Fury is the seventh book in the Legacy of the Force saga, published by Del Rey and Lucasbooks, and tells of the continuing adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo and their offspring and extended families.

Fury picks up shortly after the events of Inferno. Darth Caedus (nee Jacen Solo) has been left severely wounded from his altercation with Luke Skywalker, after he was found to be torturing Luke’s son. Seriously, the last thing you want to do is piss off Luke Skywalker enough for him to be coming after you, and then the thing you don’t want to do after that is have him catch you torturing his son.

But his hold on keeping the Galactic Alliance together under his brutal leadership becomes more tenuous by the day. The Wookiees are out of the conflict, having had their planet turned into a firestorm at the order of Jacen Solo, the Jedi have turned against him, and the love of his life and mother of his daughter (and head of the Hapes Consortium and a sizable fleet) has demanded his surrender.

Naturally, being the Sith that he is, he decides that kidnapping his daughter and threatening to kill her if things don’t go his way will work to bring peace and order to the Galaxy one more.

Obviously he needs to be taken down a peg or two.

But first, the Jedi Order and the Solos work hard to find Alema Rar, whom they presume to be the killer of Mara Jade. Once she’s dealt with, they need to set their sights on taking Jacen’s hostage from him.

The thing that became most apparent in this book was that Jacen Solo is most likely going to be killed. I’d love to see him brought back from the precipice by Luke, his sister or anyone else in the family, but he’s gone so far off the deep end it doesn’t seem plausible. I can hope though, can’t I?

As I got closer and closer to the end of the book, I wondered what Aaron Allston’s finale would bring me. You see, this was his last book in the series. He’d have to leave the story to be wrapped up by Karen Traviss and Troy Denning and as the pages ran out, I was wondering where the emotional climax would be. We’d seen a thrilling action climax in true Star Wars fashion, but there hadn’t been an emotional punch yet.

And with three pages left, Allston sneaked up on me completely and not only delivered but it was so quick and well written that it caught me off guard. So off guard, I was choking back actual tears.

After that, we learn that Jaina Solo plans to kill her brother definitively and is seeking out the archenemy of her family to teach her something new so that she can do it. And so she’s going to see Boba Fett about some training. The one two-punch of a sad ending and then Jaina committing to seek out Fett served as one of the best endings in this series so far be far.

This was a very strong installment into this series, even though Allston has had for the duration the unenviable task of kicking off each act and letting others finish it, but this was thoroughly engrossing.

So much so, that by the time I wrote this I’m already 50 pages into the next book.

If you have even a passing love for Star Wars, I would highly recommend this entire series.

To purchase Fury on Amazon, click here.

Other reviews in this series:
Betrayal
Bloodlines
Tempest
Exile
Sacrifice