Lit Why all the LOTF hate?

That's how I always saw it. As soon as Jacen started down the dark path at the end of Betrayal Luke states that "he exists." Talking about this "dark/phantom stranger" alluded to throughout the book.

 

The Dark Man was retconned to be Darth Krayt in Star Wars Apocalypse. Luke identifies him as such, as does Jacen.

Apocalypse also retconned that Jacen wasn't motivated by the sight of the Dark Man sitting on the Throne of Balance, but by seeing his daughter that wouldn't be born for several years next to him at an age older than Jacen was himself as the time of the vision.

Unless Allana turns to the dark side in a future story -- Jacen succeeded.

 

Wait Luke did know about Krayt!?

If you excuse me I need to fix my hurting brain with some Marsh Mead. Marsh Mead - Sanity loss have never tasted so good!

 

Also: Awwwwww, thar would have been an excellent plot twist

 

Then tell me again how Jacen succeeded? Jacen turning dark made this "dark man" exist. And I don't remember how Apocalypse retconned it to Krayt. Can I get a page/line reference? (That's not meant to be accusatory, just inquiring)

 

It's been 2 - 3 years since i've read LotF. I enjoyed the Mando tie-ins from Traviss. I was a big RC fan so seeing a glimpse of the clan was exciting. I remember hating Allston's writing. I've since grown to loathe anything from Denning. So Traviss's books were my favorite. I'm working toward re-reading the series and I hope I don't get bogged down half way through.

 

Luke turned to find the form of a shadow-wrapped human approaching from the shore by which Luke had entered the water, the same shore by which all mortals came to the Lake of Apparitions. The silhouette was tall and broad-shouldered, with a head hooded in darkness and glowing eyes that never seemed to match colors, that went from brown to orange and yellow to blue, that sometimes grew dark as ebony and seemed to not be there at all. As the silhouette drew nearer, it began to resemble a man Luke had seen many years before, a man who had appeared only in his dreams -- and always shortly before he awoke feeling uneasy and frightened.

Luke glanced back at Mara, then said, "It's him."

"Who?"

"The man I kept seeing in my dreams, before Jacen turned Sith."

Mara looked confused. "But the man in your dreams was Jacen."

"I thought so," Luke replied. "Who else could it have been?"

He turned back to the figure and saw that the cloaking shadows had coalesced into a suit of dark, spiked armor. The newcomer's right arm seemed a mere ghost, as though he had only a holographic projection where there should have been a limb. And his left eye had become an empty white circle that looked more like a window into another universe than an actual organ. His face was weathered and chiseled, though -- with a web of tattoos radiating outward from an angry gaze and deeply etched scowl -- he could not be considered handsome. He stopped three paces away and stood staring, as though trying to decide whether to attack to Luke or speak to him.

"You," Luke said. It was the man with the tattooed face -- the one who had been behind Luke's team in the Manarai Heights Spaceport, and who had later disarmed Yaqeel Saav'etu near Fellowship Plaza. "Who are you?"

"No one whose help you want," Jacen said. "That's the dark man I saw on the Throne of Balance."

pg. 385

 

Don't worry Mara, you aren't the only one confused.

 

Oh my God, the Man on the Throne of Balance was....

OLD MAN SMITHERS!

 

WTF is a Throne of Balance anyway and why did it not end in a epic showdown with Demons if we are already going there?!

 

Oh yeah, now I remember that retcon. I even forgot that apparently Krayt had been walking around Coruscant and popping up here and there, rather than resting back on Korriban in stasis. Then again, all the horrible moments of Apocalypse (which was basically every single page) tends to blur together.

The simple answer back in LotF was that Luke was dreaming about Darth Caedus before Jacen made his choice. An example of the future in motion. Then Jacen could apparently browse through possible timelines and choose the one he wanted. Of course, I'm not sure even the authors remembered what they wrote in their own previous books, much less the other authors' books. Such as Jacen deciding to learn from Lumiya to avoid a future where he kills Luke... then a few books he's perfectly fine with killing every Jedi. And of course no one ever remember Nelani Dinn either. Or those tassels. And that's not even comparing FotJ and LotF books.

What's the point of reading a book series if it'll only be retconned by the next series?

And as far as Jacen is concerned, he saw the Throne with Krayt on it, with Allana as one of his followers. Now the Throne just has Allana and some random people, so Jacen feels it was worth it. Of course, Jacen also unleashed Abeloth through his actions, so not sure we ever found out his reaction to that. The copy of Apocalypse I was looking at seemed to be missing a few pages from the last Luke and Jacen conversation. Oh wait, this is LotF/FotJ, these books like abrupt scene changes and leaving out important info.

Hopefully the Throne of Balance just remains a metaphor for importance... otherwise I half expect the next book series to have a giant fight over who gets to sit on it beyond shadows, followed by a tussle over the Scepter of Power and the Crown of Importance and Ring of Power and Fez of Coolness and Hat of K'kruhk and Darth Vader's Glove and pants and cape, refereed by Skippy the Jedi droid.

 

Admittedly, in an insane way that technically would mean that Legacy and Legacy of the Force are separate timelines.

But Krayt referenced Caedus.

ARGH! It's like the Legend of Zelda games all over again!

 

If it is like the Zelda games it make my head hurt less, because that means that there is no real continuity just nods and references to what have come before

 

Oddly, I'd be totally okay if Legacy and Legacy of the Force were two different continuities.

It would make Jacen Solo's sacrifice mean something.

 

I would be totally okay with this...except, as others have said, for it to make sense, Jacen had a vision of Allana at Krayt's right hand before Allana was born! The kark? Other than that, I kind of like it, though. It makes his actions make sense. They just need to retcon the retcon of the retcon, so that Jacen saw the dark-Allana vision after she was born. You know, the fact that they even need to do that many retcons really must say something.

 

it is very confusing. i hate retcons.

 

Do we know it was Allana he saw? After all it could have been that he saw a women that he, through vision knowledge, know was his child and it is possible that she did not need to be Allana

 

I originally thought it was Ben.

Oh well.

 

LUCASFILM MAKE IT CANON NAOW.

 

That would have been the next retcon.

So what happened is, in between The Unifying Force and The Joiner King, Jacen goes on his journey which went from one of self-discovery to one of learning kewl Force powers under Denning. Early on (per Tadar'Ro), he visits the Aing-Tii, and while there he handles the Codex. He senses the same disturbance in the Maw that Luke later does, and goes there to check it out. He finds Sinkhole Station, goes Beyond Shadows -- and keep in mind this is presumably around 30 ABY since it was at the start of his journey -- and looks into the Pool of Knowledge, and he sees a Dark Man sitting on the Throne of Balance, and this disturbs him. Six books later, this is retconned to him seeing Allana with the Dark Man on the Throne of Balance. But when Luke looks into the Pool of Knowledge, he sees Allana in her mid-to-late thirties sitting on the Throne of Balance. Allana is born in 36 ABY, so besides the fact that a 21-year-old Jacen is seeing his unborn daughter, yet to be born for several years, at an older age than he is and recognizes her -- not to mention the later surprise that Tenel Ka's daughter is his -- this means that the vision that Jacen saw was something that happens in about 70-75 ABY, which is much sooner than Star Wars Legacy -- which is why Darth Krayt taunts that Jacen merely delayed his plans, rather than ruining them.

Of course, it's all a rather contrived and convoluted mess in that somehow Allana is going to turn to the dark side if her father doesn't become a Sith Lord, and that Jacen's actions somehow preclude Darth Krayt from taking over the Galactic Alliance twenty years later.

The moral of the story is if you haven't read novels past The Unifying Force yet, don't.

 

The comics OTOH are worth a read.

 

Millennium Falcon, X-wing: Mercy Kill, Crosscurrent, and Riptide would argue this. But the mainstream series...yeah, most of them aren't worth the mess. But if you did...

First four FOTJ > LOTF > Last half of FOTJ/Crucible

 

Outcast, Omen, and Backlash are all pointless and aren't even important to Fate of the Jedi as a series. Kessel? Baran Do? Aing-Tii? Witches of Dathomir?