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** spoiler alert ** I admit, I'm biased against the author. I go in reading these expecting not to enjoy them and that probably taints my viewpoint. And I know, why read something that I'm expecting not to enjoy? Only because I want to read all the Star Wars novels. It's a goal, even the bad ones. So, I was ready to roll my eyes when the Mandalorians popped up again. It's funny how them and their language disappears from the galaxy until Traviss is writing in the galaxy. Their story within this novel felt fairly pointless. In fact, I found most of it unreadable. The novel could have done without it in my opinion. I didn't like the Boba Fett fighting off death in the last Legacy of the Force novel and it didn't taste any better in this one.

The first half of this novel was the Legacy of the Force series just spinning it's wheels again. The same things happening to the same people with the same responses. No characters are making any progress. In fact, the progress done in the previous novel seemed to be undone, especially Ben's progress. We're back to square one. The only purpose of Ben's trip was to get a cool ship. The things he learned about himself were all gone!

I hated how this book seemed to be a lot of political commentary. Given the year is was written in and fears about government controls the little section about comm taps and programs that listen for specific codewords seemed a blatant commentary about U.S. government and just pulled me out of the story. I believe fiction can be used to make important points, but it just didn't fit here.

Another thing that I hate in Star Wars is authors breaking the fourth wall. This happened when Luke "quotes" a certain admiral making the statement "It's a trap." Well known meme in our universe. In Luke's universe I'm not sure he would have even heard Ackbar say that. Even if he had, given the situation, I'm not sure it would be so groundbreaking that it would stick with him. Of all the stories told about the attack on the second Death Star I'm sure the Admiral yelling about it being a trap was at the bottom of the list. This kind of head nod to memes just annoys me.

While I'm on it, similar nods from previous novels (by other authors) that I also hate: Everyone referring to Mos Eisley as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Why couldn't that be Obi Wan's personal perspective? All Corellians not wanting to know the odds. Why couldn't that be Han's personality quirk? Any anyone mentioning whether Han shot first or not in novels.

Okay, rant over. The saving grace of this book was that after the halfway point things actually started happening to change the universe. Characters die, governments are overthrown, more characters die.

So here it comes, the big spoiler and the final disappointment: Mara's death. She didn't disincorporate so that her body would remain so that people would be able to find clues about her death and track down her killer? How does that even make sense in this Universe? And how did Ben miss the presence of Jaden at that showdown? How about instead Mara becomes one with the force and, as Obi-Wan did, comes back as a force ghost to tell Luke straight out, "Jacen killed me. He's a Sith!"

I find the farther we get out from the original trilogy the worse the EU gets. AT this point, unless you're a hard core fan who intends to read everything (like me), I would suggest stopping before you get this far. The Dark Nest series and Legacy of the Force series have just been disappointing.