STAR WARS, NEW JEDI ORDER: ENEMY LINES BOOK II, REBEL STAND

By: Chris Wyatt
Review Date: Saturday, July 06, 2002

Allston himself writes the follow up to his successful STAR WARS: ENEMY LINES, REBEL DREAM. The two books make up part of the NEW JEDI ORDER series. For those not familiar with that series, it centers on an invasion by creatures called the Yuuzhan Vong. In the years following the events of the film RETURN OF THE JEDI Luke and Leia are successful raising a new generation of Jedi. The Yuuzhan Vong threaten the existence of the freshly stabilized Republic.

In REBEL DREAMS Leia, Luke and Wedge Antilles all must conduct individual missions to try to push back the aliens. The "New Republic", formed after RETURN, is following "appeasement tactics" (think Vichy government) which the Jedi oppose; and Luke sneaks into the Vong's stronghold on the fallen capital world of Coruscant.

DREAMS is a solid adventure that makes great use of the characters; but REBEL STAND actually surpasses it.

In STAND Han and Leia Solo have been traveling around, attempting to consolidate support for the Jedi. They spend most of their time on a planet that, though it houses a strong Jedi contingent, is about to succumb to pressure from the Vong. The Vong demand that the local government completely turns over the Jedi rebels.

Luke and his Jedi wife Mara discover helpful secrets about the Vong, but are waylaid by a surprising enemy. Meanwhile, Wedge conducts some exciting deep space action. Allston even comes up with some pretty creative uses for C3PO and R2D2.

One complaint is the complete unwieldiness of the characters. There are just so many balls in the air at one time that it's hard to keep up an interest in what everyone's doingespecially the characters that we don't know from the movies. (But that's a complaint that could be leveled at the NEW JEDI ORDER series as a whole. Also, Luke and Mara's actions on Coruscant seems to be happening in something on a vacuum.

One of Allston's greatest strengths is dialogue. While reading this book you really believe that these are the characters from the films. Particularly Han and Leia seem to be the ones that we've known all along.

REBEL STAND can be recommended to any fan of the NEW JEDI ORDER, and to fans of STAR WARS in general as long as their willing to catch up with "current events"...it goes without saying that this novel would be pretty damn confusing without having read any of the others.


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