LMFAO I finished this through a car ride

A little boring for large parts. I didn’t care about the Lord Nyax plot line. But dang, what an ending!

“Rebel Stand” is the exciting second book in Aaron Allston’s Enemy Lines duology, and it is as action-packed as the first book, “Rebel Dream”.

Without giving too many spoilers away, the good guys win in this one. For the most part.

The Yuuzhan Vong has successfully taken Coruscant and begun their violent terra-forming. Millions of survivors, however, are still stuck on the planet’s surface without any chance of escape, so Master Jedi Luke Skywalker, his wife Mara Jade, young Jedi Knight Tahiri, and a small contingent of soldiers and scientists return to Coruscant in an attempt to gather intel and do what they can to help survivors.

Battling pockets of Yuuzhan Vong troops isn’t the problem. The problem comes in the form of an inexplicable creature that seems to be going on a rampage throughout the ruins of Coruscant, leaving a wake of dead Yuuzhan Vong and survivors. This creature calls itself Lord Nyax and seems to be extremely Force-sensitive. After some investigating, Luke and his team discover that the creature is actually the Dark Jedi Irek Ismaren (see Barbara Hambly’s “Children of the Jedi”), who has been genetically altered via experiments performed upon him by Imperial scientists and his mother, Roganda, a former assassin for the late Emperor Palpatine.

Meanwhile, Han and Leia are galavanting throughout the galaxy in an attempt to garner more support for the slowly-dwindling New Republic forces. Unfortunately, when they arrive on Aphran IV, they discover a government that is pro-appeasement. The Solo’s pitch for resistance gets them thrown in prison, leaving lovable droids C3-P0 and R2-D2 as their only hope for escape.

And, meanwhile, on Borleias, Wedge Antilles leads a daring attack on Yuuzhan Vong forces, the success of which hinges upon the Yuuzhan Vong’s belief that Jaina Solo is the reincarnation of the Yuuzhan Vong trickster goddess Yun-Harla.

Amidst all of this excitement, there is even a storyline involving Yuuzhan Vong commander Tsavong Lah, who discovers a conspiracy amongst his own ship’s scientists to assassinate him. There is also the continuing love story between Jaina Solo and rugged starfighter pilot, Jagged Fell.

Strangely enough, all of these storylines are handled extremely well. Allston is an excellent writer who knows how to balance action with human drama. He is, apparently, not new to the SWEU, as he wrote several books in the “X-Wing” series, a series that I have not read yet.

“Rebel Stand” is the 12th book in the New Jedi Order series.

The Enemy Lines duology is one of the better moments of the NJO so far, imo. Finally, the good guys get some victories and a much-needed morale booster. Rebel Stand is a good wrap up of the storylines from Rebel Dream, and is just as action-packed. And finally FINALLY, we get the end of Viq the traitor from Kuat. About damn time.

The only part I didn't like was the Nyax part, mostly cause I didn't retain much from the Children of the Jedi cause of how bad it was. It really didn't interest me all that much, but I'm just glad the entire team got off Coruscant without any unnecessary casualties.

So the rebels are on the run again, but they've gotten a big victory to halt the Vong advance. Viq is dead, a Vong warship and fleet is destroyed, Jaina, Kyp, and Jagged all seem to be on good terms, Han and Leia manage to break free and escape, and the rebels seem to be ready for the next step.

I was quite excited by the first entry in this duology, Rebel Dream. I liked the "insurgent" plotline, Luke and Mara leading a resistance cell to Coruscant, etc. I liked the defense of Borleias.

I was slightly less impressed with Rebel Stand.

I was expecting Luke and Mara to meet survivors, invite a group of spies into Coruscant. Instead, that didn't happen. Overall, a decent read, especially saved by the ending battle sequence between the Borleias defenders and the Yuuzhan Vong.

*SPOILERS BELOW*
Using it to keep track of the events in each book of the NJO series.

Luke, Mara, Tahiri,and various civilians explore Coruscant. They find some survivors in lower levels, but the Vong are trying to reshape the world and change its orbit. They find a part cyborg, time-suspended Dark Jedi called Lord Nyax. They destroy him by making him fall down a huge tower into a well of Force energy near where the old Jedi temple used to be.

Jaina continues the ruse of pretending to be the Trickster Goddess. The Rogues successfully trick the Vong into chasing a missile with Jaina's fake signature, killing them all.

The New Republic forces abandon Borleais. The Lusankya capital ship, with a crew of one, has a huge spike concealed inside, and the captain uses it to ram the Vong Worldship and destroy it, escaping in a Y-Wing. Wedge, the last one off the planet, escapes in an abandoned X-Wing, defending a Millennium Falcon-esque ship on the way out. Single-handedly destroying an entire squadron of coralskippers. The Anakin-Solo-lookalike-kid Tarc is "adopted" by Tam and Wolam, the holocam operators. Tam discovers and thwarts a Vong spy living in the biotics facility. Tsavong Lah's father dies as part of the worldship when it's rammed by the Lusankya.

This was a great improvement over Dark Journey. The action was almost nonstop, with Luke, Mara and Tahiri traveling to Coruscant; Han and Leia engaged in surreptitious missions to distant systems; and Jaina continuing her role as the trickster goddess in the conflict surrounding Borleias.

So much pew pew not enough melodrama

Yeah this book was fantastic. I miss Aaron Allston as an author already, I feel like he does such a good job creating these awesome battles and opportunities for heroism among almost every character in this story. Love the cool tricks the Republic is coming up with against the Vong AND the clear infighting problems the Vong is developing.

Not as good as the last Rebel book, but still working from their comfort zone our Rebel fleet is fighting tooth and nail with Wedge running the show. That is what I'm talking about. Love Twin Suns squadron! Also, Jaina straightening out Kyp is great. He is actually a good character at this point, where did that come from.

"Really liked it." - 4 out of 5 star rating.

The debut of Lord Nyax, the General Grievous mixed with Darth Vader hybrid nightmare fuel, brought to you by none other than the Expanded Universe (EU), New Jedi Order (NJO). Lord Nyax is definitely the star of the show here.

Do yourself a favor and google image this guy if you haven't already. Such a great story around this character and throw in a few fan created images to help food for thought... and you've just got such a super cool villain. As if the NJO/Vong War didn't have enough evilness' and needed more, ha.

On top of this abomination, we also get lots of Luke and Mara, full-send Vong biotech deep dive, more voxyn, more starship fighter content, and all in all... a damn good duology between Enemy Lines 1 & 2.

The Vong war rages on, as we move towards the following book in the series, Traitor, coming up next.

Another excellent book in NJO! This definitely solidified the Enemy Lines duology as some of my favorite books in the series.

One thing I really liked in this book, and the one preceding it, is that everyone had interesting things to do. I loved the plotline of Luke, Mara, and others infiltrating the Vong-controlled Coruscant and discovering some really intriguing stuff happening. I loved Han and Leia going off to different planets and engaging in some political diplomacy. I loved the plotline on Borleias and the New Republic fighting off the Vong there. Basically, every side of the plot was interesting and engaging, which usually doesn’t happen for me with these books—there’s normally at least one plotline I’m not quite into. The characters here were good as well. I really enjoyed Jaina, Han, and Leia, and the character of Nyax who first appears here was very interesting also. I loved the ending as well, which was very big, cinematic, and exciting. And of course, seeing more of the Yuuzhan Vong was interesting as always.

Not many big negatives here. I did think the Nyax stuff was perhaps a bit hard for me to swallow at first, in terms of how he was portrayed, but it was interesting.

Overall this was a really great one and an excellent duology!

Rating: 9/10

In the Wraith Squadron books, Allston did such a good job of balancing a huge cast while giving all of them compelling characterizations and arcs - and NOT turning the vast majority of them them into exposition-producing objects or extremely out of character quip machines. What the hell happened?

The X-wing series being my favorite part of Star Wars, I was so excited for this book (and the previous one). I thought Allston was gonna save NJO like I thought JJ was gonna save the sequel trilogy (and we all saw how that turned out). It may or may not be objectively worse than any of the others, but the bitter disappointment really makes it feel that way.

That said, there were a few scenes I really enjoyed and one I absolutely LOVED. I’ll take what I can get when it comes to enjoying Star Wars; it’s just a shame the good was vastly outweighed by the crap in this case.