Agents of Chaos I: Hero’s Trial
Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse
by James Luceno

25.5 years after ANH
(21.5 YEARS AFTER ROTJ)
RATING:
Buy Agents of Chaos at Amazon.com

Agents of Chaos: Hero’s Trial and Agents of Chaos: Jedi Eclipse are the fourth and fifth books in a 5-year story arc introducing a new threat to the Star Wars Universe that comes from beyond the galactic rim.

SYNOPSIS

As this duology starts off, things look pretty bleak for the New Republic. The invading armies of the Yuuzhan Vong have conquered dozens of worlds, and their progression towards the Core planets seems unstoppable. Book One, Hero’s Trial, begins on Kashyyyk, with a poignant memorial service for Chewbacca. Rather than the healing ritual the service is intended to be, it seems to further widen the gulf between the Solo family members. Shortly following this memorial, Han Solo, looking for something with which to occupy himself, for some way to pull together the pieces of his fractured life, responds to pleas from an old smuggling buddy to help locate another smuggler turned Yuuzhan Vong collaborator. Along the way, Han acquires, at least temporarily, a new co-pilot, Droma, of the rare gypsy-like species, the Ryn. Han and Droma’s travels take them to the heart of the captured territories, and lead them to uncover an even greater conspiracy. The race is then on to expose this plot before the Yuuzhan Vong are successful in their plan to destroy the Jedi Order.

In Book Two, Jedi Eclipse, Princess Leia becomes more deeply involved in refugee resettlement, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of the advancing, displacing Yuuzhan Vong. Han, with Droma in tow, races to rescue Droma’s Ryn relations held captive by the Yuuzhan Vong. Meanwhile, Jedi Knight Wurth Skidder allows himself to be snared by the Vong in an effort to better determine how they can be defeated. And the New Republic, finally, goes on the defensive, hatching a plan to lure the Vong to a starfleet-destroying weapon near Corellia.

MY WORDS OF WISDOM

Well it’s about durn time!! At last a contribution to the New Jedi Order stew-pot worthy of the repast that has come before. This duology displays a glimmer of the energy and suspense of the better of the Expanded Universe novels. A spark of novelty. The Yuuzhan Vong, especially in Hero’s Trial, start to seem more intriguing, less a rip-off of bad-guys past. And at long last, Han Solo becomes again a recognizable figure. We get to see the process of Han dealing with the loss of Chewbacca; it is sad, funny, achingly Han. Anguished, not quite fully coping, but definitely Han. The other, missing-in-action, drinking-himself-into-oblivion Han was a plot-device; this feels authentic.

Other affects of Chewie’s death on some of the Skywalker/Solo relationships are begun to be dealt with as well. Interactions between Han and Luke and between Han and Leia are strained and rueful, but potently real. Four books into the New Jedi Order series to get true-to-character, grown-up conversation. I’d lost all hope! Most painful to witness is Han and Leia’s estrangement, but these are two very strong-willed people and their downs are as likely volatile as their ups. We deserve to traverse this difficult passage with them, to not have their bond trivialized by inattention to how these new traumas are affecting them.

Han’s new shipmate, Droma, is a fun creation too. No disrespect to the dead, but Chewbacca was not an ideal literary companion for Han. Authors were always forced to make odd decisions on how to get around Chewie’s lack of English (Basic) verbal ability. Droma, who can communicate…on the page…in a language we know, serves as a marvelously witty sparring partner for Captain Solo. And his sarcasm and take-no-self-pity cynicism further shake Han loose from his melancholy.

On the larger political stage, the New Republic government’s responses to the Vong invasion are less over-wrought and falsely simplistic than in the New Jedi Order: Books 1-3. There is still a whiff of melodrama to the proceedings not found in a Timothy Zahn novel, or in other of the better of the EU works, but Luceno’s depiction of the inner workings of galactic governing are overall more natural and grounded. And for true fans of the Expanded Universe, there are interwoven quite a few of the story threads and peripheral players introduced in past tales. The secret weapon being positioned to ambush the Yuuzhan Vong at Corellia comes straight from Roger Macbride Allen’s Corellia Trilogy, as does Intelligence operative, Belindi Kalenda. Han’s smuggling pal, Roa, was introduced to us in A.C. Crispin’s Young Han Solo Trilogy. Vergere, the mysterious companion of the Yuuzhan Vong priestess, Elan, first appeared all the way back (in the timeline) in Rogue Planet. Even Prince Isolder, of (urk) Courtship of Princess Leia fame, has a supporting role.

The Agents of Chaos duology is not perfect. Interspersed with lucid, heartfelt text and astute dialogue and character work, are periodic sections of florid prose and sophomoric, sloppy plotting. And the same sense of “old home week” in the EU afforded the avid fan from the continuum connectivity and Star Wars Trivial Pursuit sort of obscure references, ventures from abundance of arcane detail and edges over into the pat and a trifle forced. Too, the recapping necessitated by the historical minutiae occasionally slows down the story. But perhaps the biggest flaw is not of author James Luceno’s making. Despite almost ceaseless physical description of the Yuuzhan Vong, we still don’t know them as three-dimensional figures. Their ritualistic, superstitious trappings and behavior make them buffoon-like, not fearsome. The layers upon layers of pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo are beginning to get repetitive and add no genuine insight to flesh these fellows out. Perhaps the intent is to make the Vong threat insurmountable for just the reason that the Vong are zealots who won’t countenance any diplomatic compromises. But so far, there is no depth to them. They seem too intractable and limited in their vision to be so invincible. Surely a race that is so xenophobic that they can’t and won’t get into the mind-set of their adversaries is easily defeated by a military, such as that of the New Republic, with much less restricted scope?

Any book that begins by viewing a scene, and in a very silly way, from C3P0’s point of view (as Hero’s Trial does), has at least a few missteps to compensate for. But mostly, this duology does what the best of the Expanded Universe novels do so well, that is, deepen our understanding of and link to the Star Wars characters. And here, where those characters’ voices finally begin to feel “true”, we at last get a sense of the toll taken by the Yuuzhan Vong. Even if the Vong themselves are to-date less than ideal as nemeses, the swath they are cutting through the Star Wars galaxy now has an emotional resonance. Each planet that falls to the Vong is felt as a powerful loss. These are places we’ve come to know, places that make up the nuance and richness of the enormous Star Wars cosmos, and one by one, everything we care about in that cosmos is being upended. Here’s hoping the next installments of the New Jedi Order series keep moving in this positive direction, and not backslide toward the series’ inauspicious beginnings.

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Vector Prime
by RA Salvatore

25 years after ANH
(21 YEARS AFTER ROTJ)
RATING:
Buy Vector Prime at Amazon.com

Vector Prime is the first book in a 5-year story arc introducing a new threat to the Star Wars Universe that comes from beyond the galactic rim.

SYNOPSIS

Vector Prime begins in the relative calm before the storm. In the previously released Timothy Zahn duology Specter of the Past/Vision of the Future, which was set about 5-6 years earlier, the New Republic and the remnants of the once mighty Empire finally negotiated a peace accord. Small, inter-species and inter-planetary conflicts still break out around the galaxy, but for the first time in a very long time, most of the Star Wars universe is stable. One of these smaller, brewing disagreements is threatening to stir up bigger tensions, and so, into the fray goes Leia Organa Solo, her daughter Jaina, and her now-sister-in-law, Mara Jade Skywalker, in an attempt to arbitrate a settlement between the bickering factions. Unbeknownst to the Solo/Skywalker ambassadors, many of these “little” skirmishes are actually being manipulated by the advance representatives of an invading alien race from a neighboring galaxy. Needless to say, with ulterior motives at work, the mediating process does not go well.

Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker is in the throes of his own dilemma. The good news is that the Jedi Order has begun to strengthen and grow. Luke’s exhaustive searches for beings with nascent Jedi talent, and his hard work at establishing the Jedi Academy on Yavin, have finally started to pay off. There is now a healthy cadre of young Jedi available to serve the New Republic. Unfortunately, there are factions within the New Republic who aren’t so sure reviving the Jedi Order is a good idea; with no governing body such as the old Jedi Council to set behavior guidelines, what is to keep these powerful Knights from operating outside the confines of Republic law? For Luke, there is a tightrope he must walk between the politicians playing the “Jedi issue” for their own ends, and the more vocal of his own Knights, who accede to his authority no more readily than they do to that of the Senate’s.

All of the petty squabbles are soon to pale in comparison, however, to the enormous threat just now entering the galaxy in force. These are the Yuuzhan Vong. The Yuuzhan Vong have been fomenting trouble and gauging the lay of the land, and now they are entering the Outer Rim in potent numbers. Their technology is organically based, their weaponry is unlike anything the New Republic has ever faced, and their culture seems indifferent to killing, reveling in pain and death. Their designs are unclear, but the means to whatever their end goals might be is unrepentantly drenched in blood.

MY WORDS OF WISDOM

Let’s not mince words here. Vector Prime is dreadful. It is a heavy-handed, sloppy, amateurish work. There are long-winded descriptive passages that repeatedly violate the creative writing 101 axiom “show me, don’t tell me”. Significant plot developments happen either before the book begins, or during the course of the novel yet inexplicably “off-stage”. Because of these passive story-telling choices, instead of seeing the action, or of having the action honestly motivated, Salvatore is forced to give us page after page of pop-psych explanations. It’s like a Star Wars book as written by John Bradshaw. Every major player has several scenes which are dramatically out of character, timeline and canon inconsistencies are rampant, and there are so many gaps in plain old logic it’s not really worth listing them all. Worse still are the awkward bantering conversational sections. Meant to lighten the tone or to add human dimension, they instead read as uncomfortable and false.

The Yuuzhan Vong as protagonists are problematic as well. We’ve seen these guys before; the Vong are almost a carbon copy of the Yevetha from Michael Kube-McDowell’s excellent Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy. Maybe because the Vong are so blatantly derivative, or maybe because Salvatore’s writing is so hackneyed, but the Vong come across as Lego Land nemeses, constructed from a laundry list of scary traits. They are built with layer upon layer of self-consciously gross-out, faux evil malarkey. It’s melodramatic over-kill. And it makes the Yuuzhan Vong less menacing not more, less compelling, and less able to carry the weight of the major narrative developments instigated and driven forward by their introduction to the Star Wars universe.

SPOILER ALERT:

Unless you’ve been living in a box under the highway, you probably are aware of the huge, saga-shaking event that transpires in Vector Prime. If you don’t know, and don’t want to know before reading this book, skip ahead to the end of this review.

Still with us? Ok. Chewbacca dies. Oddly enough, despite the fairly hideous book surrounding Chewie’s death, the writing in the actual scene itself is surprisingly moving. It’s a bit over-wrought… and let’s not even get into the science (or lack thereof) of a moon falling on a planet and the supposed only at the last minute devastation this causes…but it is not particularly over-written compared with the rest of this chest-heaving tome. It is grossly unfair that this sad-sack author gets the gift of such a Star Wars-Universe altering occurrence, and equally unjust that he gets to be at the head of the parade leading into this 5-year progression in the SW mythos. But due to fan vested interest in these characters, and to the reservoir of powerful emotions we feel for Han and Chewie and their bond, the demise itself is deeply affecting.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

In small defense of Vector Prime, there is the beginning of an intriguing on-going debate among the Jedi about their role in the galaxy and about how to utilize their powers. Jacen Solo is given the task of questioning his path, and thus the paths of his brother and sister, and by extension all the other Knights, and the conversations between Jacen and Anakin are interesting and character-enhancing. But this is way too little and way too late. Blessedly, the three New Jedi Order novels that follow Vector Prime substantially improve in quality. But this is a wretched opening chapter. Not since The Courtship of Princess Leia has opportunity been so wantonly and abjectly squandered. True completist fans of the Expanded Universe are without much recourse. This is too significant a piece of the NJO pie to skip. Read it quickly, with the thinking, feeling, reasoning part of the brain on pause; better things are to come as reward for wading through this flotsam.

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