Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial

The third book in the New Jedi Order series was a very frustrating reading experience. As I had promised myself that I would read all the books in this arc, I ended up reading it after several attempts. I felt bogged down at several moments. It took a while for the reading to flow satisfactorily. Later I listened to the audiobook to remember some events to write this review.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings regarding James Luceno's writing. The verbose and encyclopedic writing style ends up becoming obstacles to a more fluid or organic narrative. At some times it seems that the author's concern is to talk about the origins of the “Corellian Bloodstripes” in Han Solo's pants instead of focusing on really important topics.

As I said previously, it is not and has never been the objective of Star Wars to debate serious topics, despite them appearing in the text and moving the narrative. The book presents the struggle of the New Republic (or rather, just a few people from the New Republic, like Ambassador Leia Organa Solo) to help the various waves of refugees from the war against the Vong. This is an urgent topic that is present in our real world.

This book also provides closure to Chewbacca's death. Finally Han Solo abandons his depressive stance and decides to embody something more nihilistic. He is our hero without purpose, however, he forgets his role as a father and husband and abandons his family at such a critical moment, which is the scenario of war.

This Solo narrative about the “need to find balance” is portrayed in the book in a controversial way. Leia is presented as the always compliant and understanding woman/mother, ignoring her own more pressing needs. This is a sexist reading and unfortunately quite common in the franchise's books during the 1990s (after all, the vast majority of these books were written by men).

Another problem with this book (but perhaps it was my expectation redirected to the wrong place) is that I imagined we would have a more in-depth presentation of the religious dimension of the Vong. I say this because the main villains in this book are Vong priests and acolytes. However, this is all presented shallowly and without depth (it was a missed opportunity).

To conclude, I read this book for the first time very recently, but I didn't remember almost anything that was written. I went to listen to the audiobook as if I were encountering this title for the first time. This feeling left me quite disappointed and says a lot about this installment.