Star by Star

I went with an audiobook for this one. It may have been abridged - there was a storyline involving the Solo children, but that was about it. If it wasn't abridged, that's a bold storytelling choice - leaving out the old, recognizable characters in favour of the ‘next generation' of Jedi. Basically, the Solos and a bunch of other young Jedi go on a raid to attack the Yuhzong Vong on their own turf. Everything seems to go farly well, until they are attacked by dark Jedi and Anakin dies! Right after he became a (somewhat) interesting character, as well. Anakin's death, ironically, becomes thematically similar to Chewbacca's earlier in teh series - it's a reminder to the readers that no characters are ‘safe', and that death can strike at any time. That's a very necessary atmosphere to have in war novels, I think, and it's something that the NJO novels have been kind of lacking up to this point. I must say, though, that I'm not really looking forward to the next few novels being nothing more than another Han pity party (even though I know that might seem somewhat callous to say)