The Books of Vonda McIntyre

A stand-alone Star Wars novel published when the Expanded Universe was still young. However, this latter fact, is no excuse for the poor book we're presented with here, especially when Timothy Zahn had established what Star Wars literature had to live up to with his Thrawn trilogy. The story here is bizarre and full of holes that you could fly a Death Star through. Han and Luke investigate a possible Jedi, only to discover that it is in fact an extra-dimensional cube of ooze. Meanwhile Leia attempts to find her children, who have been kidnapped by the Dark Jedi Hethrir. Han and Luke's story is marred not only by the ridiculous nature of Waru, but also by the fact that Luke ignores fourteen years of friendship and starts hating Han with little credible reason. The story of the Solo children is boring at the best of times and outright daft at the worst, with Hethrir being a singularly unthreatening villain. As for Leia's planet-hopping, each clue she finds leads your mind to the words 'who cares?'. The various plot holes include a light side Jedi who was Darth Vader's apprentice, the whole concept of the worldcraft and (worst of all) Luke's 'logical' conclusion that to understand the life-sucking Waru, he must dive into the creature and go for a swim!? One of the worst Expanded Universe books available, it is a boring and frustrating read and doesn't even add anything of significance to the saga as a whole.