The Jeb Bush of Planets: Meaningless Reviews in a Galaxy Even Further Away
Before the prequels, before Jar Jar, long before Rey and Kylo Ren, George Lucas kept the nerds satisfied by keeping the story of Luke and Leia and Han going in the pages of books and comics, all of which was negated when Disney purchased the franchise in 2012. This is a meaningless review of one of these stories, itself part of a larger run comprised of nineteen novels. For a full explanation of this review and series, click here. All previous installments can be found here.
In this installment, we’re finally getting moving again….
Number 17 in the series, Reunion is the final third of Sean Williams and Shane Dix’s Force Heretic Trilogy, also known as The Backburner Chronicles.It was published in June of 2003.
Look, I get it. You want to build a little tension towards the end of the series by taking a pause. You want to tie up some loose ends. You want to ease off the gas, maybe have a few laughs before darkening the stage for the finale. All well and good. What’s not well and good is taking more than 1200 pages and three books to do all of that. Here’s a graph I made depicting the entire series:
I am exhausted with this series, mostly as a result of the last three books, which have stalled the entire thing up. There were several items that the writers have been working through, namely, Nom Anor’s rising heresy on the Yuuzhan Vong occupied Coruscant, Tahiri’s psychological struggles following the death of Anakin Solo and her torture at the thirteen fingered hands of the shapers, and the search for the living planet Zonama Sekot, which, according to the giant bird Vergere, is the key to stopping the Yuuzhan Vong. Let’s see if our intrepid writers managed to resolve these things, shall we?
Plot via Twitter:
Cast: The links take you to Wookiepeedia, as always. Asterisks denote characters I’ve already described.
Group A: The Sekot hunters
Luke & Mara Jade Skywalker*
Group B: The random assorted task force
Han & Leia Organa Solo*
Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon* Now on his way to unifying the Imperial remnant forces with the Galactic Alliance navies.
Group C: The Nom Anor Show
Nom Anor:* Still in exile, but leader of rapidly growing cult. Goes by the name Yu’shaa now, which means prophet. Is suddenly the cold, competent trickster god of the first third of the series instead of the overmatched bureaucrat from the middle portion. I much prefer this version.
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Developments:
Luke and company finally arrive at Zonama Sekot, which is found in a system called Klasse Ephemora. Ephemora, as in temporary. Get it? Because Zonama Sekot jumps around a lot? Ehh? Ehh? It’s the most grievous naming of a place in the Star Wars universe since Mon Calamari, which is the home of the squid people. Good job, good effort, everybody.
Because this is Star Wars and the galaxy is apparently smaller than the town of Gresham, Nebraska (population 223), it turns out that Zonama Sekot was once visited by Anakin Skywalker when he was a snotty teenager.
The planet’s consciousness uses the form of teen Anakin to speak to Luke. Science fiction — Mass Effect in particular — seems to have been really taken with the idea of a powerful, possibly unknowable consciousness manifesting itself as an annoying kid.
Han & Leia’s group spend the majority of this one on or around a planet called Esfandia, which is a rogue planet, meaning it escaped its orbit around the star and is now hurtling through empty space. It’s a real phenomenon, which is cool. As a result of not having a star, Esfandia is mostly dead, powered only by the radiation thrown off by the core of the planet. It’s referred to as “Low energy” several times, making this the Jeb Bush of Planets.
Prior to arriving there, Han manages to start a planet sized riot, which is impressive and just generally rules.
After arriving there, they kill 17 of the native life forms. This fact is pretty much immediately forgiven and then forgotten by the native population.
Tahiri, who has been enduring a bit of a split personality crisis over the past three novels (relayed to the reader through a stream of very ham handed dreams and visions) finally comes to a point where she must merge the two sides of herself or die. She does so, in the same way that you can merge a reflection of yourself in a fun house mirror or fucking around in photobooth (the app, not an actual photobooth).
Jaina attempts to help Tahiri with the process but gets trapped in Tahiri’s mind, which I thought was hilarious. Jaina has spent most of this trilogy getting hit over the head, shot with stun bolts, fried, running into things, crashing vehicles, getting captured, or trapping herself in mental prisons. Not the best showing for Jaina.
Danni Quee is one of the more interesting characters in the series. As is the case elsewhere, this hyper intelligent and willful scientist finds herself once again a damsel, which is about par for the course for female characters in the Star Wars universe, its reputation for “strong female characters” notwithstanding. In this one, some mutant ass trees capture her.
Nom Anor, leader of an ever growing movement of heretical Yuuzhan Vong, finds himself a powerful spy in the court of the supreme overlord and spends most of this one being super petty and framing all of his old co-workers for heresy. It’s a living, I guess.
The imperials show up and begin to actively fight alongside the former New Republic forces. Not much else to say about that, but there is a scene where Pellaeon asks Jag to surprise him on the battlefield, in the same tone people ask to see a party trick, which is pretty dope.
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Cliches in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
“Baby with the Bathwater” is transformed into “Egg with the Afterbirth,” which I am not really sure even makes all that much sense.
“It’s all Greek [or Byzantine, don’t sleep on the Byzantines] to me” is modified to “It’s all Kubazian to me,” which doesn’t really mean the same thing in a universe in which translator droids are everywhere.
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Final Thoughts:
Happily, this one is a little faster paced than the last installment. Other than the discovery of Zonama Sekot, and the involvement of the Imperial forces, there’s really nothing all that important in this installment, which has been true of the entire trilogy. You gotta lay the groundwork, but thankfully, you don’t have to read it. Skip this one.
This has been Meaningless Reviews in a Galaxy Even Further Away, in which your intrepid author blogs about some Star Wars Fiction.
