Customer Reviews

Tempest (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 3)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Tempest is the third book of the nine part Legacy of the Force series. This book focuses on the attempt on the life of the Hapan Consortiums Queen Mother Tenel Ka and the implications for the war between the Galactic Alliance and the Corellian system. It takes place just a couple of days after the end of Bloodlines by Karen Traviss.

This book surpassed my expectations, which were very high to begin with since Troy Denning is one of my favorite Star Wars writers and he had set up the LotF series so well in the Dark Nest Trilogy. The plot revolves around the new (but no better) Corellian Sytem Prime Minister Dur Gejjin trying to bring the Hapns into the war on his side with the help of Han and Leia Solo. This plotline is interwoven very nicely with the ongoing plot regarding Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker which continues to shock and amaze. Luke and Mara Skywalker are also involved in this plotline and in this book the pieces start to come together a bit more and they finally are forced into a frantic confrontation with the Dark Lady Lumiya. What made this book so good for me was that the action sequences were simply amazing, from begin to end they all felt compelling and full of Star Wars magic and they covered a great deal of locations and types of combat, from the Jedi Temple training vault on Coruscant to the marshy hunting retreat of a Hapan Noble family. The characters all felt spot on as usual with Troy Denning and I found that the overall GA/Corellia plotline continued to be both extremely plausable and throughly intriguing as it spread into the Hapan Cluster. I missed seeing Jedi Master Saba Sebatyne who only got a couple of mentions in the book but I certainly enjoyed the pair of Coruscant Detectives(a Bith and a Rodian) who tag along Luke and Mara Skywalker for a part story and I hope they might pop up again somewhere down the line.

I think that Tempest is the best book of Legacy of the Force so far and that is saying something based on how much I enjoyed both Betrayal and Bloodlines. It has great action, cahracterisations, plot and a number of shocking surprise thrown in along the way. I could't stop reading untill I had finished it. The only downside is that it will be late february 2007 untill book four; Exile by Aaron Allston is released.

This third volume in the Legacy series is perhaps the easiest read thus far. Denning brings a light touch to composition, leading the reader from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter. It's a wonderful experience to be carried along so effortlessly, caught up in a spell that for a short time obscures the world outside these pages.

If you can afford to stay in that zone, the book might work better for you than if you have to read it in sections over a period of a week or more, in which case the twisted plot and the large cast make rereading previous portions of the book a necessity in picking up the threads.

The series limps along without any additional information about what's causing this galaxy-wide conflict, so leave behind any such expectations, then get ready to swallow this: Han Solo, the newly minted Correllian nationalist, is sent along with Leia as emissary to convince the Hapes Consortium to remain neutral in Corellia's conflict with the Galactic Alliance. In reality, they've been sent as bait to lure Queen Tenel Ka into the open for an assassination attempt, part of a wider plot to install a pro-Corellian government on Hapes. Realizing they've been set-up, Han and Leia try to warn the Queen, only to be caught up in the shooting once the assassin strikes. Everyone thinks Han and Leia are part of the plan and so the two play along, teaming up with and helping the frustrated assassin escape so that they can uncover the plotters. From there it just gets sillier, as the Solos convince the assassin's handler that they are in fact part of a plot to kill the former Jedi and longtime friend of the family, and later when the shooting resumes to do nothing to save the Queen in order to protect their credentials as Corellian nationalists.

As if that weren't incredulous enough, there's the 80-year old assassin who gives Jacen a run for his money. The big, bad, dark-sider is saved from extinction by his 5-year old daughter (who tawks with an annoyingly steweotypical wisp). Luke and Mara's 13-year old son, Ben, who in the previous volume was for the very first time sensitively written, is reduced by Denning into a whiny, petulant teenager.

Then there's the problem of death, or more specifically how all the major and even minor characters avoid it. This book is packed with violent encounters of all kinds - Mara and Luke take on Lumiya; the assassin shoots it up with the Hapes Royal Guard before trading lightsaber blows with Jacen; Alema goes a round with Mara; Jaina and Zekk are pounded by two YVH battle droids and a dozen starfighters and later have to evacuate spacecraft twice; the Falcon, limping along without shields, is rocked by a massive turbolaser blast; and out of all this carnage, the only corpses in sight are a Jedi you likely won't remember from the Dark Nest trilogy and Leia's two Noghri bodyguards.

In the end, the pro-Corellian plot is put down, all the major and supporting characters have survived (a few with treatable wounds), Luke and Mara seem no wiser about Jacen's turn to the dark side (though they do finally assert their parental rights to take their son back to Coruscant), and about the only development of significance seems to be the beginning of a rivalry between Jacen and Lumiya. In other words, nothing much happens to advance the story.

Which is why Denning's writing saves this from being little more than an exercise in selling more product to Star Wars fans.

The story is really good. Jacen progresses further down the road we all know he's going (from the current promotion/contest - sales must be poor). Seeing what he'll do towards those ends is pretty surprising. Luke and Mara finally get a little spine in this one too. The space battle and lightsaber duel are well done, but I won't say why because it gives too much away.

There are some downsides. First: This book suffers from Denning spending so much time re-treading old characters. The Lumiya angle is fine since its central to the story, and she hasn't been in a SW for years. But a few other unnecessary Denning-favorites appear, which is sad, because there was some room for some fun character building. Traviss did the same thing with Boba Fett's storyline in the last one. If you hadn't read her books, you miss a lot of the subtext of that book. Well, if you haven't read Denning's previous SW books, you miss a lot here, too. I think it's purely a marketing scam to makes us read the older novels. Nice way to bump sales, eh? Only this time the re-tread is a dead Jedi who has not-really-died before. Eesh. There's another re-tread bounty hunter too. Double-eesh. I won't say who, and it's not as bad as Boba Fett, but it could have been someone new and fresh. Remember how the NJO gave us a wealth of new, major characters? Not Legacy, not yet anyway.

Second: Jacen's story is just the same as Vader's story. If I told you there was a bad guy in long black robes, who commands from the deck of a Star Destroyer, and chokes out his own staff with the force, and who has a secret love he can't acknowledge because she's in politics, and has a secret kid with her, you'd probably think I was talking about Vader. But I'm not.

Overall, the book is alright, just completly devoid of any originality

I thought that this book wasn't as engaging as the first two books in the the Legacy series. Denning, to his credit, did find a way to reference every Star Wars book he has written so far. However I don't feel much was accomplished with this book. I know there are six more book to go so it has to be stretched out but I was left saying oh well. I have to wait until the next book to say for sure if this book is even important enought to read or should have been a couple of chapters in another book. So with that said if your not intending to read the whole series you can skip this one.

I am a huge fan of Star Wars, both the original series and the expanded universe. I have read the entire New Jedi Order series and all of this current Legacy of the Force series. Okay, first the good things: The relationship between Ben and Luke and Jacen is heating up and becoming more interesting and dynamic. Jacen's ability to justify everything he does is much colder in comparison to his grandfather Darth Vader. Although there are similarities between the two, Jacen's self-righteous reasoning for the evil that he does is chilling. The series so far has topped itself in every book with another action more evil than the last for Jacen. I would like to be more specific but I can't without introducing spoilers. Ben is becoming more impulsive and dangerous in his blind following of Jacen even though he does seem at times to question his motives, and it is still not clear which path Ben will eventually take. Han and Leia have some of the best scenes in this book both in content and dialogue, and I found their plot lines to be the best part about this book because they involved all of the kids, Ben, Jacen, and Jaina, and gave me more of a nostalgic feeling for what made Star Wars great; action, witty dialogue, and impossible situations that the good guys get out of with humour and real humanity.

Now for the bad things: A lot of the dialogue between Luke and Jacen when Luke confronts Jacen about obvious evil deeds just falls flat. It ususally starts out looking like Luke has finally had enough but the extent to which Jacen openly lies without much challenge left me wondering just how much Jacen has to do before luke takes his head. I mean, I know there are more books in this series so they have to draw it out, but come on. Also, while a lot of what Jacen and Lumiya do is deceptive and clandestine, Jacen is so obviously evil in a lot of his actions, that it is hard to believe that those who consider him a hero can be quite so naive, especially Ben or the Queen Mother of Hapes. Jacen does not hide much of what he does and yet he seems to have the complete approval of the Alliance. At least the emperor was using the Dark side to hide his activities, but Jacen does a great deal in the open and a lot of people buy it. I'm sorry I don't believe the people of Coruscant and the Alliance in general would be so willing to take the lead of another ruthless charismatic Jedi. I think that is the weakest point of this series. It just doesn't wash. Also, the space battle between the Alliance, Correllia and Hapes I found to be poorly described, giving the reader a sense of "Okay, now which battle group is this, and what are they doing?". It did little more than serve as an excuse to get everyone together at the end of the story.

So, while the development of Jacen as a bad guy is interesting, his dialogue is mostly flat and the space battles were poorly done and confusing. I'm sorry, I have just seen much better work from this author. I hope the next book in this series shows how much people are getting sick of Jacen as his character to me is completely despicable. This is a shame because I was hoping someone would come along to fill the void that the death of Anakin created and I thought it would eventually be Jacen. Who knows, maybe it will be Ben?

I know I'm probably different from most Star Wars fans in that I read this book about 6 months after I read Bloodlines, so it's hard for me to compare Denning's writing to that of Karen Traviss. Not that it's required for the review, but I'm hoping I can get the next one a little sooner so I can get a better comparison of the writing, if only because I felt like Troy Denning's writing was only really well suited to the scenes involving the Solos. Of course, the Solos are also the most interesting characters, while everyone else is kind of stale and bland, so maybe that's why the former seem more well written.

There were times when the use of certain phrases cropped up several times in a chapter and then were never used again. Maybe I'm being hypercritical, but it really took me out of the story at those points.

Overall, though, this was a solid addition to the Legacy of the Force series, and obviously worth reading for anyone who likes Star Wars. If you've already read the first two books in the series, you're probably not going to stop reading unless the writing is truly awful, and even then, you'll probably just skip a single book. This is a pretty easy read, and certainly not one you want to skip.

I liked the book but it seemed to drag a little leading up to the big battle at the end but then the battle ended real quickly. I understand this story isn't really about the military battles. But, this was the most important battle of the series so far and it just ended really abruptly. I think Jacen should be kicked out of the JO by now. They are having way to much patience with him.

This is the third installment in the Legacy of the Force series and, in my opinion, the best so far. The basic plot of Jacen Solo's decent into darkness may not be all that original, but it does make for some entertaining reading.

While an assortment of old friends and even older enemies make an appearance, Han and Leia are the emotional heart of this book. Having allied themselves with Corellia, a decision that strained family ties, the Solos find themselves being manipulated into a plot to assassinate the Queen Mother of Hapes and thus into direct confrontation with their son.

Denning has a knack for capturing the essence of the Solos and a real gift for penning Han's obligatory cocky comebacks. The book is full of the usual political intrigue and blasterfire. Yet at its core, it is an expoloration of conflicts between parents and their children.

Overall, this is a solid entry in the Star Wars library.

Tempest, the 3rd book in a 5 part series is very well written. The plot flows evenly. The biggest complaint I have is that Luke, at least in this series seems to be "Lost in Space". He appears weak and ineffective and as "Grand Master" of the Jedi he is a collossal failure, his & Mara's failure to contain Jacen and bring Ben Skywalker back is Mind boggling. Are you telling me that the power that Luke and Mara have between them can't overcome Jacen is unfathomable. It almost appears that Luke is being marginalized or on the verge of being written out of existence. After all, HE IS the main character in Star Wars along with Han and Leia. The story line is good but I'd like to read more of Luke and for God's sake lets bring Lumiya out into the open so that we can hate her properly.

The first two books in this series made me think this series was dead, but this one happily surprised me. I liked the story, unlike the previous books. Troy does things in this book that the other 2 had failed to do in their books, making it interesting. The first one wasn't bad, the second one was horrid, but this one is very well written and interesting. I wanted to give up, but after reading this one, I want to continue. Thank you so much, Troy!