Ylesia (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order, #14.5) in The Expanded Universe

Jan 02, 2010 Keith rated it liked it

Shelves: star-wars

Stars: 3
Re-read: Yes
Recommend to: It's worth the short read if you are reading the NJO, but you don't miss much if you skip it.

Ylesia is a strange and sometimes problematic story that does just enough to be worth the time it takes to read it. There isn't much you learn that feels necessary to the plot of characters of the NJO though, so skipping it won't cost you anything.

Some of the problems with having Walter John Williams as the other (and how poorly coordinated some aspects of writing this Stars: 3
Re-read: Yes
Recommend to: It's worth the short read if you are reading the NJO, but you don't miss much if you skip it.

Ylesia is a strange and sometimes problematic story that does just enough to be worth the time it takes to read it. There isn't much you learn that feels necessary to the plot of characters of the NJO though, so skipping it won't cost you anything.

Some of the problems with having Walter John Williams as the other (and how poorly coordinated some aspects of writing this series has been) are evident here like they were in the Destiny's Way. He wasn't up on Star Wars lore and so some characterizations feel a bit off and his knowledge of how the universe works was lacking. Like before, much of this fault lies with the people coordinating the series.

One thing that really frustrated me in this book was Jaina. She has been an annoying character for many books now, but the last few have taken it to a new level. (view spoiler)[In Destiny's Way, it felt bizarre how Jag was swept off-screen and I later learned that it was because Williams didn't even know they were an item when he wrote the book and had to re-write aspects of it. Not his fault, but you could tell something was off. This short story kind of seems like he was making up for it in a strange way. I would guess he added these scenes in a later draft and they didn't feel necessary. Jag is back for no apparent reason. He says they needed work done on their ships or something. So they just drop what their mission was (clear trade routes of Vong) and he nows basically goes where Jaina goes. Whatever. So he surprises her in her room and kisses her. She is kissing him back (and I think it is clear she knows it is him) before she flings him across the room and into the wall with the Force. What? This is kind of brushed off by everyone, but this wasn't some friendly shove. This would be like if she surprised him with a kiss, and then after waiting a few seconds, he punched her in the face. It's a wild escalation directly towards violence. He still wants some alone time, but she says no for some reason and they should hang out in public. They play some sabacc and she says something about wanting to kiss him but they need to be alone, so they should go back to her room. Was this two separate drafts that were accidentally spliced together? Anyway, the writing of Jaina's dialogue I think we very poor in both books by Williams. She is a veteran of war at this point, but she is constantly near panic and the wild overuse of exclamation points made it even worse. She is also very incompetent for no reason and would forget things like the fact that she has reinforcements just waiting around for her to tell them to come help. This book has her arguing (rudely) with Jag and demanding he not fly in with some squadrons on a bombing run to save hundreds of lives. He does it anyways and has a very simple solution to keep them accurate and it's yet another case where not only was Jaina wrong, but she was wrong while arguing rudely with someone vastly more experienced and qualified than she is. I'll remind you this is a character we are supposed to like. (hide spoiler)]

The moral questions of war sadly comes up again, and I hate it because this is a topic the NJO has royally screwed up. Williams is far better than almost all the other authors on this topic, but I wish they would just ignore it altogether at this point. (view spoiler)

Jacen was also a perplexing character. (view spoiler)

All of my complaints aside, the topic of the story is a good one. I think it is good to have a focus on the Peace Brigade and how the Republic plans to tackle them. It all got wrapped up a bit too easily in my opinion, but I'm not complaining too much about it. ...more

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Dec 21, 2011 goodbyewaffles rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, tie-in

Particularly hearted this one, mostly due to make-outs. (I do not have high standards for Star Wars books, even within The New Jedi Order, which is orders of magnitude better than anything other than the Timothy Zahn novels.)

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