COPYRIGHT: 2004
TIME FRAME: Rebellion -- about a year after the Battle of Yavin
"Sooner or later, everyone betrays the ones they love to the Empire. It's inevitable."
Imperial bioengineer Dusque Mistflier is at a casino resort in Naboo where a tournament is being held pitting various creatures against each other. She is there to collect genetic samples from these creatures. But while there, she crosses paths with a mysterious man named Finn who recruits her to help him on a dangerous mission for the Rebellion. It seems there's a holocron that contains a list of all known Rebel agents and sympathizers which the Rebellion, in their hurry to evacuate, left behind on Dantooine when the base was abandoned. Finn suggests being able to use Dusque's Imperial credentials to gain access. So the two go on a treasure hunt to the titular ruins of Dantooine, where a relationship grows and loyalties are tested.
This is a tie-in novel with the Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game Star Wars Galaxies: An Emire Divided. It's debt to the gaming world is evident from the way the story is handled. There are a number of strange creatures and several different locales. The story is oddly paced, with what are essentially several "fetch quests". Dusque and Finn don't set off for the actual holocron on Dantooine until two-thirds through the book. Along the way, there are cameo appearances from Han, Luke, Chewie, Leia, and my favorite is a brief interaction with Lando. The book does manage to still feel like a novel, but the debt to the gaming world is obvious. Reading it reminded me of some of the stories from the Star Wars Journal; it has a similar feel. Dusque is a good character (and it wouldn't be Star Wars without silly names, right?), and the book reads very easily.
I like that it's a story that takes us to the abandoned base that Leia referred to in A New Hope. Although the actual ruins are an old Jedi training area outside the base. As usual with this type of story, it's primarily a character piece about confronting one's loyalty to the Empire and what that means. While it does feel like I've read it all before in several other books, I thought it was nicely handled here. The author definitely takes us into the mind of the protagonist rather nimbly. And her scientific specialty allows for interaction with all sorts of wildlife with a perspective that other characters wouldn't afford. Sometimes it reads like Jurassic Park.
My problems come with some of the "fetch quest" nature of it, as it takes some time for the supposed main plot to get going, and ultimately the finding of the holocron seemed very easy. But perhaps it was just a macguffin and was never meant to be anything substantial to the story. The ending was sort of a cheat to me (SPOILER ALERT!). Finn turns out to be an Imperial spy this whole time who wanted the holocron for himself. Dusque manages to find out and destroy it before Finn can transmit much data to the Empire, only for Finn to stab her and leave her for dead. She's saved by Luke, but it's still a sudden twist. I just find it hard to believe that an Imperial agent was able to get so deep into the Rebellion like that. And then we are meant to accept that he didn't give Vader the location of the Rebels because of his love for Dusque. But how did this guy ever infilitrate them in the first place? Was he a guy on the fence who got in with the Rebellion and changed his mind? The ending suggests he was on assignment from Vader, which opens all kinds of plot problems. It just felt like a twist too far for me to accept. Maybe if it were a stand-alone novel and didn't have to fit into future existing canon it might have worked, but I had a hard time swallowing it. I could have believed if he was a rogue pirate or something, but an Imperial?
So the ending is a bit much, but it's an otherwise engaging book for Star Wars fans looking for some light reading. Whether it inspired anyone to play the online game, I can't say.
GRADE: C
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