Reviews on Amazon describe this book as "very poorly done", "almost painful to read", and "just plain stupid". It boasts an impressive two-and-a-half stars. Strap yourselves in for an adventure to boredom!
We begin our tale on the planet of Ithor. The whole extended Solo/Skywalker family is there for a ceremony whose point is never really explained. In the middle of the ceremony a crazed assassin pushes his way through the crowd screaming "Solo! Kill you! Going to kill you all!" After subduing the assassin, the Ithorians promise to find out who he is. But Han surprises everyone by telling them he already knows who it is. Turns out it's an old smuggler friend of his, Drub McKumb.
His mother had high hopes for him, I'm sure. Apparently the guy used to be a
big ol' porker, but now is rail thin thanks to a strict diet of drugs. Luke tries to enter the guy's mind but finds buckets full of crazy and has to cut the connection. Eventually McKrub brings up a place, "Plett's Well" and starts rambling about "the children".
This leads us to the scientists/Jedi/married couple/I have no idea Nichos Marr and Cray Mingla. Nichos isn't actually alive, but a robot with Nichos Marr's brain downloaded into it.
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| And here I am wondering if he's....fully functional. |
There's no canon picture of Cray...and there's a reason for it. Rest assured, it's creepy as fuck and we will get to that.
Six months or so before the beginning of the book, Nichos contracted something called "Quannot's Syndrome" and died. Rather than, you know, accepting death and becoming one with the Force, he and Cray decided to use the entechment process from Truce At Bakura to transfer his consciousness to a robot body (And oh yes, I'll be getting to that fucking thing sooner or later.)
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| Yet another entry in the "Somebody actually thought this was a good idea to include in Star Wars" list. |
Luke, Cray, Nichos, and C3PO decide to go to the Moonflower Nebula. Luke makes this decision by having Nichos produce a random string of numbers. Which is like planning your day around the decisions of a magic 8-ball, but okay. The numbers lead them to the Moonflower Nebula, which leads them to a planet, the unfortunately named Pzob. It's inhabited by Gamorreans. En route, they fly through an asteroid field and are suddenly fired upon by an unknown enemy. Luke does an impressive bit of flying and they manage to get away. He's just getting ready to hit hyperspace when we're subjected to our first of many clunky similes:
Ugh.
The Huntbird had just started to move when a bolt of ionized plasma hit the shielding asteroid like the hammer of Death.
It's enough to knock Luke into unconsciousness. He wakes up after a bit, floating in zero-g. Everyone else is okay, mostly because two-thirds of them are droids. Cray explains that Luke got a face full of coolant but he still manages to land their crippled ship on Pzob. They're planning their next move when the door opens and a Stormtrooper enters. The great Jedi Master Skywalker nearly faceplants in front of him and the Stormtrooper shows uncharacteristic concern. Turns out the guy is the last of an Imperial battalion stationed on the far-flung planet. He still thinks the Emperor is in charge.Luke has to break the news to him. "Triv" tells them that the rest of his comrades were killed by the Gamorreans. He managed to escape because
Meanwhile, C3PO is with Nichos back at the ship moaning about how Cray and Luke are probably dead when Cray and Luke show up with Triv. The group is getting ready to liftoff when a group of Gamorreans show up. Just when things look dim, a ship suddenly appears. Triv is ecstatic, positive it's the Emperor. The Gamorreans charge on board the new ship and disappear inside. The new ship issues a recorded command, telling them to surrender. Obviously, not the Emperor. Triv unwisely makes a run for it and gets shot. 'Tracker bots' pour out of the mystery ship. Nichos and C3PO decide to try the 'make a run for it' thing as well. The trackers ignore them. Cray shoots at one of the trackers, revealing her position. She gets shot and Nichos stops and screams her name. Luke tries to shoot one of the trackers, since it worked so well for Cray, I guess. He gets shot too. This is the man who blew up the first Death Star and helped to defeat the Emperor. A tactical genius!
We join Leia, Han, and Chewbacca in the city of Plawal. Which, in case you were dropped on your head repeatedly as a child, is the mysterious Plett's Well. Turns out Plett was a Jedi who made his home on the planet of Belsavis. There were other inhabitants on the planet, but that's boring so we're going to skip it. Plett was living on the planet, minding his own business when the Great Purge began and shit got real. Jedi from all over the galaxy began hiding their families and children on the planet, thanks to its weird terrain, which makes landing difficult.
I'd like to take the time to point out probably the most annoying thing about these books, the descriptions. I'm all for describing things, but Hambly goes to great, unnecessary pains to explain everything in mind-numbing detail. For example:
The bench-the last giant step of rock at the end of the valley-was less than thirty meters wide, running back in an uneven triangle into the sheerness of the cliffs. A jungle-covered slope of debris blunted the inner point of the triangle, before which rose the tower, its front wall broken out to reveal two stone floors and the remains of two more, reduced to little better than ledges around the tower's inner wall. What looked as if it might have been a curtain wall lay about fifteen meters out from that, more or less halfway between the point of the triangle and the edge of the bench. It had been shattered in a dozen places, as if some huge creature had taken bites out of the stonework. Another curtain wall, reduced to a chain of dark rubble, skirted the edge of the bench itself, punctuated with old blast craters in which thickets of lipana grew around small silvery rain pools.
Seriously, who the fuck cares?
Leia asks their guide about the hidden tunnels they've heard so much about. Their guide assures them the tunnels are only rumors. They ask him if he recognizes a picture of McKumb, he says no. They part ways and Han says that they guy is lying, but whether it's about the tunnels or McKumb is anyone's guess because Hambly chooses not to nail that particular detail down. Leia spends a fucking page and a half blathering on about the beauty of the city and repeating "They hid the children down the well" in case we're retarded. Eventually she uses her pseudo-Jedi powers and sees a door in the wall that they can't open. Wonderful.
Back on the mysterious ship, Luke wakes up, dreaming about how the Jedi murdered his entire family. Eventually, he snaps out of it, with Nichos and C3PO standing next to him. Time to point out another annoyance, the run-on sentence:
The whole room performed one slow, deliberate loop-the-loop and Luke tightened his grip on the sides of the bunk in which he lay to keep from falling out, but at least Nichos and See-Threepio, standing over him, didn't try to clone duplicates of themselves and the pain in his chest was far less than it had been.
That's one sentence. One sentence with far too much description. At more than one point in this book, I had to trace back a sentence in a futile effort to find the subject.
It seems the ship they're on is the Eye of Palpatine. It's completely automated, which is just stupid because who does that? Really? A giant killing machine and you're going to set it on automatic? It's described as "more vast than even the biggest of the Super Star Destroyers, bigger than a torpedo sphere, with firepower to waste a planet". Basically another Death Star that was kept in cold storage for NO FUCKING REASON when it would have been a good thing to have in between the destruction of the first Death Star and the creation of the second.
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| Because it looks like a baked potato that somehow has the tinfoil on the inside? Seriously, something with as badass a name as the Eye of Palpatine deserves better. For shame. |
So this giant ship goes around to preprogrammed star systems, landing long enough to snatch up anything remotely human and shooting them full of "indoctrination drugs". This is the reason Luke was dreaming about the Jedi killing his family. All around the ship, various alien species are dressed in stormtrooper armor and Luke vaguely remembers that under the influence of the drugs, he had seen them all as human.
And boom we have a plothole! Because if Luke saw them all as human under the influence of the drugs, then why do the Gamorreans still act like Gamorreans for the most part? Or any of the other races that the Eye kidnaps?
Luke finds Cray, still acting under the influence of the drugs. He tries to pull her away to help her snap out of it when a fight breaks out. Blahblahblah, he passes out. Again. He wakes up and the head Gamorrean "stormtrooper", Ugbuz, is taping a splint to his leg. Luke manages to limp away and finds C3PO, who tells him that the other group of Gamorreans have taken Cray to their village with Nichos following in hot pursuit.
With no actual, physical evidence to support the idea, Luke says the ship's mission is to blow up Plawal. He finds a computer and tries to figure out what's going on. The computer won't tell him anything, just spits out "I can't do that" to every question he asks. So it's basically HAL. In fact, I will now refer to it as HAL because that's what it is and a Nebula award winner could only rip off Arthur C. Clarke and oh my god I'm angry!!!
Eventually the lights go out for some reason. Why, you ask? Who knows! Luke finds a med-bay and starts looting, filling his pockets with drugs and whatnot. Then he decides to look for Cray again. He runs afoul of some Gamorreans attacking a Jawa and starts throwing them around with the Force. The Jawa escapes and they demand to know who he is. He gives them Lando's name. He tells them he's in intelligence and that he's very important. They scurry off and Luke continues to explore the ship, eventually finding the ship's hangar bay. He wanders some more and tries to get more information from the computer. It works just as well as last time. Then the Jawa he saved earlier finds him. He has a gift for Luke - a lightsaber.
We catch up with Han and Leia, still on Belsavis. They need more information about the hidden Well and what McKumb was up to exactly. What better way to do this than troll the local bars! Leia compares it to the diplomatic process. If I had known that my ability to fend off clumsy passes was the only thing keeping me out of the diplomatic corps, I would have joined ages ago. Han asks around about what McKumb was up to before his untimely death. They find out practically nothing, only that there might be something living in the sewers. Fascinating. They split up with Han making the excuse that he's going to call Mara Jade. Yeah, right. Leia wanders around until she sees someone in the distance, someone she thinks she might know but can't figure out who. The woman disappears and we're left thinking, "Who cares?"
Back on the Eye of Palpatine, Luke decides to follow his new Jawa friend. Fucking three pages of mind-numbing descriptions about the ship follow. Eventually he finds something towards the heart of the ship called an "enclision grid" which protects "The Will", the computer brain that's preventing anyone from gaining control of the ship. HAL. If anyone tries to enter the enclision grid and get to HAL, they get electrocuted. It isn't a thermal exhaust port the size of a womp rat, so Luke's stumped. The Jawa takes the lightsaber he gave Luke and lays it out on the floor where he found it. Instinctively Luke knows that the other Jedi was a woman, and that he wishes he had been there to help her and that he wishes he could have known her.
He goes back out into the ship. In the computer room he and C3PO are holed up in, the monitor comes on, showing Cray and Nichos being held captive in the other Gamorrean camp, the "Klagg village". Cray is tied up and Nichos has a restraining bolt on him, preventing him from moving. How the Gamorreans, whom Hambly has taken great pains to portray as borderline retarded, figured out that Nichos was a robot is not explained. Luke wants to take the Gamorreans from his camp, the "Gakfedd", and go rescue Cray. For the whole time that Luke has been on this ship, the two Gamorrean tribes have been doing their level best to destroy each other. But now, the Gafkedd Gamorreans decide to put that on the backburner and figure who is sabotaging the ship. Wow. So instead, Luke angsts about being unable to stop the ship from destroying Plawal and oh, it's going to be so awful because he's going to feel it through the Force and not be able to stop it, just like on Carida. But oh ho ho! Luke forgets that he was knocked out after his duel with Kyp Durron when Carida was destroyed. But continuity issues are the least of this book's problems.
Luke limps around the ship some more, finding the ops center and a bunch of Affytechans fighting a space battle that isn't really happening. Luke introduces himself again - "Major Calrissian, Special Services, 22911-B" and asks where the saboteur is being held. Deck Six. Luke heads that way when he suddenly smells Sand People, aka Tusken Raiders, aka:
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| Yo. |
They try to attack Luke and he spends a whole page and a half planning his strategy for defeating them. He's going to blow the doors open and fly through the air, levitating and swinging his lightsaber, when a panel behind him just happens to fall open. He jumps through and uses the Force to smash the panel back in, leaving the Sand People behind. Awwwwwwwwwww. Well, we can always hope they'll be back, and in bigger numbers.
Luke runs into C3PO who tells him that Cray and Nichos are doomed and that if the Jawas don't stop ripping random parts of the ship out, they're all doomed. Luke doesn't give a shit about this, just moons over the idea that the panel didn't fall off by itself and that something or someone helped him escape from the Sand People.
Meanwhile, Han and Chewbacca are back on Belsavis, snooping around Plett's House. Han's tried calling Mara two separate times but hasn't been able to get a hold of her, possibly because she's been checking her caller ID before picking up. They find a cover to a hidden hole in the wall, even though hundreds of other people have searched for the same thing hundreds of other times. Whatever, this book is a walking disaster. Anywho, they head down into the tunnel beneath the house where they find a bunch of expensive electronic equipment that no one's looted yet. Han also seems to have picked up Leia's habit of repeating "They hid the children in the well" as often as she can. They snoop around some more when something comes charging down the tunnel at them. They turn to run another direction and run into a bunch of McKumb's cokehead friends who start screaming and attacking them. They escape down a conveniently located well that leads out to a river that runs into Plett's Well and congratulate each other on a job well done.
We finally get to Cray's "trial". The 'bad' Gamorreans hurl insults at the viewscreen - "Soap-lovin'!", "Prissy-butt!", "Flower-nose!", and "Cabbage Eater". I struggle to continue on, trying not to think about how I willingly shelled out $7.99 for this "novel". A sham trial follows, with sentencing to be decided at noon the next day.
Luke heads back to find the Affytechans fighting their imaginary battle again. He introduces himself, "Major Calrissian, Special Forces" and tells them that he has a new order for them. There's a malfunction in the schematics library and he needs to know the location of all the transport craft on board. Luke tracks down an SP-80 droid and reprograms it to do something. Track down Gamorreans? Hunt out Jawas? Your guess is as good as mine. He ends up finding another enclision grid. When he goes back, the Affytechans are waiting for him and tell him there are two transport craft on board, capable of carrying 120 people each. He and C3PO dicker about how they're going to fit all the people on the ships. They turn the corner and find a bunch of dead Affytechans. Luke senses something in the Force and then-
An "epic" "fight" follows with HAL herding Luke around the ship by locking doors. All seems lost and then a door sudden opens. He ducks in and hears, in the distance, someone singing. He continues down the corridor, jumping at things. He sees something suddenly and turns but it's only his reflection . . But then! There's another face in the mirror! Of course she's a beauuuuuutiful woman~ But when he turns around and there's no one there.
Back on Belsavis, Mara decides to call Han and Leia back. Mr. and Mrs. Solo ask her what she knows about the Children of the Jedi. Mara thinks back to her Imperial days and coughs out the name Ohran Keldor. Leia knows him because he was one of the guys who studied with the head architect of the Death Star. Just thinking about it makes her tremble and Han looks over at her in concern. Remember how she looked right into Tarkin's face and said, "I thought I smelled your foul stench when I was brought on board", or insulted Darth Vader right to his fucking helmet in the first 20 minutes of the film? But the memory of some douchebag who was maybe indirectly responsible for the Death Star makes her shake in her slippers. Why does everyone act like an idiot in this book?
They talk some more and then go to bed. Leia dreams about the Death Star, of course and then she wakes up because R2-D2 is going around locking things in the cupboard and fusing door locks. Leia throws a bucket of water on him and Han opens the cupboard to find a makeshift bomb that R2 threw inside. Han gets rid of the bomb and they all stare down in confusion at R2's blackened shell. The next day they try to ask R2 about it but he's just turns himself off. Instead they talk about the woman that Leia thought she saw the night previous. Turns out the woman was one of the Emperor's concubines. Ugh. If you guys thought doing it with Tarkin was bad, can you imagine having to rock Palpatine's bed?
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| Oh right, I already put that image in your head. You're Welcome. |
The next day, Leia finds the woman hiding in the middle of the old city. 'Roganda Ismaren' begs Leia not to betray her to 'them'. 'Them' is anyone on Belsavis because, 'Blahblahblah, woe is me, I don't want anyone to know I used to shack up with the Emperor and they'll kick me out and this is the only place I feel safe.' Leia promises to keep it on the DL. She asks why Roganda chose Belsavis. Roganda says it was "out of the way". Roganda continues to feed her a steady line of bullshit about being a 'fruit packer'. Leia takes her leave and suddenly realizes that Roganda's hands weren't stained with fruit juice. Da, da, daaaaaaaaah!
Oh by the way? This is the (formerly) canon image of her according to Wookieepedia.
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| Just drink it in, Folks. |
Back on the Eye of Palpatine, Luke finds a computer and types out Who are you? in bold letters. And, OMG!!, someone answers. What follows is the world's worst IM conversation. Her name's Callista. She tells him that Cray's fine and that she's on Deck 19. She then feels the need to talk about what the Gamorrean 'boars' and 'sows' are doing. She wonders about Nichos, if he's some creature Palpatine has constructed. Luke tells her Palpatine's dead. At the news of Palpatine's death, the computer screen lights up, "spreading and flashing across it, a growing design, a dancing spiral geometry of outflung joy". She asks if he's really Lando Calrissian and he's forced to give her his real name. Dead silence at the mention of "Skywalker" and he blurts out that his father killed Palpatine because OMG she might not like him if she knew the truth!!!!11 Callista tells him that she exists alongside HAL. She was the one that shot at him because she thought he was one of the Emperor's agents. Neither one of them brings up the fact that, because she shot them down, Callista is responsible for Luke, Cray, Nichos, and C3PO being on the ship. Blahblahblah, she tells him that the ship started up because someone used the Force. They say farewell and we cut to Cray's sentencing. They're going to throw her into the enclision grid at 1600 hours the next day. She begs Luke to save her and then they drag her off-screen.
When Luke finds out Cray is going to meet Mr. Enclision Grid, he gets super pissed. So much so that he stops whining about his fucking leg for five minutes. All through this book, I swear, every other word is him whining about his leg or hobbling around in pain. Like a damn retirement home.
One of the Gamorreans corners Luke before he can do something cool like tap into the dark side and start tearing shit up. It seems the guy ran 'Lando Calrissian' through the computer and nothing came up. I don't know what computer this guy was using but it seems like either the part where Lando destroyed the second Death Star or those multiple DUIs would have come up. Luke tries to use the Force to mess with the Gamorrean's mind, but "The Will" fights him. The Gamorrean makes a grab for Luke and he runs for it. Running down the hallway, Callista tells him where to go. He finally finds a shaft and lowers C3PO through. He plans on levitating himself but it's so hard. *whine* But don't worry, Callista's there with him, "the warmth of her, the awareness, beside him every agonizing meter of the way."
After three pages of whining, we finally get to Deck Six where Cray is supposed to be being held. More conversation between Luke and Callista including something about 'foo-twitters' and 'wystoh'. My head spins. Then this talk about blaster bolts: "The more that hit you, the more that will". I've gone over that sentence, that paragraph half a dozen times and I still can't figure it out. But don't worry, it's mentioned twenty or so times after this, so I'm sure I'm bound to figure it out. They talk some more about where she's from and he angsts about leaving Tatooine and Obi-Wan and Yoda dying and boo-fucking-hoo.
His heart was the diamond heart of a Jedi, forged and hard and powerful, but the pain he felt inside him was no less for that.As an English Major, let me just say: Fuck you and your clumsy metaphors, Barbara.
Back on Belsavis, Leia is rambling to Han about Roganda lying to her. Han points out maybe she's embarrassed and that maybe Roganda might be working at the bordello down the street, and are we really surprised that Han knows where the closest bordello is? Leia doesn't respond to that because she's too preoccupied with R2 and the fact that someone did something to him but he can't say who because they screwed with his programming. She decides to take his restraining bolt off and go for a stroll. And who should she run across than the odious Ohran Keldor? He's hanging out with some other guy named Drost Elegin, who Leia recognizes as another member of Palpatine's court. Leia calls him a "playboy". She decides to take R2 and follow them out of the city and into the frozen wasteland that surrounds it. Without telling anybody. Wow. She follows them to a cave which leads to an elevator and various tunnels. It suddenly occurs to her that she needs to tell Han where she is. Too late for that! She follows the tunnels and runs across a room with various children's toys. Get it? The Children? In the Well? In case you don't get it at first, she repeats it many, many more times. Finally she starts to get spooked. She tells R2 they need to get out when Roganda stops her. She's got her little brat in tow, along with Ohran, Drost, and yet another guy named Garonnin. The kid's a pain in the ass who tells Leia he's the one that rigged R2 to blow up the apartment she was staying in. He threatens Leia that if she doesn't stop trying to escape, he's going to make R2 roll himself into a pool of water. It doesn't work for some reason and the kid throws a tantrum. Leia is going to start fighting when Garonnin tells her to surrender. And she does. You never would have thought this was the same woman who led the Rebellion all those years ago.
Back on the Eye of Palpatine, Luke's thinking about Cray and his leg. Mostly about his leg. He compares it to the time he lost his hand and how he'd had a mechanical one within hours and that at this point, he'd trade, fight, or sell anything to have a medlab and a 2-1B surgical droid. So, I guess he's saying he'd rather have a mechanical leg? Seems a bit hasty. I'd think he could go into a healing trance or something but I'm not a "multiple Nebula Award winner", so I guess that's not an option. He starts hobbling around looking for a place to test out the "foo-twitter". It's designed to shoot out tracking balls that distract territorial species. He comes across the "recycling area" of the ship. "Recycling" as in the droids there are throwing dead bodies into vats full of acids. Deciding this is a good a place as any, he starts dicking around with the foo-twitter when a bunch of tracker droids decide to shoot at him. No longer satisfied with stunning him, they shoot to kill and his stupid ass gets shot. Finally he remembers that he's a Jedi and that he has a fucking lightsaber, but even then, he nearly gets thrown into a vat of acid. He manages to get away and then he passes out. Again.
While he's unconscious he starts to have a vision of Callista and the other Jedi she got onto the Eye of Palpatine with, Geith. Hambly takes great pains to describe Callista's beauty and this, more than anything, is what makes this book so awful. Interspersed with his vision of Callista are flashes of the real world where C3PO is dragging him down a corridor like a sack of potatoes. Back to the vision of Callista and Geith in the ship's hangar bay. Again, Hambly describes how beautiful she is, her long limbs, her grace. Cut forward in time to her looking up determinedly at the enclision grid. And then, Luke's dreaming (or is he) that she's lying right there next to him and she's "spooned behind him".
She was so alone before he found her.
Luke understands now how Wedge could write all those poems about that girl he loved.
They kiss.
I wish for the sweet embrace of death! The only thing that consoles me is the fact that Tim Zahn fixed this fucking stupid Mara+Lando=OTP thing, got Luke and Mara together...and then picturing Mara's reaction to Luke telling her about Callista.
Han is in yet another bar, talking to Bran Kemple, asking about the tunnels in Plett's Well. Basically another rehash of the last time Han went looking for info. He finds out that there's a house in the city that supposedly has a secret tunnel. And shock of all shocks, it's Roganda Ismaren's house.
Cut to Leia, who is a guest of Roganda and her pain in the ass son, Irek. He's an absolute treasure. Why, you ask? Weeeeellllll...ok, here's his canon image during the events of this book.
There's no way you're ready.
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| Yes, those are lightsabers. And they're coming from his knuckles, his wrists, his elbows, and his knees because why the fuck not??? Also: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
Irek makes all sorts of snide comments but Lord Garonnin tells him to knock it off because Leia's still a daughter of one of the "Great Houses". There is some concern about R2 getting away, but Irek is certain they'll find him. He and Roganda leave and Lord Garonnin starts going on and on about Leia being the last Princess of Alderaan and noblesse oblige and basically fawning over her like a middle-aged woman at a Justin Bieber concert. He leaves and after awhile, Leia gets the sudden urge to lie down and go to sleep. But she doesn't because someone is making her feel that way. With the Force! Irek shows up, surprised that she's still awake and she tells him he's not the only one who can use the Force. Irek sees this as the beginning of an epic pissing contest and starts doing all this stupid shit with the Force. He does a trick where he makes a hole appear in the wall of the room and then fills it back up. More grandstanding and then he eventually calls her a "sow" and leaves. Immediately, Leia starts to try and open the hole. Heh. She recreates what he did: she moves the segment into another dimension. I am not even kidding. At least Star Trek had an established alternate dimension. When have we ever heard about this until now?
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| Oh. Right. We tried to block out the memory. |
Anywho, inside the hole is all sorts of important stuff that probably shouldn't be kept in the same room as their hostage. The most important thing is a letter from Nasdra Magrody, the famed architect of the Death Star. Somehow he knew about the records of the old Jedi and Roganda kidnapped him. The letter goes on to explain how Irek gained the powers that Margody knew about, namely how to control mechanical objects with the Force via a conduit implanted into the brain. Then there's this gem that reminds us how our "multiple Nebula Award nominee" got this plum job:
I can only be thankful I had already been soothed with Telezan before they demonstrated this fact to me.[he wrote sadly].This boggles the mind. How did this get past the editor? The guy is long dead - how does Leia know that he was sad when he wrote that? Horrible storytelling. Ugh. Leia pockets the letter and muses on the idea that Roganda wants to use her son as a way to power. REALLY?
Back on the Eye of Palpatine, Luke is reminiscing:
After Callista had left - or perhaps while she still lay in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder in the aftermath of loving - Luke had drifted into deeper sleep.Aww how sweet. Let me ruin that image by guessing Mara's reaction to this nonsense: "Stick it in my floppy drive, farmboy!"
The deeper sleep leads to dreams about flying together in the cliffs over Beggar's Canyon and talking about how they're possibly related.
"Which means we're long-lost cousins!"
WHY? WHY? WHY?
Finally he wakes up all the way. His leg is hurting, in case you forgot. So does my brain. After dragging him down the corridor, C3PO set up a nice little bed for him and found an emergency medkit. Luke has also managed to dislocate a shoulder, so add one more thing for him to bitch about constantly. C3PO asks about the foo-twitter, but Luke has a better idea: if the Will can reprogram the droids to think Luke's garbage (not a real stretch at this point), then Luke thinks they can reprogram the droids as well. He and C3PO go to the Gakfedd village (the 'good' Gamorreans) and tell the head "sow" that he knows a way to lead her husbands and other boars to glorious combat. The other Gamorreans say that it's against the Will, but Luke says that maybe the Will has changed its mind. They all go running for a computer screen where Callista has written a message that tells the Gakfedds to annihilate the other Gamorreans. This is fascinating stuff. The Jawas check in with Luke. He tried to get them to cut power lines to the "Punishment Chamber" but they only manage to burn their hands, one of them so bad that it died. Way to go, asshole.
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| Sorry, but I actually love Jawas. And Ewoks. Please don't judge me too harshly. |
You know, in The New Rebellion, Luke rebroke his leg jumping out of an exploding X-Wing. He also got pretty crispy from the explosion. The author mentioned Luke being in pain a couple times, but she had the good goddamn sense to not remind the reader EVERY FUCKING PARAGRAPH THAT SHE HAD TO CRIPPLE LUKE SKYWALKER BECAUSE OTHERWISE HER FUCKING BOOK WOULD HAVE ENDED A HUNDRED PAGES AGO!!!
God damn this is an awful book.
So Luke and company escape the enclision death chamber. For reasons that make no fucking sense, Cray is mad at Nichos for not being able to help her when she was being held captive. She knows he's a robot, is she honestly surprised that when they strapped a restraining bolt on him it stopped him? Luke tries to make her feel better but she calls him a "jerk". He nearly pisses the carpet and slinks away to cry on Callista's lack of a shoulder. She spouts off useless pearls of wisdom that make him see things in a different light and she is OMG SO WISE. Eventually she points out that they're on a giant killing machine on a course for destination unknown and maybe they should check into that. Wait, I thought Luke knew that it was going to go level Belsavis?
Down the corridor Triv, C3PO, and Nichos are actually forwarding the plot. Triv's watching the door while C3PO and Nichos go into the mess hall to get canisters of syrup. I don't remember why. I had to put this book down for a week or so because it was seriously impeding my regular reading and I just picked it up again and fuck if I can remember why stupid Luke wants them to pick up twenty stupid gallons of Scale-5 syrup.
Callista's suggestion of action is to blow up the Eye of Palpatine. Luke angsts like a whiny bitch because if they destroy the ship, ghostly Callista has no haunted house to haunt. Callista wisely points out that if they simply disable the ship, whoever set it loose is just going to come back and start it up again. Luke angsts for three or more paragraphs until:
At last he could only say, "Callista, I love you."
He remembers:
Her mouth on his, her arms around his body . . .
Why did I volunteer to read this book?!
Luke tells Callista there must be a way for her to get an actual body to frolic around in. He starts to mention the entechment process when Cray shows up. She offers to do it but tells him that she knows now that she should have never done it to Nichos. That even though the droid body had all of Nichos's memories, it wasn't the same and that the Nichos she knew is dead. On that positive note, the ship enters hyperspace.
Hey, did you know that in a book set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, they introduced a kind of droid that could pass as totally human? And that the main villain of that book was on record as using that droid as a sexbot? Just saying...
Han and Chewbacca return back to the house to find Leia gone. Han starts pacing around and shouting things because Hambly's just got his character spot on here and of course Han never contributes to the action or anything, just shouts and spouts off random insults. The 'holo phone' rings, interrupting him mid-tirade. It's Mara Jade! She's got the coordinates he asked for and senses something is amiss with Han. He tells her that he's lost Leia and blahblahblah the Emperor's Hand is on Belsavis, so Han always assumed that Mara had visited there some time in the past. Mara inserts tab A into slot B and gets pissed when she figures out that the Emperor had another Hand besides her. Despite the fact that Grand Admiral Thrawn told her that exact thing back in Dark Force Rising and I am angrier than ever GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
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| "Yes, I knew that these books would get stupid, that's why I got out |
Back in the underground caverns, Roganda is getting ready to drug Leia to keep her quiet while her "guests" are there. It's supposed to be super effective but unreliable, which kind of implies that it isn't effective but whatever. After they sedate her, of course she wakes up in time to witness their secret evil summit and hear all of their secret evil plans. Roganda is pinning all her hopes on Irek, who she says is the Emperor's son. The rest of the group decides that Irek doesn't really look like the Emperor but Roganda says that he's the Emperor's kid so he must be and WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE SO STUPID? GOD. One of them points out that it doesn't really matter anyway, since they're more interested in what he can do, not who he is. But another guy says that if all the "Great Houses" back Irek . . . And somebody else says that none of that matters once the ship arrives. Leia spends two painful pages figuring out what the "ship" is. Irek puts on a demonstration with a droid and while he uses the Force, he stumbles across Leia's Force sense. He chases her down and he almost has her when Roganda comes running to tell him that the Eye of Palpatine has arrived. Fucking finally.
Ok. Home stretch.
So it turns out Luke wanted the syrup to make sugar water because Tuskens get absolutely shitfaced on the stuff. Or they're all diabetic. You know what, I'm going with the latter. So they get all the Tuskens into diabetic comas, and have some Talz lug them all into a transport. Then they fake some more orders from HAL to get a few more groups into transports. That just really leaves some Kitonaks...and Luke gets them to charge into a transport by drenching them in water and telling them that it's coming from one of the transports because water is apparently Kitonak Spanish Fly and oh dear god I just wrote that sentence.
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| Because if I have to picture these things doing the mushroom nasty, so do all of you. |
Leia's still barely conscious, trying to figure out how to warn the Republic when two of the Senex Lords come revive her and bring her to Roganda, Irek, and some other guy named Keldor who was apparently a designer on the Death Stars. They demand to know why Artoo wouldn't obey Irek because despite him summoning the Eye of Palpatine, it's no longer obeying his commands. After a bunch of talking that amounts to exactly dick all, Leia admits that they had to rewire Artoo after Irek tried to use him to kill them. The villains all start freaking out because that means that the Eye must be damaged in some fashion, and can Keldor pretty please fix it before they all die? He thinks he can, but they also realize that if they can't fix it, they're far safer on board the ship. Roganda grabs a satchel full of cash just in case things go tits-up and they need to run. Upon running into one of the Lords, Leia screams that Roganda is betraying them and uses the force to open the satchel to prove her point. Then Irek lightsabers him.
Leia makes a run for it, running into some hydroponic facility that's growing coffee beans that are for some reason hanging over a bottomless pit. Irek and Keldor chase her for a bit, all of them jumping from hanging beds of coffee beans and Jesus this is boring. Han shows up and they knock Keldor into the bottomless pit while Irek makes a run for mommy, and as previously indicated they get away.
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| Just a reminder: This happens to him! |
On the surface, Leia, Han, and Chewie watch the Eye blow up. That is all.
Luke wakes up on a transport to a message from Callista saying that she knew that Luke would pussy out, so she and Cray decided to force the issue and get Luke off the ship. Cray and Nichos would destroy the Eye since his droid body is more likely to survive the enclision, and Cray wants to die to join real Nichos in the Force. So Luke starts shouting "No! NO!" while the Eye blows up.
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| Are we done now? No? FUCK. |
Ok. You guys ready for the fucking weirdest and possibly grossest thing in Star Wars?
Mara Jade picks up Luke's transport, picks up Han and Leia who all give Luke shit for the condition of his leg. But thank fucking GOD ALMIGHTY that this is the last we ever hear about Luke Skywalker's busted fucking leg. They spot an escape pod, and they believe that Cray decided she wanted to live after all.
Except no, she didn't. Because Cray's spirit exited her body so Callista's spirit could take over.
WHAT.
Just consider what that means, folks. Callista is using Cray Mingla's body as a meat puppet so she can be with her OMG ONE TRUE LOVE EXCEPT THAT OTHER GUY WHO DIED LONG AGO Luke Skywalker, who was Cray's teacher. And according to Wookieepedia, Callista changes her last name from Masana to fucking Ming. So that is why there's no canon image of Cray...because fucking Callista has taken up residence inside. So if you search for "Cray Mingla"....all you get are images of Callista.
Just...what the good goddamned fucking hell? And it gets worse because apparently Callista being in Cray's body starts changing it physically, starting with eye and hair color because apparently THAT'S A FUCKING THING NOW.
Oh, but there is one more delightful cherry on this shit sundae. Callista is now blind to the Force. Can't even lift a rock. THE END.
Where did this go wrong? I hope that's fucking clear.
Now, I will give credit where credit is due: Despite my snark and overwhelming rage at this book...Callista is actually a pretty well-written character. She's funny, noble, has a decent backstory and is generally pretty likable up until that fucking ending. So yeah.
Let's see Kevin J. Anderson fuck up everything about her in Darksaber. Oh, and Daala comes back too, because yeah, we're not done with her yet.
Not by a long shot.
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