A Trip With Jacen Solo : Part 4

[soloing]

Source - Canon Review with Trip & Havac!

Part XXX: Jedi Bounty
In which our hero snuggles with the love interest

Well, since we can't start this book as a direct continuation of the last one (might confuse all the poor dim children who didn't get the last one . . . apparently these books are designed for people continually jumping aboard. Which seems either grossly optimistic, or an acknowledgment of the fact that, if you actually read one of these, you're not going to be the person picking up another) we start with the kids camping on Yavin, worried about Lowie having visited the Happy Friendly Diversity Alliance Visitor Center and Information Kiosk. Gee, do you think maybe this ruthless killer organization might not let him go? Gee, what a good point, Tenel. Let's check that out. Once we get done roasting marshmallows yay! Man, Jedi training is so awesome when we never have to actually train or anything!

• Yeah, you watched TESB. You remember the scene where Luke and Artoo build a tree fort, and how Yoda never makes Luke actually practice with the Force? Yeah, that's Jedi training right there.

• Then they get attacked by a bear. Or some kind of mean critter. Jacen proves surprisingly willing to chop it up, which he does, with Jaina. But not before it scratches Raynar's leg. Dammit, Luke, let the kid have a weapon already. Oh, wait. Buy your own, you pompous rich ass! Yeah. That's more like the YJK spirit.

• Anyway, Raynar will never make it back to the far-off Academy now!

• Wait, what? The Academy staff lets a bunch of kids go off out of reasonable walking range from the Academy with no transport and no comlinks into a jungle full of man-eating predators? WHAT THE HELL. I smell a lawsuit.

• Luckily, the Exhibitionist Horsegirl shows up! And, because I'm sure you wanted to know, sweat glistened on her bare torso. OH GOD. Anyway, I guess she isn't cool enough to hang out with the Special Kids. But she has a message that Ta'a Chume has landed. So they have to go back. But Raynar can't go back. But he has to go back. So she offers to let him ride her. You heard that right. He's going to ride the naked horse lady for two hours. OH GOD OH GOD.

• So they get back to the Academy, and Jacen goes with Tenel Ka to see Grandma. Because, see, they're like a pairing, so Tenel Ka can never do anything on her own again ever. Ta'a Chume has to deliver the vital news that her uber-spies have discovered: the Diversity Alliance kills people who leave it. Also, they make money from selling ryll. This was worth rushing there in person. Apparently, Ta'a Chume has never heard of the HoloNet.

• Prose I choose to take differently than it was probably intended of the day: "Jacen listened with interest. His father, Han Solo, had told him about his adventures with glitterstim spice from the planet Kessel, but Jacen knew relatively little about ryll." Yeah, see, there was this one time with Lando, Dash, and half a dozen Zeltrons . . .

• So, Raynar is receiving medical treatment. For the wound on his thigh. And Jaina and Lusa are there just kind of watching. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD. Lusa gets fed up with the medical droid and decides to treat Raynar's thigh scratch herself. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD. She rests her hand on the bandaged wound, and Raynar feels "a sudden feverish heat that had nothing to do with his wounds." OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD. A Bothan soldier shows up who is obviously an assassin, since he just stands there creepily and awkwardly and menacingly for a minute. I thought he was just leering/aghast at seeing a girl watch a naked horsegirl play doctor with a fourteen-year-old boy, but it went on too long and I realized, "Oh, assassin." Jacen shows up to report, and he leaves. Yeah, assassins in the Jedi Academy. Killing people under the nose of LUKE FREAKING SKYWALKER. There's a good plan.

• Anyway, the kids decided to go to Ryloth and rescue Lowie. And because this is a kids' story, they can't tell any adults! Otherwise there might be some kind of diplomatic thing where Leia would actually kick the Diversity Alliance's ass! We do, however, get treated to a delightful story from Lusa about how some Talz tried to leave the Diversity Alliance, and the CANNIBAL WOLFMAN ATE HIM ALIVE IN FRONT OF EVERYONE. No one appears too worried that Lowie's been eaten, though. Probably because they know that he's a Wookiee. Come on, Wolfman. Try and eat a Wookiee. Kriffing try it.

• Anyway, they leave Lusa behind, and make her promise not to tell anyone they left. She gallows away as they leave. But . . . what does a centaur do with its arms when it gallops? It's not like she needs to pump them. Over Ryloth, Jaina clamps them onto an ore hauler, and they go down the the Diversity Alliance base with that. Dad would be proud. Oh, and when she wants a copilot? Em Teedee. Yeah, Jacen gets totally blown off. These books are just godawful if you have any desire to enjoy Jacen as a character at all.

• In what's actually a neat twist, the kids transferred out of the ship in orbit and hid inside a cargo container on the barge. So when the Rock Dragon gets searched, they just sneak out later undetected. So they sneak through some tunnels and stuff, and just kinda go toward Lowie in the Force. And they get like five feet away, and the FLESH-EATING WOLFMAN catches them, and Lowie doesn't notice. So the kids just surrender. Raaba totally sells them out. And they get brought before Tarkona, and they're all like, "Dude, we just wanted to see our friend. What the hell is your problem?" And Tarkona's like "I'm going to kill you because you're humans, and therefore evil! Yay reverse speciesism!" And Raaba's like, "Gee, I'm a total racist jackass, but I'm not that big a racist jackass. Look, these are ridiculously important people, so how about you just keep them alive, OK, Crazy Bloodthirsty Lady?" And Nolaa goes, "Aww, OK." And then, only after Tarkona decides to keep them alive, does Jacen go all Kreia on her ass and start levitating lightsabers. Well, isn't he just the Warudamned goodwill ambassador. Yeah, way to make her reconsider that one, Big Hero. So Jacen has to surrender again when CANNIBAL CRAIG decides to kill them all and save the trouble. He only managed to nick her robes, anyway. God, these kids are crappy Jedi. Probably has something to do with NEVER EVER TRAINING EVER EVER EVER.

• So they get taken down to the spice mines of Kessel Ryloth. Hey, KJA, why am I getting deja vu? Anyway, they're assigned to do some mining, and it's all scary and hard work and uncomfortable, so for that reason we won't actually show any of this despair-inducing hard work in the book. Hilariously, though, when the GUY WHO LIKES TO EAT PEOPLE, LIKE REAL PEOPLE, AND IS IN A CHILDREN'S BOOK insults Tenel's one-armedness, she kicks his ass. And the other guards just laugh at their boss getting his clock cleaned, because he totally had that one coming.

• So then Lowie realizes he's being sold a bunch of lies and has to get out of here, and then he sees the Rock Dragon and realizes his friends are here. And Raaba knew. And didn't tell him. So he gets scary pissed and goes and sees her and makes her tell him that his friends are enslaved in the spice mines. Ohhh, it is time for WOOKIEE JUSTICE.

**** just got real.

• Oh, well, apparently there is no Wookiee rampage. Dang. However, he does just put on a guard uniform, walk down, and bluff their way out of there with the classic "prisoner transfer" excuse. Who's going to call a Wookiee's bluff? Nobody. That's who. And then all kinds of distracting alarms go off due to his 1337 haxxor skillz, and he sends the kids up onto the surface where he can rescue them when he gets Sirra and the Rock Dragon.

• So the kids go, and then guards find them, and they run, and Jaina blows up a weapon cache. This knocks out the pursuit, but has the unfortunate side effect of splitting the kids up. Jaina and Raynar go down a tunnel that leads them out onto the flaming day side. Through what I am sure is sheer coincidence and not author contrivance at all, Jacen and Tenel go down a tunnel that leads them out to the freezing night side. Jacen clearly got the better deal here, since, after throwing himself on his we're-not-even-bothering-to-dance-around-the-fact-that-he's-incredibly-attracted-to-her-anymore-which-may-be-why-we-stopped-describing-her-like-a-weig htlifter love interest to protect her from the blast, he gets thrown into a classic "let's share body heat!" scenario. Tenel is wearing her customary nothing (one-piece leather swimsuit . . . wait, what the hell? Isn't this a children's book? Why is the love interest dressed like a dominatrix?) and Jacen has a jumpsuit. Being a chivalrous sort of dude, he considers stripping down and giving her the jumpsuit, but instead he decides it's better to just cling to her. Then they finally start moving. Then there's an avalanche, and Tenel pulls Jacen on top of her and slides away on her back like some kind of bizarre penguin. Then when they get to the bottom, they hang onto each other, and Jacen puts his head on her shoulder. Alright, finally, after ten books of ridiculously strong romantic tension and no one making any kind of move, we're finally going to get some kind of actual development!

• Then Tenel asks him to tell a joke.

• The mood, I believe, is as gone as the bottom half of her left arm.

• But, wait, Jacen must have been taking lessons from Lando, because he totally saves it. He puts his face right in front of hers, and says, "What?" As in, "Are you sure you didn't mean 'Kiss the hell out of me right now?'"

• And then she rests her forehead on his romantically . . . and says, "No, dude, we're in a bad children's series. Tell me a damn joke."

• And so Jacen tells her a joke. DAMMIT KID GET WISE.

• And then there's like a heat storm and stuff, so now heat is their enemy too. God, a guy can't catch a break. So they go into a cave and hide. And inside is a Twi'lek, some old dude who got exiled by Nolaa. And he's all "WOE IS US SURELY WE WILL ALL DIE HERE THERE'S NO WAY WE COULD MAKE IT TO THE TEMPERATE AREA LIKE TWO MILES AWAY!" And they're like, "Well, aren't you just the life of the party. Come on, mopey, we're going." And so they go. And Lowie shows up in the Rock Dragon after hardcore pwning a Trandoshan in the base, and they are rescued.

• Meanwhile, Jaina and Raynar get really bad sunburn and fight FLESH-EATING FLOYD. And beforewhile, Zekk went to the Academy to find them, but they weren't there, so he talked to Luke, and he was all "Lusa knows where they are but, since I am the galaxy's worst headmaster, I really didn't give a fart," so they go and find Lusa, and save her from the crazy Bothan guy who was an idiot to think he could assassinate anyone on Yavin 4 without getting a hardcore Jedi-pwning, and Lusa tells them they went to Ryloth, and Luke is like, "Oh, it's on."

**** just got realer.

• Why does anyone ever try to capture the relatives of LUKE MOTHERKRIFFING SKYWALKER? WHY? Are they freaking suicidal?

• So Luke, Zekk, and Lusa go to Ryloth, and save Jaina and Raynar, and kick ass in style while they do it. And then the DUDE-EATING DUDE tries to jump into the ship, and no one particularly feels like helping Jaina get him off her leg, so eventually she just kind of shakes him off and he falls into some conveniently-placed lava.

• And everyone flies away and goes to Coruscant to heal up, and we are set up for an epic confrontation with the Diversity Alliance.

• Stay tuned for next week, when there's an epic confrontation with the Diversity Alliance!
• Part XXXI: The Emperor's Plague
  In which our hero finally gets a kiss
  
  
• So, they're healing up on Coruscant from the last book, and Zekk spends a lot of time watching Jaina in her skimpy "medical wrap" float in a bacta tank (oh, just in case you wanted to know, her skin under the medical wrap "tingled with renewal"). Then when she comes out, he sneaks up from behind and gives her a towel. Meanwhile, Lusa towels up Raynar. The worst thing is that I'm just inured to this crap by now.

• The Solos have a lovely family breakfast, which is so incredibly inane that I feel the need to reproduce it in full.

Threepio: "More nerf sausage, Master Jacen? It is a particular Corellian favorite."
Jacen: "Maybe just one."
Jaina: "Couldn't eat another bite."
Han: "Over here, Goldenrod. These are just like the ones Dewlanna used to make for me when I was a kid."

• Yes, that's right, folks. You have now been subjected to the most inane conversation in all of Star Wars canon. "Over here, Goldenrod."

• So the kids have to talk to the Senate. About how the Diversity Alliance is mean and evil. A bunch of alien senators don't buy it. They're kinda jerks, but they have a pretty good point: these kids totally sneaked into the headquarters of another government. You'd think maybe they'd have Lusa bring up something about the GUY WHO FREAKING ATE ANOTHER GUY IN FRONT OF HER but that gets kept quiet. Meanwhile, the bad alien senators try to dismiss them, because see, the bad alien people are all in it together. They do not believe that the Diversity Alliance would want to kill humans, because how would that be related to an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era? Gee, I really hate this whole bad-politicians-holding-back-the-NR-and-making-it-ineffective thing. I hope it doesn't continue. Cilghal shows up out of nowhere and says, "Fact-finding mission!" and that works for everyone, though. Go go bureaucracy!

• Nolaa's reaction to that plan? "We've gathered arms, weapons, explosives. We have a few fighting ships, enough for a small armada. And we have sufficient weaponry and devoted soldiers to make a stand here. We can fight! We will lure the unsuspecting New Republic team into our catacombs and slaughter them. Then we declare Ryloth neutral -- exempt from human law -- and refuse to grant them any further access." Yes, Nolaa. That's how neutrality works. And then, you can bomb Coruscant, and really quick shout "Neutral!" and they won't be able to do anything. This is genius. How come no villains ever thought of this before?

• Zekk and Raynar take off on the OMG DANGEROUS mission of rescuing Bornan Thul. No one else can go, because it is too dangerous. Everyone else follows anyway in the Rock Dragon, and shockingly they show up just in time to drive off Booba Fett and save Bornan and the doofus kids. But OMG, Boba's psychopathic, vengeance-obsessed daughter electronically violated Bornan's ship! She has his logs! She knows where the McGuffin . . . uhhh, plague storehouse is!

• So they send a message to Coruscant. Bornan sends it to Aryn, because they just can't trust the New Republic's encryption. No, they need Uberthul Uberencryption. Apparently they're ever so worried about Nolaa finding out where it is again. That would just be disastrous. Then the kids head off to the plague storehouse, because they're the first line of defense!

• So, yeah, Aryn gets the message . . . and this is one of the stupidest things I've ever read. Because the Uberthul Uberuberuberencryption isn't good enough, Bornan sends it in Special Uberthul Ubercode, which involves him saying random crap, and flashing lights and sounds and music and crap conveying ridiculously complex information. So Aryn gets the coordinates . . . by instantly memorizing a song. And she instinctively knows that the notes tell her the coordinates. Yeah, sure. The best part? "The sphere of light pulsated with two colors side by side, representing Bornan and Raynar together. The vividness of the hues meant that they were both in good health. Around the edges, bright splashes of color indicated the presence of other friends. At the same time, the music told her through a series of harmonizing tones that her husband and son were happy-but the music skipped a beat or two, then paused on an open chord that symbolized something missing from that happiness: her presence."

• OK, yeah, I lied. That's just the general stupidness. You want to know the really best part? "Light-swirls of sincerity and regret surrounded a bright core of love. A musical note of tenderness rang out a single time."

• So they land on the asteroid where Evir Derricote stored all his plague when he time-jumped and worked on the Krytos virus for the Emperor. And they decide that the best way to deal with the plague is to blow it up. Where are the Wraiths when you need them? So they grab a bunch of bombs out of the conveniently-placed bomb locker and get to work planting high-yield explosives across the asteroid. This will be fun.

• So Nolaa shows up with an armada at the plague storehouse. She goes down to get her some plague, and leaves her armada in the capable hands of Raaba. Because as the Second Imperium showed us, there's nothing more sensible than putting your armies under the command of some greenhorn idiot kid with split loyalties when there are all kinds of loyal, competent, and experienced military veterans around.

• Jaina, Jacen, and Tenel start planting explosives. Then DA people chase them. They run to the Rock Dragon, and throw some bombs at the bad people, and fly away. Jacen gets a cut on his forehead during the violent takeoff, and gets to totally awesomely channel Han and dismiss it by saying "Builds character." That's pretty much the only interesting moment of characterization for Jacen in the whole book. Then the fleet comes after them. But wait . . . it's a fleet! Led by General Han Solo! BADASS.

• So the Solos and Tenel manage to totally sit this one out while Han's fleet pounds on the DA, and the Bornaryn fleet shows up and pounds on the DA, and Bornan goes and gets tragically killed trying to stop Nolaa, and Lowie kills a Trandoshan in a badass hand-to-hand fight using his Wookiee-fu . . . oh, wait, he goes to a computer and has it suck the other guy out into space. Forget it. And IG-88 shows up like the kids programmed him like two books ago and . . . really does nothing except bang on some doors, pull Raynar away, and be all badass. And Zekk and Raynar run away so the place can get blown up, and Bobailyn shows up and kicks the hell out of the DA guys and helps the good people, because her job with Nolaa was over and now Tyko hired her. This is awesome. It's also fraud, since she's presenting herself as Boba Fett. And some idiot guy shoots up a bunch of plague canisters and dies, and Nolaa gets infected and is all, "Ahh, I don't care, what's a galactic Twi'lek extinction if I can take those damn humans with me? Get me out of here, Raaba! Let me spread the human disease!" And Raaba's like, "OK, that's it. You're off your motherkriffing rocker. We're going far, far away into total isolation and you're going to die and I'm going to hang out for a while carrying plague and not knowing how to get rid of it." Gee, I really hope she shows up in the next storyline and she and Lowie can be together!

• And then the NR blows up the asteroid. The Diversity Alliance is beat. No more diversity for the galaxy. The affiliates are going to be so pissed.

• So, the kids do some kind of helping-people-clean-up-and-sort-out-the-mess diplomatic crap no one cares about. Zekk and Lusa decide to become Jedi trainees. And they all hang out all happy and stuff, and they're all like, "Wow, what a wacky time we had!" And Raynar's like "My dad's dead, you jackasses!" And they're like, "Well, yeah, that's rough. But gee, didn't we have a grand old time with our wacky hijinks!" And Jacen's like, "Gee, nothing could surprise us anymore!" And Tenel's like, "Oh, yeah? How about I kiss you? PWNED!" And OMG OMG OMG OMG DUDES SHE KISSES HIM. After eleven books of freaking romantic tension that goes absolutely nowhere, KJA actually institutes this strange and foreign concept known as "development" immediately before ending the book, because god forbid we have to pursue that. As for this strange "development" . . . I believe it's an old, old wooden ship, used during the Civil War era . . .

• Tune in next time, when a new absurdly overpowered third-rate crapheap organization rises up out of nowhere to manufacture overplayed crisis!
• Part XXXII: Return to Ord Mantell
  In which our hero promptly gets a new love interest
  
  
• We open watching Zekk fight a tree for the hell of it. Since this is boring, I will speak no more of it. It has hilariously corny dialogue about "Jedi powers" and such -- just painfully leaden.

• Jedi meeting! All the Jedi get together, and Kyp and Streen show up. Honestly, I'm amazed it took KJA this long to tie into his JAT characters beyond Tionne, since unlike pretty much every other ridiculous tie-in he does, they actually have legitimate reason to show up, being Jedi (that's why Cilghal doesn't count -- she showed up as a senator, not a Jedi). Luke talks about how making mistakes can be good and necessary, because it's how you learn. Yeah, Kyp's little mistake was just a stumbling block that made him strong. Genocide? No big deal so long as you come away from it a better person. Also, KJA manages to hint at the fact that Zekk is a blatant Kyp ripoff.

• Then Han shows up randomly. Good god, is this guy ever not on Yavin 4? Han meets up with his good old pal Kyp, and randomly mentions the events of Leviathan like they happened recently instead of ten years ago ("Jedi Academy: Leviathan -- I wrote it just recently! BUY IT DAMMIT!") and talks about Kyp's hilarious hijinks as a kid. No, seriously: "Did we ever tell you about the time he stole the Sun Crusher and went after the Imperials, as if he could take on the whole Empire with his bare hands?" Oh, that brash young hellraiser! What a handful, haha!

• So, Han is the Grand Marshal for the Ord Mantell Blockade Runners' Derby, which is cool, and he's taking the kids. Because how else would we have a book? On their way there, we get a rundown of the fifty billion bounty hunters at Ord Mantell who changed Han's mind. "One of the worst was an insect creature named Cypher Bos, a mercenary, as vile and self-centered as they come. He was impersonating his identical hatch-mate brother, who was a Rebel sympathizer. But all those bug-people look alike, and I couldn't tell the difference." Han, you're not supposed to say those things.

• Pointlessly added to the list of Ord Mantell hunters is Czethros. Between his past and his physical description, it's hilariously obvious that he was intended to be Skorr before KJA realized Skorr was dead. So KJA changed the background minimally, and the appearance . . . not really at all.

• So they land, and hey, it's Czethros. He's gone semi-respectable now, and is backing the Derby, and doesn't hold a grudge, really. I believe you, Czethros!

• So they have to fly through the course first, since that's what the Grand Marshal does. Han, being Han, tries to outdo his old record just to prove he's still got it, and there are some space mines (not planet mines -- space mines!) that don't get them because they're going fast. This frightens people and stuff, but they go and race anyway, and the officials such as Czethros are surprisingly unconcerned, and Zekk, Tenel, and Lowie show up out of nowhere and win the race. Because, see, they're Jedi, so naturally they beat tons of the galaxy's best pilots in hot-rodded ships. Oh, wait, that's not right. They're main characters in a YA novel. Yeah, that's why they win.

• So this is exciting and crap, and stuff happens, and media attention, and haha winning. Then the kids get the bright idea of analyzing the space mine debris, but stop for a lovely and friendship-infused lunch break. "We are laughing and we are very good friends. Good buddies sharing a special moment, laughing and enjoying our friendship, and someday we'll look back on this with much fondness." Then they sense something funny, and go and find their evidence being stolen by a bunch of chameleon-things that clearly hate justice. The kids lay into them, and it's never made clear if they're sentient or just trained critters. But a bunch are dead, and the body count goes way up when some random chick shows up lightsabering the hell out of them. But they get away with the evidence anyway.

• Jacen starts getting hot for this random chick. After the terrifying development of last book, it's obviously necessary to back off the Jacen/Tenel romance completely and introduce a new love interest so we can go straight back to ground zero. Then Han shows up, and she starts hating him because he's an evil bastard who killed her dad. See, she's Gallandro's daughter. Amazingly, KJA is referencing something he didn't write. She's all self-righteous, and Han mysteriously fails to say, "Dude, he got killed by a security system, not me." Jacen immediately starts siding with his crush (who has to be over 25) and gets all suspicious of Han's absurdly guilty reaction. She gets ticked and goes away. To meet Czethros. Who shockingly turns out to be working to bring down Han Solo, a Black Sun kingpin, and Anja's drug dealer.

• Jacen's all moody and suspicious, and so Han explains the whole thing to him. And he still doesn't believe Dear Old Snuggly Dad totally, because Han retains plot-inspired feelings of baseless guilt. But now they're going to go to Anja's war-torn and conveniently nearby homeworld of Anobis to find out about the civil war no one ever cared about and which she bitterly mentions.

• She randomly shows up when they're going to leave, so Jacen's all, "Come along." So she does. And they go and find a gunrunner in the Anobis system. And this guy acts pathetically guilty and indignant all at once, and they blow up his weapons and make him very sad.

• Then they land in a farming village. This makes Anja angry because, see, she's a miner person. And the miners and farmers are fighting, because that's how civil war works, and the farmers had had enough of the "angry yellow eyes of the Emperor" always watching them like a particularly bored and binocular Sauron whereas the miners kinda needed interplanetary trade to live. And so they've hated each other for twenty years in a particularly vicious war. The farmers are all beat-down and pathetic, and devastated because all their land is mined. Princess Di would be proud of this book. They hate the miners (haha pun) for being great big meanies, and want to kill them, but are also tired of the war. But they're nice to the NR people, who make them food.

• Then the velociraptors invade. Seriously. A rampaging herd of hundreds of vicious and very hungry velociraptors descends on the village, because sometimes they just do that. There's no chance to fight against them, so the kids decide to fight against them with their Jedi powers while Han takes a bunch, but not all, of the villagers up in the Falcon. Why he couldn't just concussion-missile the hell out of the herd is never explained. Han also agrees to let his kids basically die with very little angst. Then, the instant the dinosaurs attack, the kids realize, "Sweet Waru, this was really really stupid," and run away through the minefields. Jacen gets the bright idea that, being Jedi, they can figure out where the mines are and avoid them. Velociraptors may be smart, but they're not that smart, so it works. Except there are still like hundreds of them, but highly coincidentally, past the minefields is the edge of their territory, so Jacen just has to give the raptors a little nudge to stop pursuing.

• They can't go back to the dinosaur-infested village, however, so Jacen and friends lead the villagers through the booby-trapped woods while Han flies the leaders and weaklings to the mountain village to talk peace. When Jacen gets there, everyone gets grabbed by the miners, who are jackasses. But see, they're tired, scared, brutalized jackasses just like the farm people. But they're not going to be mean to the NR people. So they talk and stuff, and Anja wanders off to booby-trap the farmers' village, the dinosaurs having moved on by now. In addition to being a jerk move, it gets the miner leader's little brother blown up in a landmine (not space mine) accident. This makes him sad and he decides to kill the farmer leader, but then it spills that the gunrunner dude was selling to both sides, and everyone gets ticked off. Then the kids do the whole "War! Uh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" deal (Jacen may have painstakingly choreographed a dance routine) and everyone realizes, "Hey, war gets us nowhere! Let's just stop it, OK?" And no one seems particularly bothered by Anja's having decided to booby-trap a bunch of houses.

• So they're happy-happy and stuff, and Jacen and everyone use their magical powers to disarm all the traps. Jacen invites his new crush to Yavin 4 to train, since she's displayed absolutely no Force-sensitivity, and they should be able to sense she has none, and the book even said she's really got no talent, but dammit she has a lightsaber and plot requirements, and that's good enough.

• Stay tuned for our next adventure, when there is some type of trouble on Cloud City.
• Part XXXIII: Trouble on Cloud City
  In which our hero finally gets to fly something
  
  
  The role of Jacen Solo will now be played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
  
  
• Does this mean Tim Allen is playing Han?

• Jaina, Tenel, and Lowie are randomly running around. They run up to Raynar and Lusa. For some more of their pervy underwear swimming. This is the only time the topless centaur girl is in this one. I suppose that's OK, since the scene's already creepy enough that adding a totally naked girl doesn't really hurt. There might be another naked girl, too, since KJA has this thing about always mentioning how Tenel Ka only wears her ridiculously skimpy armor, then having her strip out of it to swim, but there have to be some kind of undergarments there, right? I mean, that lizardhide would chafe. Anyway, I guess I had kinda been led to believe that Lusa was a character of some minor import in the series, but really, she's in like three books as a third-stringer who always just stays behind. Now that the Diversity Alliance crap is over . . . she has disappeared from the Academy. And the hearts and minds of her "friends". As has Raynar. Good thing we don't have to pretend to like that stinking rich kid anymore. Anyway, the kids we're actually supposed to care about are upset because Jacen and Zekk are mooney-eyed over the significantly older woman. Who is herself rather pathetic for hanging out with a bunch of kids ten years younger than she is.

• So now that we've seen that this idiotic love triangle crap thrown in to prevent KJA having to actually develop the characterization, relationships, and storyline of his characters is making the kids sad, we see Jacen and Zekk hanging out with Anja. It doesn't really make sense that they want to spend time with her, since she's a total ass to everyone. Total. To everyone. She seriously is the kind of blatantly rude, insulting, selfish, callous, jackass person you want to punch in the face, not volunteer to spend time with instead of the hot underwear-swimming readhead warrior princess who freaking kissed you two books ago you dumbass kid (and who at some point stopped being a Romanian bodybuilder, which is good). So they're doing lightsaber training, and Anja nearly takes Jacen's arm off. How cute, right? She's totally unfazed, and Jacen's all "You crazy fricking moron, you almost chopped my arm off! Watch where you swing that thing, dammit!" and Anja's all, "Haha, haha, haha. Oh, and haha. You had it coming or something. I'm just so bold and rambunctious and uncontrollable! Gotta fight wild, you know? Haha haha haha." And then Jacen should be "You are a horrible person and I will have your jerk ass thrown out of this Academy," but instead he's all "You have boobs. I love you!" and just whatevers it off. And then Luke calls Jacen over, and the Wise Jedi Master is like, "Your friend is an ass. Also, she doesn't have the Force." And Jacen just goes, "Well, I'm sure she does." And that conversation is over.

• Meanwhile, Zekk controls his hair and puts it behind him . . . JUST LIKE HE DID WITH THE DARK SIDE HAH!

• Because it would be impossible to have a good story actually set at the Praxeum, Lando shows up. He wants to take the kids to test his new amusement park. You have got to be freaking kidding me. Jacen invites Anja along. She immediately begins being a jerk to Lando. Lando, being too smooth to kick a lady in the kidneys, is instead ridiculously gracious. Dude's smooth.

• So they go to Bespin. Because where would Lando set up his amusement park if not a movie planet? And Lando's partner Cojahn is dead. He committed suicide. But since this is a work of fiction, we immediately know it was a fiendish murder. Jerkosaurus Rex starts talking about how Lando's good friend could have just been unable to handle the pressure and snapped. Too bad Lando doesn't snap.

• They tour the exhibits and crap, and Jacen's animal nonsense actually comes vaguely in handy, as it does every third book, when he criticizes the holographic monsters as unrealistic. But mostly, the kids decide to play Junior Corran Horn and investigate the possible murder. They accomplish this by doing nothing other than watching a thranta-rider show.

• The next morning, they have breakfast with Lando. And Lando just goes, "Hey, don't take any of that andris Jerky McJerston is taking, OK?" And they're all like "WHHAAAAAAAAAAT?" and Lando is "Huh, you didn't know? Oh, right, not all of you are former drug smugglers and underworld gods. Yeah, she's definitely showing the symptoms." And Jacen does his best NO WAI owl impersonation until Anja shows up, and Jaina tries the blunt "Can I ask you a question about andris?" route and Anja goes "OMG IT ISN'T MINE STAY OUT OF MY STUFF!" and deploys the classic "I'm just holding it for a friend!" excuse. Then she's like, "Yeah, whatever, so I take it. Doesn't mean I'm addicted," and runs off. Remember, kids, if your friend has lots of energy, dilated pupils, and/or is a colossal turd to everyone around them, your friend may be a speed fiend. I suppose, being that they're more determined to make friends with Anja than they ever were with Raynar, they'd do an intervention or something (personally, I'd prefer to just hit her in the back of the head with an oar, lock her up until she's over it, and then hit her with the oar again a couple times for good measure), but they're pretty meh about the whole thing.

• So our big investigators go and take some more amusement park tours. They really need to work on this detective thing. Then on the tour, some A/V guy goes, "Hey, Cojahn got a band, but they booked it out of here on the day he died in a highly suspicious manner." And because this is a bad book, and there are only two bands in the movies and one of them is far better known, the band was the Modal Nodes. Because, you know, originality sucks and cantina band haha dudes awesome! HEY DO YOU REMEMBER THAT FAMOUS CANTINA SCENE? HAHA YEAH THEY WERE IN THAT, DUDE! They were booked to play in the swamp environment, because being from a swamp world, they must play swamp music. The whole thing just seems so racist. And did you listen to ANH, KJA? That doesn't sound like the swamp. They don't play swamp music. They play jizz, and don't you forget it.

• So Lando, the Flying Solo Twin, and her love interest take off for Clak'dor VII to check out this lead. Meanwhile, the Boring Solo Twin, his love interest, his other love interest, and the big hairy thing that is the love interest of the plague-ridden big slightly-less-hairy thing that will never show up again, stay behind to do some more "investigating". Which, from their previous activity, presumably means they're going to sit in their hotel rooms and watch a lot of Cops, Judge Mathis, 70s Bond movies, game shows on Telemundo, and various other bad TV and laugh their asses off. I know that's what I do in hotel rooms.

• Actually, they go sit in a tree where no one is and screw around. Close enough. Jacen sums up the investigation thus: "We're not really sure what we're looking for." No kidding. Queen Jerkface points out that this is the stupidest investigation ever, and the kids slowly realize, "God, this is stupid." And so they move to wander around places where there's construction and stuff, because that'll totally have clues. And there they see the fired Ugnaught foreman we heard about before run off. And Wet Blanket is like "This couldn't possibly be in the least bit suspicious. Screw you guys, I'm going home." And she does. And everyone else chases the little guy.

• So they chase him. And they chase him. And they chase him some more. And whenever they're about to lose him, he shows up again. And their loud talking does not disturb him. And he leads them to a really, really shady part of town. This does not raise their suspicions. Finally, he leads them into an ambush. So they just run away. This was clearly a crappy ambush. So they run. And run. And run some more. And some guys chase them. And then they run, and suddenly the Ugnaught is there and he drops them down a chute. JUST LIKE IN THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK OMG! And they fall out the bottom of Cloud City. JUST LIKE IN THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK OMG! Seriously, people need to think about where they're placing these hatches that just drop out from underneath you and fricking shoot you out into a very long fall. Anyway, Lowie and Tenel Ka grab onto an antenna. JUST LIKE IN THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK OMG! But Jacen does not grab onto anything, and falls away and dies. NOT LIKE IN THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK OMG OMG OMG OMG!

• So Jacen falls, and falls, and falls, and uses the Force to say: "Umm, like, some help, please?" And a thranta-riding dude shows up and grabs him, and takes him to a secluded algae sky island. In any other context but falling to his death, this would have Jacen grabbing for the pepper spray. And, because this is a young readers' book and KJA can't handle writing an actual mystery story, the random dude is like, "Yeah, I totally saw some dude throw Cojahn off the walkway. He had a LASER EYE. And moss-green hair." And Jacen's like "Moss-green? Why, that particular noun is only attached to this color when describing Czethros! Did you know my sister's eyes are brandy-brown? BRANDY! NO OTHER KIND OF BROWN! And Nolaa Tarkona's eyes are rose-quartz in color!"

• So M'kim, the random guy, takes him home now, and he meets up with everyone else, who are all "OMG YOU'RE ALIVE!" And Jacen doesn't get a kiss from Tenel. Gypped. And Lando and everyone come back and are like "Figrin said Black Sun is trying to muscle in on Cloud City's stuff! What a devious plan they have!" And they're like, "Hey, Czethros is probably a Black Sun dude! We solved the mystery!" And Jerko O'Jerkell keeps going, "I highly doubt the veracity of this testimony. Moreover, you cannot prove that Czethros was here. See, there is no record of his arrival. These obviously doctored security camera feeds at the time of his possible arrival mean nothing. This missed shot of him remaining in the system does not in any manner imply that he, being here, had anything to do with the erasure of the rest of his images or in fact killed the person your so-called witness says he did. No, this is probably just an innocuous suicide." Unsurprisingly, no one gets the least bit suspicious of her.

• Lando demands an investigation. Because Cloud City authorities are corrupt, which Lando knows but apparently does not care about, he gets set up for a blatantly obvious hit, which he walks into in an absolutely incredible, in the original meaning, scene which I prefer not to dwell on. Jacen, Jaina, and Lowie, meanwhile, get called in to report on their assassination attempt. They arrive, and find that their "debriefing center" is a deserted hangar. Being utterly brain-dead, they sit around and go, "Gee, that's funny." Then four assassins show up. Being the most pathetically-trained trio of Jedi ever, they run away. Obi-Wan is rolling over in his grave.

• They run away in a couple cloud cars. The lonely Wookiee goes on his own. The two lovebirds-who-aren't-anymore-really-because-we-decided-to-ruin-a-semi-decent-thing-for-cheap-bad-YA-drama take another one. Jacen actually gets to fly something here. Finally. He flies, and they chase him, and he flies into a storm because he's a Han Solo-style daredevil ("They'd be crazy to follow us, wouldn't they?"). That doesn't work. So he uses the Force to send some velkers at the other ship. Because this is necessary for the plot, the velkers are able to just rip through the metal and give the bad guys a hell of a time, so problem over.

• So we get another happy-crap ending where they watch a thranta-rider show. Again. But because the arc isn't over, we get the ominous "Czethros has escaped justice! Black Sun is a growing menace!" keep-you-reading punch.

• Stay tuned for our next installment, when the suffering finally ends.
• Part XXXIV: Crisis at Crystal Reef
  In which our hero gets a medal for not actually doing much
  
  
• The kids all contrive to get Zekk out on the landing field where he can be surprised with a visit by (Old) Peckhum. Aren't they just so precocious?

• Jerkorama moans to herself about her drug addiction. Drugs aren't cool, OK kids? Zekk builds a lightsaber, too, because apparently Luke finally realized that he was Extra Super Special too. Then Anja sneaks away in the middle of the night and steals the Lightning Rod. The New Republic fleet in orbit (I'm glad Luke finally got some kind of protection for the Academy . . . about twelve years too late) is totally ineffectual in preventing this. They also suck at notifying owners that their property has been stolen, since Zekk only learns about it when he wakes up the next morning and finds the NR investigating the space where his ship used to be. But first, he had breakfast. The kind of breakfast you only find in insipid children's books ending big series, where everything is love and lightness and laughter and buddy camaraderie and sun shining through bay windows and oh god get me some insulin I'm dying from saccharine overload. Neither Rich Kid, Too Old For This Peer Group Jerk, nor Boobiehorse show up, because they're not real members of the Extra Special Uber Friends Breakfast Club.

• Peckhum slept over too. Probably in Zekk's room.
  I really don't know where the hell the editors were on letting so much creepy garbage into this series. Topless horsegirls, old men (named Peck 'em) who live with young orphan boys, young boys who are interested in topless horsegirls, coed undergarment swimming, fourteen-year-old girls in skimpy leather outfits . . .

• Zekk gets extremely upset about Anja's theft of his ship, but KJA totally ignores the whole resentment/anger/dark side issue thing going on. Luke talks to them about it, leading to this hilarious line: "Do you believe she intends to keep your ship -- or even sell it? In order to get credits to buy spice?" God, this is so after-school special. So Luke's all, "Hey, be friends and help her out. Track her down and help her get over withdrawal. Oh, and get your ship back, kid. But I know you don't want her arrested." That's right, kids. Consequences for breaking laws are undesirable when applied to people who, despite being great big jackasses, have protagonists who like them. This is so Skywalker. And so KJA. I wonder if that's the story-moral KJA pitched LFL for this one.

• So the kids, through awesome sleuthing ("Hey, NR dude, which way did her ship go?" combined with "Wasn't she saying something about Kessel earlier?") realize she's going to Kessel, and go after her in the Rock Dragon. We then cut to Kessel, where Nien Nunb, hero of the Battle of Endor, is brutally assassinated. Well, the actual assassination attempt fails, but his character is pretty roundly trounced by KJA's relentless and baseless "Sullustans are all jibbering midget cowards" trope, which sees Nien Nunb, the wild-ass smuggler who took on the Empire at its height and flew a freighter inside the fricking Death Star II, become a timid, passive little guy who shies from conflict and is about a foot tall. Seriously, he comes up to some guy's knee. Which I suppose canonically means that the other dude was about thirty feet tall. The other dude, by the way, ends up snapping his legs clean off when they get frozen and then falling and shattering into frozen person-pieces while the dead flesh of his shattered-off hand remains clinging to Nunb. God, I can't wait for this brutal, disgusting carnage to end when we move on to a new series.

• Then we get Jerkety Jerk on Kessel, bullying Lilmit, the smuggler from two books ago who randomly shows up again while continuing to act hopelessly pathetic. He sucks at being Black Sun, since he's incredibly easy to manipulate, bully around, and get to spill the beans to people he simply assumes are working for Czethros too. Then she leaves for Mon Calamari, to go score some crack. Or something.

• The kids show up, and Nien is all, "I suspect a plot on my life! I have no idea who to trust! Except you guys! So, uh, beware or something," and then he lets them go look around for the Lightning Rod. They don't find it, but they do find Lilmit. Well, isn't that just a funny little coinkydink. And again, they lean on him just slightly, and he starts saying things he shouldn't, and they play him like a fiddle and get all the information they could want, with him thinking they're Black Sun agents. Good lord, everything in these books is easier than a Zeltron.

• Lilmit also seems to suggest that word in the street is something about to go down on Kessel. The kids decide they'll split, with Zekk, Jacen, and Tenel going after the Jerkinator on Mon Cal and Jaina and Lowie staying to protect Nien. There is some kind of really bad, cringe-inducing flirting or something when Zekk and Jaina split up. YJK dialogue, I served with good writing. I knew good writing. Good writing was a friend of mine. YJK dialogue, you're no good writing.

• Jacen has the bright idea of contacting Cilghal and asking her to help them out. Since Mon Cals are always on Mon Cal. Despite her being on Coruscant serving in the Senate a few books ago. Nope, she's guaranteed to be on Mon Cal, and she's back to being an ambassador now, whatever the heck that actually means for a member world of the NR. They show up, and Cilghal already has a parking spot for them and everything. This leads to continual "Wow, KJA, your character is so AMAZING!" dialogue for the next several scenes, as Cilghal manages to use her position as a vaguely important government person to access information and other thoroughly unimpressive nonsense. With government records, it's easy to track her to the uber-elite resort city of Crystal Reef. Just like in the title, wow! I wonder if there'll be a crisis?

• They go there. They talk to a concierge or something, and he's all like, "Yep, she's right down there arguing with some dude about a sub." So they go down and finally they've caught up with this thief, this addict, this dangerous person who's struggling with love and hate for her friends! And she just kind of goes, "Oh, hi guys. I, uh, guess you guys are nice and all. I'll have a good cry and confess to being addicted. But I'm going to get over it now and punish Czethros for manipulating me. Oh, did I not mention before I was working for He Of The Moss-Green Hair and Cyber-Eye hoping to kill you? Yeah, I, uh, changed my mind. Thanks for being super-nice to me even though I was a Grade-A Punchworthy Numbskull Idiot Jerkwad, Jacen."

• So, yeah. Anticlimax.

• Meanwhile, for the second book in a row, someone who is highly competent and intelligent, nervous, and aware of the fact that people are making attempts on his life walks into an incredibly obvious, blatantly telegraphed trap. Look, you can have intelligent, aware characters walk into fiendishly concealed traps, or you can have naive, unsuspecting fools blunder into mind-numbingly obvious traps. You can't have it both ways. Well, I suppose you can have naive, unsuspecting fools blunder into fiendishly concealed traps, but you know what I mean. Czethros captures Nunb and takes over Kessel . . . as the first step in a DEVIOUS PLOT TO TAKE OVER THE GALAXY using his NETWORK OF UBER INFILTRATORS WHO HAVE INFILTRATED EVERYTHING IMPORTANT EVERYWHERE. Just how many whacko fringe groups are infiltrating the New Republic in 24 ABY? I hope we don't get any more of this secret-infiltrators crap. Anyway, it's up to Jaina and Lowie and Em Teedee to stop them. Or some such garbage. They just kind of end up throwing sewage (seriously, Em Teedee rigs a toilet to launch feces) and fire-retardant foam at the bad guys until they get bored and wander through the mines and blow up the one transmitter on Kessel (
  ) so Skorr II can't send his Evil Takeover Message out, then break out all the good guys from imprisonment with the greatest of ease, and just kind of fight back generically until Czethros falls into a carbon-freezing pit. And all of a sudden the Jedi are really worried about killing. Big change from Lowie stomping people's heads in, literally, in Lightsabers.

• So anyway, the people whose storyline we're actually following get a yellow submarine (check the book cover . . . would I lie to you?) and go under the polar ice cap so they can check out this whole spice cache. And they find it and destroy it with absolutely no interference from Black Sun or anything. Man, this is the most anticlimactic plotline ever. KJA seems to realize this, since he suddenly throws a sea monster at the sub. Yeah, there's your big series climax. Jaina and Lowie foil the villains. Everyone else fights a random-ass giant squid.

• I don't know why the Mon Cals never arm their subs. They're always getting attacked by sea monsters. So they do the only thing they can do and run away. But the monster eats a crate of andris. So now the Sea Monster On Speed starts attacking them, and they are forced to run into an ice fissure in the polar cap and drag some ice cubes in behind them. Foiled by the insurmountable floating ice cube barrier, the Speedmonster leaves. God, we can't even have fighting a Drug Squid as the random climax. Nope, it's fighting . . . being stuck in the ice. In a damaged sub. They're all worried about it. Then they ignore their problems, since Not Really a Jerkface Anymore goes into withdrawal, and Cilghal has to flush the junk out of her system in Anja's triumph over addiction, or some such crap. Then they go back to the problem that might actually kill them. They get in wetsuits and hack up some ice with their lightsabers, while Anja decides to ignore the last bit of spice she finds floating around, and tosses her lightsaber away because she's not worthy or something. Woman, did you ever consider that maybe, oh, Luke Skywalker might be interested into hanging onto an antique lightsaber or something if you're not interested anymore?

• Like all good solutions, simply vaguely putting the idea into practice allows them to teleport back to Crystal Reef, where they go and be all happy and other climax nonsense while the guy who rented them the sub doesn't even care they ruined it because OMG A GREAT ARCTIC SKRA'AKAN THAT'S SO RARE! Then they leave Jacques Cousteau and Jacen and Tenel Ka have the Rock Dragon all by themselves, unchaperoned, when they go back to Kessel. Skywalker sucks at this whole exercising-the-trust-parents-put-in-him thing. Anyway, they act all happy and friendly and stuff, since it's the last book in the series and we need about a billion pages of celebratory wrapup crap to make you feel good. Hanky-panky may or may not have occurred. We wouldn't know, since it's a kids' book. However, given the pair's inability to do anything more than occasionally hold hands or pat shoulders or some crap, have one kiss, and say some vague stuff about good friends and such, I doubt they even know what hanky-panky is.

• So they go back to Kessel, and I imagine their conversation went something like this: "So, all on our own, trapped on a barren, inhospitable rock and surrounded by elite Black Sun mercenaries, we Die Harded the hell out of them, saved a bunch of people, and beat Black Sun. What did you do?" "We, uhhhh, got Anja off spice. And ran away from a giant hopped-up squid. But it was really, uh, hardcore running. And we hacked at ice. So yeah, I totally got to use my lightsaber. It was . . . uhh, it was a lot more impressive than it sounds. I bet the squid was played by Alan Rickman."

• Then, because this just isn't enough post-climax hogwash, they go back to the Academy (imagine that . . . a YJK book in which the only Academy scenes are in the very beginning and end, bookending the actual plot!) where Luke's all like "You're Super Uber Extra Special students! I'm going to throw a MASSIVE PARTY just for YOU! Because you're HEROES like I've never seen before! That's three absurdly overpowered crackpot organizations you've saved the NR from!" All the other students will, of course, not be resentful or anything.

• But first, we need more saccharine windup crap.

• Luke says he'll talk to them about their futures. We never actually see these conversations or learn what's said, because that would actually be interesting. Instead, Jacen apologizes to Han for doubting him over Gallandro's death, and Anja apologizes for hating him for killing her dad except he didn't, and over dinner (there is no record of whether nerf sausages were on offer) Anakin, being all into puzzles or something (this kid desperately needs a new shtick), hatches a genius plan to beat the Black Sun infiltrators left out there or some such nonsense, and Anja announces she's leaving the academy because, you know, she doesn't actually have the Force, and Lando hires her because we need a nice ending (she gets away totally scot-free for working for Black Sun and her various crimes pursuant to such, because she's all changed and nice now. God, Skywalker, especially, KJA Skywalker, is really not big on the whole judicial system, is he?), and Jacen gives Tenel a necklace made out of the shell of the critter we spent an hour and a half watching them watch hatch, and Em Teedee, Threepio, and Artoo have "droid conversations" about "the merits of various lubricants".

• Then we get the actual ceremony, where the Extra Super Special Kids We Actually Care About, plus Anja and Em Teedee and, for no good reason at all other than rampant nepotism, Anakin, get the ANH climax reenacted for them, medals and all. Then someone realizes, "Hey, there were other kids in the series who did crap" and they let Raynar and the busty horse onto the platform in front of everybody to get clapped at. Hopefull they made her put on a shirt, or people will come away with some pretty odd impressions of the Jedi. Then all the Jedi Knights get up and salute the blundering idiots . . . uhh, heroes . . . of the new generation. They get a two-minute rabid standing ovation, and Tionne starts to sing ballads about them. I'm going to throw up.

• Despite the cover tag, the twins are at no point forced to "choose between friendship and the Force".

• Anyway, tune in next time, when the kids begin their journey toward adulthood as OMG FULL JEDI or something, right?
•  

Part XXXV: The Crystal
In which our hero ponders

• We pick up right where we left off last time, which is actually kinda nifty. Apparently, Cunningham read Crisis at Crystal Reef and said, "What the hell? What did Luke talk to them about? What's their future going to be? That's actually interesting, and instead we get eggshell necklaces. This is dumb." So she wrote a short story.

• So they're up there, getting sung at and all that ridiculous over-the-top vomit-inducing nonsense, and then it mercifully ends and they run outside and celebrate graduation. Sometime between the ceremony starting in CACR and ending here, it stopped being an awards ceremony and started being a graduation ceremony. So, if they had Jedi hats, they'd be throwing them now. Instead, they just shout and jump in the summer sun and all that. How come Yavin 4 never has a rainy season, anyway?

• Jacen just pipes up and says, "Well, I'm getting apprenticed to Luke. And so is Anakin." And everyone's like, "OK."

• And then Jacen's like, "You know what? The ancient Jedi did a lot more than be warriors. I want to go back and discover what that was, and do more than the stupid wandering around fighting random bad people and learning absolutely nothing we've been doing for the past two years." So Jacen's finally thoughtful and actually Jediish. This should be interesting. I wonder if they'll follow through on this character development.

• Then everyone else disappears and we get nonsense about Jaina. Now, the Wookieepedia summary of this short story made it sound like just about the dumbest story on the planet. "Jaina Solo, her brothers and friends graduate from the Jedi Praxeum. Han Solo gives his daughter a heavily modified Z-95 Headhunter as a present and she decides to fly it to Mon Calamari where they are having a vacation. However on the way she gets held up because a cyborg piloting an X-wing tries to destroy her. He thinks that the Z-95 is a prototype despite the fact that it was manufactured many years ago. She succeeds in destroying the cyborg and proceeds to Mon Calamari."

• Really, after a plot summary like that, nothing in the story itself could possibly top that. Well, except the part that implies that cyborgs either become psychotic, or, if they're lucky, just become inhuman meat droids. Yeah. But, yeah, random-ass insane cyborg comes out of nowhere and shoots at her ship, because he's all delusional and stuff. Because he's a cyborg. And she fights him, and goes to Mon Calamari. The story itself, and Jaina aren't so bad, but as far as sheer randomness of threats . . . this takes the cake. Not even Waru tops that.

• And on Mon Calamari, Jacen's there, because everyone's taking a happy-fun vacation at Crystal Reef, since Crystal Reef wanted Skywalker-Solo PR back in the last book. I'm digging the whole happy-fun-family-joy-time vibe. I hope they don't disrupt that or anything. Maybe just a couple more insane cyborgs here and there, that kind of thing.

• Tune in next week, when there's something about the young Jedi becoming the new Jedi Order or something. Sounds hopeful and uplifting.