In my opinion, this was Denning's best Star Wars novel to date, a fantastic ending to an overall great series. Sure it has the same problems/weaknesses as the series in general and Denning in particular has shown in the past, but it's more than made up for by how good it is.
I'm one of those people who feel The Unifying Force was ok. It was a 'functional' ending, in that it got us from point A to B, but it just wasn't that exciting to me. Maybe it was series fatigue - though in general, I felt the 'ending' novels of the NJO sub-series were always weaker than the 'beginning' novels, unlike Bantam where the 'ending' novels of a series were often great. Anyway, Invincible is not like that - it was gripping, sucking me in from the first page to the last - a novel I had trouble putting down, and hence never even really had the time to do a 'running' commentary like I've done with most of the rest of the books of this series.
I'm going to list a bunch of the things I liked, along with (a shorter) list of the things I didn't, but mostly I thought the book was awesome.
The book totally hooked me with the opening prologue. I've read that first 'Shadow Academy' arc of the YJKs, and this scene seemed familiar. The book starts out right away as a Jaina centric novel, and that just continues through the rest of the book - a very tight 3rd person novel, 90% Jaina with a little devoted to Luke, Han and Caedus' perspectives. I also loved the two additional story breaks where Jaina remembers those things from the past.
But that coupled with the jokes at the beginning of the chapters clued me in right away that Jacen was a goner. Not that I ever thought he could be redeemed - but I had hopes that he might still survive the book to fight again the other day. But those jokes painted a picture, one that was saying goodbye to Jacen. Because of that, in some ways the book is full of sadness. I've heard some of these characters refer to Jacen as dead in past books, but never did I really feel it like I did in this novel. Caedus never ever thinks of himself as Jacen, and no one calls him that.
He is finally becoming an almost sane Sith in this last book - a Sith who might have been able to help shape the galaxy. And it could definitely be argued that Jacen did achieve what he set out to do, create a more stable, or balanced (a word I always like to associate with Jacen) galaxy. But he's still crazy enough to think that killing Isolder serves the greater good (always better to kill someone that to work with them to try and solve the problem).
Jaina was fantastic. I couldn't believe how quickly the novel jumped right into Jaina on her mission to kill Jacen. Denning did a great job of using her Mandalorian training - heck he did a great job of finally merging together plot threads that the authors had mostly been ignoring through each others books in this series.
And is there anyway that the Mandalorians + Daala/GA aren't going to be the next big threat to the Jedi? Frankly, I can see why the there are Imperial Knights in Legacy - the Empire under Fel would be far more tolerant of the Jedi, much more likely to be aligned with them.
And the Imperial Mission was created in memory of Allana! Holy crap.
But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Jaina was freaking brutal, going for Jacen without mercy. Her final battle with him in the Anakin Solo, was such a total surprise, you could feel how shocked Jacen was.
There were little touches here and there that I loved. Saba and Tesar having the same sense of humor, the droids actually having speaking roles, Jacen referring to his training with the Ang Ti Monks (spelling?) and talking about how he wanted to go back to the past and Save His Brother!
As usual Denning did great with Han and Leia - Han was so IN character it was crazy. I loved his scene with the Moffs - and I was so freaking angry with Denning for killing off Allana (and he was the one who had created her in the first place), I could understand Han's rage. I haven't been so upset since Anakin's death.
But then Tenel Ka shows up, and I knew there was no way she'd be as put together as she was unless Allana was actually still alive. And what a fantastic solution, to have Han and Leia parent her - Han and Leia, who didn't get as much time with their own children as they probably would have liked, and now finally have that time. I never got involved in the discussions about their abilities as parents, but I think this will be a great thing for their own character growth and healing.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the weaknesses of the novel. Allston's characters/plots involving the alliance pilots are completely ignored short of a mention of Darklighter (not an appearance mind you, a mention). It would have been nice when Denning mentions fighters flown by former Alliance personnel who defected to the Jedi, he could have mentioned Wedge by name. Niathal really got the short end of the stick - not that she didn't deserve to be marginalized and put out of power. 'Flow Walking' is the midiclorians of the LotF series - totally screwed up by the lack of its own logic. I can't make Jacen's comment about Flow Walking to Tahiri mesh with what Jacen actually DID with Flow Walking in the Dark Nest trilogy. 'You can't change things'?!? Isn't that what he did? It hurts me to try and make it work, so I'm just hoping it doesn't get used again.
There were other things. I still have trouble at times figuring out where the action is taking place. Were the Jedi on a planet in the Transitory Mists? Then why does Denning call it a space station at one point? There were also missing scenes - we should have had a scene seeing Ben be tortured by Double X, so that we could have felt more of his fear when the droid shows up again later. This is one of those 'weaknesses of the series' thing - more of these scenes would have led to larger books, filling in the gaps a little more and connecting the novels together better.
Tahiri was awesome. Seducing Ben, fighting her former friends, generally being a bad-ass. She was a little like Vader (ok, not as bad-ass as him) in that you could tell that she wasn't totally gone - she could still be redeemed. And I'm glad that's the direction they went with her - it would have been a shame not to give this character a chance to come back from where she had gone. That it was Ben who helped her come back to the light is all the better. He actually came across at just the right level in this novel - not too Ben centric (I felt they were relying on a 14 year old far too often in some of the earlier novels) but not ignoring that he has a role to play.
I'm not sure how I felt about Luke. He certainly shows his power level in this book - a follow up to the things we saw him capable of in Inferno. But he's a little too obsessed with Visions (Yoda would tell him it's always in motion) and a little too worried about his own actions leading to his own fall to the dark side. Forget that crap - just have him say that only Jaina can defeat Jacen and leave it at that. But Luke was great in his last scene - setting the stage for the new peace. It was His idea to put Fel in charge of the Empire. Hot damn. But it was interesting how Luke cast his die with the Imperials (and maybe the Hapans) but I got no feel that he was really returning the Jedi to the GA fold.
I'm not sure I ever figured out what was happening to Mirta. I thought the point of giving her the shot was that she would recover the use of her limbs - but then when Jaina sees her later, only one arm is working? Anyway, as I said before, Boba Fett was totally used by the Jedi, and a personalized attack was made on him (and his family - and it should be mentioned, there are PLENTY of Fett clones on Mandalore who should be affected by that attack - but again no mention here, but hopefully followed up on in a future book/series) - along with his conversation with Daala in the last novel makes me think this is the direction we're headed in the future. Jedi/Imperial vs GA/Mando. Now if only they'd get Karen Traviss to write such a trilogy (I know that would be some people's worst nightmares, but not mine).
I'm disappointed that the Force Ghost of Anakin Solo didn't show up. I think there were a couple of opportunities - maybe when showing Jacen the future, or helping him to see that what the Moffs had done would kill his little girl. Or even at the very end of the book, if Jaina could have seen both her brothers ghosts together, like Luke saw his father at the end of RotJ.
It's a bit of a shame that the final battle took place on the Anakin Solo yet again. Our heroes have fought Jacen so many times on his ship (and broken in so many times) it's really ludicrous. It would have been nice to have some other location for the final battle. Maybe onboard the SSD, after Jacen uses the Anakin Solo as a battering ram to crash into Tenel Ka's flagship or the Jedi base itself. Something more dramatic. And the battle ends a little too quickly once Jacen dies, considering it's not like he was using battle meditation to keep the troops going and they suddenly 'woke' when he died.
Oh, and Jaina totally loves Jag. She may like Zekk (who could have quite the relationship with Tenel Ka's cousin I must say), but she loves Jag.
That's all I can think of for now. The preview for Millenium Falcon makes it sound awesome. It's like
they took one of the rumors of the prequel trilogy (we'd learn who had the Falcon in the past, maybe Obi Wan - not that I think we'll find out he did
anymore) and decided to make a post LotF novel out of it. Totally out of left field for me, and very very cool how it's including Allana and the Solos. I
think I've heard this is a Luceno novel? Hopefully it'll be up to his prequel era quality, not his NJO level. It seems to me Del Rey has managed to set
up many future plotlines for themselves - and despite not having the official word yet on the contract yet, I'm glad they're being given the chance to
follow up on those ideas. I'm really looking forward to what comes next.
(I'll follow this up by saying, I wrote this on my laptop while on the train to work this morning - I haven't read any other reviews of the novel yet,
nor any other posts on this board. I'd like to get your reactions to the comments I've had above, and I will try to post some of my own in the other
topics as my time allows).
