+

Spoiler review:

This is the first ebook I've read on my Kobo Vox, and it is something I quite enjoyed, and plan to continue.

The problem with a book that spans so many generations is that so much must be skipped, and so much of it could have been so interesting. Such was the case in The Lives of Dax, for example, and this is true here, also. Instead of finding out what happened to the two lovers from opposing cultures in Sentinel, we get a new main character in the form of records keeper Varner Hilts. He is in a good place to have a main character, because we are missing a lot of history.

It turns out the important part of Sentinel was not the former Jedi Jelph, but in the death of the Sith leader, who tried to fly his starship and detonated the bomb. The Sith arena was so ready to explode in those two stories that every Sith formed its own clan, trying to be Emperor and warring with the others to be declared High Lord of the Sith. So now the Lost Tribe has been divided into the Sisters of Seelah, followers of the wife of the first High Lord Korsin, and who of course was banished, the Tribe 57, based on the 57 surviving Massassi warriors (whom they didn't even realize were non-human), the Korsinites, who all call themselves Korsin (as a title), and others.

The most ruthless, as in all Star Wars novels, is the group formed by only women, the Sisters of Seelah. Iliana intrudes on the hall of records in an attempts to force Hilts to change Korsin's final speech to give her group the advantage. Hilts is not worried, as his job is a sacred one, and as far as he knows, nobody has ever threatened the keeper of the records before. But Iliana does, even after Hilts essentially laughs in her face, because Korsin's last words are not read by any of the records keepers, but are played from a holocron (a very nice twist)!

The sisters try to pry the device open, but no technology other than lightsabers work on Kesh, so they are not familiar with how to operate anything mechanical, and are forced to resort to threats again. But then other groups arrive, and everyone is forced to a standstill. Due to an atmospheric effect, the "sandpipes", timekeeping devices taken from Omen, lost about one second per year, which adds up to eight days since Omen crashed, which allows Hilts to cheat when threatened, and play the recording early (as it is eight days before the officially sanctioned day).

Korsin's words are not very meaningful, and were obviously meant for his successor, not for the general public. Yet the more important information is that he recorded over a former message from Naga Sadow, who gave Korsin his mission. Due to age or defects or tampering by the Sisters, the message plays after Korsin's last words. It is very obvious from this that Korsin was Sadow's minion, and it reveals to those present that humanity and Keshiri were not the only two races in the galaxy -perhaps not even the most dominant. The news is dangerous, in that it reveals to the Keshiri that the humans are not necessarily their overlords, and threatens to destroy the entire power structure Korsin put in place.

Iliana destroys the holocron, but the information is out, and it spreads like wildfire, causing riots and burning of all the cities. As the hall of records is about to be destroyed, Hilts and his Keshiri assistant go out in search of the Omen and the power possibly hidden there.

And that's how the story ends! Once again, it's way too short, and it doesn't give us enough information. But it does answer the question of how a Keshiri could become a Sith High Lord in Allies.

While Iliana and the other clan leaders were one-note characters, not given any development whatsoever, Hilts was strong, even when faced by those leaders. He seemed fair to his staff, though always careful to be a master to them, and he was secure in the belief that his role as a passive observer was one that would keep him alive and out of conflict forever. But it wasn't true. With Iliana's threats to his staff, only coincidentally stopped by the early playing of the holocron message, and the riots afterwards, which are of course indiscriminate, that role is gone. I wonder if Hilts will become the next High Lord?