This book almost broke my resolve to read and review every STAR WARS novel ever published. The first half of the book was so uninteresting to me that it sat half-read for several months. But lately I’ve spent lots of time waiting for my compute to render, so I’ve been exhausting all my reading material. Finally, Kathy Tyers’ STAR WARS: THE NEW JEDI ORDER – BALANCE POINT was all I had left.
I’ve already set up the basic concept for this series on previous reviews, but basically an awesome race of aliens is invading our beloved STAR WARS galaxy and doing a great job of tearing shit up. By the time we reach BALANCE POINT, they’ve pretty much destroyed or taken over all the outer planets and are quickly moving towards the “Core” planets. The “Core” planets seem to be the ones that are actually in the movies, with Coruscant being the center.
This book picks up with Leia and Han trying to help out refugees who are winding up in all kinds of crappy situations, i.e. governments are offering safe haven in order to barter off the refugees as bloood sacrifices for the Yuuzhan Vong. The first half of the book is comprised of a bunch of running around and dealing with the interpersonal relationships of the Solo family. It gets a little tedious. Plus, there are so many different alien races running around and getting shaved (yes, shaved) that it was hard for me to keep track of it all.
One of the central threads running through the series to date has been Jacen Solo’s discomfort with using the force. It comes to a head in this book, and although it is not handles particularly well, this seems to be one of the key threads of the NEW JEDI ORDER series. For the entire series, I’ve been waiting for the Jedi to stop being contemplative pacifists and kick some ass. The resolution of Jacen’s internal struggle has consequences that will force the Jedi to get their act together.
So this volume is a real mixed bag. Based on the first half of the book, I thought this was going to be a filler volume that didn’t really move the larger plot forward. I was wrong. Some cool stuff ends up happening, I just wish these plot points had been entrusted to a more capable writer. At the very least, this restores my interest in seeing what happens next. –Chris Sharpe
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