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Star Wars: Legacy of the Force #9
Invincible
No war can last forever. Now, in the long and punishing battle between the defiant champions of the New Jedi Order and the juggernaut that is the Galactic Alliance, the endgame is finally at hand.
The rebel cause is losing ground under the twin blows of Admiral Gilad Pellaeon’s assassination and the death of Mara Jade Skywalker. At the same time, the Galactic Alliance, with the extraordinary power and dark brilliance of newly ascendant Sith Lord Darth Caedus at its helm, may be unstoppable. Tormented and torn between the call of duty and the thirst for vengeance, Luke has searched the Force and beheld an unspeakable vision of the galaxy enslaved under tyranny more monstrous than even Palpatine’s. Now it seems that the last, best hope lies in mobilizing the scattered Jedi for one decisive search-and-destroy mission. The objective: eliminate Darth Caedus.
It’s a plan that will be as difficult and dangerous to execute as it is daring. For Caedus is a scion of both the Skywalker and Solo bloodlines whose command of the Force surpasses even that of his grandfather Darth Vader. There is only one who is bound by destiny to stand against him in what will surely be a duel to the death, only one with an outside chance of bringing down the dark lord who was once Jacen Solo.
The furious final moments between power and peace are here, and whoever confronts Darth Caedus will decide the outcome–and the fate of those left standing.
The rebel cause is losing ground under the twin blows of Admiral Gilad Pellaeon’s assassination and the death of Mara Jade Skywalker. At the same time, the Galactic Alliance, with the extraordinary power and dark brilliance of newly ascendant Sith Lord Darth Caedus at its helm, may be unstoppable. Tormented and torn between the call of duty and the thirst for vengeance, Luke has searched the Force and beheld an unspeakable vision of the galaxy enslaved under tyranny more monstrous than even Palpatine’s. Now it seems that the last, best hope lies in mobilizing the scattered Jedi for one decisive search-and-destroy mission. The objective: eliminate Darth Caedus.
It’s a plan that will be as difficult and dangerous to execute as it is daring. For Caedus is a scion of both the Skywalker and Solo bloodlines whose command of the Force surpasses even that of his grandfather Darth Vader. There is only one who is bound by destiny to stand against him in what will surely be a duel to the death, only one with an outside chance of bringing down the dark lord who was once Jacen Solo.
The furious final moments between power and peace are here, and whoever confronts Darth Caedus will decide the outcome–and the fate of those left standing.
Audio CD
First published May 13, 2008
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About the author
Troy Denning
186 books665 followersAlso known as Richard Awlinson.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Den...
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Den...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 239 reviews
June 2, 2019
Heartbreaking, but still good space opera.
July 31, 2011
Oh, I LOVED this one. But, beware, spoilers abound in this review.
I had pretty much figured out that Jaina would be the one to have to kill Caedus (Jacen, her twin, if you don't know) by the time he became Caedus. The Prophecy of Jaina being the Sword of the Jedi has been around since about the middle of the NJO series; it was only a matter of time before we saw what it ultimately entailed.
A lot of people don't like the book, or the whole LotF series at all. People have brought up points like, "Nobody tried to redeem Caedus/Jacen," and stuff like that. But, really, there was no other choice at the time other than kill him. He wasn't going to stop; he wasn't going to see that what he was doing was wrong (or at least the wrong way to go about it). And people DID try to redeem him, bring him back from the Dark Side, but he wasn't having any of it.
Now for random things I liked about this book.
There was a ton of Jaina material in it. She's my favorite character (EU character, anyway), and they really shortchanged her in most of the LotF novels. She was finally brought forward and was able to fulfill the Prophecy given to her when she was made a Jedi Knight.
"I name you the Sword of the Jedi. You are like tempered steel, purposeful and razor-keen. Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends. Yours is a restless life, and never shall you know peace, though you shall be blessed for the peace that you bring to others. Take comfort in the fact that, though you stand tall and alone, others will take shelter in the shadow that you cast."
- Luke Skywalker, Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way
A pretty hefty burden for anyone to bear, but Jaina does it beautifully. She was the only one that could kill Caedus, and she did what she had to.
Zekk is missing, as of the end of the book. Not that I want him to be dead (which he probably isn't), I just like this fact because it makes it almost certain Jaina will end up with Jag. Because I am a Jaina/Jag fangirl. Lol. But it makes perfect sense for them to end up together. Besides the fact that she'd actually have a last name - seeing as Zekk doesn't have a last name; sure, she could keep Solo but c'mon! - they just click. That, and Jag can outfly her.
"She squeezed his hand again. 'Thanks.'
'Thanks aren't necessary,' Jag said. 'Zekk is a good man.'
'Not for...Zekk." Jaina shook her head - and wished she hadn't as her neck erupted into scalding pain. 'For getting here first. Glad it was...you.'"
- Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible, pg. 285.
Woohoo, they didn't kill off Allana! They tried to trick you for a moment there, but she's fine and is now pretending to be Amelia, a 'war orphan'. Leia and Han are her acting guardians now; they can actually act like her grandparents instead of pretending they aren't. (Due to the secrecy of Allana's parentage [besides the mother, everyone already knowing it was Queen Mother Tenel Ka of Hapes], they couldn't before).
"'Hello, Jaina,' Allana's small voice said. 'They tell me we're going to be sisters now.'
Jaina smiled, her heart suddenly filling with a joy she had not thought imaginable just ten seconds earlier. 'I guess we are, Amelia. Welcome to the family.'"
- Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible, pg. 299.
I loved the flahsback chapters too, especially the last one. One of my favorite quotes is in that chapter.
"And Jaina hears [Jacen] whispering to her in her dreams, telling her that no one you love really ever has to die - not if you don't want them to...All you have to do is hold a place for them in your heart."
- Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible, pg. 281.
Beautiful.
:)
I had pretty much figured out that Jaina would be the one to have to kill Caedus (Jacen, her twin, if you don't know) by the time he became Caedus. The Prophecy of Jaina being the Sword of the Jedi has been around since about the middle of the NJO series; it was only a matter of time before we saw what it ultimately entailed.
A lot of people don't like the book, or the whole LotF series at all. People have brought up points like, "Nobody tried to redeem Caedus/Jacen," and stuff like that. But, really, there was no other choice at the time other than kill him. He wasn't going to stop; he wasn't going to see that what he was doing was wrong (or at least the wrong way to go about it). And people DID try to redeem him, bring him back from the Dark Side, but he wasn't having any of it.
Now for random things I liked about this book.
There was a ton of Jaina material in it. She's my favorite character (EU character, anyway), and they really shortchanged her in most of the LotF novels. She was finally brought forward and was able to fulfill the Prophecy given to her when she was made a Jedi Knight.
"I name you the Sword of the Jedi. You are like tempered steel, purposeful and razor-keen. Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends. Yours is a restless life, and never shall you know peace, though you shall be blessed for the peace that you bring to others. Take comfort in the fact that, though you stand tall and alone, others will take shelter in the shadow that you cast."
- Luke Skywalker, Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way
A pretty hefty burden for anyone to bear, but Jaina does it beautifully. She was the only one that could kill Caedus, and she did what she had to.
Zekk is missing, as of the end of the book. Not that I want him to be dead (which he probably isn't), I just like this fact because it makes it almost certain Jaina will end up with Jag. Because I am a Jaina/Jag fangirl. Lol. But it makes perfect sense for them to end up together. Besides the fact that she'd actually have a last name - seeing as Zekk doesn't have a last name; sure, she could keep Solo but c'mon! - they just click. That, and Jag can outfly her.
"She squeezed his hand again. 'Thanks.'
'Thanks aren't necessary,' Jag said. 'Zekk is a good man.'
'Not for...Zekk." Jaina shook her head - and wished she hadn't as her neck erupted into scalding pain. 'For getting here first. Glad it was...you.'"
- Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible, pg. 285.
Woohoo, they didn't kill off Allana! They tried to trick you for a moment there, but she's fine and is now pretending to be Amelia, a 'war orphan'. Leia and Han are her acting guardians now; they can actually act like her grandparents instead of pretending they aren't. (Due to the secrecy of Allana's parentage [besides the mother, everyone already knowing it was Queen Mother Tenel Ka of Hapes], they couldn't before).
"'Hello, Jaina,' Allana's small voice said. 'They tell me we're going to be sisters now.'
Jaina smiled, her heart suddenly filling with a joy she had not thought imaginable just ten seconds earlier. 'I guess we are, Amelia. Welcome to the family.'"
- Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible, pg. 299.
I loved the flahsback chapters too, especially the last one. One of my favorite quotes is in that chapter.
"And Jaina hears [Jacen] whispering to her in her dreams, telling her that no one you love really ever has to die - not if you don't want them to...All you have to do is hold a place for them in your heart."
- Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible, pg. 281.
Beautiful.
:)
April 20, 2015
My advice: stay away from this series altogether. It's dark, depressing, but perhaps even more important than any of those is that it makes no sense. Some characters suffer for the sake of suffering, others die in stupid ways, villains create plots that should have no chance of succeeding yet they always do due to the continuous, and I'll be borrowing a term from gaming here, "dumbing down" of the "good guys," etc., etc. This series really hits all the nails in the head.
It could've been an interesting read for a trilogy (maybe) but certainly not deserving of nine books. This series is going right to my "good-is-dumb" bookshelf and hopefully I'll create another category that can reflect how awful this series truly was. There were a few glimpses of hope in the form of Karen Traviss' depiction of Mandalorians but little else. The constant going back and forward between different authors didn't help the story either.
Unfortunately, this is a problem that's been going on since NJO, the longest-running war/drama/? in the history of Star Wars (close to 20 books!), and that has continued in the form of the series "Fate of the Jedi": too many books, not a very interesting plot, and the new generation of SW characters are rather dull and uninteresting.
To sum up: my faith in the EU died with Anakin Solo.
It could've been an interesting read for a trilogy (maybe) but certainly not deserving of nine books. This series is going right to my "good-is-dumb" bookshelf and hopefully I'll create another category that can reflect how awful this series truly was. There were a few glimpses of hope in the form of Karen Traviss' depiction of Mandalorians but little else. The constant going back and forward between different authors didn't help the story either.
Unfortunately, this is a problem that's been going on since NJO, the longest-running war/drama/? in the history of Star Wars (close to 20 books!), and that has continued in the form of the series "Fate of the Jedi": too many books, not a very interesting plot, and the new generation of SW characters are rather dull and uninteresting.
To sum up: my faith in the EU died with Anakin Solo.
January 17, 2018
I hate everything Jacen has become.
I hate-no, ABHOR-his actions in this book.
But Denning does a fantastic job at yanking at emotions so that I cried at the end.
Granted, that's because he focused on Jaina's point-of-view.
The prologue and an unnamed interlude focus on pieces of the past. Shadow Academy. Jacen being there for Jaina.
Each chapter begins with a joke from Jacen, most of which are from the YJK books.
So, yeah. This had the potential to be a five-star book, despite Jacen's behavior. Because Denning wrote him to be a great Sith who has one weakness.
- Fett is still Fett
- Han says that Jacen died of wounds from his fight with Omini and Caedus is the monster that took over, which is a very apt description.
- Tenel Ka's cousins Taryn and Trista are fantastic - mostly.
- Imperials are horrid and unleash nanoviruses that make me want to vomit...but show the Empire is still the Empire without a moral leader like Pellaeon...or Jag.
- Chief of State Daala *eye twitches but it works with the rest of the plot*
What is truly nauseating, and what makes me drop the star, is the pedophilia Denning has spattered throughout the book. Tahiri tries to seduce Ben. Hell, let's call it what it is - she's willing to rape him for the sake of helping Jacen.
Sure, she's kind of redeemed later, but those actions are despicable.
Then Taryn and Trista flirt with Ben.
WHAT THE KRIFF?! The kid is 14 bloody years old. You are all in your 30s. You are disgusting, all of your. Why the hell would this be okay?! WHY WAS THIS OKAYED?!
I hate-no, ABHOR-his actions in this book.
But Denning does a fantastic job at yanking at emotions so that I cried at the end.
Granted, that's because he focused on Jaina's point-of-view.
The prologue and an unnamed interlude focus on pieces of the past. Shadow Academy. Jacen being there for Jaina.
Each chapter begins with a joke from Jacen, most of which are from the YJK books.
So, yeah. This had the potential to be a five-star book, despite Jacen's behavior. Because Denning wrote him to be a great Sith who has one weakness.
- Fett is still Fett
- Han says that Jacen died of wounds from his fight with Omini and Caedus is the monster that took over, which is a very apt description.
- Tenel Ka's cousins Taryn and Trista are fantastic - mostly.
- Imperials are horrid and unleash nanoviruses that make me want to vomit...but show the Empire is still the Empire without a moral leader like Pellaeon...or Jag.
- Chief of State Daala *eye twitches but it works with the rest of the plot*
What is truly nauseating, and what makes me drop the star, is the pedophilia Denning has spattered throughout the book. Tahiri tries to seduce Ben. Hell, let's call it what it is - she's willing to rape him for the sake of helping Jacen.
Sure, she's kind of redeemed later, but those actions are despicable.
Then Taryn and Trista flirt with Ben.
WHAT THE KRIFF?! The kid is 14 bloody years old. You are all in your 30s. You are disgusting, all of your. Why the hell would this be okay?! WHY WAS THIS OKAYED?!
November 19, 2015
Legacy of the Force left me speechless. I really can't describe the enormous impact this series has on the Star Wars continuity, and the magnificent way it was executed. We get to see the Skywalker/Solo family shattered, the galaxy thrown into turmoil when it has barely recovered from the last conflict, and several major characters are lost along the way. The series is not perfect, in particular I felt that Traviss's unhealthy obsession with Boba Fett hurt the series a bit by forcing the Mandalorians in where they were not needed. The Jaina/Fett training montages really seemed more like fan service than a realistic plot point. Jacen's fall to the dark side, while fascinating, is a little questionable considering he appeared to be the only voice for morality in the epic New Jedi Order series. None of this mattered though, the epic nature of the story made these strange decisions into insignificant details. Legacy of the Force was amazing. I would say that every Star Wars fan should read it, but with the caveat that you really should read at least the New Jedi Order series first to provide context.
May 16, 2024
With the exception, I think, of Timothy Zahn's 'Heir to the Empire' books, I've found the Star Wars Legends (formerly known as 'extended universe') novels to be little more than fan fiction. This seems particularly pronounced the further you get into them. Having read nearly all of them in the past, including the YV war (which started out with promise, at least), I found myself particularly disappointed with this series of tales involving Jacen Solo as a Sith Lord.
Aside from the fact that his 'descent' made little sense to me, I just have serious doubts about Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia being action-hero types 40 years after they first chased stormtroopers around a Death Star. These older characters talk and make old-people jokes as if they're 80, but they run and fight as if they're still 20-35. Boba Fett was unduly emphasized in this series as well, and I found myself increasingly skipping past those parts. The politics and overall military conflict were un-interesting, predictable, and haven't we been here before? and I found myself reading very quickly through those as well. Then, there was the oddity of occasionally graphic violence and blood which isn't 'Star Wars' in any way shape or form.
These books just aren't 'Star Wars' in any real sense, and I'm glad they're no longer considered 'canon.' File them under fan fiction that some fortunate fans actually got paid for.
Aside from the fact that his 'descent' made little sense to me, I just have serious doubts about Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia being action-hero types 40 years after they first chased stormtroopers around a Death Star. These older characters talk and make old-people jokes as if they're 80, but they run and fight as if they're still 20-35. Boba Fett was unduly emphasized in this series as well, and I found myself increasingly skipping past those parts. The politics and overall military conflict were un-interesting, predictable, and haven't we been here before? and I found myself reading very quickly through those as well. Then, there was the oddity of occasionally graphic violence and blood which isn't 'Star Wars' in any way shape or form.
These books just aren't 'Star Wars' in any real sense, and I'm glad they're no longer considered 'canon.' File them under fan fiction that some fortunate fans actually got paid for.
July 6, 2023
2.5 stars
For 2023, I decided to reread the post-NJO books set after the Dark Nest trilogy, especially as I abandoned the Legacy of the Force series after Sacrifice all the way back in 2007. This shakes out to the nine books of the Legacy of the Force series, the nine books of the Fate of the Jedi series, three standalone novels, and five short stories.
This week’s focus: the last book in the Legacy of the Force series, Invincible by Troy Denning.
SOME HISTORY:
Jason Felix is a self-taught artist, and growing up he really enjoyed the artwork in comic books and Dungeons and Dragons. Before creating the covers for the Legacy of the Force series, he mostly created art and characters for video games. His LotF covers feature a different character on each book (maybe you can argue that Jacen on Betrayal and Caedus on Revelation are two different people at that point), and unlike Drew Struzan’s traditional paintings for the Bantam books, these works were all created digitally. I like getting to see the characters here, but the backgrounds are a little too vague and nondescript for me. Legacy of the Force: Invincible by Troy Denning made it to number five on the New York Times bestseller list for the week of June 1, 2008, and was on the list for three weeks.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
While I tried to go blind into my read of Invincible, I did know a few things were going to happen—I mean, the cover pretty much gives away the ultimate showdown between the Solo twins.
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
The rebel cause is losing ground after the assassination of Admiral Pellaeon of the Imperial Remnant and the murder of Mara Jade Skywalker. Darth Caedus and his Galactic Alliance forces seem unbeatable, and Luke Skywalker has seen a vision of the future which shows the galaxy enslaved under a tyranny to rival that of Emperor Palpatine. So the Jedi decide to make one last-ditch effort to eliminate Darth Caedus, and there's only one individual capable of facing him…
THE PLOT:
I was a little surprised by Invincible’s short length. As the series’ closer, I expected a hefty volume, but it was under 400 pages and only 20 chapters.
We open with the Imperial Remnant attacking the Verpine homeworld of Roche, and the Mandalorians plus Jaina Solo failing to stop the invasion. Jaina heads back to the secret Jedi base in the Hapan Cluster, and the Jedi decide they need to make a final stand against Darth Caedus, formerly Jacen Solo. Ben Skywalker is captured by Tahiri Veila and the Galactic Alliance Guard during an intelligence mission on Coruscant, and Jaina learns that Caedus is on Roche. Jaina sneaks onto Nickel One, and she faces off against her brother. She manages to grievously wound him by cutting off his arm, but Jacen escapes.
From there it's a madcap dash to the finale, as Jacen has marked Jaina with a Nightsister blood trail and will soon learn the location of the secret Jedi base. The Jedi and the Hapan fleet unite to stop Jacen’s forces, and Jaina faces off against him one more time.
CHARACTERS:
A key portion of the novel involves Jaina having to face down her brother and eliminate him, but she doesn’t want her parents to lose all their surviving children in one go so…she’s pretty conflicted here. The previous book Revelation was about Jaina finally coming to terms with the fact that she has to kill her brother, but one book later she’s still struggling with that decision. She knows the job that she has to do, that her brother won’t stand down or surrender, but he’s still her twin. And after training with the Mandalorians for an entire book, she has enough camaraderie with them that she worries about them becoming collateral damage during her fight. Jaina is outmatched by Jacen in Force skills, but she has trained very hard and she’s persistent. She wounds Jacen during their first showdown (partially because Luke is using the Force to focus Jacen’s attention on him to the extent that Jacen doesn’t even realize Jaina there), and she triumphs in their second duel because Jacen is pretty distracted by the Hapan situation.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Troy Denning novel without some weird stuff, so we learn that concussed Jaina propositioned Jag and Zekk for a threesome after that first showdown with Jacen. I did not need to know that! It seems that spending time with the Mandalorians has led to the last vestiges of Jaina’s connection with Zekk fading away, which is for the best. Since Jaina is not interested in Zekk that way, he’s presumably going to be paired off with a Hapan relative of Tenel Ka in a blatant bit of sequel bait. (Another bit of sequel bait: Zekk is MIA after the final battle, and while Jaina didn’t feel him die, we don’t know what happened to him.)
Jagged Fel is still hanging around with Leia and Han on the Millennium Falcon, but after Jacen is defeated Luke puts his name forward Admiral Pellaeon’s replacement, the next leader of the Imperial Remnant. The Moffs are cool with it and Jag accepts, but it’s quite the whiplash to go from a 92-year-old man with loads of authority and experience to…Jag. I like Jag! But (no offense) Jag comes across as a boring non-character at times.
We learn that Luke has seen this recurring vision of the future wherein the galaxy falls apart under Caedus’s leadership, and I really wish we could have seen an example of this instead of being told about it. Because we’re never really in Luke’s head—definitely the shorter page count at play here—and instead only see Luke through other people’s eyes. He’s focusing Jacen’s attention on him, he allows Ben to be captured so Caedus won’t be too suspicious, and he lures the Mandalorians into a trap; he’s a lot more manipulative than I expected from good old Luke Skywalker.
Ben is a good boy, but he felt more mature than fourteen. (Yes, he’s lived through a lot and is Wise Beyond His Years, but there were times when I questioned if a fourteen-year-old would really think and talk like that.) Ben is worried about the people around him, especially when Captain Shevu and he are captured, but he also won’t give away crucial info under interrogation. (More on that interrogation scene later.)
Leia and Han just want this war to come to an end, and they’re trying their best to ensure that Jaina makes it out OK. Again, this wouldn’t be a Troy Denning novel without people disguising themselves as aliens—so when Jaina and Leia and Ben sneak onto Coruscant, Leia is the sexy alien. And during the final battle, the Imperial Remnant releases a biological weapon meant to wipe out the Hapan royal family. The Queen Mother survives, but it looks like Allana was killed—and Han is broken up about it. They just found out about their granddaughter, and now they’ve lost her. When they confront the Moffs at the end of the book, Han threatens them; and while we know that Han would never shoot a Moff, I wish he had! Screw those Moffs, they’re garbage.
After the end of Revelation, I wasn’t sure if we were going to see Boba Fett and the Mandalorians again. But they’re on Roche in the beginning with Jaina, and they return to Roche when Jaina first attempts to take Jacen out. Mirta Gev and the other Mandos want to kill all the Moffs, but it ends up being one of Jacen’s power plays to remove the Moffs he didn’t like. The Mandos are pretty much all killed, except for poor Mirta, who has spinal cord damage, is captured and tortured by Jacen, and then her DNA is used to create a biological weapon targeting the Fett family. Mirta is rescued in the end, but the weapon is still deployed on Mandalore so that Boba and Mirta can never return home.
Oh boy, that development did not feel thought through to me. Yes, it’s a way to keep them off Mandalore, but I felt like no one considered the ramifications here. If you build a bioweapon targeting Boba Fett (the clone of Jango Fett), you’re putting both Jango’s extended family as well as any other Jango clones or offspring of Jango clones at risk—and at one point, there were millions of Jango clones running around the galaxy. Plus, the fact that it apparently does not dissipate and will always be on Mandalore sounds like huge possibilities for the bioweapon to mutate or start affecting other Mandalorians. I know the Moffs are the bad guys here, but the development of this Fett-specific bioweapon seems super risky to me.
On the bad guy front, Tahiri Veila continues to be an absolute monster. She has no problem torturing and assaulting a kid (ahem, more on that in the Issues), but killing Captain Shevu causes a crack in her facade. She didn’t mean to go that far, and she’s upset about it—and then Jacen reveals how much he manipulated her, and how their flow-walking sessions did not and could not change anything. She loses trust in Jacen’s vision, but I felt like her about-face at the end was a little too sudden for me. Up until Invincible, she was 100% Jacen’s minion, so I wasn’t sure that I bought her redemption after barely one book of doubts about the Sith stuff.
Jacen’s scenes as Caedus were hard to read, partially because I never imagined that Jacen would become Darth Vader 2.0, that Jacen would be the Solo sibling who falls to the dark side. Jacen in the NJO was obsessed with ethics and morality, so to see him become so self-deluded that causing pain and suffering is right was hard for me to swallow. In Betrayal, Jacen had visions of the galaxy erupting into war, and I wish that had continued into the subsequent books—because as it stands, his motivations seem nebulous at times beyond “it’s all for Allana’s future.” Going into Invincible, I hoped that maybe there was a little light left in Jacen and he could be redeemed. Not so much here…he’s fine with a bioweapon targeting the Fetts but not Tenel Ka, he murders Prince Isolder to prevent that, only for the Moffs to target his ex anyway. He tries to warn Tenel Ka at the end, but it’s too little too late.
ISSUES:
I tore through Invincible pretty quickly, and while I appreciated the frenetic pace (especially compared to Revelation) I felt like that didn’t work as well for the end. We rocket towards the final showdown with Jacen, and then everything ends super fast. I liked the closer to the New Jedi Order series, The Unifying Force by James Luceno, because it concluded the series well and wrapped almost everything up. Invincible leaves a lot of things hanging (bioweapon shenanigans, nothing with Admiral Niathal, we don’t see Daala until she’s voted Chief of State in the end, Zekk is missing and Jag is now head of the Imperial Remnant) and I suspect that you need to read the Fate of the Jedi series to see those dangling threads play out. No one really knew why Jacen turned evil, and papers were signed and the galactic Civil War was over, the end—but real life conflicts are much messier than that, so I would have liked some more pages to wrap the story up more. As it stands, the ending felt somewhat abrupt.
And I think that breakneck speed led to the conclusion feeling a little too predictable. The Moffs release their Hapan bioweapon, and obviously Tenel Ka will not die—and it looks like Allana is dead, but there’s no way that they’ll actually kill off Allana after her grandparents just met her and Jacen fell to the dark side “for Allana.” So I wasn’t surprised to learn that Allana is alive and she’s now a “war orphan” adopted by her grandparents for her own safety.
Regarding the action scenes: I felt like Jaina's first confrontation with Jacen on Roche was very effective. I was concerned about what was happening, and while I sometimes find Denning’s action scenes disorienting, I could follow most of the action here. However, the second showdown between Jaina and Jacen fell a little flat for me, because it happened way too quickly and wasn’t as easy to follow as the first one.
My biggest issue, though, was how Chapter 8 played out. Ben has been tortured and interrogated because Jacen and Tahiri want to find the location of the secret Jedi base, and then Tahiri comes in and she looks nice and she’s putting ointments on his wounds…and then she starts molesting him. Ew ew ew. If I felt like Tahiri in Revelation was treated as younger than she actually was, she’s definitely portrayed as an adult here. I didn’t want to read that, and if it’s meant to show me how bad she’s become I already know! I don’t need to see her assault a fourteen-year-old! I can’t believe this was in the book, and I can get that Tahiri is down a dark path and has lost her way without her molesting a teenager.
IN CONCLUSION:
Invincible is the conclusion of the Legacy of the Force series, and while it did wrap up some things, there are a lot of loose plot threads dangling for the Fate of the Jedi series to run with. In fact, I might argue there were too many plot things left unresolved at the end! I was very invested in Jaina's confrontations with her brother, even if I do feel like the second one fell a little flat for me. And who even knows what's going to happen with Tahiri next: she made a sudden about-face to the light side, but it can't be that easy.
Next up: a standalone adventure! Millennium Falcon by James Luceno
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/6vQRSkpdvH8
“Star Wars Artist Series: Jason Felix” (August 3, 2006): https://web.archive.org/web/200608051...
For 2023, I decided to reread the post-NJO books set after the Dark Nest trilogy, especially as I abandoned the Legacy of the Force series after Sacrifice all the way back in 2007. This shakes out to the nine books of the Legacy of the Force series, the nine books of the Fate of the Jedi series, three standalone novels, and five short stories.
This week’s focus: the last book in the Legacy of the Force series, Invincible by Troy Denning.
SOME HISTORY:
Jason Felix is a self-taught artist, and growing up he really enjoyed the artwork in comic books and Dungeons and Dragons. Before creating the covers for the Legacy of the Force series, he mostly created art and characters for video games. His LotF covers feature a different character on each book (maybe you can argue that Jacen on Betrayal and Caedus on Revelation are two different people at that point), and unlike Drew Struzan’s traditional paintings for the Bantam books, these works were all created digitally. I like getting to see the characters here, but the backgrounds are a little too vague and nondescript for me. Legacy of the Force: Invincible by Troy Denning made it to number five on the New York Times bestseller list for the week of June 1, 2008, and was on the list for three weeks.
MY RECOLLECTION OF THE BOOK:
While I tried to go blind into my read of Invincible, I did know a few things were going to happen—I mean, the cover pretty much gives away the ultimate showdown between the Solo twins.
A BRIEF SUMMARY:
The rebel cause is losing ground after the assassination of Admiral Pellaeon of the Imperial Remnant and the murder of Mara Jade Skywalker. Darth Caedus and his Galactic Alliance forces seem unbeatable, and Luke Skywalker has seen a vision of the future which shows the galaxy enslaved under a tyranny to rival that of Emperor Palpatine. So the Jedi decide to make one last-ditch effort to eliminate Darth Caedus, and there's only one individual capable of facing him…
THE PLOT:
I was a little surprised by Invincible’s short length. As the series’ closer, I expected a hefty volume, but it was under 400 pages and only 20 chapters.
We open with the Imperial Remnant attacking the Verpine homeworld of Roche, and the Mandalorians plus Jaina Solo failing to stop the invasion. Jaina heads back to the secret Jedi base in the Hapan Cluster, and the Jedi decide they need to make a final stand against Darth Caedus, formerly Jacen Solo. Ben Skywalker is captured by Tahiri Veila and the Galactic Alliance Guard during an intelligence mission on Coruscant, and Jaina learns that Caedus is on Roche. Jaina sneaks onto Nickel One, and she faces off against her brother. She manages to grievously wound him by cutting off his arm, but Jacen escapes.
From there it's a madcap dash to the finale, as Jacen has marked Jaina with a Nightsister blood trail and will soon learn the location of the secret Jedi base. The Jedi and the Hapan fleet unite to stop Jacen’s forces, and Jaina faces off against him one more time.
CHARACTERS:
A key portion of the novel involves Jaina having to face down her brother and eliminate him, but she doesn’t want her parents to lose all their surviving children in one go so…she’s pretty conflicted here. The previous book Revelation was about Jaina finally coming to terms with the fact that she has to kill her brother, but one book later she’s still struggling with that decision. She knows the job that she has to do, that her brother won’t stand down or surrender, but he’s still her twin. And after training with the Mandalorians for an entire book, she has enough camaraderie with them that she worries about them becoming collateral damage during her fight. Jaina is outmatched by Jacen in Force skills, but she has trained very hard and she’s persistent. She wounds Jacen during their first showdown (partially because Luke is using the Force to focus Jacen’s attention on him to the extent that Jacen doesn’t even realize Jaina there), and she triumphs in their second duel because Jacen is pretty distracted by the Hapan situation.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Troy Denning novel without some weird stuff, so we learn that concussed Jaina propositioned Jag and Zekk for a threesome after that first showdown with Jacen. I did not need to know that! It seems that spending time with the Mandalorians has led to the last vestiges of Jaina’s connection with Zekk fading away, which is for the best. Since Jaina is not interested in Zekk that way, he’s presumably going to be paired off with a Hapan relative of Tenel Ka in a blatant bit of sequel bait. (Another bit of sequel bait: Zekk is MIA after the final battle, and while Jaina didn’t feel him die, we don’t know what happened to him.)
Jagged Fel is still hanging around with Leia and Han on the Millennium Falcon, but after Jacen is defeated Luke puts his name forward Admiral Pellaeon’s replacement, the next leader of the Imperial Remnant. The Moffs are cool with it and Jag accepts, but it’s quite the whiplash to go from a 92-year-old man with loads of authority and experience to…Jag. I like Jag! But (no offense) Jag comes across as a boring non-character at times.
We learn that Luke has seen this recurring vision of the future wherein the galaxy falls apart under Caedus’s leadership, and I really wish we could have seen an example of this instead of being told about it. Because we’re never really in Luke’s head—definitely the shorter page count at play here—and instead only see Luke through other people’s eyes. He’s focusing Jacen’s attention on him, he allows Ben to be captured so Caedus won’t be too suspicious, and he lures the Mandalorians into a trap; he’s a lot more manipulative than I expected from good old Luke Skywalker.
Ben is a good boy, but he felt more mature than fourteen. (Yes, he’s lived through a lot and is Wise Beyond His Years, but there were times when I questioned if a fourteen-year-old would really think and talk like that.) Ben is worried about the people around him, especially when Captain Shevu and he are captured, but he also won’t give away crucial info under interrogation. (More on that interrogation scene later.)
Leia and Han just want this war to come to an end, and they’re trying their best to ensure that Jaina makes it out OK. Again, this wouldn’t be a Troy Denning novel without people disguising themselves as aliens—so when Jaina and Leia and Ben sneak onto Coruscant, Leia is the sexy alien. And during the final battle, the Imperial Remnant releases a biological weapon meant to wipe out the Hapan royal family. The Queen Mother survives, but it looks like Allana was killed—and Han is broken up about it. They just found out about their granddaughter, and now they’ve lost her. When they confront the Moffs at the end of the book, Han threatens them; and while we know that Han would never shoot a Moff, I wish he had! Screw those Moffs, they’re garbage.
After the end of Revelation, I wasn’t sure if we were going to see Boba Fett and the Mandalorians again. But they’re on Roche in the beginning with Jaina, and they return to Roche when Jaina first attempts to take Jacen out. Mirta Gev and the other Mandos want to kill all the Moffs, but it ends up being one of Jacen’s power plays to remove the Moffs he didn’t like. The Mandos are pretty much all killed, except for poor Mirta, who has spinal cord damage, is captured and tortured by Jacen, and then her DNA is used to create a biological weapon targeting the Fett family. Mirta is rescued in the end, but the weapon is still deployed on Mandalore so that Boba and Mirta can never return home.
Oh boy, that development did not feel thought through to me. Yes, it’s a way to keep them off Mandalore, but I felt like no one considered the ramifications here. If you build a bioweapon targeting Boba Fett (the clone of Jango Fett), you’re putting both Jango’s extended family as well as any other Jango clones or offspring of Jango clones at risk—and at one point, there were millions of Jango clones running around the galaxy. Plus, the fact that it apparently does not dissipate and will always be on Mandalore sounds like huge possibilities for the bioweapon to mutate or start affecting other Mandalorians. I know the Moffs are the bad guys here, but the development of this Fett-specific bioweapon seems super risky to me.
On the bad guy front, Tahiri Veila continues to be an absolute monster. She has no problem torturing and assaulting a kid (ahem, more on that in the Issues), but killing Captain Shevu causes a crack in her facade. She didn’t mean to go that far, and she’s upset about it—and then Jacen reveals how much he manipulated her, and how their flow-walking sessions did not and could not change anything. She loses trust in Jacen’s vision, but I felt like her about-face at the end was a little too sudden for me. Up until Invincible, she was 100% Jacen’s minion, so I wasn’t sure that I bought her redemption after barely one book of doubts about the Sith stuff.
Jacen’s scenes as Caedus were hard to read, partially because I never imagined that Jacen would become Darth Vader 2.0, that Jacen would be the Solo sibling who falls to the dark side. Jacen in the NJO was obsessed with ethics and morality, so to see him become so self-deluded that causing pain and suffering is right was hard for me to swallow. In Betrayal, Jacen had visions of the galaxy erupting into war, and I wish that had continued into the subsequent books—because as it stands, his motivations seem nebulous at times beyond “it’s all for Allana’s future.” Going into Invincible, I hoped that maybe there was a little light left in Jacen and he could be redeemed. Not so much here…he’s fine with a bioweapon targeting the Fetts but not Tenel Ka, he murders Prince Isolder to prevent that, only for the Moffs to target his ex anyway. He tries to warn Tenel Ka at the end, but it’s too little too late.
ISSUES:
I tore through Invincible pretty quickly, and while I appreciated the frenetic pace (especially compared to Revelation) I felt like that didn’t work as well for the end. We rocket towards the final showdown with Jacen, and then everything ends super fast. I liked the closer to the New Jedi Order series, The Unifying Force by James Luceno, because it concluded the series well and wrapped almost everything up. Invincible leaves a lot of things hanging (bioweapon shenanigans, nothing with Admiral Niathal, we don’t see Daala until she’s voted Chief of State in the end, Zekk is missing and Jag is now head of the Imperial Remnant) and I suspect that you need to read the Fate of the Jedi series to see those dangling threads play out. No one really knew why Jacen turned evil, and papers were signed and the galactic Civil War was over, the end—but real life conflicts are much messier than that, so I would have liked some more pages to wrap the story up more. As it stands, the ending felt somewhat abrupt.
And I think that breakneck speed led to the conclusion feeling a little too predictable. The Moffs release their Hapan bioweapon, and obviously Tenel Ka will not die—and it looks like Allana is dead, but there’s no way that they’ll actually kill off Allana after her grandparents just met her and Jacen fell to the dark side “for Allana.” So I wasn’t surprised to learn that Allana is alive and she’s now a “war orphan” adopted by her grandparents for her own safety.
Regarding the action scenes: I felt like Jaina's first confrontation with Jacen on Roche was very effective. I was concerned about what was happening, and while I sometimes find Denning’s action scenes disorienting, I could follow most of the action here. However, the second showdown between Jaina and Jacen fell a little flat for me, because it happened way too quickly and wasn’t as easy to follow as the first one.
My biggest issue, though, was how Chapter 8 played out. Ben has been tortured and interrogated because Jacen and Tahiri want to find the location of the secret Jedi base, and then Tahiri comes in and she looks nice and she’s putting ointments on his wounds…and then she starts molesting him. Ew ew ew. If I felt like Tahiri in Revelation was treated as younger than she actually was, she’s definitely portrayed as an adult here. I didn’t want to read that, and if it’s meant to show me how bad she’s become I already know! I don’t need to see her assault a fourteen-year-old! I can’t believe this was in the book, and I can get that Tahiri is down a dark path and has lost her way without her molesting a teenager.
IN CONCLUSION:
Invincible is the conclusion of the Legacy of the Force series, and while it did wrap up some things, there are a lot of loose plot threads dangling for the Fate of the Jedi series to run with. In fact, I might argue there were too many plot things left unresolved at the end! I was very invested in Jaina's confrontations with her brother, even if I do feel like the second one fell a little flat for me. And who even knows what's going to happen with Tahiri next: she made a sudden about-face to the light side, but it can't be that easy.
Next up: a standalone adventure! Millennium Falcon by James Luceno
My YouTube review: https://youtu.be/6vQRSkpdvH8
“Star Wars Artist Series: Jason Felix” (August 3, 2006): https://web.archive.org/web/200608051...
March 29, 2021
And that's a wrap. Really good series. I heard nothing but negative things about it for years but it was quite good. Bittersweet, of course. Jacen being dead now as well. But it was nice to see a small spark of the man he used to be at the very end. It was a well done story, just very sad.
August 9, 2025
it made me cry a lot so 5 stars
June 16, 2015
Disheartened by Invincible and its very abrupt unapologetic ending, (which I maintain is the saddest EU book of all time) I picked up Solo Command moments later to reassure myself that SW books can be fun. So that's not a great sign but I got right into Solo Command.
Invincible has problems. If it weren't the last book of a 2 year 9 book cycle it wouldn't be so bad. Not at all but...it was. And Invincible gives any Star Wars EU fan a handful of hopelessness. I invested what? $130 bucks or something in LOTF to end bleak, wonder-less, and near hopeless. Not even a Luke Skywalker with a soul left to reassure us the readers that this galaxy is a bit safer. Cause it isn't. It's as messed up as ever just like the "real world". I just don't buy SW to remind me of here. And unfortunately for Luke and his Order things aren't going to get better for at least 100 years. If anything, this novel begs the reader to take up reading Legacy Comics. Without Legacy Comics Invincible would have been a more nebulous experience for me.
Invincible has problems. If it weren't the last book of a 2 year 9 book cycle it wouldn't be so bad. Not at all but...it was. And Invincible gives any Star Wars EU fan a handful of hopelessness. I invested what? $130 bucks or something in LOTF to end bleak, wonder-less, and near hopeless. Not even a Luke Skywalker with a soul left to reassure us the readers that this galaxy is a bit safer. Cause it isn't. It's as messed up as ever just like the "real world". I just don't buy SW to remind me of here. And unfortunately for Luke and his Order things aren't going to get better for at least 100 years. If anything, this novel begs the reader to take up reading Legacy Comics. Without Legacy Comics Invincible would have been a more nebulous experience for me.
October 24, 2011
I've long considered myself a Denning fan, but this book fell a bit flat for me. A lot of the characterizations seemed a bit "off", and many of the details struck me as completely ridiculous (GAG "Doomsleds", for example.)
The ending of this 9-book saga seemed slightly unsatisfying, but what else was there to do? Things played out pretty much how they had to; I can accept the events as they happened, even if I didn't like them. (Although the new choice for Chief of State is a big ol' double-you tee eff.)
The ending of this 9-book saga seemed slightly unsatisfying, but what else was there to do? Things played out pretty much how they had to; I can accept the events as they happened, even if I didn't like them. (Although the new choice for Chief of State is a big ol' double-you tee eff.)
July 10, 2023
Reading this book was an absolutely bizarre experience, because much of it felt fairly polished, clearly the result of some genuine care and effort, but every few pages there would be a plot point or line of dialogue that was so monumentally, laughably stupid that it completely derailed the story. Usually when a book has a terrible plot, sloppily developed characters and cringeworthy dialogue, this incompetence is reflected in the writing itself. But many of the sentences in this book were quite serviceable; it was honestly better written than a lot of the Star Wars books I actually like. Fairly long stretches of it were very readable, with some compelling ideas and sequences. I particularly liked Jaina's first duel with Caedus, and the space battle towards the end. But there are so many elements in this book that are just absolutely atrocious. All in all, I don't know what to make of Invincible. It's bad, certainly, but in a rather unique and fascinating way. I don't recommend it, but I can't say I regret reading it either.
Right off the bat, Invincible helpfully lets you know what kind of book it is by completely botching the characters of Boba Fett and Jaina Solo. Karen Traviss's rich, nuanced portrayal of Fett in the previous books (the definitive version of Boba Fett, in my opinion) is discarded in favor of a one-dimensional psychopath who you can practically imagine twirling a handlebar moustache under that iconic helmet. Jaina, the protagonist of the novel, is frustratingly inconsistent. At times she is naïve and foolish, letting her compassion cloud her judgment, but at other times she is a grim and brutally violent antihero. She often seems actively indifferent to the suffering of others, and is constantly reminding herself that mercy is a weakness—a principle Fett taught her that she has apparently completely internalized and embraced despite hating his guts. But then, mere moments after promising to prioritize the greater good over attachments, she brazenly risks the fate of the entire galaxy to provide unnecessary protection for her family. A book whose protagonist is so poorly and inconsistently characterized can hardly be an unqualified success, and unfortunately the problems don't end there.
There are countless "WTF moments" in this book. Characters speak and act in ways that are contradictory not only to their preexisting characterization, but to the basic rules of common sense and causality. Leia is both a strong matriarch and an unstable, strangely horny idiot. Han is absolutely bewildering as a character. Ben Skywalker is an appealing everyman, but even he elicits many a cringe with his nonsensical decisions and sudden bouts of horniness. (Sensing a pattern?)
This is the sort of book where characters' words and actions are dictated by the plot rather than any sort of logic or coherent themes. It's very hard to feel invested in a story like that. You can't relate to a character who speaks and behaves like no real person ever would. (Example: sixty-year-old Leia making a BDSM joke during a war meeting whose express purpose is to plot the downfall of her own son.) The action sequences in this book are generally the most tolerable bits, because it's always clear what the characters' motivations are, i.e. killing each other.
Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus continues to be absolutely insufferable as a villain. Even Karen Traviss was never really successful in selling his fall to the Dark Side. He doesn't have the mystique and terror of a Vader or the cackling fun of a Palpatine. He is simply an obnoxious, self-important man who wants to force his abhorrent worldview on everyone else. He's not a villain you love to hate, he's a villain you endure being irritated by. There's nothing wrong with fleshing out an antagonist's beliefs and giving them POV scenes, but because Caedus is so annoying and implausible as a character, his scenes don't provide suspense, tragedy or thematic complexity; they're just unpleasant.
An aspect of the story that I actually found quite clever was the way Denning justified Luke sending Jaina to fight Caedus instead of going himself. I thought he found a creative and believable way to keep Luke out of the action while still involving him and staying true to his character. However, he spoils his own compelling idea by giving him another, nonsensical reason for staying out of it, which is all the more annoying because it is completely unnecessary.
Something that got on my nerves in this book is Troy Denning's self-indulgent focus on characters and storylines from his own previous books, a vice that many Star Wars authors fall prey to. For much of the book, we get the classic Star Wars gang adventuring together—Han, Leia, Luke, Threepio, Artoo—but with Troy Denning's darling invention Saba Sebatyne shoehorned in. Saba also suddenly and unaccountably seems to be the most important Jedi on the Council other than Luke, and his closest confidante. I don't dislike Saba, I'm completely neutral to her character, but regardless I found this self-indulgence exceedingly irritating. Characters are also constantly referencing Denning's Dark Nest storyline from years earlier, with nary a word about the hundreds of non-Denning-written adventures they've had over the years.
Troy Denning loves to keep things dark and gritty, and I'm not opposed to this in theory; many of my favorite Star Wars stories are violent and morally ambiguous. However, in Denning's less-than-subtle hands, these "mature" touches end up feeling performatively edgy rather than convincing. Horrors abound in this book—brutal violence, several extended torture sequences, the sexual abuse of a child—but they are handled with such a lack of nuance that, rather than bringing the nuance and gravitas Denning is going for, they just make the book needlessly unpleasant.
I want to get a bit more in depth about the sex abuse thing because I think it's really problematic, but I'll have to resort to spoilers. Even if the book was brilliantly written, the gross mishandling of the child sex abuse storyline would be enough to irrevocably poison my respect for Troy Denning as an author and person.
While we're in spoiler territory, I want to talk about the resolution to this book. I thought it was very poorly handled, and it was extremely disappointing to see Legacy of the Force, a series that despite its flaws brought us some genuinely excellent books and moments, end in such a frustrating and lackluster way.
This book solidified my opinion of the Legacy of the Force series, namely, that I hate it. What's odd, though, is that I actually like more than half of the books in the series. I didn't like Denning's Tempest, and I admit I skipped Inferno altogether. But Karen Traviss is in my top three Star Wars authors, and unsurprisingly her LOTF books were consistently great. Aaron Allston's Betrayal had some fascinating ideas and moments, and Allston's other books were consistently entertaining if not exactly what one would call good. But I vehemently object to the overarching storyline of Legacy of the Force, as well as the general philosophy of storytelling and theme that its architects display. Jacen's fall was handled poorly, the hero vs. hero storyline contrived through the war between Corellia and the Galactic Alliance felt arbitrary and ignored decades of character development, the dark and morally ambiguous tone felt pretentious and exhausting rather than mature, and the killing of Timothy Zahn's most iconic remaining characters without his involvement or consent felt inconsiderate at best, actively disrespectful at worst. Even the books I liked were weighed down by the ill-conceived overall narrative. The insistence on continuing to foreground the Original Trilogy characters, after decades' worth of interminable storylines pitting Luke, Leia and Han against a neverending stream of galactic-scale threats, is especially tiresome. Whatever the flaws of the sequel trilogy movies, and they are legion, I appreciate that Disney was willing to bring the classic characters' storylines to a definitive conclusion, rather than dragging them through storyline after storyline with no end in sight.
I would not recommend this book, obviously, but I do think Karen Traviss's LOTF books are worth checking out if you haven't already. Just read the plot summaries of the other ones and you should be set.
I can't believe Troy Denning got to write TWELVE Star Wars books, to Matthew Stover's four. A travesty.
Right off the bat, Invincible helpfully lets you know what kind of book it is by completely botching the characters of Boba Fett and Jaina Solo. Karen Traviss's rich, nuanced portrayal of Fett in the previous books (the definitive version of Boba Fett, in my opinion) is discarded in favor of a one-dimensional psychopath who you can practically imagine twirling a handlebar moustache under that iconic helmet. Jaina, the protagonist of the novel, is frustratingly inconsistent. At times she is naïve and foolish, letting her compassion cloud her judgment, but at other times she is a grim and brutally violent antihero. She often seems actively indifferent to the suffering of others, and is constantly reminding herself that mercy is a weakness—a principle Fett taught her that she has apparently completely internalized and embraced despite hating his guts. But then, mere moments after promising to prioritize the greater good over attachments, she brazenly risks the fate of the entire galaxy to provide unnecessary protection for her family. A book whose protagonist is so poorly and inconsistently characterized can hardly be an unqualified success, and unfortunately the problems don't end there.
There are countless "WTF moments" in this book. Characters speak and act in ways that are contradictory not only to their preexisting characterization, but to the basic rules of common sense and causality. Leia is both a strong matriarch and an unstable, strangely horny idiot. Han is absolutely bewildering as a character. Ben Skywalker is an appealing everyman, but even he elicits many a cringe with his nonsensical decisions and sudden bouts of horniness. (Sensing a pattern?)
This is the sort of book where characters' words and actions are dictated by the plot rather than any sort of logic or coherent themes. It's very hard to feel invested in a story like that. You can't relate to a character who speaks and behaves like no real person ever would. (Example: sixty-year-old Leia making a BDSM joke during a war meeting whose express purpose is to plot the downfall of her own son.) The action sequences in this book are generally the most tolerable bits, because it's always clear what the characters' motivations are, i.e. killing each other.
Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus continues to be absolutely insufferable as a villain. Even Karen Traviss was never really successful in selling his fall to the Dark Side. He doesn't have the mystique and terror of a Vader or the cackling fun of a Palpatine. He is simply an obnoxious, self-important man who wants to force his abhorrent worldview on everyone else. He's not a villain you love to hate, he's a villain you endure being irritated by. There's nothing wrong with fleshing out an antagonist's beliefs and giving them POV scenes, but because Caedus is so annoying and implausible as a character, his scenes don't provide suspense, tragedy or thematic complexity; they're just unpleasant.
An aspect of the story that I actually found quite clever was the way Denning justified Luke sending Jaina to fight Caedus instead of going himself. I thought he found a creative and believable way to keep Luke out of the action while still involving him and staying true to his character. However, he spoils his own compelling idea by giving him another, nonsensical reason for staying out of it, which is all the more annoying because it is completely unnecessary.
Something that got on my nerves in this book is Troy Denning's self-indulgent focus on characters and storylines from his own previous books, a vice that many Star Wars authors fall prey to. For much of the book, we get the classic Star Wars gang adventuring together—Han, Leia, Luke, Threepio, Artoo—but with Troy Denning's darling invention Saba Sebatyne shoehorned in. Saba also suddenly and unaccountably seems to be the most important Jedi on the Council other than Luke, and his closest confidante. I don't dislike Saba, I'm completely neutral to her character, but regardless I found this self-indulgence exceedingly irritating. Characters are also constantly referencing Denning's Dark Nest storyline from years earlier, with nary a word about the hundreds of non-Denning-written adventures they've had over the years.
Troy Denning loves to keep things dark and gritty, and I'm not opposed to this in theory; many of my favorite Star Wars stories are violent and morally ambiguous. However, in Denning's less-than-subtle hands, these "mature" touches end up feeling performatively edgy rather than convincing. Horrors abound in this book—brutal violence, several extended torture sequences, the sexual abuse of a child—but they are handled with such a lack of nuance that, rather than bringing the nuance and gravitas Denning is going for, they just make the book needlessly unpleasant.
I want to get a bit more in depth about the sex abuse thing because I think it's really problematic, but I'll have to resort to spoilers. Even if the book was brilliantly written, the gross mishandling of the child sex abuse storyline would be enough to irrevocably poison my respect for Troy Denning as an author and person.
While we're in spoiler territory, I want to talk about the resolution to this book. I thought it was very poorly handled, and it was extremely disappointing to see Legacy of the Force, a series that despite its flaws brought us some genuinely excellent books and moments, end in such a frustrating and lackluster way.
This book solidified my opinion of the Legacy of the Force series, namely, that I hate it. What's odd, though, is that I actually like more than half of the books in the series. I didn't like Denning's Tempest, and I admit I skipped Inferno altogether. But Karen Traviss is in my top three Star Wars authors, and unsurprisingly her LOTF books were consistently great. Aaron Allston's Betrayal had some fascinating ideas and moments, and Allston's other books were consistently entertaining if not exactly what one would call good. But I vehemently object to the overarching storyline of Legacy of the Force, as well as the general philosophy of storytelling and theme that its architects display. Jacen's fall was handled poorly, the hero vs. hero storyline contrived through the war between Corellia and the Galactic Alliance felt arbitrary and ignored decades of character development, the dark and morally ambiguous tone felt pretentious and exhausting rather than mature, and the killing of Timothy Zahn's most iconic remaining characters without his involvement or consent felt inconsiderate at best, actively disrespectful at worst. Even the books I liked were weighed down by the ill-conceived overall narrative. The insistence on continuing to foreground the Original Trilogy characters, after decades' worth of interminable storylines pitting Luke, Leia and Han against a neverending stream of galactic-scale threats, is especially tiresome. Whatever the flaws of the sequel trilogy movies, and they are legion, I appreciate that Disney was willing to bring the classic characters' storylines to a definitive conclusion, rather than dragging them through storyline after storyline with no end in sight.
I would not recommend this book, obviously, but I do think Karen Traviss's LOTF books are worth checking out if you haven't already. Just read the plot summaries of the other ones and you should be set.
I can't believe Troy Denning got to write TWELVE Star Wars books, to Matthew Stover's four. A travesty.
June 20, 2025
(review written on June 20, 2025)
What's the difference between a Jedi Knight and a Jedi Master? Ask me in twenty years!
I read this book and the series it's attached to about one year ago. I chose not to write a review of this one because it left me in a rather apathetic place. In short, this is my least favorite SW book - so far... - and an utter failure on basically every level. Denning drops just about every lingering plot thread left hanging by the series, he brings LOTF to an impossibly nihilistic end, and manages to mangle every character in the process. By the end, there is just nothing left.
Jacen's characterization stands out as the one slight bright spot. The prior books, going back to Denning's own Tempest, had done their utmost to strip the character of every bit of depth or subtlety. Rather than resembling the utilitarian anti-hero we'd been following since The Joiner King - himself a counter-textually created caricature of the New Jedi Order's moral protagonist - Jacen had become an incompetent buffoon straight out of a Saturday Morning Cartoon. Invincible attempts to salvage Jacen Caedus as a competent villain - he gets things done, his one-liners are basically effective, and most importantly, he's a reflective villain, someone who is seemingly self-aware and wouldn't get caught up by key jingling. He's a fun character with a bit of meat to him, someone you're not necessarily rooting for as much as you can see his perspective, and love to hate him. Somehow, Jacen stands out among the least morally repugnant adults in this novel, as well.
Further, I must admit that there are worse Star Wars books on a technical level. Invincible is actually acceptable for most of its runtime; it knows how to make its cast stand out from one another through dialogue and POV. My favorite scene on that end features Jaina's reaction to a nerve gas in which her narrative POV crumbles down. Effective. Every chapter moreover starts with an epigraph detailing one of kid Jacen's terrible jokes which were either lifted from Kevin J. Anderson/Rebecca Moesta's Young Jedi Knights series or made up by Denning, his wife, and Sue Rostoni of Lucas Licensing. One the one hand, this is torture on multiple levels and proves that God is dead. On the other, it's somewhat compelling and kind of cute for a SW book. Better yet are three Denning-original scenes based on key moments in YJK and NJO, of which the last stands out as my favorite scene in the entire book. It reminds me of the book it alludes to, Dark Tide II: Ruin, which is ten times the book this one tries to be. Compared to the average one-off SWEU tie-in book as well as its oft miscreated LOTF siblings (Revelation says hi), Invincible can at least be said to have tried to do some interesting things.
I would still deem it a deficient read. Denning's literary vices are on full display here. Why are there three separate scenes in which Han & Leia make a joke about their sex life, going down to kinks and roleplay, in front of their daughter - or vice versa? I don't mind "adult" content in Star Wars books, see the works of Michael Stackpole or even Denning's Star by Star & Tatooine Ghost, but this is genuinely uncomfortable in a way that otherwise only hormone-driven teenagers are. The same goes for the violence: I'm okay with it in general, but did we need Jaina's entrails to hang out of her stomach? Did Jacen need to fall headfirst into a crate of hypodermic needles? At least the violence can be seen as a crutch, given the author's evident inability to describe combat from a spatial POV. Jacen and Jaina's final confrontation and especially Ben's with Tahiri (more on those two in a moment...) are unreadable as a result. Finally, I could divine a lack of editorial oversight, given that basic facts such as which of Jacen's arms it is he loses are never made apparent. There is no reason for this to be kept from the reader, no point being made, or POV fed. Apparently Mirta Gev, hardened """tough girl""" Mandalorian warrior, is now concerned with her physical looks more than anything else. Jaina learns Mace Windu's shatterpoint ability at one point, and this does not figure into anything ever. The novel becomes incomprehensible at points. This was not a problem early on in the Del Rey-era, a few innately misbegotten books aside.
I need to get the Tahiri thing out of my system. Tahiri Veila was one of the best parts of the NJO's final third, a supporting character methodically turned main player who dealt with massive trauma but came out of the ordeal a better, stronger person. Her arc of combining Yuuzhan Vong and infidel personalities was stunning, deep (in The Final Prophecy), and thematically on point as far as the larger NJO narrative was concerned. She gets more interesting the more I think about her. The post-NJO stories started out a bit directionless as far as Tahiri was concerned, until by mid-LOTF she... became Jacen's Sith apprentice because she never got over her adolescent grief. Tahiri had become a tremendously witless individual, someone who existed to be taken advantage of by Jacen (including physically, according to Denning...) without exhibiting any agency. In this novel, she is portrayed as a child molester. She interrogates a captured Ben Skywalker and illicitly touches his body so as to extract information. People talk about Jacen, Jacen, Jacen as far as character derailment goes, but at least that followed a story of sorts. However much of a trainwreck "Darth Caedus" is, he's the central character of a narrative built around his becoming Caedus. There is absolutely no reason for the Tahiri thing. No excuse. I genuinely cannot think of a worse case of character assassination, period, off the top of my head. For this alone, Invincible deserves a spot in the SWEU's bottom tier of content.
It's not like the rest of the cast fares much better. I came out of this book disliking every adult Jedi. They've all become consequentialist Machiavellians, scheming behind Jaina's back for her to assassinate her twin brother. It's worth noting once more that Dark Nest and early LOTF were written to make a statement against this form of philosophical morality. Luke's frothing at the mouth at the opportunity to murder Jacen, but chooses not to because of an ad-libbed "dark side taint" that exists now for some reason so that Jaina gets to kill Jacen. Han and Leia don't care because this is Caedus and not Jacen we're talking about, and because it fits the story we're now pretending that the Vergere retcon didn't happen and actually Jacen died as the hero of the Yuuzhan Vong War or something (is there another story that retcons itself as much as this post-NJO run?). Neither does Jaina care, after the fact: perversion aside, this portrayal suffers because she really does become a killer assassin in Jacen's last moments while he tries to save the lives of his loved ones. We have absolutely lost the plot here. Ben Skywalker is somewhat bland, and gets to deal with Tahiri because LOTF decided to replace him with Jaina as main character two thirds of the way through. To be fair, he's not unsympathetic, and comes out of this the best - albeit a sufferer of sexualization and generally reprehensible adult characters around him. Boba Fett has become Jaina's buddy cop partner because the audience and (supposedly) Denning didn't like Traviss' books and so he's an epic Marvel character now. There are two hot Hapans in their early twenties hanging out with Ben because perversion. One of the Imperial Moffs is portrayed in a wholly different manner from the prior book, etc. etc. Invincible is just a complete failure of characterization.
Legacy of the Force is a lesser story with this as its conclusion. The war with the Confederacy has been an ailing plot thread since the very beginning, only kept up by Allston, bless his heart; now, it doesn't even figure into the plot. It's literally resolved in the background. None of the Confed leaders make an appearance. It's just lore drops. This "Second Galactic Civil War" has got to be the most neglected conflict in Star Wars publishing history. Developments from Revelation are ignored, as well: That novel implied a split in the Galactic Alliance, with Cha Niathal - one of the few salvageable characters in LOTF - splitting from Jacen and taking a large chunk of the GA's military force with her. This, too, is dealt with off-screen in a couple of paragraphs, if even that. Niathal doesn't even physically appear in this book. It's like I'm reading with a concussion, and my perspective of the state of the galaxy has blurrily diminished as a result. What, exactly, was the point of Allston and Traviss' books now? The Confed vs. GA (vs. Niathal's GA [vs. Jedi I guess]) War never accomplished anything other than providing a backdrop, so why, in retrospect, did Allston try to salvage it so desperately? Traviss' New Labour allusions, carefully building up Jacen as the head of a Gestapo-like police state, didn't have any results. I commended Jacen's characterization here, but as with every book in this series compared to its last, it's a non-sequitur. In the end, all that seems to have mattered were Denning's own novels, which is to say Jacen as an Anakin expie, Hapans being trash, and a bunch of Tenel Ka/Allana angst. Legacy of the Force, in the end, is not a cohesive series of books, but - at best! - a trilogy of trilogies that sort of follow the same basic principles and ideas but still must exist in separate universes because they're just that incompatible. Oh, and Daala as Chief of State. Yes, the novel ends with the Galactic Alliance having nominated the drooling Imperial war criminal from 30 years back to the post of leader. Something something the US electing Osama bin Laden President in 2008. Hey, it even fits with Invincible publication year! Imbecility.
What are we left with at the end here? The Unifying Force, the NJO's finale, managed to satisfactorily wrap up its series and provide a satisfying end to the setting as a whole as well as build up just enough potential storytelling sites to hypothetically nurture at least another Bantam-style decade of publishing. This book, this series, leaves us with nothing. The setting is simply dead, beaten to the ground. Jacen Solo, the past 30-ish books' most important character, is dead, his legacy tainted, his character blasted into oblivion. The OT's main trio have all been turned into sociopaths. Mara is dead; their Jedi peer group, a collection of shop window dummies. Jacen's peers have been killed off or made irrelevant. Ben Skywalker has been unceremoniously denied the role of main protagonist which LOTF's first six books built up for him. Jaina's every personality trait but a sense of Dark Journey-era angst has been surgically removed, she's been stuck in a pointless love triangle this entire series, and after not accomplishing anything for its initial two thirds, she was awkwardly fit into the protagonist role. Jag and Zekk suffer similarly. Shevu, Lekauf, and Thann Mithric, three of the more promising new additions LOTF made, are dead. Boba Fett and Mirta Gev have been permanently denied their residence on Mandalore because Denning added this nanovirus subplot ostensibly to make flip off Traviss and her Mandos and oh god what am I reading. None of the other younger characters stick out particularly much. The Confederacy is a joke. And none of that is to mention that the Yuuzhan Vong, the developments that sprung about from the NJO, and its changes to the setting have continued to be ignored.
Why would anyone want to continue reading from here? There's a genuinely solid Luceno book set right after this one. It can serve as an epilogue to the NJO. I'm about to jump into Fate of the Jedi because I'm a completionist, a sucker, and I haven't learned anything. But there is no reason why any sane person would want to continue from here. Invincible is not just a terrible book in of itself, it not only drops anything its own series might have attempted to build up to, but it pretty much does away with any sense of credibility the post-ROTJ storyline might have once had. Nobody should ever read this book, let alone write a review of it.
What's the difference between a Jedi Knight and a Jedi Master? Ask me in twenty years!
I read this book and the series it's attached to about one year ago. I chose not to write a review of this one because it left me in a rather apathetic place. In short, this is my least favorite SW book - so far... - and an utter failure on basically every level. Denning drops just about every lingering plot thread left hanging by the series, he brings LOTF to an impossibly nihilistic end, and manages to mangle every character in the process. By the end, there is just nothing left.
Jacen's characterization stands out as the one slight bright spot. The prior books, going back to Denning's own Tempest, had done their utmost to strip the character of every bit of depth or subtlety. Rather than resembling the utilitarian anti-hero we'd been following since The Joiner King - himself a counter-textually created caricature of the New Jedi Order's moral protagonist - Jacen had become an incompetent buffoon straight out of a Saturday Morning Cartoon. Invincible attempts to salvage Jacen Caedus as a competent villain - he gets things done, his one-liners are basically effective, and most importantly, he's a reflective villain, someone who is seemingly self-aware and wouldn't get caught up by key jingling. He's a fun character with a bit of meat to him, someone you're not necessarily rooting for as much as you can see his perspective, and love to hate him. Somehow, Jacen stands out among the least morally repugnant adults in this novel, as well.
Further, I must admit that there are worse Star Wars books on a technical level. Invincible is actually acceptable for most of its runtime; it knows how to make its cast stand out from one another through dialogue and POV. My favorite scene on that end features Jaina's reaction to a nerve gas in which her narrative POV crumbles down. Effective. Every chapter moreover starts with an epigraph detailing one of kid Jacen's terrible jokes which were either lifted from Kevin J. Anderson/Rebecca Moesta's Young Jedi Knights series or made up by Denning, his wife, and Sue Rostoni of Lucas Licensing. One the one hand, this is torture on multiple levels and proves that God is dead. On the other, it's somewhat compelling and kind of cute for a SW book. Better yet are three Denning-original scenes based on key moments in YJK and NJO, of which the last stands out as my favorite scene in the entire book. It reminds me of the book it alludes to, Dark Tide II: Ruin, which is ten times the book this one tries to be. Compared to the average one-off SWEU tie-in book as well as its oft miscreated LOTF siblings (Revelation says hi), Invincible can at least be said to have tried to do some interesting things.
I would still deem it a deficient read. Denning's literary vices are on full display here. Why are there three separate scenes in which Han & Leia make a joke about their sex life, going down to kinks and roleplay, in front of their daughter - or vice versa? I don't mind "adult" content in Star Wars books, see the works of Michael Stackpole or even Denning's Star by Star & Tatooine Ghost, but this is genuinely uncomfortable in a way that otherwise only hormone-driven teenagers are. The same goes for the violence: I'm okay with it in general, but did we need Jaina's entrails to hang out of her stomach? Did Jacen need to fall headfirst into a crate of hypodermic needles? At least the violence can be seen as a crutch, given the author's evident inability to describe combat from a spatial POV. Jacen and Jaina's final confrontation and especially Ben's with Tahiri (more on those two in a moment...) are unreadable as a result. Finally, I could divine a lack of editorial oversight, given that basic facts such as which of Jacen's arms it is he loses are never made apparent. There is no reason for this to be kept from the reader, no point being made, or POV fed. Apparently Mirta Gev, hardened """tough girl""" Mandalorian warrior, is now concerned with her physical looks more than anything else. Jaina learns Mace Windu's shatterpoint ability at one point, and this does not figure into anything ever. The novel becomes incomprehensible at points. This was not a problem early on in the Del Rey-era, a few innately misbegotten books aside.
I need to get the Tahiri thing out of my system. Tahiri Veila was one of the best parts of the NJO's final third, a supporting character methodically turned main player who dealt with massive trauma but came out of the ordeal a better, stronger person. Her arc of combining Yuuzhan Vong and infidel personalities was stunning, deep (in The Final Prophecy), and thematically on point as far as the larger NJO narrative was concerned. She gets more interesting the more I think about her. The post-NJO stories started out a bit directionless as far as Tahiri was concerned, until by mid-LOTF she... became Jacen's Sith apprentice because she never got over her adolescent grief. Tahiri had become a tremendously witless individual, someone who existed to be taken advantage of by Jacen (including physically, according to Denning...) without exhibiting any agency. In this novel, she is portrayed as a child molester. She interrogates a captured Ben Skywalker and illicitly touches his body so as to extract information. People talk about Jacen, Jacen, Jacen as far as character derailment goes, but at least that followed a story of sorts. However much of a trainwreck "Darth Caedus" is, he's the central character of a narrative built around his becoming Caedus. There is absolutely no reason for the Tahiri thing. No excuse. I genuinely cannot think of a worse case of character assassination, period, off the top of my head. For this alone, Invincible deserves a spot in the SWEU's bottom tier of content.
It's not like the rest of the cast fares much better. I came out of this book disliking every adult Jedi. They've all become consequentialist Machiavellians, scheming behind Jaina's back for her to assassinate her twin brother. It's worth noting once more that Dark Nest and early LOTF were written to make a statement against this form of philosophical morality. Luke's frothing at the mouth at the opportunity to murder Jacen, but chooses not to because of an ad-libbed "dark side taint" that exists now for some reason so that Jaina gets to kill Jacen. Han and Leia don't care because this is Caedus and not Jacen we're talking about, and because it fits the story we're now pretending that the Vergere retcon didn't happen and actually Jacen died as the hero of the Yuuzhan Vong War or something (is there another story that retcons itself as much as this post-NJO run?). Neither does Jaina care, after the fact: perversion aside, this portrayal suffers because she really does become a killer assassin in Jacen's last moments while he tries to save the lives of his loved ones. We have absolutely lost the plot here. Ben Skywalker is somewhat bland, and gets to deal with Tahiri because LOTF decided to replace him with Jaina as main character two thirds of the way through. To be fair, he's not unsympathetic, and comes out of this the best - albeit a sufferer of sexualization and generally reprehensible adult characters around him. Boba Fett has become Jaina's buddy cop partner because the audience and (supposedly) Denning didn't like Traviss' books and so he's an epic Marvel character now. There are two hot Hapans in their early twenties hanging out with Ben because perversion. One of the Imperial Moffs is portrayed in a wholly different manner from the prior book, etc. etc. Invincible is just a complete failure of characterization.
Legacy of the Force is a lesser story with this as its conclusion. The war with the Confederacy has been an ailing plot thread since the very beginning, only kept up by Allston, bless his heart; now, it doesn't even figure into the plot. It's literally resolved in the background. None of the Confed leaders make an appearance. It's just lore drops. This "Second Galactic Civil War" has got to be the most neglected conflict in Star Wars publishing history. Developments from Revelation are ignored, as well: That novel implied a split in the Galactic Alliance, with Cha Niathal - one of the few salvageable characters in LOTF - splitting from Jacen and taking a large chunk of the GA's military force with her. This, too, is dealt with off-screen in a couple of paragraphs, if even that. Niathal doesn't even physically appear in this book. It's like I'm reading with a concussion, and my perspective of the state of the galaxy has blurrily diminished as a result. What, exactly, was the point of Allston and Traviss' books now? The Confed vs. GA (vs. Niathal's GA [vs. Jedi I guess]) War never accomplished anything other than providing a backdrop, so why, in retrospect, did Allston try to salvage it so desperately? Traviss' New Labour allusions, carefully building up Jacen as the head of a Gestapo-like police state, didn't have any results. I commended Jacen's characterization here, but as with every book in this series compared to its last, it's a non-sequitur. In the end, all that seems to have mattered were Denning's own novels, which is to say Jacen as an Anakin expie, Hapans being trash, and a bunch of Tenel Ka/Allana angst. Legacy of the Force, in the end, is not a cohesive series of books, but - at best! - a trilogy of trilogies that sort of follow the same basic principles and ideas but still must exist in separate universes because they're just that incompatible. Oh, and Daala as Chief of State. Yes, the novel ends with the Galactic Alliance having nominated the drooling Imperial war criminal from 30 years back to the post of leader. Something something the US electing Osama bin Laden President in 2008. Hey, it even fits with Invincible publication year! Imbecility.
What are we left with at the end here? The Unifying Force, the NJO's finale, managed to satisfactorily wrap up its series and provide a satisfying end to the setting as a whole as well as build up just enough potential storytelling sites to hypothetically nurture at least another Bantam-style decade of publishing. This book, this series, leaves us with nothing. The setting is simply dead, beaten to the ground. Jacen Solo, the past 30-ish books' most important character, is dead, his legacy tainted, his character blasted into oblivion. The OT's main trio have all been turned into sociopaths. Mara is dead; their Jedi peer group, a collection of shop window dummies. Jacen's peers have been killed off or made irrelevant. Ben Skywalker has been unceremoniously denied the role of main protagonist which LOTF's first six books built up for him. Jaina's every personality trait but a sense of Dark Journey-era angst has been surgically removed, she's been stuck in a pointless love triangle this entire series, and after not accomplishing anything for its initial two thirds, she was awkwardly fit into the protagonist role. Jag and Zekk suffer similarly. Shevu, Lekauf, and Thann Mithric, three of the more promising new additions LOTF made, are dead. Boba Fett and Mirta Gev have been permanently denied their residence on Mandalore because Denning added this nanovirus subplot ostensibly to make flip off Traviss and her Mandos and oh god what am I reading. None of the other younger characters stick out particularly much. The Confederacy is a joke. And none of that is to mention that the Yuuzhan Vong, the developments that sprung about from the NJO, and its changes to the setting have continued to be ignored.
Why would anyone want to continue reading from here? There's a genuinely solid Luceno book set right after this one. It can serve as an epilogue to the NJO. I'm about to jump into Fate of the Jedi because I'm a completionist, a sucker, and I haven't learned anything. But there is no reason why any sane person would want to continue from here. Invincible is not just a terrible book in of itself, it not only drops anything its own series might have attempted to build up to, but it pretty much does away with any sense of credibility the post-ROTJ storyline might have once had. Nobody should ever read this book, let alone write a review of it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 1, 2024
This was bad in so many ways that it's hard to know where to start.
The most horrifying part was when Troy Denning vividly described the near-rape of 14 year old Ben Skywalker. And then he wrote it off as if Ben might have enjoyed it. Later, he introduced two brand new characters that constantly sexualize and hint at sexually abusing Ben.
After the disgust of that wore off, it's difficult not to be distracted by how awful the actual writing is. He clearly edited out all of his word contractions into full words in order to get past a certain word/page count. The dialog is abysmal. He butchers every woman character again. It's so egregious that I'm certain now that Troy Denning hates women. They're just walking tits with an attitude.
Mirtas and Fett's roles get mishandled so awkwardly that all of their previous appearances become meaningless.
Denning decides for some reason that Mace Windhu's Shatterpoint ability is some kind of parlor trick, used for breaking wooden boards, and apparently unbreakable armor.
He gives Jaina the ability to Force-hide, and she uses it whenever it's convenient to move the plot. One moment, it's too dangerous to use any Force abilities because Jacen will sense her, and a moment later, she's using it without care. Denning throws out all sense of rules and reason in order to get through a scene. It's lazy, and it hurts to read.
(minor spoiler)
And Jaina's first attempt at killing Jacen creates a huge let down for the conclusion of this series. It takes all of the bite out of the ending.
I hated everything about this book, and I'm so glad it's over. I wish Karen Traviss could have handlded this whole series. I'll probably add more complaints as I remember them. I'm too disgusted to keep typing.
The most horrifying part was when Troy Denning vividly described the near-rape of 14 year old Ben Skywalker. And then he wrote it off as if Ben might have enjoyed it. Later, he introduced two brand new characters that constantly sexualize and hint at sexually abusing Ben.
After the disgust of that wore off, it's difficult not to be distracted by how awful the actual writing is. He clearly edited out all of his word contractions into full words in order to get past a certain word/page count. The dialog is abysmal. He butchers every woman character again. It's so egregious that I'm certain now that Troy Denning hates women. They're just walking tits with an attitude.
Mirtas and Fett's roles get mishandled so awkwardly that all of their previous appearances become meaningless.
Denning decides for some reason that Mace Windhu's Shatterpoint ability is some kind of parlor trick, used for breaking wooden boards, and apparently unbreakable armor.
He gives Jaina the ability to Force-hide, and she uses it whenever it's convenient to move the plot. One moment, it's too dangerous to use any Force abilities because Jacen will sense her, and a moment later, she's using it without care. Denning throws out all sense of rules and reason in order to get through a scene. It's lazy, and it hurts to read.
(minor spoiler)
And Jaina's first attempt at killing Jacen creates a huge let down for the conclusion of this series. It takes all of the bite out of the ending.
I hated everything about this book, and I'm so glad it's over. I wish Karen Traviss could have handlded this whole series. I'll probably add more complaints as I remember them. I'm too disgusted to keep typing.
April 7, 2023
It is very hard to evaluate this book in isolation, rather than as the culmination of a nine book series.
Invincible has a lot of the attributes that make Star Wars such a wonderful franchise; lightsaber combat, space battles, Skywalker family drama and so much emotion. After eight novels of build, we see the conclusion of many of the plotlines which have been developing throughout the series. Unfortunately, the payoff for some of these plotlines are resolved much better than others.
The main drawback of multi-author series like these is obvious. But at times, the different authors each having their own agendas is painfully obvious. There could have been much more cohesion between Allston, Traviss and Denning, a view which I know is shared by many Star Wars Expanded Universe fans.
I enjoyed this book, and I enjoyed this series. I can't help but feel that both could have been much more however, something really special.
Invincible has a lot of the attributes that make Star Wars such a wonderful franchise; lightsaber combat, space battles, Skywalker family drama and so much emotion. After eight novels of build, we see the conclusion of many of the plotlines which have been developing throughout the series. Unfortunately, the payoff for some of these plotlines are resolved much better than others.
The main drawback of multi-author series like these is obvious. But at times, the different authors each having their own agendas is painfully obvious. There could have been much more cohesion between Allston, Traviss and Denning, a view which I know is shared by many Star Wars Expanded Universe fans.
I enjoyed this book, and I enjoyed this series. I can't help but feel that both could have been much more however, something really special.
January 20, 2026
This book is exactly what I love in a Star Wars novel. Dark, beautiful, tragic, and heartbreaking, with just a dash of hope sprinkled in at the end.
The most painful part of this book is the chapter heading jokes, which only breaks your heart more as you plummet towards the inevitable end.
I liked the NJO series but had my problems with it (way too long and fillery). LOTF while I felt it started off slow and took too long to reveal answers to the heroes that we all knew, I didnt feel like there was a whole lot of filler, and the pace was actually well done. Even some of the books I didnt think I'd like, I really enjoyed.
A well crafted series that tells exactly the story it set out to tell, the further tragedies of the skywalker lineage.
The most painful part of this book is the chapter heading jokes, which only breaks your heart more as you plummet towards the inevitable end.
I liked the NJO series but had my problems with it (way too long and fillery). LOTF while I felt it started off slow and took too long to reveal answers to the heroes that we all knew, I didnt feel like there was a whole lot of filler, and the pace was actually well done. Even some of the books I didnt think I'd like, I really enjoyed.
A well crafted series that tells exactly the story it set out to tell, the further tragedies of the skywalker lineage.
August 26, 2024
It tries its best, but by the 9th book, this can't help feel like an anti-climax. This should have built up to something that would blow a wanna-be epic confrontation like "Revenge of the Sith" out of the water...instead, it's a competent conclusion that just...comes to a stop. I just wanted so much more.
July 8, 2021
Good way to end the series. I like that the author gave Luke a good reason to not face Darth Caedus without killing him off.
September 11, 2025
The flashbacks with Jacen and Jaina really tugged on the heartstrings, and the ending just added on to the emotions that pile up through the book. A great finale to wrap up the series
January 10, 2026
Never cried harder reading something in my life
March 28, 2020
Troy Denning produced an epic conclusion to an epic series. Unfortunately for me, I already knew all the spoilers going in, so there was no surprise at all. However, if I had gone in blind, the twists and turns of this book would have been amazing.
Troy Denning really captures the feel of Star Wars. I felt like I was watching a Star Wars movie in book format at times. The dialogue was great. The jokes were funny, the action was stellar. Troy Denning really just gets Star Wars.
There were things that I wish were different, but as a whole, it really was a satisfying ending. Legacy of the Force has earned its place as one of the top series in Star Wars. I still believe that the orignal Thrawn Trilogy is the best, and that the New Jedi Order series, Darth Bane trilogy, and X-Wing deserve a lot of credit, but this beats out most of the rest(series, not individual books).
As a whole, Invincible is incredible. I believe that the Legacy of the Force really hit its stride in the end. 9.0 out of 10!
Troy Denning really captures the feel of Star Wars. I felt like I was watching a Star Wars movie in book format at times. The dialogue was great. The jokes were funny, the action was stellar. Troy Denning really just gets Star Wars.
There were things that I wish were different, but as a whole, it really was a satisfying ending. Legacy of the Force has earned its place as one of the top series in Star Wars. I still believe that the orignal Thrawn Trilogy is the best, and that the New Jedi Order series, Darth Bane trilogy, and X-Wing deserve a lot of credit, but this beats out most of the rest(series, not individual books).
As a whole, Invincible is incredible. I believe that the Legacy of the Force really hit its stride in the end. 9.0 out of 10!
September 15, 2008
I think that in the context of a sci-fi space opera, the "Legacy of the Force" storyline has been pretty brilliant (its not trying to cure cancer). But this last book was quite disappointing. After reading the pretty amazing "Revelation" by Karen Traviss, you kind of have to wonder what happened. Traviss spent that whole novel meticulously building great characterizations of Jacen, Ben, Luke, Niathal, Daala, Palleaon, and most impressively, Boba Fett, who has spent most of his history being a rather boring bada$$ enigma. Traviss moves all the chess pieces around the board to establish an interesting political, military, and philosophical standoff, then along comes "Invincible", and all that groundwork, and all those characters either disappear, or are reduced back to the stock cliches that were the hallmark of the worst Bantam novels (anyone remember "The Crystal Star" or "The New Rebellion"?)
We're left with what reads more like an outline with a few well written action scenes, and dialogue that is eye-rollingly frustrating. Has Denning always had such a tin-ear with these characters? I don't recall things getting so goofy during the Swarm Wars. Scenes where characters spends a page extemporising about throw-away one liners betray an author who is far more amused than he should be about his characters' witty retorts. I hate to keep comparing Denning to Traviss, but I love the way her Manolorians (and the Clone Troopers in their series) dryly quip to one another while going about their duty. If a Clone Trooper laughed at one of their jokes, they'd be thrown out of the squad. Denning's characters sounded more like the dorky kid who repeats someone else's joke ad nauseum long after it stopped being funny. And I'd swear Denning must have been using his thesaurus looking up synonyms for 'laugh', as his characters spent waay too much time chuckling, chortling, or snickering.
But the poor attempts at humor are just a small problem compared to the short-shrift given to characterization and the complete lack of resolution or explanations for the major political upheavals that literally take place in the space of a few pages at the tale end of the book. [SPOILER] Daala as the new Chief of State? Jagged Fel taking over the Moffs? Wahuh? I'm not saying I can't accept these rather drastic turns of events, but could we get just a little explanation? Did we really need the rather pointless car chase through Coruscant or the blink-and-you'll-miss-it death of Prince Isolder? [END SPOILER] I think there are about 50 pages of this book that could have been a little better spent.
So, overall, I've really enjoyed the series as a whole. I just wish the finale had been placed in the hands of someone prepared to do it right. The various plot-lines had been built up and woven together far too effectively to be so casually brushed aside for a pretty banal and by-the-numbers conclusion.
We're left with what reads more like an outline with a few well written action scenes, and dialogue that is eye-rollingly frustrating. Has Denning always had such a tin-ear with these characters? I don't recall things getting so goofy during the Swarm Wars. Scenes where characters spends a page extemporising about throw-away one liners betray an author who is far more amused than he should be about his characters' witty retorts. I hate to keep comparing Denning to Traviss, but I love the way her Manolorians (and the Clone Troopers in their series) dryly quip to one another while going about their duty. If a Clone Trooper laughed at one of their jokes, they'd be thrown out of the squad. Denning's characters sounded more like the dorky kid who repeats someone else's joke ad nauseum long after it stopped being funny. And I'd swear Denning must have been using his thesaurus looking up synonyms for 'laugh', as his characters spent waay too much time chuckling, chortling, or snickering.
But the poor attempts at humor are just a small problem compared to the short-shrift given to characterization and the complete lack of resolution or explanations for the major political upheavals that literally take place in the space of a few pages at the tale end of the book. [SPOILER] Daala as the new Chief of State? Jagged Fel taking over the Moffs? Wahuh? I'm not saying I can't accept these rather drastic turns of events, but could we get just a little explanation? Did we really need the rather pointless car chase through Coruscant or the blink-and-you'll-miss-it death of Prince Isolder? [END SPOILER] I think there are about 50 pages of this book that could have been a little better spent.
So, overall, I've really enjoyed the series as a whole. I just wish the finale had been placed in the hands of someone prepared to do it right. The various plot-lines had been built up and woven together far too effectively to be so casually brushed aside for a pretty banal and by-the-numbers conclusion.
December 7, 2014
This novel not only concludes the "Legacy of the Force" series, but is probably one of the most violent and gory Star Wars novels I have read; making it one of the darkest too.
Jaina Solo is tasked with killing Darth Caedus, also known as her brother, Jacen Solo. Inevitably, the two meet amongst a nest of broken bodies, pools of blood and charred holes in the walls, and the duel is one of the best lightsaber battles I have read since Kenobi bested Anakin Skywalker on Mustafar. Incredibly, it doesn't end there as the two duelists are separated by Imperial forces, but it is from that point on that I couldn't put the book down. The climatic duel isn't quite as fierce or surprisingly gory, but its conclusion leaves the reader both happy and sad, especially given how it seems that the justified destruction of the Sith Lord is called into question. Could Jacen have been saved? We'll never know.
My only real problem with the book was how it seemed the plan Caedus had in place to destroy the Jedi was so poor that it was destined to fail. Ultimately, this is a very entertaining book if you can look past the weak subplot and poorly devised plans of the worst (or is that best) Sith Lord since Vader himself ruled the galaxy.
Jaina Solo is tasked with killing Darth Caedus, also known as her brother, Jacen Solo. Inevitably, the two meet amongst a nest of broken bodies, pools of blood and charred holes in the walls, and the duel is one of the best lightsaber battles I have read since Kenobi bested Anakin Skywalker on Mustafar. Incredibly, it doesn't end there as the two duelists are separated by Imperial forces, but it is from that point on that I couldn't put the book down. The climatic duel isn't quite as fierce or surprisingly gory, but its conclusion leaves the reader both happy and sad, especially given how it seems that the justified destruction of the Sith Lord is called into question. Could Jacen have been saved? We'll never know.
My only real problem with the book was how it seemed the plan Caedus had in place to destroy the Jedi was so poor that it was destined to fail. Ultimately, this is a very entertaining book if you can look past the weak subplot and poorly devised plans of the worst (or is that best) Sith Lord since Vader himself ruled the galaxy.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 27, 2018
The conclusion to Legacy of the Force inevitably has good triumph. We know who is going to die, but we don't know how and we don't know if any other key characters die as well. It was a strong, satisfying conclusion to a series that at times dragged. The epic battles between Jaina and Jacen were well detailed and very riveting (I would expect nothing less). Ben Skywalker and Tahiri Veila also had key, and satisfying roles as the series wrapped up nicely.
I found the Moffs to be too ruthless. I also believe that there are too many Moffs - as piles of them can be killed and yet there were still several dozen alive, leading me to believe that originally there were 60 or 80 Moffs! How big is the Imperial Remnant that it can be split 80 ways? When the Empire was in its heyday, Moff Tarkin seemed to be the most powerful and I got the impression that there were only four or five Moffs altogether. But now there are 80? I know I spend too much time thinking about this, but it's the author's job to keep me focused on the story and not such petty details.
I found the Moffs to be too ruthless. I also believe that there are too many Moffs - as piles of them can be killed and yet there were still several dozen alive, leading me to believe that originally there were 60 or 80 Moffs! How big is the Imperial Remnant that it can be split 80 ways? When the Empire was in its heyday, Moff Tarkin seemed to be the most powerful and I got the impression that there were only four or five Moffs altogether. But now there are 80? I know I spend too much time thinking about this, but it's the author's job to keep me focused on the story and not such petty details.
December 26, 2010
The conclusion of the Legacy of the Force series. From the previous books in the series it was clear what was going to happen to Darth Caedus. But there are a few surprises at the end of the book for some of the other characters like the mandalorians (especially Boba Fett and Mirta), Tenel Ka, Allana, Shevu, Isolder, Jagged Fel, Zekk??? Ben Skywalker and Tahiri. This makes the book highly recommendable.
The author also presents a different view of the whole character that is Jacen Solo. It seemed like in the other eight books there was an effort to make the reader hate Jacen for everything he did. This book focuses on reminding the reader who Jacen Solo was before this series started. How he liked to joke around, how he loved his sister and the hero he was during the war against the Vong. This contributes greatly to make the book a sad one, but not because of the story itself, but because of all the little quotes of younger Jacen written along its pages.
The author also presents a different view of the whole character that is Jacen Solo. It seemed like in the other eight books there was an effort to make the reader hate Jacen for everything he did. This book focuses on reminding the reader who Jacen Solo was before this series started. How he liked to joke around, how he loved his sister and the hero he was during the war against the Vong. This contributes greatly to make the book a sad one, but not because of the story itself, but because of all the little quotes of younger Jacen written along its pages.
September 12, 2013
A fitting end to the story. In my opinion it was a little short compared to other books in the series written by Troy Denning. Going into the book I knew it was going to focus mostly on Jania and Jacen (Darth Caedus) and the epic battle that is coming. However I was disappointed that it didn't bring closure to other parts of the story that where brought into the series. The Boba Fett and the Mandalorian aspects that the other books in the series force us into caring about. What happens to Admiral Nithal is another story arc that is just left hanging.
The battle scenes in the book are dramatic and intense, each one includes such detailed information that draws the reader in. It easily kept me turning pages till I reached the end. You also see a very mature side of Ben Skywalker that often makes you question if he is truly a 14 year old.
Overall this is a very good book and it cements why I really enjoy Troy Dennings work. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.
The battle scenes in the book are dramatic and intense, each one includes such detailed information that draws the reader in. It easily kept me turning pages till I reached the end. You also see a very mature side of Ben Skywalker that often makes you question if he is truly a 14 year old.
Overall this is a very good book and it cements why I really enjoy Troy Dennings work. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.
February 12, 2017
I had to read this book again after seeing The Force Awakens, and I still love it. If your invested in the characters it reads like a tragedy with the opening quotes at the beginning of each chapter trying to remind you who the villain used to be. It definitely has flaws. I wish they would have spent the end depicting the emotional fallout of Jaina's journey instead of spending it on setting up the next story. The overall narrative could have been a little tighter as well. There are a few sections that don't seem to contribute to anything worthwhile so I'm left wondering if they were just filler or if the book was rushed and the proper time wasn't given to develop those points. Despite all of that I do love this book and it stars my favorite of the EU characters, and also makes me a little sad about the cancelled Sword of the Jedi trilogy.
March 18, 2021
A bittersweet ending to the series.
In his final moments he reverted back to his true self to warn the ones who held his heart dear. Crazy how fast the dark changes people. This is how a SW story should be.
All the loose ends were tied with a little teaser for what's to come.
In his final moments he reverted back to his true self to warn the ones who held his heart dear. Crazy how fast the dark changes people. This is how a SW story should be.
All the loose ends were tied with a little teaser for what's to come.
June 2, 2020
This is my second time reading this. Memory rated it a four, but given it took six months to read a second time, I'm dropping it to a three for not holding enough interest.
October 31, 2025
A very good story and a satisfying ending to the series.
10/26/25--Listened at work on audible. Very good listen.
10/26/25--Listened at work on audible. Very good listen.
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