(1)A more careful read so far is confirming my earlier general impressions. The biggest problem of NJO is Vong just not being bad enough dudes to serve as a galactic threat. As far as an extragalactic invasion forces in space operas go, they are not as inept as Tyranids, and as far as opponents in Star Wars go they score more victories (if bloody and costly) than the Imperials from the preceding EU books, but these are not exactly high standards. They and their personal weapons are designed to be credible opponents to the Jedi, and do so well enough, but, you know, it would be nice if the rest of their tech was not adapted to and countered as early as the second book in the series.
This is unfortunately a problem that permeated the NJO series as a whole. The Yuuzhan Vong are my favorite alien species, but I feel like the greatest aspect they had (and would be embellished in further books past
Dark Tide) was the ideological threat that they posed to the Jedi. Their culture and rabid religious fanatacism made them an excellent departure from past threats, and spawned some super interesting characters like Nom Anor, Nen Yim, and Tsavong Lah, just to name a few. Unfortunately, their biggest weakness is that the writers couldn't decide on how powerful/efficient the Vong's tech or battle prowess could be between books. Sometimes their tech is utterly decimating, like decimating entire worlds like Ithor and Duros, dismantling moons from orbit, or developing bioweapons that slaughter countless Jedi...then in other books, they're completely steamrolled by shit that wouldn't even graze them in prior books, or the Jedi characters can dispatch them by using the Force to drop the roof on them, or some contrived shit. One minute their ships are so deadly that they require haphazard Imperial prototype craft to properly counter, and then the next minute the Jedi are developing Force Techniques to manually guide missiles around Vongcraft shields. It would be one thing if this stuff happened naturally and over an organic build-up across the series, but a lot of these developments and countermeasures happen at breakneck speed in the early books,
way sooner than they should. Even the discovery and implementation of Zonama Sekot happens EXTREMELY quickly, and kind of comes out of left field.
I think a lot of this has less to do with poor planning, and more with the constantly shifting number of books mandated by Del Rey as the publisher. Keep in mind that James Luceno and the Del Rey editors were using a series bible to catalogue all major developments of the series---including premeditated decisions set in stone back in 1998, like who lives, who dies, how the Vong are ultimately defeated, etc. But given the widely-reported editorial hijinks of Del Rey promising a 25-book saga one moment, the 22 books later, then 25 again, and then ultimately 19, you had books cancelled (or in the case of
Dark Tide and
Agents of Chaos, split from one book to two on short-notice). I think any series, no matter how well planned out, is going to have the pacing of its events fucked by that amount of editorial monkeying.
I'd say probably the most sound and organic development when it comes to factors that defeated the Vong was the spiritual insurrection and unveiling conspiracy of the Vong Religion being a lie. That was unfurled and executed over something like five or six books, and was done with believable execution and all the right characters involved (including my favorite Vong character, Nen Yim). This spoke to the thematic subtext of NJO as a whole, and unlike a lot of the seemingly-boiler plate ways that the Vong would be undermined as a whole, I'd say this one happened at a very good pace.
Having said all of this, I still think the final battle depicted in
Unifying Force made up for all of these shortcomings. The space battle of the combined Alliance-Imperial Forces against the Vong Fleet, the surprise appearance of Boba Fett and the Mandalorians, Luke and his students battling the Vong equivalent of the Knight Templars, the explosive duel between Luke and Shimmra, and the amazing confrontation with Jacen, offered a huge sense of catharsis and finality to the Vong War.
I think NJO really is emblematic of the post-Endor story arcs: often uneven in terms of lead-up, greater than the sum of their parts, but often compensating by sticking the landing.
(2)Jacen Solo was set up for his eventual fate as early as Dark Tide I. You could miss foreshadowing if you did not pay attention, and nearly all readers probably did. But with hindsight, it is obvious that he was the problematic one among Solo kids from the start. Between mistaking Force visions for reality, and relying on his ability to detect emotions to discern bad people, his vulnerability is even too obvious. Anakin Solo, by comparison, is depicted as merely using the Force too casually for everyday tasks.
I love Jacen Solo's Dark Side journey tremendously, but it would be inaccurate and revisionist to claim that his fall was "set up" by the authors. The Del Rey Editors, James Luceno, and everyone who worked on NJO at the time have reiterated several times that Jacen falling to the dark side was not something they had initially planned during the planning or writing stages of that series. They just lucked out that when they were considering taking Jacen in that direction much later on, they had a lot of unintentionally organic narrative track they could use as precedent. They revisited scenes and aspects of Jacen's character in NJO and found that they could all lend themselves as milestone moments that led to his Dark Side turn, in the same way Lucas found he could recontextualize
prior scenes like this that suddenly worked in his favor when he was writing Vader's identity in ESB. Old scenes now had new meaning, and the Del Rey authors used them as sound justification for where Jacen ends up. It's just sheer luck that it ended up flowing as organically as it did...so much so that new readers or even people revisiting NJO after many years see these scenes, and mistake them as having set up Jacen's Fall from the beginning, when it was all purely accidental.
It's also worth mentioning that, at the time, Jacen's characterization in NJO as a ponderous, troubled, philosophical and angsty character was already a big departure from his depiction in
Young Jedi Knights, who was a goofy kid who chased after animals and annoyed his sister with lame jokes. But this is another thing that would retroactively work in favor of Jacen's overall arc, as the wild differences between each phase of his life would help make his journey throughout the EU seem more like an organic evolution based on where he was at each respective stage in life---the happy-go-lucky teenager in the backdrop of Academy shenanigans during
Young Jedi Knights, the indecisive and angsty philosopher to be soon groomed by traumatic wartime experiences in
New Jedi Order, the contemplative and shadowy outsider to the Jedi Council in
Dark Nest---and finally, the driven father and despotic tyrant with an uncompromising messiah complex in
Legacy of the Force. The final book featuring Jacen,
Invincible, even attempted to bring his evolution full circle by incorporating Teen Jacen's corny jokes from
Young Jedi Knights as chapter headliners, as a melancholic way to say goodbye to the character...which really pulled on my heartstrings reading that book.
Another thing that cemented Jacen's Downfall is how many different creators were itching to see the character go dark as a natural outcome of his life experiences in the NJO series, not just the Del Rey editors. Haden Blackman, who wrote the Darth Vader comics and later wrote
The Force Unleashed, actually pitched a game to LucasArts called
Episode VII: Shadows of the Sith wherein Luke Skywalker's son, Ben, would face off against Jacen as the game's Dark Side antagonist...a pitch Blackman made in 2003, literally the same year
New Jedi Order came to an end.
So it was numerous people from all over LFL advocating for this character to go dark, not just the Del Rey Editors and authors,
well in advance of the books where that creative direction would be made official.
Is that AI Generated or just a bad looking render of what the figures are supposed to resemble?, becuase that Luke's face looks so.... wrong in that first image.
It's because they're using the ANH head sculpt, which in its Hot Toys form is a bit...
effeminate, to say the least. And unsuitable, not least of which because the Dark Empire version of Luke should look older, or at the very least closer to ROTJ, considering
Dark Empire is set 10 years after the events of that film.
