Customer Reviews

Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

After two volumes filled with major events, The Legacy of the Force series returns to form in this seventh installment. For the most part, you could skip it and not miss much.

While author Aaron Allston delivers a well-plotted and fast-paced finale, the ending leaves the story right where it began, with Jacen politically and militarily isolated and seemingly finished. The promise of a helping hand from Korriban, hinted at the end of the previous volume, turns out to be a feint, and no one has yet figured out Jacen is a Sith or Mara's killer.

Neither have they figured out that he's lost all sense of proportion. In order to bring the Hapans back into the war for the Galactic Alliance, Jacen kidnaps his own daughter. The Hapans instead withdraw from any outside contact except for a secret mission to the Jedi, who devise a rather improbable mission to plant on Jacen's body a tracer housed in a tiny piece of cloth the same color and texture as his clothing. They can thereby track Jacen's whereabouts and eventually effect a rescue - but only so long as Jacen doesn't change his clothes.

As in Allston's previous volume, Exile, Jacen walks into an obvious trap, this time set up by the Corellians to fry his fleet using Centerpoint Station, implausibly revived after being scrapped by Ben and Jacen in Betrayal (also by Allston). While the as yet unannounced Sith Lord loiters in space waiting for Centerpoint to complete its firing sequence, he allows his mother to come aboard "to talk." Instead of throwing her in the brig, the pair chat away the minutes while the Corellians take aim and the stowaways on Leia's craft pilfer data from Jacen's computers. The entire sequence comprises a long list of contrivances that make you want to give up on the book altogether.

Meantime, in an asteroid field far away, Jaina, Jag and Zekk prepare for a final showdown with Alema Rar, who is also being hunted by a Sith from Korriban eager to retrieve purloined Sith artifacts. Among them is Ship, which in the ensuing chaos flees to the Sith homeworld of Ziost, the Korriban agent in pursuit.

Along the way two major Jedi sustain life-threatening injury, but miraculously live to fight another day. A last-minute method for destroying Centerpoint Station is discovered, and Jacen can manage to kill only a Jedi-newbie and one of his subordinates, proving that he's not such a bad-ass after all and continuing the devolution of his character from a villain who reluctantly took up the dark arts in an effort to save and protect society, to a blinkered madman divorced from any rational view of the universe.

My best guess is that the next volume won't advance the series much further, though we're likely to get some interesting material on Boba Fett.

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Aaron Allston does a great job in the 7th installment of the Legacy of the Force series. Above all else, he has crafted a well-paced novel with action and events spread out evenly. For those readers who want a build-up and big finish, this book is probably going to disappoint you. The last sequence is supposed to sound important, but I didn't get the feeling like anything was resolved by destroying something epic.

We also get to see some fringe charaters from Allston's previous book, and some good old charaters from...Allston's previous X-Wing books. However, this book is nothing like his previous work, with the exception of some good old pilots humor. It really broke the tension when people starting making jokes, thanks!

IF I liked this book so much, why only 4 stars? Well, because as the series progesses, I find it more and more ridiculous. Jacen seems a lot like the bad guy on every cartoon show, he always gets away...but just barely. Luke is torn emotionally, which is understandable, but it's hard to read...but not as hard as "Children of the Jedi".

Of course if your a fan, you'll enjoy the lightsaber duels, space battles, and plot deveolopment...but the more this series lingers on, the more I grow tired of it.

Perhaps in the next arc, we can have the bad guy go down in book 6, and use the next 3 books to deal with the aftermath....kinda more realistic.

But who am I kidding? If I wanted realistic, I would read something else.

The newest installment of the Legecy of the Force: Fury if anyone is still completely in grossed in this series my hat's off to you. Its hard to feel anything but dread at this point. You know no matter how good the author tries to make it sound its going to be bad. At this point the only thing shocking is how each book is worse then the last.
Fury could have been exciting with Jacen kidnapping his daughter Allana, a group of Jedi attemmpting to kill him who were not made up of Solos and Skywalkers and the Jedi have to get Allana back. But once again like most of the series author sucked out any potential of being good...and I usually like Aaron Allston's books.
First off we have the kidnapping of Allana. Jacen only does it to get Tenel Ka to give him back her military. Not for turning her to the Dark side, making her his apprentice, or any of the more interesting reasons.
Not to mention its a sad pathetic day with a Sith has to resort to kidnapping a little girl to get anywhere. This is a problem with all three writers of Legecy none of them can make Jacen a compaling Sith. Sure he does bad things but he doesn't come off as frightening as Vader, as maniplative has Sidious or any of the thousands of other Sith. I mean could you really see Vader resorting to kidnapping a little girl in order to get Hapes to bend to his will? For all Jacen's talk of being idolizing Vader he seems to have missed everything that made everyone terrified of Vader...and apparently so have the writers.
Over in the Jedi camp we actually have a group of non-Solos and Skywalkers sent to kill Jacen. It could have been exciting except you know if Jacen's killed it'll be by one of his own relatives. But they were still more exciting then the Solos or the Skywalkers. Now how's that for sad? Perhaps if the Solos were allowed to do anything besides talk about how evil Jacen's become and he's dead to them or fight Alema again or rehash Jaina and her boyfriends (does anyone at this point care about Jaina-Jag-Zekk storyline)they might be worth reading. Having them rehash the same stuff book after book is not a story.
Its not like they are major charactors in the Star Wars Universe who's son or twin brother has turn to the Dark Side of the Force could have resulted in a wealth of plotlines for Han, Leia and Jaina....on wait they are.
Over in the Skywalker camp we have Luke who's still mourning the death of his wife. I'm glad to see someone is. Asside from Luke and Ben, everyone else seems to have forgot Mara ever existed. But neither of them did anything really interesting until the rescuing of Allana except thinking about how to kill Jacen without turning to the Dark Side. Standing around talking is not a plot.
Last but not least Leia and Han learning Allana's their granddaughter. Something that should have been interesting and exciting since we've been waiting through seven books to happen but of course it was a big let down. Leia simply realizes Allana's her granddaughter and that's it. The tragedy is this series could have been really good instead each book it gets worse and worse. With only two books left I have little doubt they'll be any good.

Another very poor book in the Legacy of the Force series. Wish I could give the Legacy of the Force series negative points! By now the series is showing very poor continuity, unrealistic actions by the main characters and there is little in this that represnts the best of any of the Star Wars canon. I wish I had saved my money and avoided this book! The characters are so flawed and dark that there appears to be no point in mentioning the light or good side of the force. Even Luke has regressed and seemed to have forgotton all the lessons that he's learned from his past experiences and teachers. I almosy wished they had killed him of along with so many of the other main and minor characters killed in this series.
I'm sadly done with Star Wars for now unless future books return to a reasonable level of quality. This is poor writng and in many ways a poor rehash of the original 3 movies.

This was a disappointing read after 'Inferno'. Aaron Allston writes a good book, but this book wasn't the greatest.

Jacen/Caedus is very pathetic in this. Kidnapping his daughter to force his secret lover to turn her fleets over to him. How unbeleivable can you get! He spends a lot of time fuming about how unfair the rest of the galaxy is and how he is only doing what is best. To end this book he strangles, using the Force, a junior officer because she was not able to predict that a shuttle actually contained Luke, Ben, Han, Leia, another Jedi and some others to destract Jacen/Caedus and rescue Allana.

The Jedi are trying, unsuccessfully, to kill Jacen/Caedus and so far have succeeded in planting a tracer on him. Hopefully he won't change his clothes.

The Allana passages read like something out of a children's book. They could have been a book of their own. "What will I do if Jacen doesn't say the special words?" Ha, Ha, Ha.

Luke is still greiving over Mara's death and Ben is a little childish in the first half of the book. At least he grows up in the end.

Han and Leia have some very interesting scenes in this book. They had to go to some rather extreme lengths to gather some imformation to help Jaina, Jag, and Zekk track down Alema Rar. Now they have a good way to locate Jacen's/Caedus's ship.

Jaina, Jag, and Zekk are getting very close to locating Alema Rar. The breastplate and crushgaunts that Boba Fett sent proved very effective in the scene on the astroid. I won't say anymore on this cause that would be a spoiler.

The Confederation has unleashed an ancient superweapon in the Corellia system.

Luke and the Jedi plan an operation to rescue Allana and to destroy Centerpoint Station.

Wedge and Tycho get some brief scenes in this book and are now semi-allied with the Jedi, at least that is the case with Tycho, Wedge is diffently on the side of the Jedi.

I recommend this book only if you have read some of the other books in this series or have read a lot of the reviews for these book. Otherwise, you could skip this book.

May the Force be with us!!

It's so difficult to continue to pick up this book to read it, but I keep telling myself to finish the series I started.

Aaron Allston started out doing well in this series, but it seems from this book that he grew tired of this storyline. The other authors didn't help, especially Traviss' addiction to Mandalorians and their completely unrelated storyline taking up half of each of her books.

But, really, it is almost physically painful to continue reading this. The writing just plain sucks, and even the ideas of how events occur and characters' reactions to them are completely out-of-place and absurd. And I'm not even going to talk about the dialogue. Unbelievable. I mean, *I* almost feel embarrassed to read this.

Summing it up in one word: Disappointing.

i like the star wars books mostly because of their psychological aspect, and this book just didn't have much of it. i'm giving it 4 stars only because both and like finally are starting to make sense and the game is no longer "i know something but i won't tell anyone what it is!". what i didn't like is the fact that jacen is very steadily going down the dumb path, and not the dark one. he gets dumber and dumber with every book.. why??? we want to see him darker and darker, not dumber and dumber...

i found the first half of the book very boring. the second half though was pretty good - lots of things happened.

It is very rare when a book that is ostensibly part of a series can actually be skipped altogether. This is ultimately the case with Fury, a book that ends with every character in exactly the same place they were when the book began. If you skip Fury altogether, you won't miss anything. It fails to advance any of the story arcs, and those few changes that do occur end up being reversed by the end of the story. As just one example, Jacen begins the story by abducting his daughter. By the end of the story, she has been abducted back and Jacen is once again alone in the galaxy. Sadly, this is what happens with every ongoing story arc in the series: A change happens at the beginning of the book, but things are returned to the status quo by the end of the book.

This series remains a fun diversion for die-hard Star Wars fans. However, it is getting tired. While I know (warning: blasphemous statement ahead) the original Star Wars movies (especially the prequels) were not the most well-conceived and executed stories in history, they are fun, and carry the viewer into a brilliantly conceived realm, but suffer from poor writing and scripting throughout. However, the Legacy of the Force series has thoughtlessly embarked on a voyage to rehash the original storylines, set some 4 decades in the future, without so much as wincing at the half-baked recycling being done.

So far, the only truly interesting part of the series occured during "Bloodlines" when we got a more thoughtful look into the life of Boba Fett, who has been often admired but overlooked in the deeper stories. Other than that, it's the same "tragic hero" scenario as the movies. Anakin was trying to protect his wife, and bring order to the galaxy, and fell to the dark side in the process. His grandson, Jacen, wants to protect his daughter and bring order to the galaxy, and what do you know ... he falls to the dark side! Gee, didn't see that one coming!

There is so much potential in this series to be really great, to really define these inheritors of the Star Wars legacy, but so little realization of that potential. This book, at times, starts to generate some real tension and almost draws you in, but somehow loses its hold of the reader (me, at least). I don't know how to explain it other than to say that as quickly as I started to get wrapped up in the story, it would fizzle and I would find myself puting the book down to go do something else. The story progresses ... and plot continues (I'd like to say thicken, but how could it not after the last 6 books?) ... and we wait for at least one really defining book in this series. It's a fun read, like the others ... low on substance but rich in sub-cultural tradition. It's a very quick read, like the others, and seems to fit in nicely with the overall story and substance of those books.

I just wish one of these three authors, all perfectly talented enough to do it, would bring some real tension and action to this series. I wouldn't pay full price for any of the these books so far, look to Half Priced Books or another used book store for them. They are worth the price of a used version, but don't buy it new. Look at Darth Bane: Path of Destruction and tell me that any of the Legacy books parallel that quality of storytelling. I know my standards are probably set a little high, but I know there is more potential in this series than what we are seeing. Everything feels rushed, and too many familiar plot devices have been used. Either this series needed to only be 5 or 6 books long, or the writers need more time to craft these works. Whatever the reason, this series continues to leave me feeling like I'm watching an HD broadcast on a standard definition TV.

Another month, another Star Wars review... I personally think that Inferno by Denning was the best thus far in the series, so I expected to be slightly let down by this installment. Allston wrote an entertaining read. It's true, I skimmed over certain parts, mostly pertaining to the battles, which have never been my favorite part of the SW Universe, but overall, I enjoyed what this latest installment of LotF.

Ben takes a huge step back for the first part of the story and Luke takes a huge step forward towards the becoming again the old Luke Skywalker we all grew to know and love. Kyp has a larger role in the story, which I found quite nice, and Jag has some great interaction with the Solo clan. Even Boba, who isn't seen in this book, plays a small role in the beginning, which definitely sets things in motion for the final two books.

Obviously I recommend this to anyone who has come this far with the series, why stop now? Even if I'm not a huge Boba Fett fan, I'm looking forward to Traviass book. Every storyline has its good and bad, but honestly, LotF is panning out into a decent addition to the SW timeline.