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Last week I posted a review of the first novel in the Legacy of the Force series, Betrayal. It seems too short a time to come back to you with a review of the second novel, Bloodlines, but here I am.
This book widens the conflict between Corellia and the Galactic Alliance and is tearing the Solo and Skywalker familes asunder.
Han and Leia Solo are colluding to help the Corellians (and even aid a coup against the Corellian head of state, Han Solo’s cousin Thracken Sal-Solo). Jaina Solo and Luke Skywalker and his wife Mara are loyal to the New Jedi Order and are sworn to protect this burgeoning Republic. And that leaves Jacen Solo, slipping further into the Dark Side, and his apprentice and cousin Ben Skywalker have their own agenda, rounding up residents of Coruscant in gestapo like raids for having ties to Coruscant.
The other main character involved in this particular book is fan-favorite Boba Fett, who is featured on the cover. His story is quite interesting and I was glad to read it and hope there is more of him in the series. You see, he’s dying. And before he dies, he’s working his hardest to hunt down Taun We (one of the Kaminoan cloners featured in Attack of the Clones) in hopes that he can extend his life. But thrust in his path is a spectre from his past, a young girl with information about his wife and daughter, whom he’d left 50 years ago.
In fact, it’s this relationship that served as the best scene in the book. On one end of the conflict, Thracken Sal-Solo has hired a bounty hunter to hunt down Han Solo and his family. On the other side, Jacen Solo has captured that bounty hunter in his fascist round-ups. In the pursuit of his daughter, Fett has to help Han Solo deal with Thracken once and for all and they discover the bounty hunter Jacen brutalized during questioning was Fett’s daughter.
It caused quite an emotional climax and I was incredibly pleased with how well built it was.
All in all, the story felt like a loose allegory for authoritarianism in government. Jacen and Ben’s secret police, the Galactic Alliance Guard (GAG) seemed like a healthy mix between Hitler’s SS and the Patriot Act. At times, it was a little heavy handed, but I liked it all the same.
And Lumiya is in the mix still, working hard to turn Jacen Solo into a Sith. In fact, another one of my favorite parts were recreations from Revenge of the Sith. Jacen tried hard to use the Force in the Jedi Temple to walk in shoes of Anakin Skywalker during the dark time. It ran shivers up my spine.
I wasn’t familiar with Karen Traviss’ work before this and her prose is a little bit more choppy than Allston’s, but still workable. She tended to rely on quotes from the news headlines to advance parts of the larger conflict instead of showing them like Allston did. I don’t think this was a bad thing, per se, I just preferred Allston’s handling of the material.
As far as the story overall, I’m officially sucked in. I’m 100 pages into the third book in the series already.