Originally posted by Slasher
I hafta agree with KillMeNow on at least one point. Too much of the NJO books are spent depicting Jacen's moral dilemmas and his jubilent whining. Here he, and apparently a number of other Jedi, are debating over what constitutes a justifiable defense while millions of innocents are thrown into the firey pits of insanity. WTF?
When I read that one NJO book where Duros falls I wanted to feed Jacen to that big ugly green tentacle thingy in Half-Life. He gave up the use of his force powers. *rampant chicken noises*
Why oh why did these respected Star Wars authors turn the Jedi into a bunch of pompous political pussies (apology if this language isn't allowed; I haven't been here in ages)? I don't think any of the books represented the "let's go get 'em" side of the Jedi enough; they all seemed to focus on Jacen's irrelevant and completely irresponsible pondering of inconsequential things. I haven't been keeping up on these books, but I hear from this thread that Coruscant's fallen? What in heck are these guys doing to the Star Wars universe?!? Does Old Lucas even know what's going on? It's as if he's off producing a frickin' movie or something...
The Babylon 5 universe was built for drastic, violent changes whose impact would resonate for years to come. The fall of Narn, of Centuari Prime, the poisoning of Earth. JMS wrote it to be that way. But, in my opinion, the Stars Wars universe isn't up for that kind of literary abuse. Yeah, it's nice that the good guys are getting their butts kicked for once, but NJO is taking it too far. At the present rate, there won't be an SW universe around the next time an NJO book comes out. Instead they'll have to rename it Vong Wars, complete with Episode IV, V, and VI. All full length theatrical features, of course.
I only hope they kill off all the main characters we once knew and loved and put in new ones that are actually capable of shooting first and asking questions later. Or simply kill off Star Wars and start the much anticipated Vong Wars. You wanted fresh? How about never having to hear the words "Imperial Star Destroyer" again? 
Yes, Coruscant
has fallen. The tactics the Vong used to take the New Republic capital highlights the very trouble the Jedi and the New Republic is having in fighting the Vong.
SPOLIER ALERT! DO
NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT READ
STAR BY STAR!
During
Star by Star, the Warmaster Tsavong Lah tried to arrange a two- prong offensive on Coruscant. However, the Jedi and a New Republic fleet led by Wedg Antilles managed to destroy one of the prongs before the Vong could attack Coruscant. The Jedi even managed to capture a
live yammosk war coordinator (a great intelligence boon for finding out about Vong tactics). Normally, this could have forced the Vong to wait further for reinforcements to attack Coruscant. The delay could even have been long enough to let the New Republic Navy rally and go on the offensive, thus becoming the turning point of the war.
It might have happened, had Tsavong Lah not had an insidious idea...
The warmaster realized that the Jedi were concerned about innocent refugees, so he decided to use the refugee fleets he had captured as "human shields", the same way Saddam Hussein tried to do in the Gulf War. Only this time, the Vong warmaster used the refugee ships to shield his own fleets as he attacked Coruscant!
Chief of State Fey'lya understood that in order to save Coruscant, the New Republic had to fire through the refugee fleet to destroy the Vong ships, so he gave the order to do so. Most of the NR fleet commanders (including Wedge Antilles) refused to follow that order. (Even Luke Skywalker hesitated to follow that order because he wondered if a New Republic that fired on its own citizens would be worth saving.) Garm bel Iblis was the only one to follow the order.
We all would probably agree that if we were there and commanding some of those fleets, we would have probably followed Fey'lya's order too. But I wonder...
If any of you have been watching the news about Afganistan recently, then you know about Operation: Anaconda, a U.S. operation to wipe out some al-queda holdouts in eastern Afganistan. I wonder if we would have hesitated to bomb the crap out of them if they were holding several hundred American citizens as "human shields" in their caves...
This is the same dilema that the Star Wars heroes are facing. But now that Coruscant has fallen, the Jedi and their allies (those that didn't want to turn them over to the Vong) now that their backs are now up against the wall. In
Dark Journey Jaina didn't hesitate to use devious and underhanded tactics to thwart the Vong invasion of the Hapes cluster. And she
did thwart it; the Vong were successfully repelled from taking Hapan space, thanks to her "Yuun-Harla" gambit. Now that the Jedi have yammosk jammers and disinformation devices, they can finally start taking the fight back to the Vong.
I think that Luke might even be willing to turn around and start getting more aggresive. His nephew is dead and he almost lost his son to the enemy because of a traitor. The losses he has already suffered should inspire him to start taking more risks.
The idea that the Jedi will
have to change to survive is already starting to take root in Luke's mind, I think. The storyline isn't called the
New Jedi Order for nothing.
