Reviews Books The JC Lit Reviews Special: FORCE HERETIC III: REUNION (REUNION spoilers)

Well, you all know how I feel about Williams & Dix's writing style, and if you don't you can go back to the reviews for FORCE HERETIC I & II. It was about the same here.

However, this was the best book of the trilogy by a fair margin. It was fairly predictable, but at least the events were more relevant than in the other two books. It was also good finally getting to ZS, and it was fun finally tying back to Rogue Planet.

I found Jag's "surprising" stunt extremely unbelievable; I don't think a starfighter would last five seconds under those conditions, although I suppose I could be wrong.

I don't know. I don't really have a whole lot to say about this one. I felt that the whole trilogy could have been condensed into one book without losing much of import.

I also agree with most of what McEwok said. And nice to see an Iain Banks reference. They need to get him to do some SW.

I'll give it a 6.5/10

For comparison, I gave I a generous 6 and II a 3.5


I'm looking forward in particular to seeing how Keyes handles Tahiri and the Vong again - it strikes me that The Final Prophecy and The Unifying Force aren't much room to stop all the balls they have in the air smashing to the ground in a rather ugly and unfulfilling mess... except for bringing the Empire and Zonama Sekot into the war (which didn't need a trilogy), there's been no movement in FH3 at all...

My guess is that Keyes will just bring everything together and clean everything up. Turn the Vong and Tahiri back into what they should be, bring Sekot into the mix, and then pave the path for Luceno, who will basically give us a big battle with lots of political intrigue, races against time to get this fleet there before it's too late and so forth.

 

Counting 7 reviews: 55.27/7 = 7.90/10

 

Mara is a total embarrasment in the book. If she'd been in charge, the YV would have new ally: Zenoma Sekot. She goes off half cocked every 23.6 seconds. This is a Jedi Master? She should have been left onboard. She adds absolutely nothing to the story. Luke has enough problems without having to reign her in. Gets worse every book. Everytime she improves she goes back to square one. She is the biggest waste of a trees life I have ever seen.

As for her giving Anakin Skywalker crap while she's married to his son, and wear HIS lightsaber, she deservse a nice firm slap in the mouth. She is the biggest hypocrite there is. Professional murderer, with no class. What makes her so high and mighty that she can pass judgement on everyone? I'm glad Jabitha told her to stuff it.

I like Jag and Jaina more more though! They are quite the pair.

Tahiri. Shoes. My dream has been fulfilled!

I wish Luke would get some time alone with Jabitha, with Big Mouth not around, so he can discuss his father without endless comments from the peanut gallery. I hope this will happen in TUF.

7.5

 

Okay, maybe that was a wee bit harsh, but she was still a bore.

Tahiri saying "we" sounds a little Borgish, no?

 

Or maybe a bit Tenel Ka-ish.

 

Her comment about DARTH VADER was probably true, but that wasn't the smartest place to bring it up when discussing with a friend of ANAKIN SKYWALKER.

*Sigh* chalk it up to Imperial conditioning constricting her brain...

 

Counting 8 reviews: 62.77/8 = 7.85/10

 

When I first read the plot synopsis for the Force Heretic trilogy *THIS* was the book I expected. Not dredging through the Black Fleet Crisis and the Truce at Bakura again. Not having the climax of a whole book being Jacen's realization that Zonama Sekot could be a moon instead of a planet. I wanted the expedition team finding Zonama Sekot and getting on with the story. This is finally delivered. After moderately enjoying Remnant and being bored to tears through Refugee I had a lot of fun reading Reunion.

THE GOOD
- Finding Zonama Sekot.
This is what we've been waiting for and I felt the pay-off was worth it. Emerging from hyperspace to see the Vong vs. Sekot battle was awesome and the physical description of the planet was beautiful. The way Sekot interacted with our heroes was intriguing. Luke and Jacen's opposite responses to Sekot's offer to help were written very well and provide an interesting plot point that I'm hoping will be followed up on in The Unifying Force (since they're both on the cover).

- Jagged Fel.
I'm actually starting to like this guy and feel that his character development from uptight Chiss-like uber-pilot to actual person has been well done. Like Pellaeon I'm pleasantly delighted at Jag's ability to "surprise me."

- Galactic Trash Talk Bowl Round Two: Pellaeon v. Vorrik.
I love it when these guys mouth off at each other. Good stuff on pages 219-220.

- Jacen Solo.
After the first few books of the NJO one might have been hard-pressed to find fellow fans of Jacen Solo. Matt Stover brought a lot more into the fold with Traitor and I continue to enjoy the direction he is going. It's becoming more and more clear that the *solution* to the war will be coming from Jacen and I think he's being built up to it nicely. I also liked how he ran off to rescue Danni but still maintained his head and his values while doing so.

- "I must be getting old, Threepio," [Leia] said to the golden droid.
"We are all, Mistress," he chirped mournfully in reply. p. 263

I found 3PO's response very poignant and moving. Both C-3PO and R2-D2 are mentioned in the Dramatis Personae and then are given absolutely nothing to do the whole time (okay 3PO translates a bit). I really feel bad for 3PO and R2 and for that matter the whole original gang -- Leia who has to stay behind and sit on the Falcon as the Enfandia plan unfolds, Luke who is continually being trumped by Jacen, and Han who wanders in mournfully to be lectured on life by Tahiri(!) of all people after Droma doesn't say good-bye to him. The original gang is getting old and they're hitting a lot of dead ends and to hear 3PO say it was a sad and touching moment. Good stuff.

THE BAD

- Mara's attitude.
She's been a real biz-snatch throughout this whole trilogy and her complete lack of politeness and respect for the residents of Zonama Sekot is unexpected and unnecessary. I'm sure basic ettiquette towards other beings was part of her undercover training and certainly part of being a Jedi Master. What is going on?

- The Brrbrlpp.
I loved the idea of an intelligent species so different from humans but unfortunately Star Wars authors haven't inherited the gift of making up cool names from the Star Wars creator, George Lucas. Look at all the names of characters and species in the movies that Lucas has named including all the Jedi and Outlander Club extras from the prequels. He comes up with some sweet names without resorting to multiple apostrophes or incomprehensible strings of consonants. Brrbrlpp doesn't exactly roll of you tongue. Try it. Brrbrlpp. We need to better than that.

- AND THE WORD OF THE DAY IS "TELEMETRY."
It seems like every author has a word or two that either consciously or unconsciously slips into their writing once or twice more than it should becoming an annoyance to the reader. In Reunion, "telemetry" is that word. It slips in about half a dozen more times than it has to.

 

The Good:

Zonama Sekot-Everything I could have hoped for from this part of the story. The Ferroans were perfectly portrayed at the beginning as people who had suffered immensly in their lifetimes and had finally found peace, only to have it interupted again. It was great to see Jabitha as the Magister, and the conversation between Luke and her about Anakin was one of the best moments of the NJO so far. Sekot's entrance to the war was done right, although jacen nearly screwed that up(more on that later)

Jaina and Jag- I'll admit it. I like both the characters now. Jaina, for the moment anyway, has seemed to grow out of her ***** phase and became an enjoyable phase. Jag shows a cool demenor in surprising Pellaeon, and finally admits out loud that he loves Jaina. I think these two are great together and will continue to be.

Droma-Aside from the predictable "leader of the Ryn" thing, Droma was great with Han. He brought a level of humor that had been sorely lacking for a while, and it was great to see him again.

Pellaeon-Perfectly written as the wise old General type who thrives in an unfamiliar situation with allies who he may or may not have full trust of. Gilad is always a welcome addition to a NJO book.

The Bad:

Tahiri/Riina-Resolved WAY too easily I thought. And also, I thought that after the merging that she would be one person, but later she is still talking about how half of her is against killing Vong. I like her confidence, but I don't want to hear the continuing split personaility drama. And TAHIRI DOES NOT WEAR SHOES!

Jacen-Ugh. After Traitor and Destiny's Way, I thought Jacen had grown into a Jedi, but now here he is back to where he was at the beginning. He showed he cares more about how he feels than the lives of billions of civilians that could be killed without Zonoma Sekot's help. He is selfish and gerenally uncaring. I only hope he can be saved before the end of the NJO.


Overall, the good outweighs the bad, so I'll give this book a 8.5/10. Easily the best book of the FH Trilogy, and a generally enjoyable read.

 

The Good:

Zonama Sekot-Everything I could have hoped for from this part of the story. The Ferroans were perfectly portrayed at the beginning as people who had suffered immensly in their lifetimes and had finally found peace, only to have it interupted again. It was great to see Jabitha as the Magister, and the conversation between Luke and her about Anakin was one of the best moments of the NJO so far. Sekot's entrance to the war was done right, although jacen nearly screwed that up(more on that later)

Jaina and Jag- I'll admit it. I like both the characters now. Jaina, for the moment anyway, has seemed to grow out of her ***** phase and became an enjoyable phase. Jag shows a cool demenor in surprising Pellaeon, and finally admits out loud that he loves Jaina. I think these two are great together and will continue to be.

Droma-Aside from the predictable "leader of the Ryn" thing, Droma was great with Han. He brought a level of humor that had been sorely lacking for a while, and it was great to see him again.

Pellaeon-Perfectly written as the wise old General type who thrives in an unfamiliar situation with allies who he may or may not have full trust of. Gilad is always a welcome addition to a NJO book.

The Bad:

Tahiri/Riina-Resolved WAY too easily I thought. And also, I thought that after the merging that she would be one person, but later she is still talking about how half of her is against killing Vong. I like her confidence, but I don't want to hear the continuing split personaility drama. And TAHIRI DOES NOT WEAR SHOES!

Jacen-Ugh. After Traitor and Destiny's Way, I thought Jacen had grown into a Jedi, but now here he is back to where he was at the beginning. He showed he cares more about how he feels than the lives of billions of civilians that could be killed without Zonoma Sekot's help. He is selfish and gerenally uncaring. I only hope he can be saved before the end of the NJO.


Overall, the good outweighs the bad, so I'll give this book a 8.5/10. Easily the best book of the FH Trilogy, and a generally enjoyable read.

 

Counting 10 reviews: 79.77/10 = 7.98/10

 

A good book. Far and away the best of the FH trilogy. I greatly enjoyed Luke, Leia and Jacen. Not enough Jaina for my taste, but I'll admit that she has had a lot of airtime lately, not that that entirely makes up for her puny role in every book before SBS.The person who said that after this book Jacen wouldn't be popular was dead on.

EDIT: Oops! I forgot to give it a rating - 7.5

 

Masdage: My guess is that Keyes will just bring everything together and clean everything up. Turn the Vong and Tahiri back into what they should be, bring Sekot into the mix, and then pave the path for Luceno, who will basically give us a big battle with lots of political intrigue, races against time to get this fleet there before it's too late and so forth.

I darn well hope so. We've just had plot-driven dreck since Enemy Lines... wierd to think that in continuity terms, it's barely a year since the end of Rebirth...

But feel free to divvy my ratings any way you want... add them up and divide them by three, or give 40% for the middle one of the spread, and 30% for the other two...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Counting 11 reviews: 87.27/11 = 7.93/10

 

We've just had plot-driven dreck

That's one of the things that's looking good to me about Clone Wars -- they seem to be doing stories, instead of each book just another step advancing the story-arc.

 

Well I just finished reading Force Heretic III: Reunion, and I must say I enjoyed it.

Before I give my rating, I just want to give a brief review of the book.

I was not expecting a lot when I picked up Reunion. The first two novels of the trilogy left much too be desired in my opinion. They did not expand on the NJO storyline, as nothing big really happened. So when I started to read Reunion I was worried that this trend would continue.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. Reunion was a very good novel, and it did the most important thing, the last novel of a trilogy is supposed to, it tied up all loose ends. I specifically enjoyed what happened to Tahiri. In the first 2 books I was afraid on where they were going with this, but I like the new character of Tahiri/Riina. I just hope she is continued to be written this way.

I also enjoyed Luke/Jacen on Zonoma Sekot. While yes, it did seem that Jacen was reverting back to his old ways, Sekot still decided to join the war. We will have to wait and see if this will be a good or bad thing, but I think even though Jacen was a bit whiny towards the end, I have a feeling this is going somewhere, and it might be good. I also liked what they did with Saba and how they resolved his pain over the loss of his planet.

There wasnt much I disliked about this book, heck even Jaina was tolerable throughout. Finding out Droma was the leader, while not surprising was still pretty cool.

As for my rating, I give it an 8.5 out of 10.

A very strong rating for a novel that ended a disappointing trilogy. I just hope the last 2 NJO novels are at least as good as this one.-

 

T McE, in point of fact, Pellaeon's task force was 'fully supported by support ships...'--but their class(es?), names, et cetera are never so much as hinted at. *grumble*

Anyway, on to the review.

First, I'll give you the score. Then I'll explain it.

6/10

Yes, that's right. Six points out of a possible ten. The half of this book dealing with the *cough*actualgalacticwar*cough* was very nice. The other two-thirds of the book were either contrived, meaningless, or irritating.

I'll break it down in terms of plotlines:

-The Battle of Esfandia:
Very good. Although how Pellaeon wound up so far away from Imperial space is beyond me. Also more than a little preplexing is why his task force was so small. He had a fleet cetered around nine star destroyers of both Imperial and Victory classes, in addition to dozens and dozens of smaller warships. And by Force Heretic III, he seems to have sent the rest of *that* fleet somewhere else and decided to not command the hundred-plus star destroyers in the Empire's offensive forces. Even though he's the bloody Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces. Whatever.

Anywho, the plotline worked up until the very end. Having Vorrik's ravaged battlegroup attack the relay station made sense to me until I found out where the authors went with the idea. In my mind, cutting off communications with Unknown Regions while simultaneously invading Chiss space would have made great sense. With the Chiss potentially knocked out of the war, the Yuuzhan Vong could have launched a surprise counterattack from the Unknown Regions with devastating effect. But instead, they were going to claim that the place was attacked by clawcraft. Whoopey-doo. Boy, I'd fall for that. Inane. Simply inane. Just another example of writing the story to advance what little plot there is instead of writing a believable war story.

-Tahiri's (continuing) implausible mental issues:
Stupid. They were stupid from day one. Had the Riina Kwad issue been sorted out in the Edge of Victory series, I would have moved on happily, viewing Tahiri as a, oh, I don't know--good character. But dragging out the preposterous split personality thing--with such idiotic and unexplained rationale, mind you--galls me to no end.

Multiple personalities can, and often are, destroyed. And the rationale as to why this was not the case this time? Um...they...they're, uh, inseparable. Yeah. They...uh, can't be separated. This coming from some random character with no background in such things.

And then when the Riina and Tahiri personalities actually did merge, what do we wind up with? A 14 year old über warrior with annoying dialogue and piloting abilities? Great. Lovely. What is this? Mobile Suit Gundam? "Fourteen year old saves galaxy!" All she needs is a giant, indestructible, multicolored robot, and it would be. *rolls eyes*

-The finding of Zonama Sekot:
Silly. Very silly. Looking for the planet in the first place was inane. There's a bloody *war* going on. Oh, but I know, we'll go off into the Unknown Regions to find a living planet. For...um...uh...a-a reason. Yeah. That's it. Not only are the potential benefits of finding the bloody thing/place never explained, but the trip to it was poorly written and implausible. And actually finding the place was even worse.

They find it (Holy crap! It's friggin' moon!), jump through infinite loops to get there, and somehow, magically, the Yuuzhan Vong got there first. First off, the planned invasion of Chiss space um, wouldn't pause in orbit of a hard-to-reach gas giant. They'd oh, I don't know--attack the Chiss! Second, they weren't looking for the place, so why in bloody hell would they be there at all? Third, why would any--any--Yuuzhan Vong commander attempt to invade a *planet* with a pair of light cruisers? Imperial invasion fleets were centered around six Imperial-class star destroyers, along with about two-and-a-half dozen support warships (primarily Strike-class cruis

 

Counting 13 reviews: 101.77/13 = 7.83/10

 

Not a bad book at all, but it was poorly edited. 7.9

 

This was a great book it had a lot of great moments and had some good action sequences. It also made me devalue Refugee quite a bit as I could see although that book was well written the over series storyline was left to drift a little too much. With Reunion however the series is back on track.

The Nom Anor bit was good showing that he isn't going to have it his own way. I also like that terrorist acts are beginning and that splinter factions are beginning to form suggesting that the movement is quite large and even the death of Nom Anor couldn't stop it from being a persistant problem now that a doctrine of Jedi faith has been created.

The ZS thread was also quite good with Jacen being quite brilliant until his decision. This shows that Jacen hasn't formed a plan to achieve his goals meaning as the hero of the NJO he needs to grow a little more. I also like the inclusion of Anakin Skywalker to the proceedings.

The third thread the battle of Estfandia was also excellent but not without its flaws. I believe there were a lot more capital ships than the two Star destroyers but these were mentioned only as "Support Vessels" and if taken in to the literal context the battle was unfeasable. the objectives of the YV reflect not the authors but Vorrik. Vorrik is an idiot and only he could lose a battle in which he has superior numbers. Only he could believe that the GA would be gullable enough to actually believe the isolationist Chiss would begin a war with them.

all in all 9/10.

The Trilogy only gets 7.5
i might add as while the indvidual books were good by themselves as a trilogy Refugee seems out of place if they wanted to show Galactic hot spots the should have gone to more than Galantos and Bakura. If they wanted to have the jedi find ZS it should have been a detective story while joining the chiss in their struggle against the YV going from planet to planet with them ending up in the library at Csilla at the end with the evidence in hand to help them find the planet. Only the Nom Anor story line I would not change as it shows that the uprising will not just not happen overnight.

However the tilogy achieved its main objectives which were to:
Expand upon things mentioned in DW
Show what is happening in the wider galaxy
Give the readers a pause in the intensity of the action (done far too well)
Set the pieces for the final battle in terms of character development.

 

"If he can't see that defending yourself is a viable reason to take up arms and visit violence upon others, I fear that I will never like his character. There are conflicts that cannot be won with words. And I hope he gets into one someday after having given up his lightsaber."

You and many, many others.

 

Best book of the trilogy by far. Not super great, but a fun blend of the new and the familiar.

8.7/10

 

Counting 16 reviews: 127.37/16 = 7.96/10

 

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Looking forward to see if Sean & Shane add their thoughts. Haven't read REUNION yet, but can't wait to do so.