Product Description

Civil war rages as the Galactic Alliance–led by Cal Omas and the Jedi forces of Luke Skywalker–battles a confederation of breakaway planets that rally to the side of rebellious Corellia. Suspected of involvement in an assassination plot against Queen Mother Tenel Ka of the Hapes Consortium, Han and Leia Solo are on the run, hunted by none other than their own son, Jacen, whose increasingly authoritarian tactics as head of GA security have led Luke and Mara Skywalker to fear that their nephew may be treading perilously close to the dark side.

But as his family sees in Jacen the chilling legacy of his Sith grandfather, Darth Vader, many of the frontline troops adore him, and countless citizens see him as a savior. The galaxy has been torn apart by too many wars. All Jacen wants is safety and stability for all–and he’s prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.

To end the bloodshed and suffering, what sacrifice would be too great? That is the question tormenting Jacen. Already he has sacrificed much, embracing the pitiless teachings of Lumiya, the Dark Lady of the Sith, who has taught him that a strong will and noble purpose can hold the evil excesses of the dark side at bay, bringing peace and order to the galaxy–but at a price.

For there is one final test that Jacen must pass before he can gain the awesome power of a true Sith Lord: He must bring about the death of someone he values dearly. What troubles Jacen isn’t whether he has the strength to commit murder. He has steeled himself for that, and worse if necessary. No, the question that troubles Jacen is who the sacrifice should be.

As the strands of destiny draw ever more tightly together in a galaxy-spanning web, the shocking answer will shatter two families . . . and cast a grim shadow over the future.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11634 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-29
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 512 pages

About the Author
Karen Traviss is the author of Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines and two Star Wars: Republic Commando novels, Hard Contact and Triple Zero, as well as City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before, Matriarch, and Ally. A former defense correspondent and TV and newspaper journalist, Traviss has also worked as a police press officer, an advertising copywriter, and a journalism lecturer. She has served in both the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service and the Territorial Army. Since her graduation from the Clarion East class of 2000, her short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, On Spec, and Star Wars Insider. She lives in Devizes, England.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter one

He will choose the fate of the weak.
He will win and break his chains.
He will choose how he will be loved.
He will strengthen himself through sacrifice.
He will make a pet.
He will strengthen himself through pain.
He will balance between peace and conflict.
He will know brotherhood.
He will remake himself.
He will immortalize his love.

—“Common Themes in Prophecies Recorded in the Symbology of Knotted Tassels;” by Dr. Heilan Rotham, University of Pangalactic Cultural Studies. Call for papers: the university invites submissions from khipulogists and fiber-record analysts on the subject of the remaining untranslated tassels from the Lorrd Artifact. Symposium dates may change, subject to current security situation.

Sith meditation sphere, heading, Coruscant—estimated

It was odd having to trust a ship. Ben Skywalker was alone in the vessel he’d found on Ziost, trusting it to understand that he wanted it to take him home. No navigation array, no controls, no pilot’s seat . . . nothing. Through the bulkheads he could see stars as smeared points of light, but he’d stopped finding the ship’s transparency unsettling. The hull was there. He could both see it and not see it. He felt he was in the heart of a hollowed red gem making its sedate way back to the Core.

And there was no yoke or physical control panel, so he had to think his command. The strange ship, more like a ball of rough red stone than a vessel made in a shipyard, responded to the Force.

Can’t you go faster? I’ll be an old man by the time I get back.

The ship felt instantly annoyed. Ben listened. In his mind, the ship spoke in a male voice that had no sound or real form, but it spoke: and it wasn’t amused by his impatience. It showed him streaked white lights streaming from a central point in a black void, a pilot’s view of hyperspace, and then an explosion.

“Okay, so you’re going as fast as you can . . .” Ben felt the ship’s brief satisfaction that its idiot pilot had understood. He wondered who’d made it. It was hard not to think of it as alive, like the Yuuzhan Vong ships, but he settled for seeing it as a droid, an artifact with a personality and—yes, emotions. Like Shaker.

Sorry, Shaker. Sorry to leave you to sort it all out.

The astromech droid would be fine, he knew it. Ben had dropped him off on Drewwa. That was where Shaker came from, like Kiara, and so they were both home now. Astromechs were good, reliable, sensible units, and Shaker would hand her over to someone to take care of her, poor kid . . .

Her dad’s dead and her whole life’s upended. They were just used to lure me to Ziost so someone could try to kill me. Why? Have I made that many enemies already?

The ship felt irritated again, leaving Ben with the impression that he was being whiny, but he said nothing. Ben didn’t enjoy having his thoughts examined. He made a conscious effort to control his wandering mind. The ship knew his will, spoken or unspoken, and he still wasn’t sure what the consequences of that might be. Right then, it made him feel invaded, and the relief at finding the ancient ship and managing to escape Ziost in it had given way to worry, anger, and resentment.

And impatience. He had a comlink, but he didn’t want to advertise his presence in case there were other ships pursuing him. He’d destroyed one. That didn’t mean there weren’t others.

The Amulet wasn’t that important, so why am I a target now?

The ship wouldn’t have gone any faster if he’d had a seat and a yoke to occupy himself, but he wouldn’t have felt so lost. He could almost hear Jacen reminding him that physical activity was frequently displacement, and that he needed to develop better mental discipline to rise above fidgeting restlessness. An unquiet mind wasn’t receptive, he said.

Ben straightened his legs to rub a sore knee, then settled again cross-legged to try meditating. It was going to be a long journey.

The bulkheads and deck were amber pumice, and from time to time, the surfaces seemed to burn with a fire embedded in the material. Whoever had made it had had a thing about flames. Ben tried not to think flame, in case the ship interpreted it as a command.

But it wasn’t that stupid. It could almost think for him.

He reached inside his tunic and felt the Amulet, the stupid worthless thing that didn’t seem to be an instrument of great Sith power after all, just a fancy bauble that Kiara’s dad had been sent to deliver. Now the man was dead, all because of Ben, and the worst thing was that Ben didn’t know why.

I need to find Jacen.

Jacen wasn’t stupid, either, and it was hard to believe he’d been duped about the Amulet. Maybe it was part of some plan; if it was, Ben hoped it was worth Faskus’s life and Kiara’s misery.

That’s my mission: put the Amulet of Kalara in Jacen’s hands. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jacen could be anywhere now: in his offices on Coruscant, on the front line of some battle, hunting subversives. Maybe this weird Force-controlled ship could tap in and locate him. He’d be on the holonews. He always was: Colonel Jacen Solo, head of the Galactic Alliance Guard, all-around public hero holding back the threats of a galaxy. Okay, I’m feeling sorry for myself. Stop it. He couldn’t land this ship on a Coruscant strip and stroll away from it as if it were just a TIE fighter he’d salvaged. People would ask awkward questions. He wasn’t even sure what it was. And that meant it was one for Jacen to sort out.

“Okay,” Ben said aloud. “Can you find Jacen Solo? Have you got a way of scanning comlinks? Can you find him in the Force?”

The ship suggested he ought to be able to do that himself. Ben concentrated on Jacen’s face in his mind, and then tried to visualize the Anakin Solo, which was harder than he thought.

The sphere ship seemed to be ignoring him. He couldn’t feel its voice; even when it wasn’t addressing him or reacting to him, there was a faint background noise in his mind that gave him the feeling the vessel was humming to itself, like someone occupied with a repetitive task.

“Can you do it?” If it can’t, I’ll try to land inside the GAG compound and hope for the best. “You don’t want Galactic Alliance engineers crawling all over you with hydrospanners, I bet.”

The ship told him to be patient, and that it had nothing a hydrospanner could grip anyway.

Ben occupied himself with trying to pinpoint Jacen before the ship could. But Jacen’s trick of hiding in the Force had become permanent; Ben found he was impossible to track unless he wanted to be found, and right then there was nothing of him, not a whisper or an echo. Ben thought he might have more luck persuading the ship to seek holonews channels—or maybe it was so old that it didn’t have the technology to find those frequencies.

Hey, come on. If it managed to destroy a freighter on the power of my thoughts alone, it can find a holonews signal.

Ah, said the ship.

Ben’s mind was suffused with a real sense of discovery. The ship dropped out of hyperspace for a moment and seemed to cast around, and then it felt as if it had found something. The starfield—visible somehow, even though the fiery, rocky bulkheads were still there—skewed as the ship changed course and jumped back into hyperspace. It radiated a sense of happy satisfaction, seeming almost . . . excited.

“Found him?”

The ship said it had found what it was seeking. Ben decided not to engage it in a discussion of how it could find a shutdown Jacen hiding in the Force.

“Well, let me know when we get within ten thousand klicks,” Ben said. “I can risk using the comlink then.”

The ship didn’t answer. It hummed happily to itself, silent but filling Ben’s head with ancient harmonies of a kind he’d never imagined sounds could create.

Colonel Jacen Solo’s cabin, Star Destroyer Anakin Solo, extended course, heading 000—Coruscant, via the construum system

None of the crew of the Anakin Solo seemed to find it odd that the ship was taking an extraordinarily circuitous course back to Coruscant.

Jacen sensed the general resigned patience. It was what they expected from the head of the Galactic Alliance Guard, and they asked no questions. He also sensed Ben Skywalker, and it was taking every scrap of his concentration to focus on his apprentice and locate him.

He’s okay. I know it. But something didn’t go as planned.

Jacen homed in on a point of blue light on the bridge repeater set in the bulkhead. He felt Ben at the back of his mind the way he might smell a familiar but elusive scent, the kind that was so distinctive as to be unmistakable. Unharmed, alive, well—but something wasn’t right. The disturbance in the Force—a faint prickling sharpness at the back of his throat that he’d never felt before—made Jacen anxious; these days he didn’t like what he didn’t know. It was a stark contrast with the days when he had wandered the galaxy in search of the esoteric and the mysterious for the sake of new Force knowledge. Of late, he wanted certainty. He wanted order, and order of his own making.

I wasn’t ridding the galaxy of chaos then. Times have changed. I’m responsible for worlds now, not just myself.

Ben’s mission would have taken him . . . where, exactly? Ziost. Pinpointing a fourteen-year-old boy—not even a ship, just fifty-five kilos of humanity—in a broad corridor coiling around the Perlemian Trade Route was a tall order even with help from the Force.

...

Customer Reviews

Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice
Next to Inferno (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 6)this has to be my favourite book in the Legacy of the Force series.

How do I begin to review this book? Well, it opens with Ben returning from a mission that Jacen deceived him to go on. This is the beginning of the end for Jacen's tyranny over Ben. I noticed that Ben isn't quite as devoted to Jacen in this book as he was in the earlier books in this series, which is a good thing. Maybe he will finally realize that Luke and Mara aren't as unfair and tyrannical as he thought in the past.

Jacen is going so totally dark that it is rather amazing that it is taking this long for the GA and so many other people to notice. And his take over of the GA is rather unbelievable. To get there, he tasks Ben to murder the Head of State of the system whose rebellion was the starter of the war. Jacen's behavior isn't going to help the situation one little bit. During the killing of the afore mentioned Head of State, one of the members of the GAG blows up his ship, with himself inside so that Ben can escape. This doses Ben with some common sense and he really begins to realize that Jacen isn't his friend. This realization gets even more stunning when Ben overhears a coversation between Jacen and Lumiya.

The main complaint that I have about this book is that Karen Traviss spends WAY too much time analyzing Boba Fett and trying to make him into a character who people should feel got a bum rap during his early life and therefore should be considered a good guy who made some bad choices. Give me a break!!! Fett is an amoral bounty hunter who happens to have gotten thrust onto the readers by an author who likes to bore her readers with everyother page being about Fett and the Mandolorians. It could be interesting information in a book about Fett and the Mandolorians, not at all necessary in a series of books about the Skywalkers and Solos. At least there was more time devoted to the Skywalkers and Solos in this book than there was in Bloodlines (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 2) and in Revelation (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 8).

Speaking of the Skywalkers and Solos, Mara Jade Skywalker was really front and center in this book. The cover artist made Mara look really good for this book. I hope I look that good when I am almost 60! Because I read the books that follow this book first, I had a pretty good idea of what happened in this book before I read it. Mara goes back to her past as the Emperor's Hand and you get to see just what she was like in those days. She goes after Lumiya and you get a pretty amazing duel between two former Emperor's Hands. It is a shame that Mara was unable to finish Lumiya off at that point, it would have saved everyone in the Star Wars universe a lot of pain and grief. Luke takes a side role in this bokkas he seems to do in alot of the previous books in this series. I just wish that he had insisted that BOTH he and Mara go after Lumiya. Maybe what happened in this book wouldn't have happened.

The main focus of this book was on the sacrifice that Jacen would have to make to become a full Sith Lord. It is very interesting to read about how Jacen comes to the decision on who the sacrifice has to be and how he suddenly changes it at the last moment.

The duel that provides Jacen's sacrifice was stunning. I have the audio version of this book uses the 'Duel of Fates' music from Star Wars - Episode I, The Phantom Menace (Widescreen Edition) as a backround track. I started crying while I was reading this book. I just wonder how certain other authors feel about the death of this character?

Luke reacts in an incredible way. You get to see the Luke Skywalker of the movies in this scene.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this series.

May the Force be with us!!

Sacrifice is an understatement
Sacrifice has many meanings within this novel and can apply to a bevy of the situation contained within.

Book 5 here in this series really seems to take Star Wars back to its roots, and is able to balance a somewhat cerebral tone as well. Meaning, it has great action and climatic battles in every book thus far, but weaves a more politically motivated tale akin to those novels spun by Tom Clancy or Larry Bond.

The build from the previous installments is still escalating and there is quite a bit of political intrigue and thread weaving that all seems to make sense. Karen Traviss does a fine job in taking the second tier Star Wars universe characters and really fleshing them out and making them the forefront of this tale.

Lumiya, Jacen Solo, Ben Skywalker, Mara Jade Skywalker, Boba Fett, Mirta Gev (to name a few) all play prominent roles in shaping the direction of the galaxy after the Vong war and a very solid foundation in which the rumblings of the once powerful Sith culture and religion begin to take shape again and usher in a new era for the galaxy akin to the Empire.

As it stands the stand-off between Corellia and the Galactic Alliance grows as planets begin to take sides. The jedi order wishes to maintain a certain level of neutrality whereas Jacen Solo and his secret police (The GAG) begin to squash splinter cells and dissenters. With the ousting of Cal Omas (Galactic Chief of State), Jacen and Mon-Cal Admiral Cha Niathal assume a new role as `acting' dual head of state.

Ben is tasked by Jacen to do something unspeakable at the request of Lumiya to either proved Ben's worth and loyalty or destroy him in the process. This act alone had a profound impact on Ben, and forces him to grow up in a way he never intended or wished. He first wants to hide this from his parents, but his conscious eventually gives way and he tells Mara.

At this point Mara has her own personal revelations about Lumiya and Jacen and decides that something must be done, even if Luke is slightly hesitant and Mara begins to slip into her old ways as The Emperor's Hand. By the end of the novel Mara is cast in a whole new light and the reader can sympathize with her dual role.

At the other end of the galaxy, Boba Fett and his granddaughter Mirta begin a quest not only to restore Boba's failing health, but a Mandalore discovery prompts Fett to become the leader he was always tapped to be to the people Madalore. However, he hasn't forgotten about the death of his daughter at the hands of Jacen Solo. But the re-emergence of the people of Mandalore and their place in the galaxy, and what side they are about to choose is an interesting chess piece that author Traviss reveals and begins to explore. By the end of the novel, it is clear which side Boba has chosen and he also receives some shattering news that even the most stoic of all bounty hunters is shaken to his core.

Luke's showdown with Lumiya towards the climax and the events that lead up to it has the reader once more excited about the Luke Skywalker of old, as he's on a personal quest now letting his emotions triumph over his Jedi training. I'd hate to be in his way now.

Finally a new Sith Lord arises, Darth Caedus, who begins to full fill his own destiny as he proves good on the prophecies Lumiya speaks of. The galaxy, the characters, and the Star Wars universe is about to change very dramatically. What Traviss reveals and executes on in this book all serves purpose and really makes this series shine.

Not so good
*CAUTION CONTAINS SPOILERS*

I'm a diehard Star Wars fan, and I did not care for this book. I'll admit that I'm a little jaded due to the fact that my favorite Expanded Universe character, in fact possibly my favorite character in the entire SW universe is killed off. I've always considered Han and Wedge my favorite characters, but Mara was right up there too. She's the ideal female character: a servant of the good side with just a bit of the dark still in her, stealthy yet strong, powerful without sacrificing her femininity. She embraces her role as Luke's wife and Ben's mother while still having the cunning and killer instinct of an assassin (she's also incredibly beautiful, whoever did the artwork on the cover deserves an award.) It's always an interesting story when Mara's involved, and I'm deeply saddened to see that the Lucas Licensing people have now made her inaccessible to any future novels. Her death rips a distinct and vital piece out of any future installments to the expanded universe, though I will grudgingly admit that the whole sequence was well prepared for and well written when the time came.

My biases at losing Mara aside, the writing was pretty poorly structured. The book, like the others before it, has a good deal of emphasis on the Fett storyline, which has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the overall plot. I found myself frequently skipping over the pages with it. Jacen is turning dark, ordering assassinations, deciding who is the right person he loves that he must kill in cold blood, then you turn the page and it's Boba Fett trying to figure out his role, recycling the same dialogue that the series has already used numerous times. You get past it to the dynamics of the Skywalker family shifting, Ben coming to grips with life, Mara and Luke trying to figure out the right path with the fate of the universe in the balance, then you turn the page and it's Boba Fett trying to figure out his role, recycling the same dialogue that the series has already used numerous times. Back to military action, dogfights, lightsaber battles, hunting for the bad guys, then you turn the page and it's Boba Fett trying to figure out his role, recycling the same dialogue that the series has already used numerous times. You get the idea, plus my sneak preview of the repetitiveness.

Another major problem is the idleness of numerous major characters. Han and Leia pretty much just sit on the sidelines, idling on Corellia. That's not the Han and Leia I know. Even Luke doesn't do anything until the end; he just kind of sits at home and worries about Mara and Ben. When Mara goes hunting for Lumiya, and eventually to confront Jacen, he doesn't do anything. Knowing how powerful Jacen has become, if Mara were my wife I'd have insisted we go together. He didn't, and he lost her because of it. Jaina's hunt for Alema Rar is a subplot at best and receives little to no attention. Having Han, Leia, and Luke inactive while focusing on Boba Fett's family soap opera is not the structure of a good Star Wars book.

Overall, I am enjoying the Legacy of the Force series, but I do not like the direction this book went in. When pertaining to Jacen, who is the main character of the series, this book is excellent; however, the other areas are poorly developed.