Light of the Jedi

On the whole I enjoyed this but as others have said, it suffers from too much happening - and nothing happening - and far too many characters who I can't name, can't remember, and don't care enough about that when (spoilers) one of them dies, it really doesn't matter to me.
The opening chapters are quite exciting, but then the pace drops significantly. It picks up at the end with a space battle but again, characters are named, then killed or promoted or saved and I don't know who's who.
This is the fate of a novel that's supposed to start a series but it needn't be like that - I remember when the original Thrawn trilogy came out. One ‘bad guy' there versus several here.
So, not badly written, just badly conceived.