Lit The Legendary 181st Imperial Discussion Group: Balance Point!

I bid you dark summerly greetings! I hope everyone is enjoying sun, great weather, ice cream and long nights with friends outside. What's our next topic? Oh yeah, the Vong are back and destroy everything; meanwhile, the Solo family is officially dysfunctional and moves to the industrial wasteland of Duro Neimoidia.

It's The New Jedi Order Episode II: Balance Point by Kathy Tyers, and apparently stuff has happened since the Eve of the War epilogue of Vector Prime.

- As mentioned in the Vector Prime thread, one attempt here is to look at these novels as if we really hadn't read the volumes between these "cornerstone books" or whatever you may call them. So, how does that work? We get a summary that sadly doesn't fit into an opening crawl; we open with Jaina in a losing battle when we last saw a single Vong expedition force soundly "defeated"; we then get a lot of infodumping regarding the course of the war.

- There's also a fair amount of infodumping regarding earlier Centerpoint adventures and Bakura fairly quickly. Too much information to make this (and the EU in general) accessable, too much information to make this smooth even for EU fans, or just the right amount of things tying everything together for EU fans and those who will surely want to catch up on everything?

- I read the last few chapters of Vector Prime again, then immediately continued with Balance Point, and the best part about that is seeing Jaina jump from talented Solo kid flying the escape car on a personally organized mission to obviously experienced Rogue Squadron pilot. They grow up so fast! (Side note: both books start with Jaina in space. All OT movies start with star destroyers in space. Star destroyers are evil. Sure looks like Jaina is evil.)

- A big theme here is Han and Leia having grown apart; they are even shown separated by a special visual effect thing on the cover. The easy question is, does this work conceptually? And does this work when you haven't really experienced Han in his loner phase but have Jacen attached to him from the start? The harder question is, was Kathy Tyers chosen to deal with this part of the story because a female author was seen as the cliché fit for a relationship story (not even factoring in that Denning's Recovery did more for the relationship than BP, if I'm not mstaken)?

- Duro was a truly interesting setting in the year 2000 if you factor in the entire Neimoidian/Duros business. Do you think that at any point, somebody made that choice with just the tiniest bit of regard for the issue that the Duros and the Neimoidians were kind of the same for Lucas and thus for the concurrent prequels? With Dark Tide's cover making allusions to a Trade Federation ship, which retcon would you have preferred - Duro being the typical Corporate Faction industrial wasteland (compare barren Geonosis), or Duro having been turned into a wasteland when the Empire took reparations from the Neimoidian Separatists? I know, this is way out of Legends canon, but personally, I'm intrigued by the idea of combining all of this. Nute Gunray does he contradict the EU, and Cad Bane does he contradict my thought experiment?


We'll soon get to other topics, as well, including Our Hero, His Brother and That Voice. Eventually, we'll - obviously - see the galaxy slip to the dark side Denning book by Denning book, beginning with the first Denning book, Star by Star.

 

Jaina is pretty morally dubious throughout her EU appearances.

 

She seemed like a pretty nice kid in the pre-NJO works.

 

Well, she did kill her brother.

 

I guess I am curious why Sword of the Jedi is so sought after given Jaina's characterization throughout the NJO even, let alone post-NJO, is not particularly heroic, at least in the modern sense of the word. In the NJO, as the war drags on, she "spends [her] days in the decadence of war, and with that [her darkness] grows inside [her]." This becomes particularly evident in Star by Star and afterward through Destiny's Way, at least. I can't really admit to remembering much of her B plots in Force Heretic, nor is she particularly memorable in TUF besides hanging from a hook,

MURDER

Then in Dark Nest she becomes corrupted by a hive mind, then in Legacy of the Force she selfishly obsesses over a silly teenage love triangle (it seems the war stunted her emotional development) before becoming an assassin. And after killing her brother, she goes on living like it was no big deal. Sociopathic, really.

And this is our hero.

 

. . . so do SBS and DW. Luceno screwed it up.

 

Balance Point might be one of the more forgettable books in the NJO, hardcover or not. It's been a long time since I've read it, but that's true for most NJO books except Traitor, and I remember a lot of those pretty well. This one there's just... Duro, Jaina gets her head shaved for some reason, Mara finds out she's pregnant so that Kathy Tyers can get in some anti-abortion comments, there are refugees, and I think Leia and/or Jacen kicks Tsavong Lah out the window at the end. That honestly might be all of what sticks to mind for me from this.

 

Jacen does it, Leia is bleeding out at the time.

 

You can stop right there. This is one of the problems in a nutshell. We're more or less stuck on Duro for the entire book; and scenes like the Coruscant infiltrator hunt might as well be set in a big city on Duro. Your average SW epic is supposed to take you across the stars. Yeah, I know, Traitor, but we can all see all the ways that this is different, right. At least until we take a closer look at Jacen's surprisingly prominent role in this book.

I wonder if the book (or rather Tyers) truly needed to be as focused to get the character focus right.

 

FWIW, this book is supposed to be Jacen's Refusal of the Call. Which comes entirely too late after how Stackpole characterized Jacen in Dark Tide, fighting in two significant battles and going behind enemy lines twice.

If anything, this premise should have come shortly after Vector Prime.

And I think they went overboard with the "refusal" because it continued to inform his characterization up through the next hardcover. Come on, Luke told Obi-Wan he'd take him to Anchorhead and then saw his family horribly murdered and was game for the adventure. Sure, Jacen is more governed by self doubt than Luke, but I think this is one of the weaknesses of the NJO is that it was to some extent winging it in terms of characterization. They had the general plot points of the hero's journey but the way Tyers executed it heavily informed his characterization through most of the series.

 

If you lose the books inbetween VP and BP, Jacen's arc is as jarring as Jaina's is satisfying. Based on VP, you'd rather expect Anakin to stop (out of guilt/self-doubt); but Anakin came out pretty focused, even having better weapon dealers than Mara. At the end of VP, Jacen doesn't question anything of what he just did. Heck, he doesn't even question going on the mission in the first place; Anakin would have been the logical choice to go get the Vong. Jacen as the proactive hero is weird if you think about it; it's him pulling a Kyp Durron. Therefore, it's not impropable for him to do some more heroics in Dark Tide, and at least those get tied to a vision, "what the Force tells him" but he misunderstands.

The refusal here is a reaction to Centerpoint. Basically, you'd need a big Centerpoint episode to get Jacen on the trajectory that he is on here and in the books to come. BP is more like a relatively quiet aftermath book in which we can find out in detail why the hero changes. In addition, a lot of the story in this book doesn't work if you ignore Centerpoint, which is one of the reasons why the topic comes up again and again. As tragic and huge as Ithor's destruction is, you can always sum it up with "those brutes destroy planets", and whether you're there first hand or see it mentioned as a bit in a sentence one character says doesn't changed too much. Centerpoint, however, has a lot to do with the general approach to the war and more importantly with the Solo brothers being caught between doing the right thing and messing up, and thus having to deal with consequences.

Jacen's refusal will not completely leave him even though it's not a natural fit (and ultimately wrong, as we'll find out in Traitor). Jacen isn't sure about it, and subconsciously, he's still a pretty active guy, having quite a temper when it comes to Kyp.

Side note - Kyp's heroics at Kubindi being immediately debunked as luck based on an overconfident Vong general messing up is an interesting and not-too-obvious comment on the mythology of war.

But back to Jacen, I think Randa has an interesting role. He's seducing Jacen, but he's doing so from a very strange position; from a very alien position, giving arguments that speak only to Hutts, but that speak true (being obviously based on greed, but not on evilness) and therefore give a nice contrast to Jacen's "higher" feelings. I once read that psychoanalytically, Jabba is some kind of impure stuff that our heroes have to overcome in ROTJ. Greed, and maybe something to do with Leia's objectification. I could buy into Randa being a metaphor for something in Jacen.

 

Do you mean that literally, out of interest?

I mean, it's a Balance Point Thread, but that's actually a serious question...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I'm not saying to eliminate the books between VP and BP, I'm just saying the refusal should have come earlier in the story. Dark Tide retroactively seemed like an outlier because it had Jacen fighting in major battles and going on a military mission. It might have made more sense if Dark Tide was a trilogy like originally planned and Jacen's phase of sitting out was in the second book after the Battle of Dantooine, because in Ruin he's having second thoughts about it and doubt about the role the Jedi should have in warfare and it's unfulfilling to him that all there is to being a Jedi is slaughtering Yuuzhan Vong and their proxies in combat to defend people.

In that sense, it seems like for Jacen's characterization, the Dark Tide books don't really do anything to advance it, because he's just coasting through the story until he hits the refusal. And I really liked what Stackpole did with Jacen (bad spelling aside). I would have liked to have seen the full trilogy published with Jacen becoming Corran's apprentice for a time, because I like the idea of Jacen having multiple teachers through the series (Luke, Corran, Vergere, Sekot). Even so, in a sense that did happen when Jacen was on the mission to Garqi, but not in an official manner. I guess the fact that the Refusal of the Call came six books into the series is a knock against the hardcover format, really.

And I don't really buy the Centerpoint fiasco as a logical reason for him to withdraw -- and I suppose it was really his vision that led to it -- because it's not as though it was a Jedi action, it was Thrackan, not Anakin. And the vision kind of is a silly reason for him to sit out for a time. I suppose that the only setup we have for that is his vision on Belkadan, but that one led him astray, so you would think realistically he would be more cautious about taking things too literally, and the vision he has in this book is even more abstract.

In the overall series, it does seem like Jacen's characterization is kind of coasting between a lot of books, because Traitor seems like a response to Balance Point and Jacen's actions, or inaction, in it. And after Balance Point, he does mostly do nothing of import until the end of Star by Star, which leads him into Traitor. And I guess you could argue that the fact that he does very little between BP and Traitor is an argument that Traitor makes sense as a response to the aggregate story, but that's seven books later. And he's absent for three of the books in between SBS and Traitor.

I think it makes sense that the series isn't solely focused on Jacen and he's only in twelve books of nineteen in a major role (for instance, he appears early on in Conquest but isn't relevant to the plot), but it seems like his role in some of those books in which he does play a major part is not really fitting with him being the "Luke" of the story. And I think that the influence that Balance Point had on his characterization until Traitor is the primary reason why he was largely unpopular when the series was being published, particularly when he contrasts so much with Anakin who did seem like the Luke of the story. Obviously in the context of what the series is about, it makes sense for this contrast between Jacen and Anakin, but I think Jacen could have been written better in a way that gave him more to do but didn't eliminate the core essence of who he was, even before Traitor. I refer again to his role in Dark Tide. Another example I would give is Crosscurrent with Jaden Korr, which is another story about a Jedi overcoming self-doubt.

The Refusal of the Call phase dominated too much of Jacen's arc in the series IMO.

 

Could it be that between three Solo kids, the old heroes (plus Mara) and any given author-chosen focus character, there was too many characters that actually demanded to be something special, and thus you could easily park a main character in one characterization for several books? Just like you said, the second year between BP and SBS doesn't do a lot with Jacen. It doesn't need Jacen because there's enough to tell (if you're not staying focused on the premise of developing one hero character).

On the other hand, BP focusses quite a lot on Jacen, and so do all the other hardcovers, even if there might not be much advancement of character. Jacen stays on your mind in those, though. So having several books postponing, denying or maybe even repeating any development speaks to the structure not demanding 19 books, but rather five books - five acts. And I guess if the hypothetical filler book plan had been followed (if it ever existed in that form), you'd have had Corran stories and Han stories and bleeping Jorallen stories to keep you entertained while waiting for the next truly focussed entry in the saga of that one Solo kid.

BTW, everyone - do you think that Our Hero, Anakin Skywalker, is kept on par with Jacen in this volume? Is he already being phased out, in spite of Mara expecting him to be the big leader in five years? Or is it still kind of a true duel between Jacen and Anakin when it comes to "the right" Solo kid?

 

I suspect that part of the problem was that Jacen's arc didn't have the capability to carry novels before Traitor. If he was portrayed as a problem-solving hero, Traitor would seem less meaningful. If he was depicted as a genuine quietist, his reinvention as a mystical hero would be harder to "sell" (he would have neither the psychological impetus nor the action-sequence credibility to step up and "stand firm", nor indeed the necessary internal conflict for a meaningful resolution). They may have also wanted to use a "hero who steps up unexpectedly from the side" structure.

Ultimately, the result of the need to give him a mix of credible badassery and moral integrity was an uncomfortable balance between "Jacen destroys stuff" and "Jacen whines", which basically fitted with the characterization he'd already been given (dare I call it Jungian?), and makes me suspect that his entire storyline was (presumably unintentionally, but appropriately) self-sabotaging.

It's an interesting setup. I think it's part of the novel's structure rather than anything else - Jacen needs to be basically exploring inside his own imagination, so Anakin is the Solo boy who falls in with the Luke/Mara plot, which is the storyline here that moves in a clear narrative direction and thus produces a clearer sense of "protagonist" (in actual fact, Mara and Anakin are the only characters who're walking in a line rather than a circle through this novel, until Jaina switches plotlines). When it comes to the finale, however, Anakin is off doing the Luke-or-Vader thing in a starfighter, and is largely outside the "narrative finale".

I think the message or intention, if there was one, was to suggest that something else other than the ability to shoot stuff in an X-wing was needed to solve the Yuuzhan Vong, but the effect was to actually place the burden of the realisation on Anakin, which kicked into Conquest and a narrative that reminded us what STAR WARS is. [1]

It's the point, in a certain sense, where the NJO derails from being the straightforward narrative of How Jacen Levels Up, and becomes a more interesting story.

I should add that I think Balance Point is a great book, and is easily in my top ten Star Wars novels (it was one of two novels that just missed the cut in my overall top ten pieces of non-movie STAR WARS)...

- The Imperial Ewok

[1] Conquest is also the only novel, I think ever, where Jacen actually flies an X-wing; this may be part of why Jacen failed to "sell" as a STAR WARS hero. Yes, this is a footnote.

 

I think Lucas was right.

 

I get the impression that Kathy Tyers prefers to write 'established characters have a one-off adventure', because twice we get a story set in a time of great consequence with characters that are important historical figures that kinda hang around one place for a while. I guess we didn't get the bait-and-switch of the level of The Truce at Bakura? But that was the go-to immediate post-Endor novel only because Bantam didn't bother to develop the early post-Endor era. Balance Point, as it has been pointed out, was supposed to be one of the big 'anchor novels' of the NJO, but it falls flat on that note and leaves the plot development of Tsavong Lah's ultimatum to the paperbacks.
But we did get a updated map of the galaxy in the inside cover, I think? So there is that.

 

Speaking of Truce at Bakura and the post-Endor era, did you ever see that Heart of the Jedi site before the link was removed a few months back?

 

I've seen oblique references to it. I'm guessing a fan Legends post-Endor?

 

It was a cancelled novel that was originally slotted for the Truce at Bakura's spot. Much larger scale than TaB was. He basically makes it sound like he was handpicked by Lucas to write a SW novel (through hearsay through Bantam) and had the immediate post-ROTJ slot and submitted his manuscript and everything and got left hanging and then was finally told they cancelled his novel and someone else got the slot. And he says he heard that the editor was friends with the author that got his slot.

No idea how true it is.

 

I'd say that not even Traitor should have had the capability of carrying a Star Wars novel. And then, even though it's not what a SW novel usually is, it found a rather huge fanbase and might have had a wee bit to do with why Stover was chosen to adapt ROTS. So, from that I'd take away that you could very well imagine 19 SW books that show a hero that's not a street-level problem-solving hero. Would it be different from what SW ususally is? Yes, it would, but then again it might still be true to what SW is telling at its core. And a piece that mistakes SW for just the space battles might suck. While a piece that goes for just the space battles and does justice to the core of SW might be great again.

In addition, Bantam EU strayed from the movie formula quite a bit; I'm not sure anymore if TTT is actually the great successor to the OT that everyone including me believed it to be. And regarding inactive Jedi, there's always Luke in TCS and Luke in BFC. And Luke in COTJ is somewhat different from the dashing hero zooming around in his X-Wing, as well. Is Jacen's No Force stance more than that? Yes, it is, but it's not shown as the solution, either; it's important to notice that there's little stuff like Jaina's healing trance and big stuff like whopping the warmaster that gets out of the hole he's lost in.

I think it's not so much that there's been an agenda like the unexpected hero (Jacen is around so much that his heroics shouldn't surprise; the only issue with him as the hero is that parts of the audience didn't want a hero who's behaving like Jacen, especially not when everything around him still goes for regular action stuff. In Traitor, you have nowhere else to turn, and suddenly mental gymnastics can be really great, and the little things the philosopher does are great action sequences). The problem might be that people didn't know how to work with the general agenda, how far they could go with Jacen lost on his journey without alienating the audience, and how to pull off giving importance to one thing while still having other stuff around. So, sometimes Jacen's position gets summed up in an unfortunate way; or his position leads him into a cul-de-sac, but he doesn't immediately learn the lesson in the most obvious way, so the audience doesn't forgive him as easily.

Compare it to ROTJ where Luke's quest to redeem Vader is the ultimate navel-gazing, except for maybe keeping the Dark Lords out of the battle. Lucas himself knows that Luke's deeds in the end are pretty moot when the Death Star is about to be blown up anyway. Why didn't Luke help sabotage the bunker, but went on a spiritual "doesn't matter" trip instead? Why doesn't Jacen fight on the front line, but gets lost in unraveling the spiritual core of the war? It's the same, but in the first case it's much more gripping and much more thought out.

Well - first, doesn't he fly an X-Wing in LOTF and possibly in Dark Nest?

Second, I think you point at a problem that SW always had when it came to sell its second or third generation: expectations of everything always being the same. The prequels depart from the OT, and a lot of flak they get isn't for bad filmmaking, but for being different. A lot of goodwill TFA gets is for not being different. But as much as a post-ROTJ Jedi needs to fly something X-Wing like (they don't even change the name anymore) and TFA feels the need to not really update the designs (they don't even change the name anymore) Luke basically doesn't fly his X-Wing anymore in ROTJ because he's got better things to do - and then Han gives up the Falcon, too. The space battle at Endor is being fought by secondary characters. The PT originally went for Jedi that were a bit less adventerous, using only public transport other people piloted; then you get Obi-Wan as the very reluctant fighter pilot with Anakin as the trigger happy exception. TCW (and the EU, obviously aiming for proven formulas) established a lot of Jedi as starfighter pilots, even though you might expect very few of them to actually be equipped for the task, Force awareness advantage or not.

Ironically, Jedi being mandatory X-Wing pilots mostly came up with the NJO's depiction of the Jedi "on the wrong side of the argument" like Skidder and Kyp, didn't it? Jaina reappropriates the X-Wing when in Rogue Squadron, which is actually not a bad way of sidelining her from the classic Jedi mold. Corran originally had a fighter because that's where he came from (that or crime fighting, he was so excellent at such a lot of things); I think later on his knack for fighters was just a little speciality of his character, not something he was tied to. Later on, however, it's X-Wings for everyone because Luke in ESB.

If there's one thing I'm excited for with TFA, it's seeing where they're heading with their new main characters: how much circumstances will be different, and how that does affect the 'outer appearance' of their stories. Especially since there doesn't seem to be a mastermind that proudly came up with an arc; at least Abrams doesn't seem to have left extensive "do this or else" notes for the other directors, who are both supposed to write their own scripts. And even if Kasdan ends up polishing everything including a screenplay Oscar, I haven't heard anything that makes him seen like the guy who has a really really big plan for this trilogy.

 

Not my fav of this epic series, but a solid novel

 

Is there anyone who would claim this book as a favourite? What are the key elements this volume has to offer?

And what is missing to make it one of your favourite NJO memories instead of that one hardcover novel that fell a bit short?

 

Not basing an entire novel around the Refusal of the Call

 

But what are the other parts of the book based on? Can we identify more themes, and do they interlock?

I mean, there's Jaina having to have a new perspective; there's the Han/Leia thing; then there's Mara and the pregnancy. The backdrop for this is not only the New Republic in a drawn-out losing battle, but even a refugee planet. The focus of the setting is about being lost, and safe for Mara and her ray of hope (which wasn't supposed to be in there yet), aren't the characters lost like that, too? Refusing to follow their call and give us a grand space opera?