|
Here's a synopsis of the first book, I think it's kind of a crappy synopsis and I probably missed some small details because it was kind of boring so I rushed through it.
The story begins the day after the Battle of Endor. Luke feels like crap after being barbecued by Palpatine. An Imperial drone ship -- used to deliver messages if communications are blocked -- was intercepted by Wedge Antilles that was intended for the Emperor, but he accidentally set off the self-destruct sequence, managing to put his hand between the two crystals that, upon contact, set off the explosion.
Luke goes out in an X-Wing and sends his lightsaber EVA, and uses the Force to briefly see through Wedge's eyes, which as far as I know, is never used again. He has Wedge remove his hand and cuts one of the crystals off before the bomb is set off.
Later in the medbay he finds out the Force lightning messed his body up by calcifying his skeletal structure and abruptly dropping his blood minerals. He is told he needs bed rest but goes to the briefing about the message anyway and gets yelled at by all the Alliance leaders. They find out that an Imperial subjugated planet called Bakura, out on the edge of the Outer Rim/Wild Space near Endor is under attack by invading aliens. The Alliance decides to send help to maybe get this planet to join the Alliance, .
Luke goes to get more bedrest and practices healing trances and Obi-Wan appears to him and tells him the Emperor made a deal with these invading aliens, but they know he died so they're just invading the planet now, and is a dick and doesn't tell Luke anything else except he has to go. So Luke tells Admiral Ackbar about this, and Ackbar says he studied the Kenobi maneuver or something from the Clone Wars, and says Luke can be commander of the small Alliance force they send, along with Leia as a diplomat and Han as her bodyguard.
The strike force consists of a small carrier called the Flurry, which doesn't seem to have much firepower other than the starfighters it carries. It's apparently from the Virgillian Civil War, along with its crew, and carries 20 X-Wings, 3 A-Wings, and 4 B-Wings.
Then we go to the character Dev Sibwarra, whom is a fifteen year old Force sensitive that was brainwashed by the invading aliens, and I don't find his subplot that interesting but apparently he is the son of a Jedi padawan (padawan isn't used in the book) that died, and he was taken by the Ssi-Ruuk, which are the alien invaders, but it's not particularly clear how they knew he was Force sensitive since it says that the Ssi-Ruuk are Force blind. They used him to entech humans, whereby they drain their life force into a droid to power it.
So the Flurry uses something called the Battle Analysis Computer, which was invented by General Dodonna, which was far as I recall never appears again, but I didn't remember it in this book so we shall see. The alliance force joins up with the Imperial defense force over Bakura, while Han lands the Falcon on a planet far out in the system to wait for the battle to die down. He has Chewbacca set a candlelight type dinner in the cargo hold, but Chewbacca puts an inflatable bed back there which ruins things for Han, then the Falcon is attacked by Ssi-Ruuvi battle droids, so they join in the battle and help the Alliance force. After the battle Luke thinks about how he hates commanding troops and wants to resign his commission.
After the battle, Luke, Han and Leia go before the Bakuran senate, which the Empire allowed to remain existent, and Leia tells them how they'd like to help defend the planet, while Luke sees a senator that he immediately has the hots for. However, upon learning that Luke is a Jedi, Luke senses that she dislikes him. So some sort of truce is agreed upon, with the Empire and Alliance merging their forces. They meet some more local politicans, and pretty much learn that most of them hate the Empire but don't have much a choice since the Empire conquered Bakura around the time of the Battle of Yavin. The girl Luke has the hots for is named Gaeriel Captison.
So the book is kind of boring with them meeting people and Leia wants to try to get the planet to join the Alliance so they are seeing who hates the Empire, while the Imperial governor there, Nereus, is thinking about how he could try to become Emperor himself but realizes since he is governor of some crap planet that would never happen, and also thinks that once the Ssi-Ruuk are repelled he's going to capture Luke and Leia. So Luke, Han, and Leia go to some dinner and Luke hits it off with Gaeriel but finds out her religion hates Jedi because it believes in Cosmic Balance and so if one person accumulates a lot of power, someone else is weakened. But Luke wants to get into her pants anyway and keeps trying to make her realize he's not a bad guy.
Also the Imperials are mad that they brought Chewbacca to the dinner, because they're racist, but Chewie says that since the Ssi-Ruuk are only interested in enteching humans, he really has no reason to care about the conflict but is helping out anyway, and offers to be an envoy. The Imperials say that they can't translate the Ssi-Ruuk language beyond what Dev translates in messages for them, so they offer up C-3PO to go, and the Imperials have a good laugh about being represented by an alien and a droid.
Luke visits one of the senator's homes, and he's gone but Gaeriel is there, as is the senator's wife, who has space-alzheimer's, and Luke does something where he realizes her disease was inflicted on her, and imprints on her mind how to heal herself or something, so she goes into a healing trance. And Gaeriel likes that Luke helped her but hates that he uses magic powers because it unbalances the cosmic balance.
So the Imperial governor sends some alien haters to the Rebel landing bay to make sure the Ssi-Ruuk don't come down through it, and they see some Mon Calamari crewmen and attack them because they're dumb, and the Mon Cals kill two of them. Luke interrupts and defuses the situation. Meanwhile, Anakin Skywalker appears to Leia, and his description in the book could apply to Hayden Christensen so I guess that's cool. He asks Leia for forgiveness, but Leia hates him and thinks of him as Vader, and refuses to acknowledge he is her father and also doesn't want to learn the Force because that would be sort of acknowledging she is related to Vader. She thinks of Bail Organa as her father.
Anakin says to tell Luke that fear leads to the dark side and that he won't be able to return again probably, but he will always be around watching, and he asks Leia for Han's forgiveness through her for torturing him and freezing him in carbonite, and Leia says no and he disappears and she gets really pissed off that he appeared to her, and she tells Han about it.
So Dev senses Luke through the Force, and we learn that Dev is being brainwashed but it's a temporary thing so he has moments of lucidity, and he warns Luke through the Force that the Ssi-Ruuk want to use him to entech people from a distance. The Ssi-Ruuk, through brainwashed Dev, contact the governor Nereus and offer to leave Bakura if he gives them Luke. Nereus agrees, but thinks that if Luke would help them, he can't do it. Gaeriel finds out about this and warns Luke and they have lunch together and it's lovely. And it sort of goes on about how that senator and his wife were Bakuran rebels and that's probably why she was given space-alzheimer's, and Gaeriel has some device that blocks electronic monitoring and it suggests there's an underground movement of sorts.
So then Leia is in a hoverlimo with that one senator and the prime minister (Gaeriel's uncle who doesn't really do much), and they're using this device to talk about overthrowing the Empire after the Ssi-Ruuk are repelled, but Nereus knows that they're blocking the monitoring and they're all arrested, and the one senator dies of a stroke or something. So the Imperials are suddenly hostile on the planet, so Han sends Threepio to the Falcon dressed in stormtrooper armor, but Chewbacca shoots him with a stun bolt. Then Han crashes a landspeeder into the wall where Leia is being held and rescues her.
Meanwhile, the Ssi-Ruuk land on the planet in an Imperial shuttle with a stomrtrooper escort to acquire Luke, and he's with Gaeriel and they try to take her too, and Luke effs them up and kills one Ssi-Ruuk and stuns the stormtroopers with their own bolt, but Gaeriel is hit by a Ssi-Ruuk stun bolt and Artoo drags her away. Luke gets hit in the leg, and then gets slapped by a Ssi-Ruuk tail (as they look like raptors). Dev takes Luke out, and Artoo comes back beeping angrily and gets knocked over.
Gaeriel is taken to the Imperial base by Nereus and he reveals that the food that she and Luke ate was infested with a parasite, and she has her removed, as Nereus' plan was to have the Ssi-Ruuk killed off by this parasite before they could use Luke.
Meanwhile, Luke wakes up and kicks ass, and all the Ssi-Ruuk flee the ship because they think that if they die off their consecrated homeworlds they don't go to the afterlife. The Empire notices this, and destroys the Flurry, and then starts firing on the Ssi-Ruuk flagship. Luke realizes he has these parasites and uses the Force to remove them. Dev gets effed up like Revan does by an attack, and the Falcon recovers Luke. Rogue Squadron and the other starfighters get the one Imperial ship to surrender after they disable it, and take its commander prisoner, and he's supposed to be a sort of okay guy since aliens saved his life once so he feels indebted to them.
Meanwhile the Bakuran rebels capture Nereus, and then they have a scene at the end like at the end of Episode I where the Alliance confronts Nereus, and Luke comes out and Nereus freaks out and grabs a blaster and shoots at Luke because he thinks he's infected, and Luke deflects it back at him and kills him. Them Gaeriel is ready to reciprocate Luke's feelings but Luke cares more about training Dev and goes and checks on him, but he dies. Then Gaeriel comes in and tells Luke she doesn't want to leave Bakura and they kiss once and that's it, so it's kind of lame. Apparently Kathy Tyers wanted Luke to marry her but she couldn't because Luke wasn't with her in the Zahn trilogy.
Altogether, the book was very average, and the only part that interested me was Luke and Gaeriel, but it didn't go anywhere so it was sort of pointless.
_________________
"I tell you this: though neither he nor they yet know it, he is the greatest of all the Jedi. Jacen Solo is the living Jedi dream."
|
