The NEW JEDI ORDER series continues with this two-book DARK TIDE series. The way these books are released continues to baffle me at times. What we have here is a two-book series set within a 20-book series set within the larger series of STAR WARS novels. It gets a little confusing at times. This book could technically be considered: STAR WARS: THE NEW JEDI ORDER – BOOK 2: DARK TIDE, BOOK 1: ONSLAUGHT. Yep. Pretty geeky.
All that aside, the NEW JEDI order storyline continues to be very cool. Author Michael A. Stackpole does a fine job of picking up where R.A. Salvatore left off in VECTOR PRIME. I still prefer Salvatore’s take on the material. VECTOR PRIME felt a little bit “pulpier” to me, whereas Stackpole takes a more technical approach.
In this second NJO volume, the New Republic politicians refuse to acknowledge the looking threat of the Yuuzhan Vong. This sends Leia out with a Senator on a fact-finding mission. Luke heads back to the planet where the threat was first detected. Han heads out to drown his sorrows in booze and never returns. So, in true STAR WARS style, we have various groups of characters split up and sent out on missions.
Stackpole has a big fan following because of his popular ROGUE SQUADRON series of books. In this book, Rogue Squadron plays a huge part and Stackpole goes into quite a bit of detail about the history of the squadron, how they operate and technical details about the ship. It’s surprisingly pretty entertaining. What I found less entertaining were the elaborately detailed battle sequences. These would play great on the big screen, but for me they don’t work on the printed page.
In addition to the focus on Rogue Squadron, this novel picks up story threads for dozens of characters and all are juggled really well. The non-movie characters have been developed to the point where they are just as interesting – if not more so – than the movie characters. While some of the battle sequences get a little long, they are more than made up for by the rest of the book.
Next up: STAR WARS: NEW JEDI ORDER 3: DARK TIDE 2: ONSLAUGHT. Sheesh!
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As far as I’m concerned, there are only a few legitimate STAR WARS novels, and this NEW JEDI ORDER series does not qualify.
First up, the novelizations of the original trilogy are actually quite good. If you want to start with STAR WARS novels, you have to start there.
Second, the Admiral Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zhan is fantastic. This is what they should have made instead of the prequel movies. Outstanding stuff.
After that, the series is quickly torpedoed by Kevin Anderson’s asinine Jedi Academy trilogy of novels. That’s where the STAR WARS publishing line lost me for good.