Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice

Here we go.

The sacrifice is at hand, the prophecy fulfilled, but... does it make sense?

There's a lot of good in this book, but also a mix of... strange decisions, and stuff I really didn't enjoy.

Traviss doesn't bring the A-game she did here as he did in Bloodlines, the pacing is all over the place, and the book isn't nearly as thoroughly gripping or as entertaining as her last entry was.

And it just goes to show that the people in charge of the new stories here, as talented as I think they are, do not know what to do with - or even how to do it - my favourite character, Mara Jade Skywalker.

I do not blame Traviss for her lack of knowledge, she wrote this the best she could, but was this the best decision?

At least the decision was written well as she is a talented author...

Mara Jade Skywalker

Since the moment I read “Heir to the Empire”, Mara Jade has been a standout for me. There's something about her I love, her ferocity, her sarcasm, so much I relate to, her previous bad decisions, trying to move on and become better, and how she brought out the best in who was my favourite character before her, Luke.

She has a wonderfully striking design, fiery red hair like her personality, further striking green eyes, practical combat outfits, and impractical, but admittedly attractive catsuits, and I loved her use of her past for good, and the lightsaber that Luke gave her, Anakin Skywalker's.

A problem not with the character, but with a lot of the different novels I've read, is that outside of Timothy Zahn and maybe Stackpole, a lot of authors often don't know what to do with her. That's okay, you're not going to get every character.

It was fine in the New Jedi Order, as authors could weave in and out, tell the story they wanna tell with who they want to, and let someone else do what they didn't want to.

But it has been pretty clear to me for a while now, the guys behind this series just don't know what exactly to do with my beloved Mara Jade Skywalker...

Did she have to die?

The prophecy, “he will immortalise his love,” makes it increasingly clear that the authors don't entirely know what it means.

No matter the mental gymnastics I can do with what they give us from Jacen at the end, how on earth does this add up to killing Mara? It just doesn't add up.

But does it serve the story? Her story?

Not really. She still has a lot of potential, and her character being wasted has bothered me for a little while, but now she's gone? It is like they weren't sure what to do with her, so they chucked her.

I can imagine that the treatment of her death might be wonderful, and maybe we can get a lot of good stories out of it. But I think we'd have better stories with her, rather than without.

When we lost Anakin Solo, the loss of potential was heartbreaking, it was exactly what the series needed, and it shattered me. It was the perfect tragedy, and it was horrifying.

I find it hard to define what is different here, though. Maybe it's how it feels more like a copout than a masterful decision.

I know already that Timothy Zahn didn't even know about this, and I also know of the novel he had planned that sounds brilliant. The family road trip with Luke, Mara, and Ben. I want that more than this.

I will allow the other novels time to see if they can make up for this, but this hurts.

Otherwise, as little as Traviss knew about Mara - and believe me, it shows with how she is written so un-Mara-like sometimes - she did a good job with what she was given, and I do not blame her.

I still cried rather than feeling angry or incredibly disappointed.

One thing I loved is what it does to Luke.

Furious, he duels Lumiya, believing he is delivering justice. But the fight, whilst ferocious, is quick, almost a disappointing read.

This is beautifully intentional. As Jacen Solo murdered Mara, and when he discovers it was not Lumiya (still unaware of who truly did it) it all comes crashing down as he realises he killed her almost purely out of anger for the death of his wife.

Breaking Luke like this is something I love in Legends, as I cannot wait to see how he bounces back even stronger, unlike a certain guy in The Last Jedi for many years...

I do love how this was written, and this made it even more tragic for me. I feel so sorry for poor Ben and poor Luke, and I am hoping for more of a focus on Luke in the next one.

Now back to focus...

The Mandalorian side-story in this series gripped me in Bloodlines, but to continue it in this novel in particular led to it feeling extremely intrusive and often annoying. I love Boba and Mirta, but when Mara has just been murdered... I don't give a shit.

I had to skim a lot of it. The first half was great, and I'm glad we got Boba healed. I'm curious to see what he'll do with a longer lifespan now and I am excited for his story later on. But we kept cutting back to them selling Beskar and talking business and I just couldn't care less.

They get ready to fight towards the end, and we get a bombshell reveal, but it just wasn't the time to do it, it felt like nothing to me because at that moment, I wasn't interested.

It's clear that Traviss wants to write about the Mandalorians and not the Jedi here, and that's fine, but let her do that and don't make her do all this. It's clear, I'm sorry, that she's just not the best at writing this stuff.

The action was superb with Jedi however, and I will say the fight between Jacen and Mara was deliciously brutal and rough.

As it said in the book, this was a brawl, not a duel. I loved how grimy it was and I'm glad they let Mara put up a kickass fight and how she allowed herself not to become one with the Force as a warning, a message to Luke and Ben.

And I love that she was content knowing Luke would stop Jacen.

A final note, really.

Jaina has taken on her duty as Sword of the Jedi!

And I cannot wait to see what she'll do.

I know she'll get Jacen, and I'm excited for her arc across the next books, and I'm really excited to see her come into her own again.

Darth Caedus is born, and I am eager to see him bested by the Sword of the Jedi...

In conclusion, really, I'm conflicted.

There's a lot of good, and a lot of bad. I'm not happy with the decision made, but I think they're doing a good job of writing it.

I'll probably prefer the way they deal with it than it actually happening, but that means right now, I'm not really happy with it happening.

It was nice to have Alema out of the way for a while, but picking someone who had little-to-no knowledge on Mara Jade Skywalker writing her final appearance and just get her wrong and right again repeatedly was a bad decision.

At times, I was thinking “this is not Mara.” And at other times, she felt perfect, especially when she spoke to Ben about her past and how she understood what he had done, how Ben said he had never loved her more at that moment.

So yeah, I'm conflicted.

Let me know what you think about this one and why, I know many of us will have strong opinions... thanks for reading.

6/10

I think I can honestly say this is my favorite of the Legacy of the force star wars books.

One of the things that has bothered me about this series is the idea of sacrifice put forth in that Jacen must kill someone help loves to become sith. As in he must actively seek out a opportunity to kill this person. It has seemed a rather pointless way to sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice.

I am happy to say this book solves this for me in a very satisfying way that meets all expectations and resolves this issue in a great way.

I really enjoyed Ben Skywalker's story as well as we get more into his inner conflict between right and wrong, good and bad etc...

Just overall a really good book!

It's good to see Anakin act like he cares about something. It adds a lot of depth to the man that will become Darth Vader. One thing that bugged me was the time involved. All of this happens over one or two days? The liberties taken with space travel were just too distracting