Reviews Books The JC Lit Reviews Special: THE UNIFYING FORCE (TUF spoilers)

OK, you all know the drill:

Rate THE UNIFYING FORCE on a scale from 1 to 10. Please don't rate the book until after you've finished it. Thank you.

Also, please supplement your rating of THE UNIFYING FORCE with a few words (or a lot, as you see fit).

Links to previous review threads, in case you missed 'em:

Shatterpoint
Tatooine Ghost
Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream
Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand
Traitor
Destiny's Way
Force Heretic I: Remnant
Force Heretic II: Refugee
Force Heretic III: Reunion
The Final Prophecy

 

Easily in the top three if not the best novel in the entire NJO.

This book as a definitely has a quality about it. A lot of thought and detail has gone into it you can tell that Luceno has read every single NJO novel several times and knows the material better than any other of the Authors. He has gone out of his way to use every EU source available to tie every loose thread that the NJO has created.

The characterizations are perfect

The cameos are well thought out and fit in seemlessly.

The battles are incredibly described and are as epic as hoped and dreamed for.

the YV are portrayed better than any other novel no one dimensional types here.

The tone of the novel is appropriately dark and has a more realistic and bittersweet feel to it.

The revelations about the YV are well handled and appropriately explained.

The revelations of the force expand our understanding of it without fully breaking away from the light/dark formula so well done in the movies as intially feared by some.

This novel has that feel of a creators caring touch very similar to the LOTR movie trilogy or the Rogue Squadron video games. Absolutely no expense spared in effort to create the highest quality result possible.

the best has been saved for last
The best novel in the NJO
10/10

 

10/10

I'd give it higher if I could.

The perfect finale. The heroes get their chance to shine, evil is defeated, the galaxy at last stands united, and though hundreds of trillions have died, the galaxy now seems to be moving towards a new golden age. Our heroes, have at long last, won the peace they've fought so long and hard for.

Perfect.

 

A 10!!!

James Luceno ended the NJO with a bang.

I only hope that the post NJO trilogy is handeled as well.

 

Allow me to step into Caine's shoes in his absence.

With 3 reviews 30/3 =

10 average.

 

I have to concur and give it a 10

it was a great ending to the NJO

it brought everything together very well

and it had Bubba Fett and Kyle Katan in the novel, what more needs to be said

Han and Leia were great

Luke kicked major vong @ss

Nom Amor finally died,

it couldn't have gotten much beter

 

This is an incredible book. Not the best NJO book, IMO, but it's right up there in the top three.

I actually didn't begin to enjoy it until the second part. I thought there were too many Earth sayings with Star Wars spins, and it was just a little bit slow. Also, it seemed like there was a lot of summarizing past events. I guess this was done so that people who haven't read the NJO could pick this book up and not be totally lost, but it got annoying after a while. And the cameos were cool, but it often seemed like there was no point to them, as though the characters were mentioned just for the sake of mentioning them.

That's the end of my criticism, though. The rest of the book blew me away. Jacen was awesome in this book, as was Luke. I was so pleased to see that Jacen used his Vongsense, and that his vision was fulfilled. Everything really came together. I could not be happier! All the questions were explained nicely, from the Vong to Zonama Sekot to the Force. The characterizations were right-on, the battles were great and the last paragraph was beautiful. This was a great way to end the NJO. I for one am happy with it, overall.

I'm giving it a 9.

 

Three tens?

I thank those of you who wrote these reviews for making me want TUF more!

 

Correction, FOUR tens.

 

Hmm... this should be interesting. I wonder if this book can break Traitor's and Shatterpoint's records in "x" amount of time.

EDIT: I've decided what "x" should be to impress me: At 30 votes, the average has to be 9.15 or greater (Traitor was 9.14, Shatterpoint 9.13).

 

Counting 5 reviews: 49/5 = 9.8/10

 

10 out of 10 for me too. Finally, my favorite character of all time, Luke Skywalker finally showed everyone why he is the greatest Jedi of all time.

 

8/10 I was just somehow expecting a little more...

 

Up

 

Second best in the NJO after SbS. I'll give it a 9.75

 

8/10 I was just somehow expecting a little more...

Yeah like eight out of ten is such a horrible rating...

 

It made me like the NJO again. And it managed to let me get through the book without praying that Jag Fel or Mara Jade would somehow die. Heck, it made me actually LIKE Mara (for a time only, surely).

10/10


Dana

 

6/10.

 

Counting 10 reviews: 92.75/10 = 9.275/10

 

92.75/10 = 9.275/10

I know what you meant, but that math isn't correct.
92.75/10 equals... 92.75/10
I know that you meant 92.75 total divided by 10 equals an average score of "9.275 out of 10", but I figured I might as well be a jerk and point it out anyway.

 

7/10. Not bad. But not great. Luke and Jacen didn't do much until the very end. Boba Fett was just in there to make fanboys happy. Han and Leia did well in it. Resolved nothing in the way of relationships, which really irked me.

 

9/10. It was nice to finally see a resolution to the war, but it was rather abrupt. Seeing Fett back in action made my day.

 

10/10

I think its one of the top two NJO books.

 

9.5/10, second only to SbS (just)

It did an amazing job tying togeather so many loose threads and managed to incorperate such a huge cast.

Also good to see explanations occurring after the YV had given in as to how people like Jaina responded and the like.

 

I was impressed with the way Luceno managed to integrate elements of the YV from all the other books into this conclusion.

Part of me was looking forward to seeing Kyp erform someact of sacrifice to save Jaina as a means of fulfilling his debt to the Solo/Skywalker family.

As for tying up loose ends, most of them were, in my opinion. The ones that weren't pertained to relationships and to Tahiri's future, but I see them as issues to be resolved in Denning's forthcoming trilogy.

There's one end that was never resolved, though. Who did the memory wipe on that scientist? Anki Pace mentioned this incident to Corran and Ganner back in Onslaught, but we never learned who did it. Kyp's the ovbious suspect, but is anything going to be done about it? I don't know.