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I recently read the first book of the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. I liked what the author did with Han and Lando, but Luke and Leia ended up looking stupid. I didn't bother with the other two books.
I also got a copy of Darksaber, as I'd not read it since it first came out. I don't care for K J Anderson's Jedi Academy books but I thought I'd give Darksabre a re-read, mostly as research for an article I'm writing.
God, it's awful. The best thing I can say is that it rattles along at a fair pace, and the plotline about Daala trying to get the warlords working together is good. The rest of it is pretty much beyond belief.
The Darksaber itself is a stupid design. It can only fire in one direction, like a torch shining a beam of light. It has no gun emplacements, no fighter support, and is slow to manourvre. All an enemy has to do is approach it from any direction other than straight towards the laser. A squadron of X-wings could destroy it. If Bevel Lemelisk is such a genius, why doesn't he realize this ? Why doesn't anyone ?
Then again, there seems to be a stupid ray affecting people throughout the galaxy. Admiral Ackbar gets humiliated in war games by Wedge because his strategy is based on 2D movement, as if on land. Wedge simply uses the 3 dimensions of flight to send ships up and down to attack.
The whole plot about General Madine attempting to sabotage the Darksaber achieves nothing except stupid behaviour and three, pointless deaths. The fate of the oh-so-threatening Darksaber itself is equally cheap and unsatisfying. It's defeated not by any cunning or bravery by the heroes, but because the villain is tight-fisted and stupid.
The attack on the Jedu Academy is also idiotic. For a start, the Imperial's tactics are bad - why send TIE's down to bomb the place: why not just obliterate it from space with an orbital bombardment ? Then the students and newly created knights start throwing TIEs around using the Force, before combining their Force skills to throw 17 Star Destroyers right out of the system. Meanwhile, Luke can't even summon enough Force ability to deal with a few Wampas. Mind you, these Wampas are far more intelligent than they seemed before, and their claws are tough enough to shred the hull of a spaceship.
The Empreror isn't immune to the stupid ray either. He executes Lemelisk for his flawed Death Star design, then transfers his consciousness to a clone body he happens to have had prepared. When he's not satisfied with the progess of the second Death Star he does the same again - six times. Now, the Emperor is trying out the consciousness transfer technique he hopes he'll be able use himself, but he's also punishing Lemelisk for his failures. If the engineer keeps failing so badly, surely it's a better idea to just kill him, get a new engineer and practice consciousness transfer on some minion ?
The whole book is full of plot holes, stupidity and let-downs.
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may be just "an art critic" with a military mind to you, but this is a universe where flashy swords and super powers make sanse. Timothy Zahn sure did a better job than a lot of other authors IMO.
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