Customer Reviews

Dark Force Rising (Star Wars Vol. 2)

5 star:		(84)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Dark Force Rising is the second book in Tim Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. OUr heroes, on the run from assasins after Leia's unborn twins, as well as Luke and Leia themselves, run through the book at a frantic pace. Leia decides that the best place to hide is amongst the enemy, so along with Chewbacca she embarks on a quest to the world of Honogar, the homeworld of the Empire's best assasins. Luke after spending time with the insane Dark Jedi C'Boath is off on a mission to rescue smuggler chief Talon Karrde from Grand Admiral Thrawn's personal Star Destroyer with the help of Mara Jade, who wants to kill him once the rescue is complete. Han Solo finds himself swept off to a secret meeting with a soldier who may or may not help the fragile New Republic against the victorious Empire and Thrawn. Added to this is a frantic race to discover the location of the Katana Fleet or Dark Force. A mysterious fleet of warships designed after the Clone Wars that could tip the victory in the laps of those who find it first. Add in political intrigue, an Alliance commander accused of treason and clones and you have one heck of a good novel.

A lot of people just can't find any excitement in character development. They want action, action, action. Dark Force Rising isn't for them.

However, for someone seeking an intellectual Star Wars story (which, yes, IS possible) this is great. The Noghri are vastly interesting, and Leia's interaction with them is wonderful. (This is how the bit with the Ewoks should have gone in Return of the Jedi.)

And of course, we get to see more of Mara Jade, my second favorite Star Wars character in the universe. And she's absolutely true to character (big surprise! This is one of the defining books for her character, after all.)

The best part is a complete lack of Death Stars and Death-Star-like superweapons.

"Dark Force Rising" Volume 2 of the Thrawn Trilogy. Grand Admiral Thrawn continues his attempt to finish off the struggling New Republic. Talon Karrde, the smuggler who took Jabba's place is slowly being pulled over to the New Republic's side even though his right hand Mara Jade (The Emperors' Hand before he died) wants nothing to do with the new republic and who's only goal has been to kill Luke Skywalker. The two opposing sides race for a lost fleet of about 200 ships. The winner will have the upper hand in the continuing battle. Meanwhile the newly surfaced Jedi master plots to capture Leia, her twins and Luke.

The Good: The whole book (along with the other 2 were all very good). It's good to read the old favorites including Han, Leia, Luke, Chewy and Lando. The plot stays strong throughout and this kept the book enjoyable.

The Bad: Nothing memorable

Overall: The book and series are both very good and I recommend them highly

"We who remain must stand together against those who would destroy everything"
Book two in the thrilling Thrawn Trilogy! (Who woulda thought that a C'baoth clone would get the title of this review!!)
The Empire may have been foiled, but only just barely. And now things get worse as Admiral Ackbar, member of the Inner Council, is accused of treason. Han and Lando go to attempt to sniff out the source; Luke discovers that a Jedi named C'baoth may have escaped the Jedi Purge, and Leia goes to meet the Noghri and work on some sort of resolution.

I Liked:
Golly, I almost wish I could copy and paste my review from Heir to the Empire! But, to be original, I'll try to come up with different things I like.
Timothy Zahn continues to show his Star Wars writing prowess in book two. Many other authors flounder at this point. Not Zahn. He continues the Star Wars feel with this entry, from the characters, to the actions, to the theme.
To his character repertoire, Zahn adds Garm Bel Iblis, a former Senator from Corellia--and rival to Mon Mothma. Through him, we learn more of the beginnings of the Rebellion...and how Mon Mothma, that red-haired lady from Return of the Jedi, can be a little pig-headed and temperamental. A fight between him and her forced him to leave the Rebellion, and he, being too proud and Corellian to boot, is unwilling to rejoin. Garm Bel Iblis does wonders for adding to the Corellian culture (we even learn he met Han Solo when Han was a kiddo!) and giving a new dimension to the Rebellion and Mon Mothma.
The action continues to be high, with his characters spread in five different dimensions. You would think it would be overwhelming, but Zahn handles it nicely, reminding the reader where Leia is, what Han is doing, what happened to Luke and so on so you don't ever go, "Wait a minute, it's been forever since we heard from Mara...where is she?" I've read other authors who drop viewpoints randomly and make me wonder that exact thing.
Lastly, I love how Zahn, in between his characters and plot, manages to tweak on our views of the Jedi. As this was pre-prequels, we get to see his (now obsolete) views on the Clone Wars, how C'baoth became a Jedi (he went to the University before training as a Jedi!), and C'baoth's subtle twisting of Luke to embrace the power of the Jedi. Also, here is hinted the first time in EU that the Senate took part in the destruction of the Jedi (which, honestly, is what they did...they certainly didn't mind the Emperor's movement to destroy them).

I Didn't Like:
I guess I have a few more complaints about this one than the last. They aren't huge, but I should bring them up.
Zahn creates the Calamari (no, not the Earth food!) as a peaceful race forced into war when they were enslaved. My problem? That theme is repeated ad nauseum in EU. Yeah, I know, Zahn technically wrote this before the Camaasi, before the Mandalorians (according to the Clone Wars TV series), before the billions of other "peaceful races forced into war". But it is still freaking annoying.
Also, Zahn is guilty of speciesism, specifically of Borsk Fey'lya and the Bothans. Borsk isn't the problem, he's cool. But then Zahn goes and sets up the entire race full of back-biting, knife-plunging power seekers. Not cool. I prefer a little more grey to my aliens, a little more depth besides the one word stereotype. Too many books make this mistake. Rodians are idiots and lawless. Hutts are always involved in crime. Wookiees are always good; Trandoshans always bad. Twi'Lek females are always sex slaves, and Jawas are scavengers that apparently can be found off their homeworld of Tatooine (weird, eh?). I could go on and on and on, but I think you get my point.
Lastly, the book does have that middle part of a trilogy feel. You know, no beginning, no end, makes you wonder, "What am I doing here?" We all know, by book three, we'll be like, "Oh, yeah, that's why that was important," but still, while we're reading it, we wonder.

Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:
Foul language? Can't recall anything off hand!
Sexuality is minimum to none.
Lando is injured at one point and can't receive medical attention because of triage. Really have to stretch to find ANYTHING to put here!

Overall:
Zahn doesn't fail to please with entry number two! There were a few things that perturbed me, but there were some moments that nearly brought tears to my eyes. When Leia unveils the Empire's poisoning of Honogr (even if I adore the Empire and hate how it is always shown in such a bad light), when the smugglers come to Han and Luke's aid at the end battle. Not many books can do this to me. This is Star Wars. Five stars.

Brought to you by:
*C.S. Light*

While I must admit that I was not a great fan of the first book in the Thrawn Trilogy "Heir to the Empire", the second book really got my attention. I will venture to say that most people reading the Star Wars books are reading to see the characters they loved from the movies develop. In the second book, Han Solo, Luke, Lando Calrissian, and Leia Organa Solo take center stage as they chase an once defunct fleet of abandon ships while a conspiracy against the New Republic unravels. It makes for a fast paced read that is hard to Star Wars fans to dislike.

There were a number of aspects of this book that I really enjoyed. Star Wars certainly has some political wrinkles in the plot. "Dark Force Rising" sees the New Republic's government developing into dangerous factions. The power grabs of this era are not limited to the Sith. Seeing the insanity of Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth spiral as he meets Luke Skywalker affords the opportunity to develop Luke's character as he continues to learn the ways of the force. As I await the third book in the trilogy, I am most looking forward to seeing the direction which the author takes the Mara Jade character. While the author seems to have ended this aspect of the story, I find it hard to believe that the author would end it so abruptly.

After reading the first book in this series, I was certain that I would be disappointed by chronology. After reading the second book, I can not wait to read the third book. With the plot leaving questions in my mind, the author did more than enough to keep the series interesting through three books.

I love this book series and had started reading again when it was released on kindle a few weeks ago. I just finished reading heir to the empire and went to download Dark Force Rising and discovered it is no longer available. I have requested help from amazon and they stated that I needed to inform the publisher that I want it to be available on Kindle. Hopefully this will work to notify the publisher that some mistake has occurred with the Amazon's system. I can't imagine that books one and three are available but the publisher changed his mind about the second one. This isn't much of a book review but maybe it will notify someone that they need to check the status of the kindle edition or encourage others to notify the publishers. Here's hoping!

Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy continues with Dark Force Rising. DFR is a great second act to this outstanding series. Zahn has a great villain in Grand Admiral Thrawn. One of my other favorite characters introduced in this trilogy is Mara Jade, who struggles with her hatred of Luke Skywalker and her desire to kill him. All the classic Star Wars heroes are here--Luke, Han & Leia Organa-Solo (now married and expecting twins), Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian and droids See-Threepio and Artoo-Deetoo. The Thrawn Trilogy novels are my favorites of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and Dark Force Rising serves as a great second chapter in the trilogy (very much like The Empire Strikes Back did in the film trilogy), setting up for the conclusion in The Last Command.

41/2 really,The second book of this excellent trilogy is once again full of great characters, exotic locations, and white knuckle sequences. The book gives us more about the "Lady Vader," and the mystery of the Dark Force fleet. While I do find Thrawn's "artistic analysis" of races to be a bit annoying, I like the villain as a whole. All in all this is a wonderful series worthy of the Star Wars name.

In Dark Force Rising, Timothy Zahn continues the spectacular story he began in Heir to the Empire, while upping both the intrigue and action of the incredible story arc.

The stakes are higher than ever. Grand Admiral Thrawn's first puch against the New Republic was unsuccessful, but the victory wasn't nearly one-sided. Treachery and political infighting threatens to tear the government apart. As Han and Lando fight to clear Admiral Ackbar's name of treason, Leia races to an alien planet to try to bring a dangerous and proud alien race into the fight against the Empire. Luke, feeling the call of Joruus C'baoth, the mad Jedi master, must team up with Mara Jade once again, to free her employer and comrade from Thrawn's own ship.

The threads of the plot, while becoming more numerous and complex, never get tangled. Zahn juggles the huge cast of characters with talent that few have ever shown in the series. The action is larger, the characters are more complex, creating tension on both sides of the war. The clashing between Joruus C'baoth and his uneasy ally, Thrawn, becomes more apparent, and threatens to disrupt the Empire's plans, and C'baoth himself makse a move to corrupt Luke, Leia, and her unborn children for his own twisted desires.

This is one of the rare sequels that doesn't suffer from sequelitis. True, you really have to have read the first book to understand what's going on, but the book has a definite beginning and end, and more than enough excitement and interesting characters to fill the 400 plus pages. But, aside from the quality, which is exceptional, this is just a plain fun read. Like the first novel in the Thrawn Trilogy, this captures the essence of the Star Wars mythos, while building on its wonderful history and story.

If you're looking for a fantastic literary saga in the Star Wars universe, you can't do better than the Trawn Trilogy, and the second book proves that Zahn's writing and grasp of the SW universe just keeps getting better and better.

While this book isn't as exciting as Heir to the Empire, and not as immensly well written as The Last Command, it's still an excellent book that is essential to understanding the whole trilogy. Since I consider this trilogy to be the cornerstone of Star Wars fiction, I would therefor recommend it to anyone, even the casual fan who would just kind of like to know what happened next. I would defenitely also recommend reading Heir to the Empire first, since otherwise this book will make no sense what so ever. For those of you just getting into Star Wars fiction, this is a very good place to start. In fact, I would even recommend reading this series before the ones set before it, since that way it will give a better general perspective of the overall story. Several important things happen in this series that have a profound effect on everything that comes after it, Han and Leia have their first children, Jacen and Jaina, the New Republic meets it's match (once again) and for that matter so does Luke. Anyway, the story of this book in particular basically revolved around a bunch of space battles in which everyone is fighting over the Katana Fleet, or the Dark Force, which is a fleet of dreadknots (or however that's spelled) that was lost some time ago. The smuggler Talon Karrde and his second in command Mara Jade know where it is, and promise to give it to the New Republic, something that makes Mara Jade (a former imperial assasin/spy with an intense hatred of Luke, and also happens to be highly force sensitive) very displeased. Meanwhile, a pregnant Leia is on Honoghor trying to consolidate the Noghri into joining the New Republic. Though, while this book is full to the brim with vivid battles of all kinds, there is plenty of character stuff to satisfy also. Original and new characters alike are portrayed magnificently, both in their personalities and in their interactions with the other characters. Another excellent thing about this series is that it is the official introduction of Mara Jade, who is possibly the coolest and most interesting character in Star Wars. Her interactions with Luke especially were superb, very fun and interesting. When I read this book for the first time I found it hard to believe those two were going to end up together, even if it does happen ten years later, but now the second time around I can see the subtle attraction developing between them. I think this will be a relationship I will enjoy for once, much better than Luke's other relationships (Gaeriel, Callista(gagging noises)) Anyway, this is an excellent book that I would definitely recommend to any Star Wars fan, child or adult.