(Before we start, I want to add a blanket spoiler warning. If you haven’t read this, you may want to steer clear of the review. Unless you don’t plan on reading the series. If you don’t, then by all means, read on.)

The fifth book in the Legacy of the Force series, Sacrifice, certainly keeps up its end of the bargain as far as its name is concerned. There is a major sacrifice and, if you’ve been reading along with the rest of the series you know that a sacrifice is coming. Who is to be sacrificed, though? That is the question that this book leads you around in 4 or 5 different directions in, in a very deliberate way.

Apparently, I’m in some type of minority in liking this series, though I’m not sure why. Part of the reason I so ardently defend the prequels (aside from their inherent greatness) is because I love to watch good characters make bad decisions. Watching Anakin Skywalker slowly descend into the dark side is a story that breaks my heart every time I see it, and it’s breaking my heart (in a good and entertaining way) to see his grandson, Jason Solo, following in his ultimately misguided footsteps. Some might also say that I like everything Star Wars blindly, but that’s not true either. If you remember, I quit reading Expanded Universe novels because I hated them. I’ve mentioned in each of these reviews how annoyed I am that these books are so good.

I can see a lot of fans being angry that any characters are killed, instead preferring a safe and easy story to digest, but the two main characters who were eliminated from the story weren’t in all that much of the Star Wars mythos (at least as far as I’ve read.) For those of you who haven’t read it, I’m going to reveal in this very sentence that Lumiya, who originated in the old Marvel comics, and Mara Jade Skywalker, who began life in Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire trilogy of books, were the two main characters who went the way of the Dodo. Now, I know people couldn’t be too attached to Lumiya, though I had a fondness for her, but I imagine people are much more up in arms about Mara. But, I don’t get it. I’ve only read perhaps five books with her in it and maybe two comic books. She was never all that dear to me, though her death was written in such a fashion that I was choking back tears.

But killing his Aunt wasn’t the sacrifice of a loved one Jacen had to make. Jacen and Mara were hardly close, no, her death at Jacen’s hand killed something even greater than that: the very fabric of the Solo-Skywalker family unit was torn asunder.

I would like to say two things about Karen Traviss, whom I’m beginning to enjoy more and more as a craftswoman of these Star Wars tales. First, it seems as though, in very subtle ways, she and I would line up politically. Of the three writers in this cycle of stories, she has taken the portions that are most overt in their political undertones (Jacen and his Patriot Act maneuvering) and she makes very subtle points in thinly disguised ways… There was one point that stuck out in my brain where she mentioned the pollution and climate change of a system and I thought to myself that her and I might get along famously.

The second thing I’d like to point out about her writing is that more than Aaron Allston or Troy Denning, she has the ability to repeatedly give me the chills with her prose. It’ll happen now and again with the other two, but with both of her books, she had my spine tingling for the last 50 pages of the book. And I think, beyond the final duel between Jacen and Mara, my favorite moment was Boba Fett’s message to Han. He sent him a vibroblade with a note reading, “Kill your son before we have to. Our Deepest Sympathies.” That moment just kicked me in the stomach and I almost lost it. I can only imagine how Han is going to react to his only surviving son murdering his sister-in-law.

Hell, I’m more excited to see how Luke reacts when he finds out his nephew killed his wife.

Things can only get darker from here.

I’ll be back next week with a verdict on Inferno, though I wonder if it can top this book as best of the series so far. I’d also like to register a quick prediction. I have a friend who thinks it’s going to end with Jaina, the Sword of the Jedi, killing her brother. I think Jacen has a shot at redemption just like his grandfather. We’ll see.

To purchase Sacrifice on Amazon, click here.

Other reviews in this series:
Betrayal
Bloodlines
Tempest
Exile