Balance Point (Star Wars, The New Jedi Order #6)
by Kathy Tyers

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Book Reviews of Balance Point (Star Wars, The New Jedi Order #6)

Book Review: A return to good writing in NJO
Summary: 5 Stars

Balance Point's success is largely the result of Tyers following a diverse enough cast of characters that each individual can fill in an important niche within the plot, and of her attention to detail in her writing. By following Jedi of a variety of persuasions, refugees and those assisting them, and active pilots and warriors, Tyers avoids having to describe important events without being able to follow them from the point of view of one or more main characters--the mistake that killed Luceno's battle scenes. It similarly allows her to avoid inserting "filler" characters who must show up to play a role in the plot, but never receive any sort of characterization. In fact, attention to details--particularly characterization--is one of Tyers' greatest strengths in this book. She strikes a comfortable balance between Michael Stackpole's internal-dialogue drenched mode of characterization and Timothy Zahn's more subtle indication of personality through nuanced action and speech. This combination of techniques works particularly well on Mara Jade Skywalker, who is written perhaps better than she's been since Zahn last dealt with her. Though I think that Stackpole's approach is preferable for Jacen because he is a character with a lot of internal dialogue, Tyers does well with him, too. She focuses on his sensitivity as the driving force behind his character, offering some hint at the sources of his sudden anti-action stance, though perhaps not enough. Jacen is certainly meant to be a bit frustrating in this book, and that he is, but I think the frustration may be more at a gap in the series' writing than at his character's actions. Perhaps I would have liked to see a Stackpole book between Jedi Eclipse and Balance Point (or just a better author for the Agents of Chaos duology) that gave an even more psychological account of Jacen's progress. This is not Tyers' fault, though, and she deserves to be commended for her Jacen, who is once again the interesting and dynamic young man of the first three NJO books.

Tyers' attention to detail also shines through in her handling of the Yuuzhan Vong and in her succinct but evocative descriptive language. The Yuuzhan Vong are once again the severe and distant religious fanatics of the earlier books, and Tyers even manages to explain the inappropriate flippancy Luceno ascribed to Nom Anor, as well as his correct pronunciation of "Jedi." She avoids Luceno's tendency towards melodrama and exaggeration. This is particularly apparent in her descriptive language. She ditches the overwrought vocabulary of Agents of Chaos in favor of clarity. The result is settings like the Coruscant tapcaf where Anakin and Mara go after a potential Yuuzhan Vong agent: it is vivid and memorable, but its description doesn't impede the flow of the writing, and the book continues apace. This simplification of language makes Balance Point more engaging than the James Luceno books. In Agents of Chaos, I always had the impression that Luceno was writing lots of filler-words for the sake of making his story long enough to be a book. Most of what he wrote didn't seem to matter, and I got bored with it. Not so with Balance Point, where clarity and straight-forwardness make the book seem cohesive and interesting.

Balance Point seamlessly combines the strengths of Stackpole and Zahn to create a brilliant new chapter in NJO, returning the series to the high level of quality at which it began.

Summary of Balance Point (Star Wars, The New Jedi Order #6)

Action & Adventure Books

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