Star Wars (The New Jedi Order Book 4) Agents of Chaos I : Hero's Trial by James Luceno -- (Book Review)

Star Wars (The New Jedi Order Book 4) Agents of Chaos I : Hero's Trial 
By James Luceno
Published by Del Rey, 2000
Ebook Price: $7.99

Han Solo has pretty much been missing from the New Jedi Order series since the death of Chewbacca in book one. He retreated to Coruscant to drink and mope around the apartment and hasn't done a lot. In book 4, Hero's Trial, he's back front and center. After a brief period of peace on Kashyyyk to attend Chewie's funeral, Han finds himself right back in the middle of things as an old friend named Captain Roa seeks his aid in hunting down one of their former colleagues amed Reck Desh. Why are they looking for Reck? Reck leads a group called the Peace Brigade that is helping the Yuuzhon Vong in their quest to conquer the galaxy. Roa holds Reck responsible for the death of his wife and Han is seeking revenge for the death of Chewbacca, so their interests are aligned. Han wants to take on this mission all quiet like and wants no help from the New Republic or Leia and Luke. He doesn't even want to use the Millenium Falcon on the run because it just reminds him of his missing co-pilot.

The other main plot thread of the novel is that the Yuuzhan Vong have realized that the Jedi are the biggest threat to their plans. The main Vong baddie of the book, a priest named Harrar, has come up with a way to eliminate the Jedi in one fell swoop. He enlists the aid of an assassin priestess named Elan to do the job. Her mission will be to pose as a defector and gain the trust of the New Republic by giving them intel on the Vong's battle strategies. Once she gets a meeting with the Jedi she will activate a lethal bioweapon that will kill them all.

The cool thing about the New Jedi Order series to me is that since there are so many volumes, the writers have so much more opportunity to develop characters than they would in a six hour movie trilogy. You can take your time building up plot and characterization, focus on different characters or plots and you don't have to put all of your bang in one book. For example, by the end of book four of this series, Luke Skywalker has only really had one big fight scene and I think that was two books ago. You can kind of have him hovering in the background and not in the forefront because you have so many volumes yet to come. You feel like he will get his soon enough.

Han so far, except for book one, has been treated similar to Luke. I feel like the first 3 books were about setting up Han and Leia's kids as characters in their own right. This volume was the first to focus on one of the original trilogy characters almost exclusively.

I enjoyed this book even though I felt a bit cheated that Han's trademark blaster pistol saw very little action since his gun's power pack wasn't charged for a majority of the novel. It was also a bit disappointing that he wasn't piloting the Falcon. Those are minor squabbles though. I will definitely be continuing the series and am curious to see what happens in the next book.

My Grade: B