So much going on there’s very little time for a break.Ī sign of a great writer to me, is one who can take threads that bored me in one book, and make them my favorite in others. And then there’s Mara Jade’s fumbling into her use of the force. There’s the Noghri who in the last book were sent to kill Leia and now have their own story of how the Empire corrupted them, and Leia works with them. C’boath and Luke confront each other and Luke sees how the other Jedi has gone insane and turned to the dark side – but still hopes for redemption like Vader. There’s a missing Katana fleet of old clone war ships that’s been rediscovered and it’s a race to find them before Thrawn does. In Dark Force Rising we have a few plot threads going: A Bothan is trying to take over the New Republic and frame anyone who gets in his way. We didn’t need an introduction to Mara Jade or Karrde or C’baoth anymore, and they pushed the story along almost better than the canon characters at points.
While Heir to the Empire did a lot to set up the story in Dark Force Rising, the characters really came into their own, were allowed to breathe, and upped in complexity. After reading Dark Force Rising, I am sorry to report that I am wrong, because THIS is space opera at it’s finest. In my review of Heir to the Empire, I called it space opera t its finest.
