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This week I decided to review Star Wars: Legacy of the
Force: Betrayal by Aaron Allston. The story opens with a short scene of Luke
Skywalker discussing a recent vision of a dark man who doesn’t exist yet, with
his wife Mara Jade Skywalker. It then shifts to Adumar, where Jacen Solo and his
apprentice and cousin Ben Skywalker are investigating a Proton Torpedo factory
which is suspected of using used to created munitions to export to other
Galactic Alliance worlds rather than being used for local defense or sent to
the central Galactic Alliance military as part of a new program to limit local
defense forces in favor of the central military. A battle ensues after they discover
a hidden portion of the factory producing weapons. The scene then shifts to a
dinner of the combined Skywalker and Solo families which degrades into an argument
over the new regulations on local defense forces, and whether such regulations
would have decreased the damage suffered in the Yuuzhan Vong War or made things
worse. Luke eventually takes Jacen aside and explains that the Galactic
Alliance has found evidence that Corellia, one of the loudest of the many
planets protesting the new defense force and military hardware export restrictions,
is believed to be building a secret assault fleet and seeking to reactivate
Centerpoint, an ancient station used to build the Corellian system, and just as
effective at destroying star systems as it is at building them. He asks Jacen to
take on a mission to disable or destroy the station, while an Alliance fleet
moves in to awe the Corellians into backing down. But Han and Leia find
evidence of what is coming and warn Corellia, leading to the fleet operation
turning into a massive battle. Then the Alliance admiral in command of the
forces in the system decides to invade the outermost planet of the Corellian
system. This only makes the political crisis worse, and attempted truce talks
end with both negotiation teams being targeted by assassins. Corellia’s leader is
among the causalities, leaving Han’s cousin Thrackan, not known for moderation, playing
nice with others or liking the idea of Corellia being controlled by any form of
outside government, in power. Jacen and Ben depart to try to discover who is
behind the assassination, but soon find themselves caught in a web of seemingly
random incidents involving insane and suicidal people who are quite willing to
target bystanders. Meanwhile, Han and Wedge Antilles believe that the only hope of
preventing a full scale war is to drive the Alliance forces from Corellian
space and begin plotting a daring bomber raid to clear the path for an attack
on the Alliance’s main ground base in the Corellian system. As the raid and
battle rages far away, Jacen confronts the force behind much of the recent
bloodshed and must choose from many possible paths at a time where one slip may
bring a nightmare to reality.
I give this book an 8 out of 10. It was very interesting but
the author writes some of the best humor scenes to be found in Star Wars, in my
opinion, but that humor was mostly missing from this book. Also, there are a few
parts that I question the purpose of in the story. Finally it is never a good
sign when a key plot point requires the government of the galaxy passing a law
at what I feel would be pretty much the stupidest possible time the history of
the Star Wars galaxy to enact such a measure. It is like the Galactic Alliance
senate wanted a civil war less than two decades after the most devastating war
in the setting’s recorded history or something. The battle sequences were well
done but I wish there had been some more viewpoint characters in the major
battles. In particular, during the first battle between the Galactic Alliance
fleet and Corellia’s defense fleet, you don’t see any of the space battle from
the point of view of the Corellian forces.
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