate all the focus on the young men. We had to settle for silly boy Ben and cankerous Han and super ascended Luke - which wasn't fun. Glad they left Vestara alive - I liked her more and more as Jaina liked her less and less.

And that kid - smart-mouthed, unlikeable, spoiled rotten little bratty Amelia or Allana or whoever she is. Needs a good spanking.

Anyway - entertaining if all wrong and a nice juicy ending. So overall, I am a satisfied customer.

 

That's a...new...way of looking at it...

 

Here you go.

 

9 out of 10, one of the better reads from the series. I thought the depth of action was great. The end game was fantastic as well as the locations and imagery.
Abeloth was as gruesome as anticipated, The Sith sack the Jedi Temple. The Jedi leave the captial. Era related endings. ties up loose ends and promotes future developments.

 

Feels like ages since reading...

Though from memory the only stuff I really just disliked is that Vestara really is one of the most pointless characters ever even though she had a whole series devoted to her, that Daala is still alive at the end and that Mortis showed up. Otherwise... well it is FOTJ with all its problems, but at least this book finished it.


4 of 10.

 

Average score: 154.35/22 = 7.02

 

I'll have to read that part again, indeed a curious description for Jag's expression, especially given that was one of Abeloth's more disturbing features.

 

So help me, if Jag turns out to be possessed by Abeloth I will rip my copy of Apocalypse in half!

...Okay, so I won't, but I won't ever consider it canon.

Seriously, though, it was probably a description for Jag's happiness, and Denning didn't think about the fact that it sounded very similar to the description of the villain he just sort-of-killed off. At least, I hope even Denning isn't that wacky. I hope.

 

This IS the guy who created a bunch of half-baked clone cyborgs of our heros in Crucible, we're talking about.

 

Denning seems to really enjoy doing this sort of symbolism. See: White Eyes and "mine!"

 

At least they were HALF-naked.

But seriously, considering the short story Getaway, written by Golden, I seriously doubt that Abeloth inhabits Jag's body...

I hope.

 

1/10, utterly wretched.

From the beginning, in which Jedi, tagged as spice smugglers by the idiotic Sith media and ridiculously compliant and brainless public, plot obnoxiously overpowered and overcoordinated assassinations of absurdly high-placed Sith infiltrators (seriously . . . a Supreme Court Justice? Do you have any understanding that galactic public officials can't simply spring out of thin air?) to be "badass," to the end, in which Denning retcons the basis, motivations, and nature of his entire post-NJO run yet again, lands the resolution of the series with a profound thud of anticlimax and bad decisions, and gives the most profoundly unsatisfying, perfunctory, and joyless major-character wedding ever, it's simply a disaster, one of the worst Star Wars novels I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

Even when you account for the fact that the book has been crippled by an incredibly awful, stupid lead-in that put it in an impossibly stupid scenario -- Sith controlling the government on Coruscant, a nastily widespread cabal that suggests the GA is so rotten inside as to be unworthy of saving, Wynn Dorvan being an awful, awful person, Daala existing -- it's still painfully bad. About the only right creative choices I can recall it making are promoting Jaina to Master and taking the Jedi off Coruscant (though that was executed badly). All the other ones suck. Bringing Krayt into the story to hang around with Luke and explicitly alert him to the existence of another group of Sith? BAD IDEA. Kicking Jag out of the Empire just so that you'll have to eventually put him back in again, and doing it via a completely unrealistic instant election versus a candidate with no credibility in a situation that makes no sense? BAD IDEA. Bringing in Mortis and perverting it even worse with an incredibly bad reading of it that passes off a bunch of horrid Force theology suggesting the Force is unbalanced, the Sith are intrinsically necessary, and Sith are unable to change their natures? BAD IDEA. Staging a five-hundred-page book as essentially one long action sequence revolving around gruesome injury and death as a replacement for coherence? BAD IDEA. Turning Allana into some kind of eight-year-old murder machine who goes into battle, mows down Sith, acts all "badass," and watches her friend die horribly in front of her? BAD IDEA. Rejecting the entire idea of redemption in favor of contriving a situation to make Ben and Luke give up on Vestara as irredeemable and have her essentially confirm their way of thinking, so that she can wander off as a villain with Ben's complicity? BAD IDEA. Blowing up a shipload of Jedi children and their families for no other reason than to give us a really stupid action beat in an unnecessary action sequence and reinforce how SERIOUS and BADASS this book is with all of its carnage and mutilation and gore and murder committed upon children and murder committed by children? BAD IDEA. After the dumb and bad-idea but basically-satisfying Jacen appearance in the also-bad-idea dead-people lake, bring him back as a giant jackass who just exists to tweak Luke and act cartoonishly arrogant and evil? BAD IDEA.

This is a long, joyless slog, a chore to read from beginning to end, full of nothing but bad ideas and bad writing from someone who just fundamentally does not understand Star Wars anymore. Honestly, I went in expecting a little better from this. Denning's novels often at least have something to recommend them, some element that glosses over how ill-conceived and ugly they are and gets him way too many 9 and 10 scores. This had absolutely nothing to offer. Much like Denning's conception of Vestara, it's irredeemable. instantdeath, you asked if this was the worst Star Wars novel ever. I'm now officially declaring it tied with The Clone Wars Gambit: Siege for that honor.

 

Average score: 155.35/23 = 6.75

 

I never wrote a review of Apocalypse because I disliked it so much that I didn want to even waste time to type a rant about it. I would just like to say " ditto" to Havac's review. I completely agree with every word in it. Couldn't have said it better myself! I will also officially give the book 1 out of 10 as well. Please add my score to the official total. Thanks!

 

And with Hav and COW in agreement about Apocalypse hell has suffered a sudden sharp cold snap in the weather!

 

Well, I don't see myself topping Havac's review either, but I do want to add a few observations before just giving a score:

1. In a story as disjointed as FOTJ, I should be happy that the one plot thread they stuck with from the beginning of Outcast to the end of this book was the one about the Jedi's place in galactic society. Of course, the problem here is that the answer Apocalypse gives to this question is apparently that the Jedi belong as far away from normal society as possible, turning themselves into exiled ninja commandos. Not exactly the answer I was hoping for, needless to say.
2. 8-year old Allana with a blaster really does remind me of All-Star Batman and Robin. Comparisons to late-period Frank Miller are not ones that any author wants to have, not even Troy Denning.
3. One of the things Ascension actually accomplished was to give Vestara a starting point to slide back to the Dark Side if Denning wanted to do that, which he did. Far be it from him to actually use that hook, though. That would be consorting with the black beast they call...characterization.
4. I don't get why it took so long for Luke and the others to figure out that the one Sith in the Jedi Temple that could overpower them was actually Abeloth. It's not like they'd faced non-cannon fodder Lost Tribe before that, so the answer should have been obvious.

Worst Star Wars novel? I'm not so bold as to say that, but it fails to resolve anything of value, and isn't worth more than one read, if that. Even with COS Daala t the end, Invincible was still better than this. 1.25/10.

 

Average score: 157.6/25 = 6.30