A new summary for the next 'Legacy of the Force' novel, Troy Denning's Invincible, has surfaced on the internet.
This actually appeared a few days ago, but the ultimate source was cited as a page at the Science Fiction Book Club website, which could be read only by paying members of that site. Until it was confirmed as accurate, I didn't want to run with it.
Now, though, one of those helpful girls at Club Jade has managed to confirm that this is genuine.
So, here it is:
The war between the Galactic Alliance and the Corellian Confederation is building to a boiling point. Now the fate of the galaxy hangs on what is about to happen among a lonely cluster of asteroids. At Nickel One, base of the Verpine munitions industry, Jacen Solo assembles a fleet that can crush the Jedi Coalition. But even with the Imperial Remnant?s troops at his command, he may soon find himself outmatched?
Luke Skywalker knows the Jedi will never leave the hidden base at Shedu Maad alive unless they hunt down and kill Jacen Solo. But Luke, tainted by his killing of Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith, could fall to the dark side if he goes after Jacen himself. Having finished her training with Boba Fett, Jaina Solo realizes she?s the only one who can bring her brother down. So she sets off to finish what Mara Jade Skywalker started ? unaware that Luke is using his Force abilities to mask her with his image. As Jacen?s Remnant fleet collides with Confederation and Mandalorian forces at Nickel One, a battle-royale explodes at Shedu Maad. Now, only a fatal clash between the Dark Lord of the Sith and the Sword of the Jedi may turn the tide of war?
This can be compared with the shorter version that appeared at Booksamillion.com a few days ago:
Convinced that Darth Caedus, the Sith Lord who began life as Jacen Solo, must be destroyed, Luke Skywalker worries his vision is tainted by his own desire for revenge. It now falls to Jaina Solo to fulfill her destiny and confront the horrific tyrant who was once her twin brother, in the stunning conclusion to the Legacy of the Force series.
Now, there's a core of shared material here: Luke believes that Jacen must be destroyed, but he is held back by the fear of being "tainted" by the dark side, and it falls to Jaina to confront her brother.
That's nothing really surprising: the real question is how much the additional information in the SFBC blurb is accurate.
Their former Senior Editor, Andrew Wheeler, certainly got to read thewholeseriesuptoInferno several months ahead of the release dates (lucky man!).
On the other hand, there's a lot of prominence given here to a battle between Imperials and Mandalorians at Nickel One in the Roche Asteroid Belt. This sounds a lot like the one which features in the teaser chapter at the end of Revelation.
Now, given strategic importance of the system, and Fett's insistence in the teaser that he'll return to liberate the system, it's possible that Nickel One will become a major flashpoint for a second battle later in the novel.
But there are also reasons for caution here. In the past, even the summaries on the covers of the actual novels have been wildly inaccurate - the planet Zonama Sekot is described as a "battlestation" on the cover of The Unifying Force, for example. And here, there's evidence of underlying connections between this SFBC blurb and the shorter Booksamillion one: in short, it looks like it's a variation of a shared source, not a fully independent summary of the book.
With that in mind, it's possible that this is just a combination of a generic blurb with the Invincible teaser chapter. If it wasn't for a couple of new details, I might even have suspected it was a fusion of the specific Booksamillion blurb and vague spoilers, both gleaned from internet sources.
Here's what we know, though:
We know that Jaina's going after Jacen, because Luke believes he can't. No huge surprise there.
I'm guessing that the name of "Shedu Maad" for the new Jedi base on the edge of Hapan space is accurate, as is the idea that Luke will using some sort of Force-trick to make Jaina appear to be him.
It's also possible that there's a big battle at the new Jedi base, and a second clash between the Alliance and the Confederation at Nickel One... but I'd be cautious about putting too much weight on those (and especially on the second one) based on this one blurb alone.
As I've said before: Your spoilers can decieve you. Don't trust them....
As ever, we'll bring you more hard news on this as it appears.