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This is the shortest Lost Tribe of the
Sith story yet by only one page, but it feels even shorter, for some
reason. I really thought I could only be halfway through it when it
abruptly ended. Having said that, it was well written, as usual, and I'm
happy that it continued the plot from Purgatory. Yet there were a number
of ideas or plot conveniences that I really think the author glossed
over. The entire story revolves
around Jelph, the former Jedi who crashed on Kesh and became stranded,
chasing down Ori, in order to prevent her from revealing the presence of
a near-functional starship on the planet. He admits to himself, at
least, that he is being irrational, but he also realizes that he is in
love -with a Sith.
We get a little more background on
Jelph in this story, which gives us insight into what is occurring in
the galaxy at large. I believe this book is tied in with one of the
Knights of the Old Republic novels, which I have not yet read, or video
games of the same name. Jelph comes from a Jedi sect which operate
separate from the Jedi Council, and which is dedicated to ensuring that
the Sith never return. What I don't believe, and which I will have to
read the novels to see how it happens (if indeed I'm correct), is that
the Jedi end up going to war amongst themselves because of it. Does each
faction call the other one Sith? No wonder the population views the Jedi
warily.
Suffice to say that Ori finds her
mother and tells her of the starship, planning to bargain her mother's
release with it. But her mother betrays her, the way any true Sith
would, and bargains herself with the information -with the Sith leader,
instead.
When Jelph catches up with Ori, they
battle with their lightsabers -and I have trouble believing nobody
noticed a green lightsaber up on the rooftops. But he manages to disarm
her and convince her that she can embrace a different lifestyle. I
wasn't entirely convinced, but it appears that her turnaround was true.
They try to get back to his farm before the Sith council, but fail. The
old, frail leader gets into the ship and takes off, but of course it is
set to explode if anybody does that. Tied to a proton torpedo, it makes
a huge crater where the farm used to be -Jelph Force-leaps Ori out of
the way into the river to save them, without even a scratch!
So they go to the hiding spot where he
gathered his famous manure, where he shows her the communications device
he had secreted away. He spends days poring over the stray transmissions
it picked up, which are far and few between. But when he hears of the
Jedi civil war, he agrees to turn from being a "selfless" Jedi to a more
selfish viewpoint. Jelph and Ori say they will meet halfway, as he
destroys the transmitter. Unfortunately, they don't know how selfish the
Jedi really are, imposing their justice and viewpoints on everybody -the
ensuing power struggle only proves that Jedi are in very few ways
actually selfless.
At least they mention the band of uvak
fliers who escaped to another continent back in
Savior. I wonder and hope that a future story will show what
happened to those people -if they even survived and thrived. If the
series is ending soon, we'll need some sort of continuity and
conclusion, but I don't really see a consistent plot connecting all the
stories. The small amount of Sith culture we see here isn't it. I hope
the series is going somewhere. |
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