Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide II: Ruin in The Expanded Universe

Mar 25, 2010 Jeff Diamond rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: star-wars, sci-fi

Ruin seemed better than Onslaught. Maybe it was just me, but I felt that towards the end, Onslaught seemed a little more confusing, and thought that Ruin on the other hand kept me more involved as things moved along. Regardless, of all of the authors that write Star Wars, Stackpole is one of, if not the best of all of them.

One thing that I though was interesting in this book specifically was that they went a little deeper into the culture of . . . a certain planet that most Star Wars nerds are ...more

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Dec 05, 2009 Keith rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: star-wars

Stars: 3
Re-read: Necessary for the New Jedi Order Series, so yes.
Recommend to: People who want to take on the 19 book series.

This is better than Stackpole's previous installment, but it is still far from the strongest entries in the series.

The biggest problem with this book (and really the first three books) is that the authors can't come up with a realistic response from the New Republic to the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. We constantly read about how powerful they are and people will Stars: 3
Re-read: Necessary for the New Jedi Order Series, so yes.
Recommend to: People who want to take on the 19 book series.

This is better than Stackpole's previous installment, but it is still far from the strongest entries in the series.

The biggest problem with this book (and really the first three books) is that the authors can't come up with a realistic response from the New Republic to the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. We constantly read about how powerful they are and people will say things like, "if they aren't stopped soon, we won't be able to stop them at all." But then the New Republic gives the absolute minimum effort in fighting. (view spoiler)

Another major problem with Stackpole's contributions to the New Jedi Order are insanely stupid moral quibbling. It's always been dangerous territory to dig too far into the light side/dark side debate. Stackpole takes it to a whole new level of stupidity. In this book, Luke argues that they have to be a purely defensive force. If the Jedi go on the offensive, they would fall to the dark side. Why? It isn't that they can't fight in battles, but that they can only fight in battles if they are the defending force. So by this logic, destroying the first Death Star was fine, but it was evil to destroy the second Death Star. The climactic battle in Vector Prime was also an action of the Dark Side. Luke even has to obnoxiously correct Kyp and say they shouldn't call it a council of war, because that signals aggression. Give me a break. The Jedi should apparently just be scouts and help people evacuate. It's just stupid semantics. It's retarded to act like the Jedi can't fight a defensive war, only a defensive battle. How does that even fit with the events in this book that are apparently okay with Luke? (view spoiler)

Stackpole continues his unfortunate reliance on ridiculous characters having the most absurd perspectives only for them to have a complete epiphany and now be totally reasonable. (view spoiler)[Kyp is the worst. He has led a rough life and has overcome massive obstacles. He has also made major mistakes that led to the deaths of billions. Is he really the right character to lead the group of Jedi that think they are invulnerable? I get being flashy in Vector Prime, but he lost every single person in his squadron. He led them all to their deaths at the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong. He came incredibly close to being killed himself. Why would he have this arrogance? Wouldn't he be one of the outspoken ones telling everyone about the danger they face? So Stackpole has to boil the sides down the "right" one that says we should be humble and cautious vs the ridiculous one that says we are invulnerable and can win any battle with ease. So Ganner gets his face slashed open in a battle and he's like, "Wait a minute. I could be hurt...that means I'm not invulnerable! Guys, we should take this threat seriously."
Here is part of what he says to Jaina, "...my sharing rather frank views about how dangerous the Yuuzhan Vong are is not welcome. Realism becomes synonymous with defeatism in their eyes." Jaina "Probably didn't help that you saved Corran's life on Bimmiel."
Ganner "No, it didn't..."
Jaina "I'm sorry you got hurt."
Ganner "I'm not. Before I got this scratch, it was easy to believe in my on invincibility. I was arrogant enough to think of myself as perfect."
So character development according to Stackpole is a character realizing over two books that he isn't literally perfect, and this is meant to be a big moment.

Another example is Daeshara'cor and her search for a mega-weapon. She basically falls to the dark side because she wants to find an old mega weapon of the empire and use it against the Yuuzhan Vong. She is willing to attack Anakin and kidnap him, but she completely changes her mind after talking a few times with Luke. Now, she realizes the errors of her ways. She suddenly realizes that she could be opposed to slavery without hating an entire species and wanting to eradicate them. One problem I had with this entire wasted subplot was that I don't see what is wrong with finding/using a super weapon. We see in this book that the Yuuzhan Vong are building some kind of massive ship. It'd sure be nice to have a Death Star to blow that up. Why are Star Destroyers okay to use, but a more powerful version would be evil? (hide spoiler)]

Other things:
- It was really nice to have portions of the story told from the Yuuzhan Vong perspective. Omitting this was a critical error in the previous book. That said, we still don't know enough about them.
- I didn't like the justification for the entire subplot (view spoiler)
- Stackpole comes up with a truly stupid scene (view spoiler)
- I continue to be nonplussed about the Yuuzhan Vong version of organic technology. It just seems impossible to have living creatures do some many different things and be so effective. It also just seems like the authors will just create some new creature every time they want some very specific thing to happen. Who can take seriously creatures that have enough intelligence to identify and track incoming threats and create sort of a mini-black hole to absorb all of the energy while fighting a space battle? (view spoiler)
- One of the big moments at the climax was really dumb. (view spoiler)

Previous Reads: 3 Stars 2003/2006 ...more

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