Darksaber by Kevin J Anderson (1995)

Darksaber

Most of one good book+Half of one bad book=One long Darksaber

Was not expecting a Kevin J. Anderson outing to be as good. After the "one book stretched to a trilogy" of the Corellian Trilogy, it was kind of weird to see this pretty complicated doorstopper.

Summary: Durga the Hutt gets the Death Star plans and use it to build THE DARKSABER, which is basically just the super laser with engines strapped to it for greater efficiency.

Meanwhile, Callista and Luke go on dates/try to reawaken her Jedi powers.

Meanwhile, Daala is back, and is actually kinda competent until like 80% of the way through the book.

Introduced:

The Darksaber: This week's Death Star variant. It's a failure.

Insanely Overpowered Jedi: Like 12 Jedi (barely even done training) hold off an entire Imperial fleet.

Bevel Lemelisk: Not the first mention, but first use as a proper character. The Death Star's designer. Repeatedly executed and resurrected by Palpatine.

Commentary: Like I said above, this one is kind of weird, but mostly good. I believe it's the longest novel I've read so far. Definitely refreshing after the previous few books which were super padded. And it's mostly good. Of the three main plots, only the Callista one is bad. The Darksaber plot is (unsurprisingly) the largest of the three. Aside from a couple cases of minor idiot balling (the New Republic letting Durga's pets ransack the Imperial Information Center and Madine's sabotage plan), it mostly does well until the end. When the superlaser doesn't fire, and it gets unceremoniously squished between two asteroids. Anderson loves putting idiots putting in charge of super weapons, and it's getting kind old. At least let them blow up a moon or something first. We do get a bit of Ackbar origin story, with him betraying and escaping Tarkin, as a bonus.

Lemelisk's repeated deaths and resurrection are a nice little body horror touch. He's one of those characters that's probably mentioned more in source books than in the actual novels.

Crix Madine is (after a couple earlier attempts by Anderson, like Mon Mothma) the first movie character death in the EU. He's C list, at best, but still a named movie character. I'm in support of letting the EU thin the herd a bit, if for no other reason than a lot of the authors feel compelled to create B,C, and Z plots just to cram in movie characters. The only real issue is how pointless and stupid Madine's death is. Despite being the Chief of Intelligence, the operation he plans on the Darksaber is profoundly stupid. He goes in with two other commandos, loses one to an asteroid almost immediately, and then decides to try to sneak aboard and sabotage the Darksaber. The logistics of flinging yourself across asteroids to get their aside, it's a choice not to just strafe the defenseless super weapon with A-wings and be done with it. Even once it's apparent how poorly it's constructed, he decides to go inside to plant charges. It's basically falling apart in space, you can't tell me they couldn't have placed the charges near the engines (or crawled part war up the super laser, that'd be cool) and knocked it out long enough for Wedge and the fleet to show up. 

Luke is still a terrible character while he's with Callista, and she's still completely pointless. It's a shame no one thought to just give her a reason to exist other than being Luke's girlfriend. She's one of the first characters we get to see seriously struggling with the Dark Side up close. (Luke's hypothetical struggle between Empire and Jedi is off camera. Kyp's possessed, and never really manages to be that bad...) She's seemingly cut off from the Light Side, and struggles with using/avoiding the Dark when she does tap into the Force. There's plenty of room for drama and development there. Instead we have to suffer through some pointless dates where they're creepily obsessed with each other, a credibility straining wampa fight on Hoth (no way they should've made it out a live) and then she Mary Sue's her way up to Daala's flagship and blasts it from the inside. She's left for dead (again) and lives (again). Ughhhhhh. Double bonus for (again) appearing to Luke as a (recorded instead of live) computer message. Really creative. 

Lastly, Daala and Palleon manage to reunite a sizeable Imperial fleet, including a Super Star Destroyer, and start attacking the New Republic. Daala is no Thrawn (she's not supposed to be), but her fanaticism and bravery mostly work here as a rallying point for the demoralized Empire. She manages to make a couple effective strikes, before getting fucked mostly by plot armor at Yavin 4.

She splits her forces, sending most of her smaller ships on a series of fast hit and runs (good), then sends Palleon with about a dozen ISDs to hit Yavin. They're physically thrown across the system by the combined Force powers of Luke's new Jedi Knights. Size matters not, but I've never loved when the Jedi power levels get so high that they can take down cap ships with ease. The ships are damaged, but mostly intact, and will somehow limp away to fight another day (why the main Republic fleet that arrives in the system a short time after doesn't pick them off is beyond Anderson's ability to process). She arrives in her SSD, Knight Hammer shortly thereafter, and starts bombarding the moon. Again, this should probably be the end of things, as an SSD has more than enough firepower to render the a planet uninhabitable (and she apparently completely fails to target the temple base), but a combination of plot armor and "ooh, shiny" lets things last long enough for her to get distracted by a small Republic fleet long enough for Callista to sneak a TIE Bomber onboard unmolested (I'm leaking radiation, evacuate the landing bay, don't send any techs or anything!), and then set off the explosives in a couple dozen others, and cripple it. I don't love Daala as a character, but she deserved better here. At least Anderson tries to (slightly) back up on her affair with Tarkin, who she "admired more than loved" now. She still gets a line about everyone assuming she was only promoted for sleeping with him. To be fair, she's generally shown to be pretty incompetent (despite supposedly setting all kinds of Imperial Academy records in her backstory) so it's not really a leap. Maybe everyone else in the Imperial Navy is that bad. In the end, she relinquishes command to Palleon. Good on her for owning up to her failures, but again, kind of feels like Anderson created her just to fuck her over and make her seem incompetent. Side note: I wish we got to see more of her with Wedge. In a lot of ways, I think they're foils for each other. Both have complicated relationships with leadership, go hard on guts, etc. If she was allowed to have more plot armor on her side, I think she'd probably be more successful like him.

There's a semi-trolling critique of the new Star Wars that it's pro-facist. The Empire is, obviously. But with a little squinting, you can get there with the fact that EVERYONE who actually does anything is either a Skywalker, a Solo, or a Palpatine (usually 2/3). (Rey Kenobi would've been better. Or just not making her related to anyone.) Gotta keep that magic blood pure or something. Darksaber is definitely heading that way. Luke/Callsita's obsession with their kids breeding true as Jedi, Madine's funeral involving X-Wing launched fireworks and a speech about how the New Republic is the "rightful government" and Luke's new Jedi being explicitly devoted to the New Republic, rather than the Force, or justice or something.

Review: 3/5 This is a pretty solid book for the first 90% or so, until Anderson has to get rid of the Darksaber, kill Madine, defend Yavin 4, and do something with Callista in 50 pages. He's never going to be great, but the writing is serviceable here, with minimal groaners. In a few parts, he even seems to be aware of and tries to clean up he and Hambly's goofs, and we get a couple solid individual scenes (albeit mostly minor ones). The overall EU plot moves here more than in any other single book since HttE or maybe Jedi Search. I'd put this one one the "EU Required Reading" list.