I really enjoyed this novel quite a bit. I read it a few years ago and it's the only Star Wars book I've read. I'm making it a part of my personal head canon. Kathy Tyres captured the personalities of the characters really well. And there are numerous cool things going on there. I think this should be made into a film. Spoilerish things below.... It starts off right after The Battle of Endor. Literally like the next day. Luke gets a girlfriend. Luke, Leia and crew form an alliance with remaining Empire loyalists to fight a new threat. Luke is shown using The Force on a cellular level. I think this may be where the idea for the whole midi-chlorian thing came from. Not sure though. And Wedge Antilles is in there.
With big-time return of the Gorn in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Wars has to strike back with live-action adaptation of Ssi-ruuk's invasion.
I love this book too. I think I've read it 4 or 5 times. It's very weird though, and very Bantam SW. Not sure how well it would translate as a modern SW movie.
Well like most novels things would be changed to make it work on film. I think it would be cool to see the opening scene on Endor, right where RotJ left off. Oh and another cool thing I forget about. Leia is visited by Force Ghost Anakin but Leia won't talk to him because she still hates him. I love that.
I remember liking TAB quite a bit, and revisited it a few times before I'd soured on the early EU / Bantam period. I do remember thinking it was an odd way to follow up the Thrawn trilogy, but not a bad one. WEG's TAB Sourcebook was interesting, too (despite showing up some two years after the novel).
Much of the Bantam era was very odd. A lot of the books didn't really seem like the same continuity and the universe had such different feels. Still they are mostly quite fun reads
Truce truly is a gem! thx for this topic I think what is underrated and forgotten lately is how much Truce did for the early post ROTJ EU. Before we had Warlords of the Week, Superweapons of the hour and Revived Sith of the Minute, Truce truly continued the message of ROTJ without reigniting a new war between an Empire, Dark Jedi or Sith and the Heroes. It picked up Marvel comics notion of "what could be next after ROTJ" and came to the same conclusion: A nemesis that would be faced by both, Rebels and Imperials alike to unite them. Be that the Nagai/Tof for Marvel that hardly united both, or here the Ssi Ruuvi that had them form a truce and work together actually! Or the same concept blown up for the NJO and Vong "once more with feeling". But aside this, it also precedented a few concepts that later EU works picked up and expanded, but without anybody realizing that Truce did it first! The cellular level Forceuse of Luke we see also in Crystal Star with the Solokids using it to escape their cell on the Worldcraft. The entechment technology we see by any other name return in Palpatine's Eye and Callista's Tron-adventure or the Stormtrooper brainwashing via tech-imprinting. Poor Dev Sibwarra was a great character and one of many potential students of Luke that died way too soon. The fact that the Emperor had a deal with the Ssi Ruuvi allowing them to plunder in exchange for their technology, as well as Lumiya's abusing the Nagai and Tof invasion should have had wider consequences and been used by NR marketing to discredit the Imperial Leftovers further driving many especially Rim worlds into their fold. As for later... I never understood how the NR could evolve from a Rim supported Rebel Alliance to a Coreworld New Republic loosing the Rim again to the Imperial Leftovers digging in there. Guess when the nobles financing the Alliance pushed them to take back the Core, they were spread too thin and left the Rim behind to take the Core, loosing support and trust there as they left them behind to follow the money sadly.
I haven't read this in AGES...I'll see if I can find my (original, hardcover) copy! I mentioned this on another thread, but Gaerial totally got shafted by the EU. Meet her once, get to where we kind of like her, then kill her off next time we see her.
This was a very VERY early book, before some of the world building concepts for the universe had been worked out by successive material. As such, it is a very "free" feeling book. Anything could happen, and some weird stuff does. Story aside, shout out for one of the best covers of the Bantam era. Not too busy, great use of sourced publicity photos to make the heroes look spot on, rather then artistically "close". This book clearly was blazing a trail in the post-OT era, and with probably little clear detail from Zahn on his books, Kathy Tyers picks up at the hangover from the ROTJ celebrations and shows you the next day...the adventure is immediate. No rest for our heroes, even after knocking out a superweapon and 2 Sith Lords. Always something happening in a galaxy far far away...and she nailed that. In the final analysis, the book is fun, but quite isolated from much of the rest of the Bantam era and the subsequent Legends canon. The Imperial bend, the Ssi-ruuk, entechment, all were pieces set up for someone else to spike...but other writers went other ways. Even Kathy seems to understand that, as Balance Point didn't go much into tooting the horn of Truce. Still, a fun read...and definitively the follow up to ROTJ...it is where you go to continue the story after Endor.
Well some author did pick up Bakura, but too late and more as a Shadows of the Empire Sequel with a HRD company run by Guri and Dash HQing there. NJO: Force Heretic 2: Refugee did the job! Aside from brief Black Fleet Crisis books cameo/mention as a NR member. Still scary to think of crossing entechment and HRD tech... thx Dash
Balance Point was clearly rushed out before a thorough editing was put in. There is quite a few errors that made it through to the final product.
I think they do that generally though. Release hardcover first and paperback so many months later. They know many fans will pay for the HC's. But I looked it up, it was an NYT best seller. That's probably not a hard thing to do for a SW novel though.
