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First of all, I was extremely excited about this book. I’ve been waiting for it for two months since The Unseen Queen. The book was good, but in my opinion it didn’t live up to its potential. There were a few nice plot twists that made for exciting reading, I thought that this whole series’s plot line was a little weak. After all, how is it exciting for both the Chiss and the Galactic Alliance to be involved in a war with a bunch of insects. Even though this book wasn’t as good as it could have been I think that it still qualifies as the best of this series.

The series started off strong with the Jacen and Tenal Ka plotline and the Jacen’s new skills plot line, but neither was developed to my liking. By the end of this book Jacen and Tenal Ka are still the only ones that know or even suspect that Jacen is the father. Hopefully this will be rectified in an explosive and exciting manner in the Legacy of the Force series that will be started at the end of March.

Character development was weak throughout the whole series, but especially in this book. The only characters that developed at all are Luke, Jacen, and Leia (who is now a real Jedi Knight). Everyone else either stayed flat or showed regression (eg. Artoo, Jagged Fel, Jaina, Zekk).

Summary

The galaxy is in conflict. The Killiks are under attack from the Chiss and it is throwing the whole galaxy into disarray. The Jedi Order is in shambles. There is no solid leadership. The book opens with Jacen, Jaina, Zekk, Tahiri, Lowbacca, and Tesar on Tanupe where Jacen reveals that they are being summoned to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Jaina and Zekk, joiners that they are, are more worried about carrying out UnuThul’s will than being summoned so in the opening scene we see them trying to capture a bomb that the Chiss have dropped on the planet, but failed to detonate. At the last moment Jag Fel, comes out of nowhere and destroys it much to Jaina and Zekk’s shared chagrin.

Jaina and Zekk refuse to return to the Jedi Temple and where we find that Luke is taking direct control of the Order because the current system is not working. This announcement spurs the masters into uniting inorder to solve the problem at hand. The consensus they reach is that Lomi Plo must be killed and Raynar Thul must be removed from leadership of the Killiks in order for them to loose their collective mind and settle back down. Leia doesn’t approve of Luke taking direct control of the Order so she and Han storm out of the meeting to go and find Jaina. On their way they get captured by the Chiss because someone (suspected to be Cal Omas but never truely resolved) betrayed their mission their mission. They fought the Chiss until Jag had shoot them up so bad that they had nowhere else to go. Jag promised that they wouldn’t be tortured during interrogation so they torture a dummy that looks like Han while interrogating Leia. Leia doesn’t find out that it wasn’t Han being mutilated until he is found to be in the rescue party that comes to rescue her from here interrogation room. Meanwhile Jaina and Zekk are constantly fighting and killing the hundreds of thousands of Chiss that have landed on the planet trying to extirminate the Killiks. Simultaneously Luke, Mara, Jacen and all the other Jedi launch attacks to prevent coops by the Killiks on all the insect planets in the Galactic alliance. The only planet that they don’t save is Thyferra which naturally means that there is a bacta shortage for the rest of the books. It is now time for the Jedi to launch their assault to neutralize Lomi Plo. In conjunction with the Galactic Aliance Defense Force the Jedi attack a flotilla of many Super Star Destoyer size ships that the Killiks plan to use to invade the Galactic Alliance. The Jedi land in the Dark Nest ship and after being ambushed by the Killiks and a short but furious fight Lomi Plo escapes, but not before running Jacen through with her lightsaber and a Gorog shooting Mara.

Does Luke succeed? Do Mara and Jacen make a full recovery? What was that bomb that failed to detonate at the start? Will Luke finally find out what happened to his mother? All this and more is revealed!