Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines [Paperback]

Great book, really hard to put down. Definitely leaves the reader wanting more. I particularly liked the boba fett storyline.

For Star Wars fans, this book can probably be reviewed in just two words: Boba Fett.

He's one of the best-known characters in the Extended Universe, and Traviss writes him incredibly well. There wasn't a single scene with Fett in that I can remember that would have scored below 10/10. The author should be particularly proud of those scenes.

On saying that, the Prologue is odd. It's from Fett's point of view, and I'd still give it full marks, but it wasn't the same style of the rest of the book (which I'm glad of, since I'm not a huge fan of first person books). It was... Interesting.

Another character that I thought she wrote particularly well was Ben Skywalker. Traviss captures the emotion of him seeing Jacen not being as perfect as he thought in a highly realistic way.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said of Jacen himself. He keeps doing things, not entirely in keeping with his character of the previous book, with no explanation for the actions. This is particularly true of the event mentioned above in which he falls in Ben's eyes. It is something which has major repercussions for the book, and it really needed some explanation on Jacen's part.

The other characters are all done farily well, although I would have liked to have seen more of Jaina, and Admiral Pellaeon, the second of which was a favourite character of mine in the first book.

There are some difficulties in series written by different authors, which is the style of writing. In most cases the series can feel disjointed. In this first change of authors in the series, I barely noticed that it was a different author.

The only indication was that Traviss uses more of the expanded universe than Allston did, which was in someways difficult. Jaina is upset with Jacen in this book, because of something that happened with the Chiss. I haven't read anything else with Jacen and Jaina and I'd assumed that the Audiobook I listened too had missed something important. But it became such an issue that I became sure that it was deeper. According to Wookiepedia (The Star Wars Wiki), the issue between Jacen and Jaina was covered in the Dark Nest Trilogy.

I felt that if there had been any sense of animosity between the two in Betrayal, I would have accepted this easily. However, the apparent return of the emotions could have done with an explanation.

And that's the only thing that the back lacks, and that's motivation for a few of the events and feelings that occur. It's not many, but enough so that it doesn't get as high a score as betrayal (Except on Amazon, where I round it up to 5 stars).

But it's a brilliant book despite this, and Boba Fett and his family are fantastic. I was a bit nervous about it not being by Aaron Allston, but Kathy Traviss has impressed me. If you liked Betrayal, you have no reason not to read Bloodlines. If you haven't started the series, so far you won't be disappointed if you start. I still whole-heartedly recommend this series.

In this the second installment of the Legacy of the Force series Karen Traviss picks up the plot after Aaron Allstons excellent Betrayal. The Galactic Alliance and the Corellian system of planets are locked in a tense stand off as the book begins. However terrorist attacks by Corellians on Coruscant threaten to push the situation into a full scale war. A war in which the Skywalker/Solo family would be torn onto opposite sides.

Bloodlines was a great read it picks up just a few days after the conclusion of Betrayal and shows us already the implications of Jacen Solos radical choice at the end of that book. Jacen Solo now believes that he alone by becoming a Sith can fix the galaxy and end the cycle of violence that has troubled the galaxy. This takes the form of him dealing with the threat of terrorism in a startling brutal way and in so doing gives the impression that the Galactic Alliance is becoming more and more like the Empire. This is mirrored by the actions of Han Solo and Leia becoming equally involved in the events within the Corellian camp. While this is all going on we see Luke and the Jedi Council attempt to get the Galactic Alliance to deal with the situation with diplomacy but Luke is extremely troubled and distracted by the thuggish actions of Jacen and worries whether he should remain as Bens master. Plus lots of Mandalorian goodness as well. The plot is surprisingly light on action but this has no negative effect on the book at all and I found it to be an engrossing and complex look into the developing crisis in the galaxy.

Karen Traviss has given us an excellent insight into the thinking of the characters in Bloodlines. Her tight third person POV focusing on five characters Luke, Han, Jacen, Ben and Boba Fett made this book a real treat to read. There was also a lovely surprise at the end of the book in the form of an excerpt of Tempest the next book in the series by Troy Denning which was wonderful. Overall an excellent book that was great fun to read.