Twins, Basil: 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 series, click here. All previous installments can be found here.
In this installment, Game of Thrones comes to the galaxy far, far, away….
Number ten, the stand alone novel Dark Journey, by Elaine Cunningham. Published in early 2002.
One movie in to the new story involving the latest in Skywalker family drama, and it’s clear that the new female lead (Rey) owes much of her DNA to the character of Jaina from the expanded universe. Though it’s unclear if Rey is related somehow to the Solos or the Skywalkers — given the fact that the galaxy is apparently smaller than the town of eight thousand people that I grew up in, I would guess that she is — Rey’s skill set lines up almost perfectly with Jaina’s. She’s a pilot so talented that “ace” feels like an insult, a talented tinkerer and mechanic, and a lethal warrior. It may just be a coincidence, but I doubt it very much.
Anyways, this installment features Jaina almost exclusively, though it also comes with a healthy dose of space fuccbois, palace intrigue, and Force Lightning.
Tweet-plot rundown:
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Important characters: Links attached to character names are all from Wookiepeedia, the worst named but most exhaustive of all our Star Wars resources. As always, asterisks denote characters I have already referenced or described.
Unlike the last one, this one has a cast small enough to write about. Lucky you.
The New Republic/Jedi
Han & Leia Solo: Needing no introduction
Jaina Solo:* Following the disastrous mission in the last novel, Jaina saw one of her brothers killed and the other captured by the Yuuzhan Vong. She commandeered a Yuuzhan Vong vessel and fled with all the other surviving Jedi.
Lowbacca: A nephew of Chewbacca (RIP) and a Jedi — like I said, the galaxy seems to be awfully small — Lowbacca was in the same generation as Jacen and Jaina Solo. He goes by Lowie. He’s an expert at two things: Computer science and biotechnlogy.
This makes him pretty much invaluable in the war against the Yuuzhan Vong, especially at this point in the war — The Jedi have cracked the Yuuzhan Vong war coordinators known as Yammosks and now, courtesy of Jaina, possess an entire Yuuzhan Vong capital ship and all the technology that was aboard at the time of capture.
Tenel Ka: A Jedi also around Jacen and Jaina’s age, Tenel Ka is the daughter of the Hapan Royal family, a confederation of worlds outside the New Republic’s jurisdiction. Jacen (even then, the worst) lopped off her arm when they were kids, but she didn’t have it replaced, instead choosing to fight one handed. She’s pretty badass, as you may have gathered.
The Hapans (A matriarchal federation founded by space pirates)
Prince Isolder:* last seen losing an entire battle fleet to a poorly aimed superweapon, Isolder has spent the intervening year sulking and learning about the Yuuzhan Vong, as one does.
Ta’a Chume: Former queen mother of Hapes, Chume is a powerful and powerfully ambitious woman, more than capable of maneuvering her enemies and her allies into traps. She is pretty much the Platonic Ideal of the old battle-axe.
A coterie of Jaina’s potential suitors:
Zekk: Another Jedi in Jaina and Jacen’s orbit, Zekk was very close to Jaina when they were younger. He was originally a dark Jedi, until he was redeemed.
Kyp Durron: Our mostly rogue Jedi has now been brought more under the orbit of the New Jedi Order, but he’s still a loose cannon. No word on if he’s turned in his badge and/or his lightsaber gun yet.
Jagged Fel: Boy wonder of the Imperial Remnant, Jag Fel has not been seen since the disaster at Ithor, but he’s back under the guise of a “scouting mission.”
Trisdin: A beautiful but idiotic court drone allied nominally with Ta’a Chume.
The Yuuzhan Vong:
Harrar:* Friend of the warmaster and priest of the Yuuzhan Vong diety Yun-Harla, the trickster goddess.
Khalee Lah: The son of the warmaster, Lah is a devoted but singleminded commander, assigned to Harrar so that he may learn some subtlety.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
My Bad: There was one plot point in the last installment that I didn’t mention because I was pressed for space. The Yuuzhan Vong have a weird cultural reverence for twins, twins being a very uncommon thing among the aliens. The revelation that Jacen and Jaina are twins sends shockwaves through the Yuuzhan Vong elite.
The warmaster Tsavong Lah (who sacrificed an arm in the last one to aid the capture of Coruscant) decreed that they should both be captured and made to fight each other in ritual sacrifice to the Yuuzhan Vong Gods Yun-Yammka and Yun-Harla, who also happen to be twins. Jacen was successfully taken prisoner, but Jaina escaped.
Now, the warmaster’s replacement arm is rotting off his body, jeopardizing his status and calling into question his fitness to serve the gods. As a result, Jaina is now the most wanted Jedi in the galaxy. Okay, now you’re caught up.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Important issues: This novel picks up immediately where the previous novel left off — The escape of the Jedi strike force from Yuuzhan Vong occupied space and the fall of Coruscant. It also carries the general tone of darkness from the previous installment, making this a very fun slog through almost one thousand combined pages of grimness.
Kyp Durron loses another whole squadron of fighter pilots, marking what I believe is the third or fourth such scene in the series. Among the dead is the kid who was bankrolling Kyp’s independent squadron, meaning he’s now broke. He also accidentally kills some people with the Force, which is the ostensible reason he doesn’t immediately reform his squadron, but the real reason is because he’s broke.
Lowie and Jaina manage to hack Yuuzhan Vong technology in a number of useful ways, which will be a larger theme in the next four novels or so. In the process, Jaina takes on the persona of Yun-Harla, the Yuuzhan Vong trickster goddess. This is done out of spite, but by the end of the novel, Harrar has committed himself fully to the heresy that Jaina Solo is Yun-Harla, opening up a third branch of heresy since the Yuuzhan Vong invaded.
Khalee Lah may cut an imposing figure (He even has a cool horn implanted in his head!) but he’s actually a failson. He spends the entirety of this one being run around, as much by Harrar as by Jaina Solo. He’s very superfluous.
There’s a lot of intrigue on the planet of Hapes. The current queen mother is dying, the Hapans had a fleet wiped out earlier in the series, Isolder is handsome but unable to rule and increasingly unwilling to do so, and anti-Jedi sentiment is running high. I’m going to spoil it and just tell you that Tenel Ka eventually shrugs off her reluctance and assumes the throne. She pulls an Aragorn, is what I’m saying.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Love in a Hopeless Place: Jaina gets hit on a lot in this one, by a whole grip of dudes. Among other scenes:
A small but recurring sublot of the series is Zekk having romantic notions of Jaina, and having those hopes gently dashed by her. It’s not so gentle in this one, as Jaina is grieving and sliding towards darkness and Zekk generally acts like a patronizing a-hole. He flounces off to the secret Jedi base, where I presume he spends some time frequenting r/incel (I’m not going to link to it, but look it up to find the saddest place on the whole internet).
Jag Fel finds himself enamored with Jaina, leading to some truly excellent scenes of Jaina and him getting into stupid arguments, the whispering-sweet-nothings of the Star Wars universe. There’s also a scene where Jaina checks out Jag’s butt when he’s walking away, if that’s your thing.
Trisdin plays his part in one of Ta’a Chume’s schemes, trying to get Jaina to fall for him. He gets dunked on, hard, and also exposed by Jaina as a double agent, working for an enemy of Ta’a Chume’s, so it doesn’t go well.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Nom Anor Hot Seat Ranking:
He’s barely in this one, but he sets the stage for everything that follows. Having captured Jacen Solo, and messed up the capture of Jaina, he defers the capture of Jaina to Harrar and Khalee Lah under the excuse of needing to deliver Jacen as quickly as possible to the warmaster. It’s an unsubtle act of ass covering, and fails to deceive any of his colleagues, but Khalee and Harrar accept the task, so it’s as much on them as Anor. He ends up where he started, at a 3.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Dark Journey is a very strange entry in the series. That’s not necessarily a bad thing— It’s well written, features nothing especially terrible nor any of the repurposed cliche fuckery that we’ve seen elsewhere in the series. That said, it’s not especially memorable. It’s almost like it’s just material that didn’t quite fit in with the previous installment nor with the plot of the next one, so they just stuck it here. Jaina experiences a slide into the dark side, but the slide is rather vague and not especially (at least not in 2017) dark. It’s just kind of mournful.
Here’s what you really need to know: Jaina’s dope, The tide is shifting, and skip this one.
This has been your regular dive into some Star Wars nerdery, Meaningless Reviews in a Galaxy Even Further Away.
