Customer Reviews

Force Heretic II: Refugee (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order, Book 16)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book is a waste of money. I cannot fathom how nearly 400 pages can contain NOTHING to advance a storyline. Even if you are a fan who would normally buy it for your collection, my advice is to skip it altogether.

As with the first book in this trilogy, there are numerous spelling and grammar errors (particularly split infinitives, which might be acceptable for speech, but not for narration), fixations on particular words and/or phrases (e.g., "Be that as it may..." is used WAY too often), and inconsistencies. I still am unaware whether CEDF stands for Chiss Expansionary Defense Force or Chiss Expeditionary Defense Force, since it switches between them repeatedly. Or perhaps there are two such bodies, one with each name, that share the same acronym; it certainly is not clarified in this book.

As with Remnant, book 1 of the trilogy, there are three separate storylines. One following Luke and others on a quest to find The Rogue Planet (see that book for a story actually worth reading), the second follows Han and Leia et al. investigating comm breakdown from former New Republic Allies, the third focuses on Nom Anor and his infidel uprising on the former Coruscant.

All three story lines go nowhere. For Luke, there is an absolutely pointless and unresolved conflict that occurs on the Chiss homeworld, which we don't even get to see on the star chart, with everything still referred to as the Unknown Regions. Nevermind that they mention many planets and such, leaving the reader to guess where they might be. For Han and Leia, on Bakura, there is about 100 wasted pages of poor exposition, again with battles simply for their own sake, serving no plot advancing purpose. The resolution is disappointing, again with no surprise. Meanwhile, NOTHING happens with Nom Anor except that he gains an informer.

Honestly, this story reads as though written both by AND for a twelve year old. It is insulting that this is included in the storyline populated by quality writing earlier in the series. The best thing this book might be used for is recycling.

There is really no point reading this book. If you are a fan, buy it for your collection. Otherwise just skip it altogether.
My problem with "Remnant" (part I of the Force Heretic series) was that it was totally predictable. This is even worse. Refugee is so forced its only purpose seems to be to tie up lose ends and set up the last two books of the NJO.

The worse subplot is the Han/Leia/Jaina/Jag one. Picking up where they left off in Remnant, they reach Bakura where they fumble around like clueless bystanders for a couple of hundred pages, completely fail to accomplish anything useful and in the end are actually defeated by the "bad guys". Then, suddenly, the situation reverses and resolves itself. Han Solo has no role whatsoever, Leia is limited to making clever diplomatic observations, Jaina runs around picking fights that lead nowhere and Jag Fel flies like your average space-jock. A total waste of ink.

The Luke/Mara/Jacen group fares a bit better. At least they get into a couple of scraps in the Unknown Regions and use their Jedi skills to prevail. Also a couple of old favorites make cameos, even though the long-awaited tour of the Chiss domain is a complete letdown. In the end, right as the book ends, Jacen has a flash of inspiration and the story is magically back on track.

The only half interesting storyline is the one involving Nom Anor. I found his incroporation of the Force and the Jeedi into his newly conceived Vong herecy quite interesting - creative even. Also, from the Yuuzhan Vong we get at leat a small glimse of how the war is going and what the rest of the Galaxy is up to.

That's it. This book needed not have been written. It would have fit nicely as a couple of extra chapters in the other two books of the trilogy.

Force Heretic II: Refugee is very well-written, fast paced New Jedi Order story. Although it one of the longer books in the series, it is a very quick read. The storylines are good if a bit predictable. One storyline follows Jacen Solo on his quest to find a mustical living planet. Along for the ride are Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade, Saba, and Danni Quee along with some Imperial Remnant troops. They fly into Chiss space where typical, if a bit predictable and subdued, Star Wars mayhem ensues. The second storyline follows Han, Leia, Jaina, Jag and Tahiri to Bakura where anti-Republic sentiment masks a deeper more malevolant plot. The third storyline deals with Nom Anor and his Jedi heracy. This was actually a very interesting Vong subplot, usually I just find those subplots annoying but hearing Nom Anor preach about the Jedi was quite interesting. There is not all that much action to sustain the story and Mara Jade and Han Solo get nothing more than bits parts to play, while Princess Leia only shines occasionaly. Danni's relationship with Jacen, which seemed to be moving forward seems stalled in this book. It was interesting to return to Bakura and to see Chiss space, and the subplot involving Tahiri jumps forward and one of the better parts of the story. Overall, this book is not as good as Force Heretic I. It is well-written, but misses something that the first book had. There is less of the witticism and humor that are contained in the best Star Wars books. This is a solid addition to the NJO series and sets up the third book in the trilogy rather nicely.

This latest installment of the NJO is merely treading water waiting for the series' traditional fall hardcover. Del Rey has really released a low quality product here just to line their pockets with money. This one has all the things you've learned to dread about the lesser NJO novels: retreaded plot lines, unconvincing portrayal of the Jedi mindset, shallow two dimensional emotionalism. Undiscriminating Star Wars fans will love this just as they love all Star Wars novels. I used to look forward to each New Jedi Order Novel to see how the storyline moved along and to sample the styles of the different authors. This one has me dreading the next paperback because this one had no real plot movement; more sadly, the next paperback is written by the same below average author tandem. In summary, Yuck!

There are some brief bouts of action, but altogether this book comes across an a very amateur attempt. Some annyoing mechanisms are used and relied upon way too often, such as ellipses (ending sentences with three dots...). That gets old really fast. The Chiss homeworld story arc is about exciting as watching ice melt. You never get a feel for how the planet looks, just that it is icy. All Luke and Mara do is sit in a library with one brief, completely forgettable incident involving an ice barge attack. Han and Leia are wasted, the Ssi-Ruuk attack makes all of one chapter interesting, and Jaina's story where she helps an accused criminal escape from prison left more questions than answers This just comes across as a very long filler story, written to move copies and cash in on the loyalty of fans who have read too many of the 15 prior NJO books to give up now. While I eventually got to the point of skipping pages, a good friend of mine and the most dedicated fan I know put it down halfway and will not read it anymore. This whole series should have been six books, not countless boring stories full of heroes wandering the unknown regions spouting unnatural dialogue. If I sound like I'm bitter, I just wish that after buying dozens upon dozens of Star Wars novels they would respect the fans enough to make the product worthy of the fans' loyalty. This book doesn't.

What happened? What did I miss? Is this another planet? Who gave these fools the authority the publish another novel? Is this some sort of scheme to make James Luceno look like Tolkien?
There is NO excuse for writing this poor.

I should start out my complaint by clarifying several things:
1) I am a huge Star Wars fan, especially of The New Jedi Order.
2)I must give Dix and Williams the benefit of the doubt-the idea of Zonoma Sekot always struck me as rather hokey and a waste of time. All they could do was carry the story along as best they could.
3)They didn't do that.

My main beef with this book is the way they have to have every Star Wars plotline re-emerge before the end. Luceno brought us both Centerpoint and Hapes, Cunningham wrote Hapes AGAIN, and now these...fools!...bring back Bakura for the third time. It wasn't interesting back then, and it's worse now.

They also write the stars totally out of character. The two main groups, Luke's and the Solo's both stumble around like idiots and accomplish absolutely nothing! You'd think in 430 odd pages something would happen, but no, it's off to Chiss space to foil an assassination, and then to Bakura to foil a separate assassination. I'm tired of too much political intrigue and too little action.

That brings me to my next topic. The action. I can just hear people reading this and saying "What action?" You might have missed it trying to look for a sensible sentence. There was action, I promise you, but it read like the fan fiction I wrote in second grade. These people need to learn how to write a space battle. Consult any of the following for advice: Michael Stackpole, Timothy Zahn, Greg Keyes, R.A. Salvatore, Troy Denning, Aaron Allston, A.C. Crispin, etc. It's a long list, so I'm sure they'll find something helpfull in that list of authors, or at least they could buy a MR Spell and fix all the damn typoes.

This book is (as another review so aptly put) nothing more than absolute filler material.

It is by far the weakest book in the whole New Jedi Order series - even worse (if you can believe it) than Dark Journey.

I won't waste my time writing a lengthy review for this as I put so much into my review for the first book in this "Force Heretic" trilogy.

Suffice it to say that this entire trilogy by Sean Williams & Shane Dix is complete rubbish and brings the entire "New Jedi Order" series to an all-time low!

If you haven't read the trilogy yet, do yourself a favor and skip it. There are plenty of reviews that summarize it well enough for you to get the jist without having to suffer through the poor writing style of these clowns.

Well after reading all the NJO books in order and loving most all of them, I was sorely disappointed in this one. It just did not get me interested at all. Searching for the living planet should have had more time devoted to it, I kept thinking I would get to it on the next page but just wasn't much there.

I would have to rate this book as the least liked of all, but needed it for my collection.

This is the 16th Book in the The New Jedi Order saga, or 18th if you count the 2 e-book only stories. Only three more books to go.

The second book in this 3-books story by SEan Williams and Shane Dix, is more entertaining than the first book. The action begins right from the first chapter, and that makes this chapter a better reading than the previous book, where the interesting things happens in the second half of the book.

In this book, we see three main stories: the search for the living-planet Zonama Sekot by Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, Jacen Solo, Saba Sebatyne, Tekli, Danni Quee and the group of the Imperial Remnant who are helping them since the last book. After investigating some local legends that can be traced back to the appearance of Zonama Sekot in those solar systems, they now go to the Unknown Regions, but first they have to talk to the Chiss, with whom Soontir Fel (the former Imperial Baron, father of Jag Fel, "boyfriend" of Jaina Solo) now lives. Aside from a cold reception, they must deal with other situation before they can continue the search for the living planet.

If you have been reading all the books in The New Jedi Order, you can understand why this living planet is important, and I must emphasize that there's another book not part of the The New Jedi Order line that is now important: it's "Star Wars: Rogue Planet" by Greg Bear ... It's not very good, but you can read about Zonama Sekot and the Jedi Vergere.

The other storyline deals with the other party from the Galactic Federation of Free-Alliances (formerly known as New Republic). This party is formed by Han and Leia Organa Solo and a ship and escort provided by the Galactic Alliance, including Jaina Solo and Jag Fel. They are now going to Bakura, after a "recommendation" from a Ryn (an underground spy net trying to help the forces against the Yuuzhan Vong) they met at their last stop. They are trying to re-establish the communication lines between the new Alliance and the worlds who are now isolated, but (from the last book) now we know some of them are incommunicated not because of an accident or war related, but by choice. At Bakura, they find a rebellion, the beginning of a surprising alliance between Bakura and some of their neighborhoods and some plot twists not entirely surprising.

Now to understand this part of Bakura you may want to read first "Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura" by Kathy Tyers...but it's not really necessary. I haven't read it but you are provided with all the necessary elements to understand what happened there before. Even Jaina was kind-of out of the loop, since she wasn't born yet when that Ssi-Ruuvi episode happened.

But now I want to read it even more after reading this book (good thing I already own a copy!). This smells as a "retcon", as called in the comics medium. Of course there are subplots within each story, making it an enjoyable read: we can see more about Tahiri and the changes she's undergoing, about the relationship between Jacen and Danni and a glimpse of the Chiss.

"And where are the Yuuzhan Vong ?" you may ask. Well, this is kind of a light book on them, since we see what's happening with Nom Anor, the former executor now in the run from his former masters. The good thin here is that now we see a little more about Shimrra, Supreme Overlord. The bad thins is I think they didn't got him well. The first time we saw him, it was at a gathering where we saw the awe he inspired. We could feel the floor tremble when he spoke. This is not so when we saw him in this book. I hope this changes in the last two books of the series, since I doubt it'd change in Force Heretic III.

Now, please pay attention to the prologue, and if you think the epilogue is just a wrap-up, you will be surprised, trust me.

If you are expecting your "Yuuzhan Vong Fix", you'll be dissapointed, but overall, an enjoyable book, even with so little about the Yuuzhan Vong.

I was expecting this three book series to pick up the pace, but sadly it seems to go down the slope. Three main stories, the male twin solo looking for a mystical planet called Zonama Sekot with the help of Master Skywalker, Jaina Solo and Tahiri fight a disguised Yuuzhan Vong infiltration somewhere in the universe and last but not least Nom Anor returns as a prophet leading Shamed Ones in his struggle to infiltrate the chambers of the Supreme Overlord.

All in all, as a NJO fan you follow the stories where they take you and you enjoy letting your imagination loose in the universe of Star Wars. But these books seem to stretch a story that can be fit into a single book.

I hope the third book really stands up. Books like these make you feel like a grain of sand in a marketing world. Where all you do is contribute your buy and keep on reading.