The Official Dark Nest II: The Unseen Queen Discussion Thread (spoilers allowed)

I don't think there's anything wrong with the cover. What is everyone complaining about?

Just look at the hands - they're huge.

 

They're closer to the camera. its an optical illusion.

 

I think the UQ cover is better than the JK, but SW tops it all for the trilogy.

 

Exactly what I was thinking.

 

Yeah, I really do hope Team Myrkr doesnt stay Joiners.

 

dear troy denning:
you are an awesome writer, aside from the fact that you enjoy killing off good characters. do you need validation? because killing off favorites is not a good way to earn it. every time you kill a character, a large peice of me dies inside. please troy denning, my organs beg you to let them live by not killing jagged fel. and if you do, then congratulations on officially letting down the entire star wars community.
love, society


one thing that makes me happy: i'm betting that tenel ka is the one who's having the kid. it's confirmed that jaina isn't, so i'm pretty sure that's the only other character young enough to have one. jacen's gonna be a daddy....and who else caught that allusion in the joiner king about how good he was with kids? yeah. i'm right, just admit it.

jacen is now officially awesome, by the way. i love his character now that he's knocked off the rebellious teen act for good, and now that he's not just a whiney little emo kid. kudos, denning. i would have considered his character unsalvageable, but it seems to me that jacen is pretty much the jedi order's new up-and-coming. thank you for not sucking jacen.

 

I like the way Jacens characyer is going, but I don't actually like the character. He's good for story purposes.

 

You know what I just thought of?

Perhaps the Kiliks aren't defeated, and the 100-year span of the LOTF era is all about this one conflict being set up in Dark Nest trilogy!

 

officials already said the kiliks are only important in dark nest trilogy! legacy has new enemy. lymia will only appear in legacy, not dark nest! so she is not the unseen queen. the spoilers on the www.njoe.com boards clearly state all this. so why all the confusion?

much is nown, more is unknown, but what is known excludes most fan speculations already. expect the unexpected, this is what denning does!

 

yes. i certainly didnt expect him to kill off one of the most promising characters in the EU.




...i have lots and lots of pent up anger towards troy denning.

 

I agree it makes him more interesting but i'm not a fan of his the direction is quite intriguing and i'm looking forward to see what he does next.

 

I really wish people (read, everyone, not just you!) would stop harping on him for this. HE HAD NO CHOICE. He was told to do it, and he did it. I happen to like the fact that he made Anakin's death work, that Anakin died as a hero, going out in a (rather literal) blaze of glory. But he doesn't just kill off characters for the heck of it.

Let go of your anger, you must! Or destroy you, it will! Especially when not to blame, the author is! Your rage, pointless it is! [/yodavoice]

Which really makes me think that Jag is not going to die. Whether TD particularly likes him or not doesn't matter - he'll keep him around unless there's a good reason to kill him, and it'd require official LB approval anyway - which he might not get.

I'm personally fascinated to see how things escalate, and who this "new threat" is. I'm, of course, on of the camp that thinks that the Killiks have a tendency to feel "threatened" rather easily... by intent, of course, of the Dark Nest. And I'm even more curious to find out who this Unseen Queen is. While it very well may be Lomi Plo, I'm guessing that TD has something up his sleeve. In fact, I'd about bet he has something up his leave even if it is Lomi Plo; that's one of the reasons I enjoy his books. He's taken up the role that Zahn has somewhat vacated of having rather twisty, complex, interesting plots that actually make you think (instead of having the conclusion be glaringly obvious from 10 pages in).

And I'll say it again just in case anyone missed it from CH's post:

Lumiya is not a character in Dark Nest. She won't be showing up until Legacy of the Force.

Oh, yeah, and:

The Killik situation will have been completely resolved by the end of Dark Nest. They're not going to be the problem in Legacy of the Force. Something else is.



- Keralys

 

Just look at the hands - they're huge

Seinfeld, here we go again . . .

 

Master_Keralys posted on 8/28/05 5:16pm

---

[b]Lumiya is not a character in Dark Nest. She won't be showing up until Legacy of the Force.[/b] [hr][/blockquote]

Proof please. :)

 

Padme, IE, Natalie Portman has really big hands. I am the only one that's noticed this? It seems like beautiful gilrs have big hands? Vivian Leigh had big hands too.

 

And now we know your fasination for the Emperor's Hand, Tiershon. The shroud of the dark side has truly fallen.

 

haha yes i must "let go of my hate for it is the path to the dark side".

seriously though, you have a point. he WAS told to kill of the solo child, and it sucks for him since he gets responsibility for it. but honestly though, if they had the same author kill off two popular characters, what would they expecting to happen? poor troy denning, just the poster child for murdured characters--not the actual culprit!

yes, yes...he does have a point.










but still......there is much anger.

 

Yeah, it wasn't really his fault... and I guess he did it as well as anyone could have.

I wonder if Tenel Ka really is having a child. Poor kid!

Oh, I really do hope the strike team gets debugged soon. Did anyone else find that conversation about Jag that Jaina and Zekk had rather creepy?

Well, Jag dying really doesn't seem to fit the forumla, I think. I don't want him to die... I want to see Allston write him again.

 

While TJK was great, I haven't liked what they've done with Jacen(not that I was big fan of his character in NJO)- okay, he's gone from a teen who's afraid to do a Force push, to a man who's a hyperarrogant demigod who aspires to be the next Palpatine.

 

i really really dont want jag to die. i really really really dont.

it kinda seemed like he was brought into the njo mostly because of jaina. but i like the way he is with jaina. i like how he loosens up, and i like how jaina is when she is with him.

jag fans (and especially j/j fans) just got kinda screwed with denning being the author of this trilogy. majorly screwed.

damn you denning.


btw...authors cant just kill of characters, right? those decisions are made by the authors as a whole, or del rey...?

 

Simple, actually. We know (a) that Lumiya will be fairly heavily involved in the Legacy of the Force era series (that's what they said at C3, and pretty explicitly); (b) that the stuff going on in Dark Nest will all have been resolved by the end of the Swarm War (though the characters themselves will of course still be developing in new directions), and therefore may concluded that (c) Lumiya will not be a player in the Dark Nest trilogy, for if she were her part would have to be FINISHED by the end of the trilogy, and we know she's a player in Legacy. So while no one has ever explicitly said "she's not in DN," we know from simple logic that she can't be, because she'd have to have been dealt with by the end of this trilogy for TD's statements to that effect to be true, yet we know that she hasn't for the C3 comments to still hold true.

I agree. And I was majorly creeped out by that conversation... only slightly more than I was by their near constant insect foreplay by the end of the novel. I think we're supposed to be creeped out by that...

Correct. When authors want to do something like that, they submit it as part of their outline of a book as a whole, and the outline gets approved by the fokes at DR and at LL, and often goes through revision at the hands of those editors as well.

Okay, I personally LOVE what they've done with Jacen. I enjoyed his scenes more than anyone else's, and one of my gripes was that I wanted more scenes from his perspective. It's almost impossible to predict him at any given moment, and one of the thinsg I truly enjoy about his character is that you can't tell whether he's light or dark - and moreover, that even if he is going dark, he doesn't know it. It's an interesting difference between he and Anakin (grandfather, not brother), if that's the way TD is going.

And I personally wouldn't be too sure that TD is doing what anybody expects he's doing. My prediction is that Jacen continues to be something of an enigma till most of the way through Swarm War - and perhaps long after that. I've come to view him as not really a light-side Jedi any more, but more of a Jolee Bindo with a lot more ability and a huge (and expanding) repetoire of rather unique abilities. I DO think that one of the directions TD is going to take him in Unseen Queen is to really set up his arrogance at its peak, and then perhaps by the end of the book start his humbling process. Once Jacen gets his humility back, he's going to be a serious kick-butt character.

But I really hope that TD continues to give all of these characters depth: flaws and problems and internal struggles and conflicts that move the story with some power far beyond the bug-tale. B/c honestly, while I don't hate the bug-side of things the way some people do, it's not the thing that I see as really driving this trilogy. I think Unseen Queen is going to continue to be driven by character arc... yes, the baddies are going to have their hayday, but I think the Unseen Queen is probably going to stir up a lot more character questions than she will just be a cliched old bad guy (gal?).

 

I agree. Troy Denning wanted to write something like the original Star Wars Trilogy. There wasn't much character development in ANH. In TESB there was movement and the characters got a new direction to go.
I enjoyed the Jacen passages, too, well, he was my favorite SW character all the time...
And I'm looking forward to his further relationship with Tenel Ka ... I liked their way of conversation.
I hope that in this sequel there will be more action with the younger characters. I didn't like that Jacen hasn't emerged in the last hundred pages ...

 

all I want to add is, don´t try to expect anything, speculation is running wild, but I prefer to keep my mind on other things, and enjoy the trilogy as it comes. Denning is a great author and will surprise us. he might lead our speculations in one direction with TJK, but TUQ and SW will go another. like with the movies.. you didn´t expect how they went on when you only knew ANH, did you? have fun, not fights over speculations and wishes.

 

I just like to speculate.
But you're right. Troy Denning really knows how to surprise.
And that's how his SW novels are about - they are unpredictable ... and I like it!