Fate of the Jedi: Vortex

Vortex is a properly tense, action packed book with some of the most heartbreaking moments and largest action set pieces, but also has a lot of down time and does quite a lot, reaching just under four hundred pages - around three hundred and sixty - it's the largest book of the series so far and it almost seems to have separate stages where different stories are wrapped up, and it just seems to keep going.

The threat of Abeloth isn't over, the Galactic Alliance gets crazier each day, the Jedi themselves are now losing it (without the influence of Abeloth), and it seems the only stable people in the galaxy are Han, Leia, Luke, and Ben.

This is when things get quite crazy, we're starting to see the true extent of Abeloth's power, we have the Sith truly attempt to kill Luke and Ben finally, the Jedi have deposed Kenth Hamner which leads to a brutal fight between him and Saba.

Shit is going off in this book!

Abeloth is, as usual, mysteriously powerful, but also very not dead.

I was shocked to find out that she was impersonating Dyon, the stuff she can do is insane.

She manages to consistently make the reader uncomfortable in ways only the Yuuzhan Vong have been able to match, she's very violent and evil and mysterious, but I love the ingenuity Luke has in combating her so often.

Madhi, the reporter from the last novel, reports on the Galactic Alliance's use of Mandalorians to stop slave revolts, and it leads to a really tragic scene where she is gunned down by the same Mandalorian employed who killed the apprentice at the Jedi Temple, and the slave she freed continues to report as Jedi Knights turn up and help them.

It's here where the Jedi start to turn against Kenth, they decide that they should start following their hearts, their feelings over the law, and to give up trying to appease Daala, but this means they all participate in a vote of no confidence against Kenth.

I really like Kenth Hamner in this series, I rarely agree with him but I truly sympathise and understand how he feels, and I do worry the Jedi are taking it too far. At the same time, I get why they are doing what they are doing, and Kenth's reaction is far from sane.

Daala attempts to manipulate Jagged Fel into believing Jaina and the Jedi are siding with the Sith, and thankfully, Denning didn't chose to characterise Jag terribly here - another sign that he listens to feedback and doesn't hate Jag - and had him come to Jaina and the Solos before doing anything.

Ultimately, Jag decides to pull out of agreements to join the Galactic Alliance and use the Empire to help the Jedi, which I love and this also leads to Jaina putting the engagement ring back on but refusing to talk about it - just get married, please.

Things get even more hopeless as Luke and the Sith find the Fallanassi, even Akanah who was a lover of Luke, and Abeloth takes her too, ending up in a massive fight as she works with Taalon to try to kill Luke and Ben.

Luke gets incredibly close to death so many times, even Ben too, the fight is brutal and incredibly tense, and I was really surprised when Vestara decided to cut Taalon in half, and it was even more awesome when Luke, even whilst Abeloth continued to kill him, pulled the roof down on them!

Vestara uses the Jade Shadow to fire on the Sith, killing a dozen of them and shooting them into pieces before assisting Luke and Ben reluctantly with escape. She isn't on their side properly yet, but for now, she has no other choice.

Saba Sebatyne and Kenth Hamner engage in an enormous, dramatic fight where Kenth tries to stop the Jedi from leaving to help Luke, and all Saba wants to do is stop him.

However, Kenth is so angry, so mad, that he will not let her stop him without killing him, and as much as I feel sorry for Kenth, after thinking about it I've come to believe this is Kenth's fault. He literally gives Saba no choice and she has to choose between stopping his lightsaber or letting him drop to his death.

It's the type of moment that leaves you with a pang in your heart at how awful things have become, and I feel really sorry for Saba as she has to reluctantly accept the role of Grand Master voted upon her by the other council members, believing she has to be judged for what she has done to Kenth.

The only little negative I have is an awkward one, where the novel ends with Allana discovering the Barabel nest.

So... I actually predicted this, and I'm annoyed I didn't write it down. But as soon as they started going on about them being missing and Saba refusing to explain, I knew it'd be some weird Barabel thing and literally predicted this!

Now, while it's nice, its placement really takes away from the intensity and emotion of the rest of the story, but not in a nice way, in more of a... “uh... okay... weird.” way!

They make up for it however with Valin and Jysella Horn being freed!

Generally, it's an amazing book, the only light issue I have is the pacing that flickers between traumatic and action packed, to lots of little gaps of downtime.

I'm not sure the downtime was always the decision, sometimes it helped move other plots along and sometimes it felt a little forced and seemed to take away from the high stakes stuff elsewhere in the book.

After the last book, it's crazy how this one feels like another “finale” rather than the starter to the next three books, and I'm falling in love with the crazy scope of this series. I'm a big fan of crazy Force stuff, but only very specifically.

I'm not a fan of character being gifted crazy power for the sake of it, but characters like Luke or Jaina earn this stuff through hard work and a lot of character development and complexity, however I feel an entity like Abeloth is different and crazy because of the horror element, she's something different, otherworldly even for the Star Wars galaxy, old, and very, very powerful, but terrifying, uncomfortable.

She's a true horror villain!

So overall, it's a fantastic novel, one of the best of the series, even with a mediocre cover, and I cannot wait for more. I read this book almost all in one day, even reading from the mid-afternoon until nearly 4am!

9/10