Apocalypse Star Wars Legends (Fate of the Jedi)

As much as I enjoy almost anything Star Wars, this left a lot of things wanting. The whole potential of what could have been with Vestara is wasted. I get the potential he’s leaving wide open here for various story lines and yet doesn’t seem to realize how truly limiting he has just made that whole story line. Bungled so badly you think somehow this had to be a joke at some point. I could go on but you get the idea. I put 3 stars because yes it winds up the series but once you are done reading it you will most likely come away feeling as I did, “That’s it?” That’s the best you could do? I grew up on Heinlein, Asimov and others and still reread many of their works marveling at their timelessness. And maybe that’s why I get so disappointed with these. Read them once and there’s barely enough there to keep you going much less leave you wanting to revisit them at a later time. The potential for confronting other Sith civilizations with Vestara and Ben facing many trials, Vestara being torn and tempted, their children growing up and being trained with potentially conflicting concepts, etc. Character and relationship development with so many twists and turns you’d need a map and still get lost. Well throw all that excitement and potential right down the tubes for just another rerun of good jedi, bad jedi stories. How boring.

First of all, the ending to the previous novel seems to me at the time to have been an afterthought. And then I read this garbage and understood why. It seems Mr. Denning just can’t leave a good thing alone. The idea of a sith girl born and bred being redeemed was just not good enough for him. After investing a lot in Vestari, Denning reverted her back into a villain to despise.
If this wasn’t bad enough, the showdown with Abeloth felt as if he had spent too much work making his bad guy TOO powerful, and didn’t know what to do about it. Like a bad episode of Dragonball Z, he essentially cheats his way out of it.
And then it gets worse.
I complained when The Old Republic decided to tell us that the Star Wars universe sprang from the ashes of an older empire, which sprang from one older than that. The cyclic history thing was really pointless to the SW Universe. Mass Effect did it okay, as a way to explain technology. Halo did it to set up a religious war. Star Wars did it too… well, I still can’t find a discernible reason other than “It’s what the cool kids are doing.”
But Troy… Oh Mr. Denning, FOR SHAME! Lets turn the whole thing into the tales of King Arthur. Why not? I’m guessing that in Crucible I’m going to read about how Mara had some affair with Kyp Durron, and Ben finds out he has a bastard brother? Or will Leia Seduce Luke to produce Mordren? Or will he go full DBZ, Kill off Luke, and then have the other main characters track him down in heaven to bring him back to life?
The ending of this book is EXACTLY why I haven’t yet picked up a copy of Crucible. I know I will eventually, but for now I devote myself to catching up with Battletech Novels. At least none of them made me feel such disappointment.
DISNEY: PLEASE OMIT THIS NOVEL FROM CANON. WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, BRING BACK KAREN TRAVISS TO FINISH THE SAGA OF THE REPUBLIC COMMANDOS!

A little over a decade ago the folks responsible for overseeing the Star Wars Expanded Universe decided to embrace sprawling multi-author epics as the center of the adult fiction line. While there have been various standalones and short series since the late 1990s, much of Del Rey’s focus has been on multi-year publishing events. This trend started with the New Jedi Order’s nineteen books, continued with the nine volumes of Legacy of the Force, and now possibly concludes with the nine entries in Fate of the Jedi. While there are plenty of good stories and side plots contained within these thirty-seven novels, none of the three epics has offered a substantial enough storyline to warrant being spread across so many books. I’ve been reading the entire Expanded Universe using the in-universe chronology and getting to Apocalypse feels like a weight lifting.

The great news for Fate of the Jedi is despite its being stretched thin over too many books, the three authors have presented a highly consistent and generally very interesting tale. With Apocalypse, Troy Denning does indulge himself with some of his pet Star Wars creations: the insectile Killiks are wedged into the story and the not-very-relevant saga of the Barabels and their eggs comes to an end. But overall he follows right along with what the eight preceding volumes have established. Unlike his conclusion to Legacy of the Force, this book does not feel rushed and the length is warranted as he brings various plots to a close.

Summarizing Apocalypse seems a tad pointless: I would hope no one will pick it up without having read the rest of Fate of the Jedi and anyone who is already following along with the series will certainly finish with this final volume. But I’ll mention a few things that were of particular interest to me. The book’s pacing is solid: Mr. Denning does an admirable job of building multiple cascading action sequences as Abeloth’s various avatars are dealt with. There’s a real tension to the events on Coruscant as the Jedi infiltrate the Sith-run government and position themselves for the final conflict. Boba Fett swings into action with highly unlikely ally Tahiri in a gripping assault on Imperial labs.

One surprise in Apocalypse ties directly into one of the more cryptic story arcs of the Clone Wars television series. As a fan of that show, I was absolutely delighted at how the open-ended nature of the episodes in question dovetailed so neatly into the mystery of Abeloth. This cross-pollination of Star Wars stories is something I welcome for the heightened consistency and air of reality it gives to the galaxy far, far away. Mr. Denning uses the foundation those episodes offered and also utilizes the mysteries of the Maw and Centerpoint Station to give Abeloth quite a bit of interest. Her entire arc has a fantastical air about it considering her ancient lineage, her generically named locales (the Pool of Knowledge, for instance), and her seemingly almost limitless abilities. However, the authors have tied her sufficiently to key elements of the Star Wars universe for her to feel a true and reasonably grounded part of it.

I found Vestara Khai’s arc somewhat disappointing when evaluating the series as a whole. The obvious paths were for her to either stay a Sith or be “redeemed:” in Apocalypse, one of these two options comes true and there’s not much surprise about it. Her relationship with Ben Skywalker does seem to be fertile ground for future novels to play off of: whether that’s the case remains to be seen, since at this point no one outside of the people making the movies knows whether the movie Episode VII will be set after these books and whether it will take anything in the Expanded Universe into consideration. Vestara did have some good sparring with Ben and their relationship matured him further as a Jedi: I simply would have liked to see a little more surprise in her ending. Perhaps that is yet to come.

The book also features a very nice nod to the Legacy comics in the form of an unexpected ally for Luke in his final battle. Like the Clone Wars tie-in, it’s welcome to see the novels embracing other forms of Star Wars storytelling and making the sprawling universe more unified. There is still substantial mystery around Allana Solo’s future and the various competing visions for who will sit on a throne overseeing the galaxy, but Fate of the Jedi does set some of the stage for the Legacy comics and also leaves plenty of room for yet more stories set in the intervening years. While not at the height of his Star Wars masterpiece Star by Star, Mr. Denning delivers a very solid conclusion to Fate of the Jedi with Apocalypse.

They probably didn’t know it at the time but Apocalypse was chronologically the last major EU novel (Mercy Kill being more of an add-on). As such, it effectively has the tough task of wrapping up a 100+ book series. So does it deliver?

On the action front, yes. Hell, yes. It pretty much doesn’t let up for 500-odd compelling pages so there’s little complaint there. For the actual experience of reading it, the novel pushes for five stars.

And then the ending draws near and you realise that it’s not going to have a proper ending. As with every series since the New Jedi Order, this series has had one eye on the future and this is no exception: it doesn’t wrap anything up, it just sets up the next series… a series that we now know isn’t going to happen.

After nine books, you would hope for some sort of closure. After 100+ books and of course, the movies, those of us who have followed the EU can feel justified in demanding some sort of closure. Unless you’re willing to skip ahead a hundred years to the (somewhat detached) Legacy graphic novels, you’re not going to get it. Instead, you get a bleak prophecy of endless war between the Jedi and the Sith – no happy ending after all this but unending toil and misery – and that’s a bitter pill to swallow.

This isn’t the fault of Apocalypse. The EU needed to grow beyond the consequence-free books of the nineties but in the effort to “grow up”, the EU lost the purity of good versus evil and got mired in a load of balls about “balance”. The problems with Apocalypse are a symptom of this over-ambition.

Individual gripes I have include the reveal of Abeloth’s origins. This is tied closely to the Mortis storyline in the canon-trampling Clone Wars TV series; a series which pretty much forgot the war and went off on tangents with questionable merit. The Mortis episodes saw Anakin and friends visit a clumsy manifestation of this “balance” mumbo jumbo where the Father (Balance) presides over the Son (Darkness) and the Daughter (Light). If you liked those episodes, you’ll be fine with this but for others it’s a clumsy attempt at the metaphysical that has no place in Star Wars.

Also, there is yet another band of undiscovered Sith. The Lost Tribe fizzles out disappointing to be replaced by yet another band waiting in the wings. At least Abeloth was a different sort of enemy.

On it’s own merits, the book succeeds but the more importance you put in its conclusion – or lack thereof – the less satisfying it becomes.

I really enjoyed this book. It is very very fast passed. With a battle going on in every chapter. I think there is more action going on in this book then the other 8 books of the series put together. Unlike another reviewer, I love the continuity in Star Wars, the fact the main stream book refer to things in the clone wars TV series as well as other book and in some cases even comics.

The story. A month has passed since the last book. The Jedi have made their plans to infiltrate and liberate Coruscant from Lost Tribe of the Sith. Once everyone is in place the action does not stop. However can even the Jedi, the GA marines, and the Empire defeat the Lost Tribe numbering in the thousands and Aboloth?

Aboloth’s origin and purpose are explained. Tying to an arc from Clone wars season 3. We also finally get the answer as to what exactly Jason Solo saw that he was will to become Darth Caedus. The Dark man being hinted at since the last since the previous series (legacy of the force) finally makes his appearance. Then many questions are left unanswered for the next series. The sign of a good book if you are hungry for more as soon as it finishes despite being 445 pages.

The only thing I did not like was that authors seem to forget high level Jedi masters like Luke who have passed through the Dark side are more than capable of using force-lightning (their projection of it usually is green, but just as deadly) as well as the Sith they are also capable of blocking it the way Yoda did and Luke has in the pasted. They do not just use force projections to push people back. Also all the powers and new force abilities Luke added to his repertoire were not used again. Maybe they are saving that for next time. All in all a great ending to the series, and start of something new.