Dark Tide I: Onslaught

Michael Stackpole's "Onslaught" picks up where "Vector Prime" left off, a galaxy in flux. The lack of unity and finger pointing among the people of the New Republic make it all the more vulnerable to the highly deadly Yuuzhan Vong. Luke and the rest of the heroes of the New Republic must now lead a retreat from the incoming Yuuzhan Vong forces. Meanwhile, Han remains incapacitated by the loss he feels for the recently deceased Chewbacca.

This book could probably be best described as perhaps the calm before the storm (or maybe it's the eye if you take the events that happened in "Vector Prime" into consideration). In any case, Stackpole does an excellent job at slowly building the tension in this first book in the "Dark Tide" duology. And he seems to spend a lot of time focusing in on the psyche of the New Republic rather than exploring both sides of the conflict (as Salvatore did in depicting the Vong). However this also seems to be the only real drawback to "Onslaught", in that there really isn't that much of a presence for the Yuuzhan Vong in this book. But one has to admire Stackpole's choice of employing a slow burn in telling this story.

Now granted, this book wasn't necessarily what some would call action packed, but there was just enough of it to keep things moving along. Furthermore, the author's writing style is smooth and reads very quickly (which if you've read some of my past reviews - this is a feature that can be very important to me). But it's not just a quick reading book for its own sake, it's truly an exceptionally crafted tale that maintains nearly peaked interest from beginning to end.

If you haven't been able to tell already, I really liked this book. And I would recommend to any Star Wars reader who has also read "Vector Prime". Were there be anything that I might add to this book, I would probably say that a greater Vong presence would be needed, after all they are the force behind what makes the New Jedi Order so intriguing.

Sean's Rating