Virgil by Way of Big Bird: Meaningless Reviews in a Galaxy now Even FurtherAway
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, Jacen Solo will attempt the impossible: becoming a compelling character….
This installment is called Traitor, in case the picture wasn’t clear, and, if you needed more help, it was written by one Matthew Stover. It came out in the summer of 2002 (just in time for Attack of the Clones!), which isn’t anywhere on the cover, and is number 13 in the series, which really isn’t anywhere on the cover. If you put the cover for this one and the cover for Dark Journey together it would make a mural with the Solo Twins on the cover, thus the extraneous X-Wing. I’m still annoyed about it.
The last installment was easily the worst one in the series thus far, if you’ll recall. It is my pleasure to state that Traitor is, from the very first page, the finest installment to date — and has, without a doubt, the greatest single scene in the entire series. It is better than two of the movies, and, in an alternate dimension in which Disney merely adapted the expanded universe, it would be generating “Dark Horse” Oscar buzz.
But enough of these idle conterfactuals! To work!
Tweet length plot breakdown:
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Important Characters: As always, the links are from the star wars wiki, and the asterisks denote people I’ve described before.
Jacen Solo:* Hasn’t been seen in three books, which roughly translates to about six months or so of narrative time, I think. I thought Jacen was the worst character in the series, but that was before the appearance of a Sith Lord with no brains and six lightsabers grafted onto his body.
Vergere:* Gritty ass Big Bird returns as well, as mysterious as ever.
Nom Anor:* Now teamed up with Vergere against his will by the Warmaster Tsavong Lah, Anor is nominally in charge of Jacen Solo’s captivity.
Ganner Rhysode:* The prettiest of all the Jedi. The last time we saw him, I mentioned I was reminded of Robert Pattinson. Well, our boy has grown and done some deep, deep, deep thinking over the course of the war. In this installment, he’s much more Jared Leto.
And that’s it — It’s a very streamlined cast.
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A short recap of this twins business: Jacen was captured by the Yuuzhan Vong under the direction of Nom Anor and Vergere. He was kept alive because he was a twin, which is a huge deal to the Yuuzhan Vong. The idea is that the aliens will also capture Jaina and then make them fight to the death in ritual sacrifice to the Vong dieties Yun Harla and Yun Yammka, who are also twins. It’s a nice idea, but Jaina has spent the better part of three books kicking in the teeth of the Yuuzhan Vong, assuming the personality of Yun Harla to fuck with them in the process, so Plan A for the Yuuzhan Vong is not looking too good.
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- Stover has this style that he lapses into periodically that reminds me of the best part of any Twilight Zone episode, where Rod Serling would appear on set, infinite cigarette burning in hand, and describe in that inimitable voice of his the backdrop of whatever poor sap was going to meet his end in that week’s episode. It works quite well here.
- Also working quite well here is Stover writing the part of Vergere as a reference to Dante’s Inferno. Vergere plays the part of Virgil, the ghost of whom acts as Dante’s guide through Hell.
- The central mystery of the series, the absence of the Yuuzhan Vong in the fabric of the Force, is broken open. Earlier in the series, Anakin Solo had unraveled a piece of the mystery by fusing his lightsaber with Yuuzhan Vong technology, allowing him to sort of sense them in the source. Jacen does a similar thing, only the lightsaber in this case is his body and he’s tricked by Vergere into being implanted by a device used by the aliens to control slaves.
- Jacen is aboard what is called a seedship, which contains a bunch of slaves and growing technology and, most importantly, a bunch of creatures bred to act as the architect for the reshaping of Coruscant along Yuuzhan Vong lines. All these young brains are raised and vie for supremacy against each other. All the losers are killed, making this a cross between Akira (Giant, telepathic organs) and Game of Thrones (you win or you die, etc). Jacen makes friends with one of them. Always nice to have friends.
- Once on Coruscant, the giant brain is installed in the building that once housed the New Republic Senate. Supposedly, this is done because the senate building is the most secure, yadda yadda yadda, but I think the real reason is out of a cosmic sense of pettiness.
- Jacen Solo attempts not one but two Lucille Bluth-style full face winks in this thing
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About the scene: Due to the nature of his captivity, most of the Jedi, including his twin sister Jaina, believe that Jacen was killed in action. Ganner Rhysode does not believe this to be true, and begins to investigate. He is captured by the Yuuzhan Vong and delivered to Coruscant for sacrifice.
Jacen has a plan for his friend the brain, but needs Ganner to buy him some time, so Ganner makes a last stand. That’s the short version.
The long version includes the following bits:
- Anakin Solo’s lightsaber makes another fateful appearance, given by Vergere to Jacen and passed on to Ganner by Jacen. This is the second of three major events that occur with this lightsaber.
- Ganner removes his shirt before the last stand begins, because if you’re gonna go out, you might as well go out playing on skins.
- It ends with Ganner going full Samson and pulling the whole ceiling down on his opponents.
- The Yuuzhan Vong are so impressed with this display that future generations venerate him as a human Cerberus, a terrifying guardian of the gates to the underworld that wields a purple flame.
It’s one of those scenes that starts out great, ventures into absurd, and then comes all the way back into awesome, in the way that only the unstepped on, pure Degobahan Star Wars magic can deliver.
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Nom Anor Hot Seat Ranking
One day, he’ll get that promotion. If he isn’t killed first. Ranking is from 1–7, with 7 indicating greatest success, and 1 marking utter ruination
Oh, he got so very close in this one. He twisted Jacen (or let Vergere do it), and almost converted him to the ways of the Yuuzhan Vong. He convinced the warmaster himself to go along with the scheme. He wound up the master shaper in charge of Coruscant’s reformation and had troops committed to slaughter, all in service of the plan. And once all these doors had been opened and all the machinery greased down and ready to go, Nom Anor himself unwittingly led Jacen straight to his target (the world brain of Coruscant) and then had his ship stolen out from under him by Vergere and Jacen Solo, leaving him quite literally tangled in a web of his own making. The warmaster isn’t going to be pleased.
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Cliches in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Despite the overall quality of the writing, which is on a different level altogether than most of his fellow authors, there are a few repurposed idioms in this thing.
The one that stuck out the most is Wookie and nerf show, which is a stand in for Punch and Judy show, making this a most international usage of idioms.
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Final Thoughts: This story puts to rest the version of Jacen that sucked, full stop. His passivity and his self righteousness are driven from him through lesson after brutal lesson, courtesy of Vergere. It’s all very well done. In fact, it’s so well done that it made writing this review very difficult. There wasn’t much to pick apart.
Read it.
This has been your regular dive into some Star Wars arcana, Meaningless Reviews in a Galaxy Even Further Away.
