Product Description

Fighting alongside the Corellian rebels, Han and Leia are locked in a war against their son Jacen, who grows more powerful and more dangerous with each passing day. Nothing can stop Jacen’s determination to bring peace with a glorious Galactic Alliance victory–whatever the price.

While Luke grieves the loss of his beloved wife and deals with his guilt over killing the wrong person in retaliation, Jaina, Jag, and Zekk hunt for the real assassin, unaware that the culprit commands Sith powers that can cloud their minds and misdirect their attacks–and even turn them back on themselves.

As Luke and Ben Skywalker struggle to find their place among the chaos, Jacen, shunned by friends and family, launches an invasion to rescue the only person still loyal to him. But with the battle raging on, and the galaxy growing more turbulent and riotous, there’s no question that it is Jacen who is most wanted: dead or alive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46512 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-27
• Released on: 2007-11-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345477569
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Aaron Allston is the New York Times bestselling author of the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force novels, Betrayal and Exile; Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines adventures: Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand; novels in the popular Star Wars X-Wing series; and the Doc Sidhe novels, which combine 1930s-style hero-pulps with Celtic myth. He is also a longtime game designer and was recently inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design (AAGAD) Hall of Fame. He lives in Central Texas. Visit his website at www.AaronAllston.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
chapter two

Chief of State’s Briefing Office, Coruscant

The adviser’s voice was like the droning of insects, and Darth Caedus knew what to do about insects–ignore them or step on them.

But in this case, he couldn’t afford to ignore the drone. The adviser, whatever her failings as a speaker, was providing him with critical data. Nor could he raise a boot to crush the source of the drone, not with Admiral Cha Niathal, his partner in the coalition government running Coruscant and the Galactic Alliance, sitting on the other side of the table, not with aides hovering and holocam recorders running.

To make matters worse, the adviser would soon wrap up, and inevitably she would address him by the name he so disliked, the name he had been born with, the name he would soon abandon. And then he would once again feel, and have to resist, the urge to crush her.

She did it. The blue-skinned Omwati female, her feathery hair dyed a somber black and her naval uniform freshly pressed, looked up from her datapad. “In conclusion, Colonel Solo–”

Caedus gestured to interrupt her. “In conclusion, the withdrawal of the entire Hapan fleet from Alliance forces removes at least twenty percent of our naval strength and puts us into a game of withdrawal and entrenchment if we are to keep the Confederation from overrunning us. And the treachery of the Jedi in abandoning us at Kuat is further causing a loss of hope among the segments of the population who believe that their involvement means something.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you. That will be all.”

She rose, saluted, and left silently, her posture stiff. Caedus knew she feared him, that she had been struggling to maintain her composure all through the briefing, and he approved. Fear in subordinates meant instant compliance and extra effort on their part.

Usually. Sometimes it meant treachery.

Niathal addressed the other aides present. “We are done here. Thank you.”

When the office door whooshed closed behind the last of them, Caedus turned to Niathal. The Mon Calamari, her white admiral’s uniform almost gleaming, sat silently, regarding him. The stare from her bulbous eyes was no more forbidding than usual, but Caedus knew the message that they held: You could fix this mess by resigning.

Those were not her words, however. “You do not look well.” Hers was the gravelly voice so common to her species, and in it there was none of the sympathy that Admiral Ackbar had been able to project. Niathal was not expressing concern for his health. She was suggesting he was not fit for duty.

And she was almost right. Caedus hurt everywhere. Mere days before, he had waged the most ferocious, most terrible lightsaber duel of his life. In a secret chamber aboard his Star Destroyer, the Anakin Solo, he had been torturing Ben Skywalker to harden the young man’s spirit, to better prepare Ben for life as a Sith. But he had been caught by Ben’s father, Luke Skywalker.

That fight . . . Caedus wished he had a holorecording of it. It had gone on for what had felt like forever. It had been brutal, with the advantage being held first by Luke, then by Caedus, in what he knew had been brilliant demonstrations of lightsaber technique, of raw power within the Force, of subtle Jedi and Sith skills. For all his pain, Caedus felt a swelling of pride–not just that he had survived that duel, but that he had waged it so well.

At the end, Caedus had lost a position of advantage– Luke had slipped free of the poison-injecting torture vines with which Caedus had been strangling him–when Ben had driven a vibroblade deep into Caedus’s back, punching clean through a shoulder blade, nearly reaching his heart.

That had ended the fight. Caedus should have been killed immediately. For reasons he did not understand, Luke and Ben had spared his life and departed. It was a mistake that would cost Luke.

Bearing dozens of minor and major wounds, including the vibroblade puncture, a lightsaber-scored kidney, and a fierce scalp wound, Caedus had been treated and resumed command of the Anakin Solo, only to experience more injury–emotional injury, this time. In Kashyyyk space, his Fifth Fleet had been surrounded by Confederation forces. Late-arriving Hapan forces could have rescued him . . . but the Hapan Queen Mother, Tenel Ka, his comrade and lover, had betrayed him. Swayed by the treacherous persuasion of Caedus’s own parents, Han and Leia Solo, she had demanded a price for her continued military support of the Alliance, and that price had been his surrender.

Of course he had refused. And, of course, he had battered his way out of the encirclement, leading the remnants of the Fifth Fleet back to the safety of Coruscant.

So when Niathal said he did not look well, she was correct. He keenly felt his worst injury. Not the vibroblade wound, not the scalp tear, not the kidney damage–all three were healing. All three were the kind of pain that strengthened him.

It was the wound to his heart that plagued him. Tenel Ka had turned on him. Tenel Ka, the love of his life, the mother of his daughter Allana, had forsaken him.

Niathal’s severe expression didn’t waver. You could fix this mess by resigning.

He gave her a tight smile. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m recovering quickly. And I have a plan. We’ll need to follow the recommended protocol of a fighting retreat for the next few days . . . at which time the Hapans will come back into the war on our side. Our job today is to figure out how best to employ them when they return to the battlefield. Since the Confederation thinks they are staying on the fence, we can utilize the Hapans for one devastating surprise attack. We need to decide where that attack will take place.”

“You are sure the Hapans will rejoin us.”

“I guarantee it. I have an operation in motion that will ensure it.”

“What resources do you need to carry it out?”

“Only those I already have.”

“Have I seen details of your operation?”

Caedus shook his head. “If I don’t forward a file, no one can intercept it. If I don’t speak a word of detail, no one can overhear it. Too much is riding on getting the Hapans back for me to wreck things by divulging details too freely.”

Niathal remained silent. A more incendiary personality would have taken offense at Caedus’s implied questioning of her ability to handle secret matters. Niathal chose not to recognize it as an insult. She merely turned to the next matter on her agenda. “Speaking of secrets . . . Belindi Kalenda at Intelligence reports that Doctor Seyah has been pulled off the Centerpoint Station project. Seyah reported that he had come under suspicion of being a GA spy.”

“Which, of course, he is. What’s his new posting, and can he get us any useful information from there?”

Niathal shook her head in the slow, somber way of the Mon Cals. “Kalenda ordered him out. He is already back on Coruscant.”

Caedus resisted the urge to break something. “She’s an idiot. And Seyah is an idiot. He could have stayed, weathered whatever investigation they brought against him, and begun feeding us information again.”

“Kalenda was certain that he would be arrested, investigated, and executed.”

“Then he should have stayed in place until arrested! Who knows what his cowardice has cost us? Even reporting on ship and troop movements could provide us with the critical advantage in a battle.” Caedus sighed and pulled out his datapad. Snapping it open, he typed a brief note to himself.

Niathal rose and leaned over so that her bulbous eyes could peer, upside down, at his screen. “What is this?”

“A note to myself to have Seyah arrested. He provided Kalenda with false information that led her to extract him from a danger zone, which is the equivalent of desertion under fire. He will confess. He will be executed.”

“Ah.” Niathal resumed her seat, but offered no protest.

Caedus appreciated that. Niathal was clearly growing to understand that Caedus’s approach was best–it kept subordinates motivated, kept deadwood out of the ranks. “What next?”

“Bimmisaari and some of her allied worlds in the Halla sector just announced they were defecting to the Confederation.”

Caedus shook his head dismissively. “Not a significant loss.”

“No, but it’s more unsettling as the possible first sign of a trend. Intelligence has detected more communications traffic between Corellia and the Imperial Remnant, and between Corellia and the worlds of the Corporate Sector, which may be nothing more than an increased recruitment effort by the Confederation. Or it may have been initiated by the other parties, a prelude to negotiations and more defections.”

“Also irrelevant.” Caedus felt a flash of irritation. Yes, these were matters that the joint Chiefs of State needed to address, but they would all be resolved when the Hapes Consortium came back into the fold. “Anything else?”

“No.”

“Excellent.”

When the meeting was done and Niathal had departed, Caedus remained in the office. He stared at the blank walls. They soothed him. He needed soothing.

Inside, he was ablaze with anger, resentment, a sense of betrayal–all the emotions that fueled a Sith.

In the days since his fight with Luke, he had come to the realization that he was all alone...

Customer Reviews

Fury signifying nothing
After two volumes filled with major events, The Legacy of the Force series returns to form in this seventh installment. For the most part, you could skip it and not miss much.

While author Aaron Allston delivers a well-plotted and fast-paced finale, the ending leaves the story right where it began, with Jacen politically and militarily isolated and seemingly finished. The promise of a helping hand from Korriban, hinted at the end of the previous volume, turns out to be a feint, and no one has yet figured out Jacen is a Sith or Mara's killer.

Neither have they figured out that he's lost all sense of proportion. In order to bring the Hapans back into the war for the Galactic Alliance, Jacen kidnaps his own daughter. The Hapans instead withdraw from any outside contact except for a secret mission to the Jedi, who devise a rather improbable mission to plant on Jacen's body a tracer housed in a tiny piece of cloth the same color and texture as his clothing. They can thereby track Jacen's whereabouts and eventually effect a rescue - but only so long as Jacen doesn't change his clothes.

As in Allston's previous volume, Exile, Jacen walks into an obvious trap, this time set up by the Corellians to fry his fleet using Centerpoint Station, implausibly revived after being scrapped by Ben and Jacen in Betrayal (also by Allston). While the as yet unannounced Sith Lord loiters in space waiting for Centerpoint to complete its firing sequence, he allows his mother to come aboard "to talk." Instead of throwing her in the brig, the pair chat away the minutes while the Corellians take aim and the stowaways on Leia's craft pilfer data from Jacen's computers. The entire sequence comprises a long list of contrivances that make you want to give up on the book altogether.

Meantime, in an asteroid field far away, Jaina, Jag and Zekk prepare for a final showdown with Alema Rar, who is also being hunted by a Sith from Korriban eager to retrieve purloined Sith artifacts. Among them is Ship, which in the ensuing chaos flees to the Sith homeworld of Ziost, the Korriban agent in pursuit.

Along the way two major Jedi sustain life-threatening injury, but miraculously live to fight another day. A last-minute method for destroying Centerpoint Station is discovered, and Jacen can manage to kill only a Jedi-newbie and one of his subordinates, proving that he's not such a bad-ass after all and continuing the devolution of his character from a villain who reluctantly took up the dark arts in an effort to save and protect society, to a blinkered madman divorced from any rational view of the universe.

My best guess is that the next volume won't advance the series much further, though we're likely to get some interesting material on Boba Fett.

#

Two Stars
The newest installment of the Legecy of the Force: Fury if anyone is still completely in grossed in this series my hat's off to you. Its hard to feel anything but dread at this point. You know no matter how good the author tries to make it sound its going to be bad. At this point the only thing shocking is how each book is worse then the last.
Fury could have been exciting with Jacen kidnapping his daughter Allana, a group of Jedi attemmpting to kill him who were not made up of Solos and Skywalkers and the Jedi have to get Allana back. But once again like most of the series author sucked out any potential of being good...and I usually like Aaron Allston's books.
First off we have the kidnapping of Allana. Jacen only does it to get Tenel Ka to give him back her military. Not for turning her to the Dark side, making her his apprentice, or any of the more interesting reasons.
Not to mention its a sad pathetic day with a Sith has to resort to kidnapping a little girl to get anywhere. This is a problem with all three writers of Legecy none of them can make Jacen a compaling Sith. Sure he does bad things but he doesn't come off as frightening as Vader, as maniplative has Sidious or any of the thousands of other Sith. I mean could you really see Vader resorting to kidnapping a little girl in order to get Hapes to bend to his will? For all Jacen's talk of being idolizing Vader he seems to have missed everything that made everyone terrified of Vader...and apparently so have the writers.
Over in the Jedi camp we actually have a group of non-Solos and Skywalkers sent to kill Jacen. It could have been exciting except you know if Jacen's killed it'll be by one of his own relatives. But they were still more exciting then the Solos or the Skywalkers. Now how's that for sad? Perhaps if the Solos were allowed to do anything besides talk about how evil Jacen's become and he's dead to them or fight Alema again or rehash Jaina and her boyfriends (does anyone at this point care about Jaina-Jag-Zekk storyline)they might be worth reading. Having them rehash the same stuff book after book is not a story.
Its not like they are major charactors in the Star Wars Universe who's son or twin brother has turn to the Dark Side of the Force could have resulted in a wealth of plotlines for Han, Leia and Jaina....on wait they are.
Over in the Skywalker camp we have Luke who's still mourning the death of his wife. I'm glad to see someone is. Asside from Luke and Ben, everyone else seems to have forgot Mara ever existed. But neither of them did anything really interesting until the rescuing of Allana except thinking about how to kill Jacen without turning to the Dark Side. Standing around talking is not a plot.
Last but not least Leia and Han learning Allana's their granddaughter. Something that should have been interesting and exciting since we've been waiting through seven books to happen but of course it was a big let down. Leia simply realizes Allana's her granddaughter and that's it. The tragedy is this series could have been really good instead each book it gets worse and worse. With only two books left I have little doubt they'll be any good.

Fury is how bad this book and the series are
Another very poor book in the Legacy of the Force series. Wish I could give the Legacy of the Force series negative points! By now the series is showing very poor continuity, unrealistic actions by the main characters and there is little in this that represnts the best of any of the Star Wars canon. I wish I had saved my money and avoided this book! The characters are so flawed and dark that there appears to be no point in mentioning the light or good side of the force. Even Luke has regressed and seemed to have forgotton all the lessons that he's learned from his past experiences and teachers. I almosy wished they had killed him of along with so many of the other main and minor characters killed in this series.
I'm sadly done with Star Wars for now unless future books return to a reasonable level of quality. This is poor writng and in many ways a poor rehash of the original 3 movies.