Troy Denning: Star by Star



Story:
3/5
Characters:
3/5
Humor:
3/5
Action:
4/5

Troy Denning’s Star by Star is the ninth volume in the long series The New Jedi Order and with over six hundred pages almost double the length of most its predecessors. It also marks the end of the often complained about pattern of engagement, defeat, retreat and betrayel earlier volumes fell victim to. If not the New Republic at least the Jedi finally strike back in force. With the support of their Jedi friends, the Solo kids embark on a mission behind enemy lines in order to eliminate the voxyn production facility. The nasty creatures shaped there are vicious, force aware hunters quite a number of Jedi fall prey to. The book’s focus is centered on the struggles of this dozen-or-so while their mission becomes more and more desperate.

Meanwhile, the New Republic navy can deliver the Vong invaders a number of defeats thanks to new technology and tactics. It is handicapped by the goverments decay, though. Even without enemy infiltration the senate is about to enter a schism over the Jedi question. The Jedi themselves can only sit and watch due to their controversity while they evade forces eager to hand Jedi over to the Yuuzhang Vong — and struggle with their own internal conflicts regarding the philosphy of force use in the face of certain defeat.

Overall, I enjoyed Star by Star more than many of the earlier volumes in this series. Most arcs are spun well and entertainingly written. The huge set of characters is portrayed well enough with a satisfying amount of conflicts of both inner and inter human nature. Some minor inconsistencies, in particular regarding movement and tactics of the Jedi infiltration force, and a couple of weird leaps in time do not really disturb the flow. But I really wonder how the idea of a cloning program that requires a particular living — and distinguishable! — sample came up; it is obviously flawed. The fact that the younger Jedi spend immense amounts of time tumbling into love affairs inmidst of death and destruction can be overlooked as attempt to develop some relationships, which is long overdue. Towards the end I felt that the climactic, cast diminishing event was not suspended long enough, though; the particular character needed some more time to really go out as a hero. As written it is the sad end of a promising young person, nothing more, and thus falls short of the impact it could have had. Its effect on the survivors on the other hand is told extensively and convincingly, and almost makes you wonder why they shrug off other deaths almost as inconveniences.

Really severe damage to the book’s quality is dealt by the lack of properly introduced Jedi from former installments. Basically the whole strike force appears out of nowhere and is only known to us from series that depicted their childhood. The same holds for the Wild Knights, a superior Barabel fighter squadron that has developed dominant battle tacticts but was never mentioned before. As it is, all successes Denning provides for the New Republic have the stink of deus ex machina to them. That is kind of sad; one would think that the allegedly so clever main characters should have been able to come up with new tactics on their own.

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