The Unifying Force (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order, Book 19)

Rating:
Summary: Much better than I expected
Review: With all series finales, especially with novels, your expectations are set pretty high. (As were mine.) This novel exceeds all expectations. It's fast-paced, ties together all loose ends, and even manages to throw in a few surprises along the way. For a series as long, drawn-out, and well planned such as the Star Wars New Jedi Order was, it's nice to see that they didn't let the final book fall short of the standards that they had previously set.

Without giving away the surprises of the final book, it's safe to say that you probably won't be expecting some of them. It's also nice to know that they aren't giving up on this end of the Star Wars timeline, as LucasBooks has announced another trilogy of books to follow this one.

For any true Star Wars fan, this book (along with the others in the New Jedi Order) are a necessity.

Rating:
Summary: Bittersweet Ending
Review: It is very hard to review this book on it's own as it is the wrap up to the ambitious New Jedi Order Series. I'll try to comment on both of them in their appropriate place.

There are some problems with this book, I felt it was too long for one and the first 300 pages dragged. I'm reviewing it now and I got it in hardcover when first released. However the ending picks the pace up and manages to keep the reader enthralled.

There are obviously no real surprises here. The ending has been telegraphed fairly well over the last 4 novels or maybe more. That being said although we know where the journey is taking us, Luceno, not one of my favorite authors, makes the journey a pleasant one. We get to see Luke absolutely kick butt, we see the annoying Solo children of the previous publisher's books come into their final fruition. Though I didn't like Jacen's temporary godhood it was the telegraphed culmination that he would be the new "balance of the Force".

The ending was particularly well done, bittersweet farewells of tired damaged warriors in a tired damaged galaxy with some very nice human moments.

What can we say about the NJO? I don't think it did all it set out to do, but it came pretty close. It was light years above the New Republic series of the previous publisher. The lows of the NJO came nowhere near the many many lows of the previous series. We saw main characters die, we saw characters change, we saw the philosophy of the Force through many viewpoints. We saw a high level of writing overall and some pretty good editing to contain the very large story arc. We got new stories in the Star Wars universe with an intriguing culture in the Vong. We got Nom Anor, the most despicable creature ever who went from being an absolutely loathed cardboard villain to someone the reader knew inside out. We saw many characters have very real crises of faith, hit rock bottom and come back in a fashion that didn't make it seem predictable or cliche.

Thus it is somewhat sad to see it end. It needed to end, don't get me wrong, it had gone on long enough and it was time. The Clone Wars novels are now the spiritual successors to the NJO, showing the greater depth and complexity of the shaded morality of the universe that we first saw here.

Rating:
Summary: "Meh" (Warning: Spoilers)
Review: Wrong writer to wrap up the series, as well as the wrong wrap up. The only author of the entire NJO that I really "knew" by name is Matt Stover for his excellent work on 'Traitor.' The rest of the authors are interchangeable and, to me, forgettable, not that a few didn't do a decent job (just not a great job like Stover).
My major beef with UF echoes the lot of my fellow "meh"-ers: there's simply too much going on and too many featured characters to wrap up the NJO in one 500-page novel. Yet I can't imagine it being much longer, since UF is too much exposition.
The biggest inconsistency with UF versus the past few NJO novels: it's been explained that the Vong fleet has been vastly depleted and that warriors are in such short supply Shimrra calls for an earlier breeding age. Yet in The UF the battles drag on as if this crippling effect didn't exist at all.
The perceived Boba Fett cameo was fanboy pandering, plain and simple, as was one too many mentions of Anakin (Vader) that had no bearing on anything. Nom Anor's unwitnessed "death" (if you don't see 'em die, they ain't dead) was a needless copout. I'm sure we'll be seeing him again.
The NJO has been a tremendous 'reset button' for the SW universe and the Jedi in particular. It started out much more frightening and interesting than it ended.
The too-tidy ending makes the next few books predictable (we'll be seeing plenty of rogue Vong teeming with old enemies, more fights with skips, Zonoma Sekot cameo, etc). And let's not forget the Bothan "total war" resolution and Alpha Red.




Rating:
Summary: Great Ending
Review: This book was the perfect tying up of the New Jedi Order series. I have been following it since the first one came out in 1999 and got very emotional about this book. It is well writen with intrigue, suspence, and humor. Buy it, you'll like it

Rating:
Summary: A good conclusion, but only a so-so series...
Review: Firstly, I must give full credit to James Luceno for doing, in 500 pages, what few authors could do. That is, conclude a series that by almost any measure, was nowhere near completion at the finale of the previous book. He didn't even sacrifice the pacing of the novel itself to do so. This is evidenced by the fact that almost nothing happens in the first fifty pages of this book. In 50 pages at least Jane Eyre had concluded that she hated her step-brother. I was bored senseless by the seeming lack of purpose for this lengthy introduction, but I quickly realized that's exactly what it was - an introduction. Though Luceno does spend an extraneous amount of time on the background info of the series in that introduction, from the point of view of the book as an independent unit, it also serves a number of useful plot and character services. This time also pales in comparison to the myriad of occurences that are described in the other 450+ pages. Luceno's storytelling, if nothing else, is brilliant. The plot moves quickly, effortlessly, without any glaring character-innacurracies or sudden impromptu plot movements.

The novel did falter for me near the end, when the action sequences (despite taking centre-stage) faltered and the dialogue and descriptions became weak or at times too overly-contrived. All things considering though, the writing was excellent for a book that must've been rushed through all stages of production.

Now though, comes my analysis of the series as a whole, and the plot that LucasArts and the mosaic of writers they employed created.

Quite simply: It was good. Not great, not amazing, but not horrible or ruinous of the Star Wars Universe. One major question I have to ask is... How does George Lucas expect to make a sequel containing the main three characters of the first three movies, in this radically altered Universe? He can't really make a sequel of anything immediately following the destruction of the Empire, as that is catalogued in the Extended Universe (EU) already, and I don't see how anything but three movies devoted to the Yuuzhan Vong could really explain Coruscant's changes, or the extreme character development of someone like Jacen Solo - not to mention all the other new characters the series relies on as well. While I trust Lucas' view of the series as a whole, I don't trust his moviemaking skills after the prequels, and whether he could create a post Yuuzhan-Vong galaxy as emersive as he did the original one, is something I'm not decided on.

The Yuuzhan Vong themselves, however, were an excellent motivator for the whole "Extragalactic Invaders" idea, coming across as ruthless, defiant and bloodthirsty as any other patron of the Sci-Fi idea, but with the philosophical backings to make it work. As disfigured as their beliefs are, they do have some merit, and eventually (in The Unifying Force) there was even a hint at the reason for these beliefs. If there was one constant I loved seeing throughout the New Jedi Order, it was the consistency of the Yuuzhan Vong's sadistic nature.

Unfortunately, that's just about the only thing that was consistent. While the Star Wars EU has always relied on a plethora of authors to structure and shape the main plot, it has, until this point, kept it mostly in the hands of obvious professionals, well honed and purposeful in their contributions. In the NJO, that idea was thrown out the window. 11 different authors, each with different takes on characters, settings, and each with different strengths and weaknesses to their writing styles, lent a rather shaky groundwork for the entire series. Some, such as Luceno and Greg Keyes, were obviously heading the project from the beginning, while others (Elaine Cunningham comes to mind) dropped in, put in their two cents, and left. Of course, for every abysmal Williams & Dix novel, there was a Traitor by Matthew Stover, or a Star by Star by Troy Denning. Novels intricately placed in the scheme of things kept the series running, no matter what. In reality though, one could read Vector Prime, Agents of Chaos 1, Balance Point, Edge of Victory 1, Star by Star, Traitor, Destiny's Way, any one of the three Force Heretic novels and The Unifying Force to get the absolute best of the series. That's 9 novels, a mere half of the entire series.

That being said, while the series itself wasn't entirely brillaint, (due to shifting authors and a roving importance placed on first the galaxy as a whole and then single star systems and characters and then back again) the plot was absolutely brilliant, and well pulled off.

From the first of Jacen's visions in the Allston novels (fulfilled nearly ten books later in Traitor) to his second in Balance Point (concluded only in The Unifying Force), to Anakin's seemingly pointless over-adventure on Yavin 4 (which came to shape a large part of the Yuuzhan Vong story), to Alpha Red (created in Destiny's Way but conceived as well in the Allston novels) to all sorts of movements, occurences and fine details that gave the NJO shape and purpose unlike any science fiction series written in this manner. Indeed if George Lucas was to make a film trio out of the Yuuzhan Vong encounter, the three books he would be forced to recreate would undoubtedly be Vector Prime, Star by Star, and The Unifying Force, though without the backstory of the other novels, it would be near impossible. Even in that limited frame though, is a story striving for greatness and finding it all too often.

Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: I found this book quite enjoyable. I don't know why certain people have griped about it. It is a worthy closure to the series and leaves you realing from the force-action oriented ending. Luke did what!? The Yuzzahn Vong can't be found through the force because of that? Jacen did what??!!! wow. It leaves you waiting for the next 3 books (the dark nest trilogy, 2005) to come out as fast as possible!!! I think, however that one should read the whole series of NJO to truly appreciate the ending.

--T.R.

Rating:
Summary: Notice: Quality is not welcome in Star Wars
Review: Here's a quick NJO breakdown: Traitor is good.

Rating:
Summary: The War is Over
Review: 'The Unifying Force' finally brings a close to 'The New Jedi Order' story arc. Written by James Luceno, the novel outlines the events that finally precipitate the final confrontation between the Yuuzhan Vong and the Galactic Alliance. The Gallactic Alliance had risen from the ashes of the New Republic to establish diplomatic links with not only the worlds of the former republic, but with the remains of the Empire as well.

Luceno's novel has a very brisk pace. He has excellently managed to keep the action in the book moving while still establishing important plot points. The exposition in the novel is woven into the action, which keeps the book moving. Luceno's action scenes are very worthy of the Star Wars Pantheon. His description of combat between Vong warriors and Jedi is masterful. His space battles are gripping and detailed. Not to mention that the tactics and positioning of fleets in the epic space battles are well done.

I've heard that Luceno went back and read all of the Star Wars novels in preparation for writing this one. It shows. Not only does Luceno manage to tie up loose plot lines (Jacen's vision from Vector Prime and subsequent novels, the debate about the nature of the force from 'Traitor,' and the relationship between Jag and Jainna amongst others), he brings in elements from novels outside of the NJO, including 'Tatooine Ghost' and the 'X-Wing' series. The first third of the novel contains a cameo from a character that is a cult favorite amongst Star Wars fans. The cameo is carried out excellently, and the character is captured perfectly. I won't give it away so as to not ruin the surprise.

My least favorite element of the NJO, the living planet Zenoma Sekot, even takes on a bearable quality in this novel. Luceno gives the planet its due, but keeps the action and story focused on the bipedal characters.

Anyone who has been reading the NJO must read this book. It wraps up the entire series, which has been uneven at times, in a satisfying manner. Luke Skywalker finally gets his fair share of action. In previous novels in the series, he has been relegated to a sideline character while the Solos and other Jedi did all the work. Star Wars fans in general should be pleased. Luceno manages to capture the feel of the Star Wars universe in a way that not many other authors can (with the exceptions of Zahn, Stackpole, Denning, and Keyes).

If you haven't read the other novels in the NJO first, go back and read them first. Pick up R.A. Salvatore's 'Vector Prime,' (which is excellent in my opinion) and read the following 17 novels before this one. You can't appreciate this novel nearly as well if you haven't. It is worth the wait.