David's Review of X-wing: Isard's Revenge

3/5 Rancors - The X-wing series has been one of the highlights of the Star wars Expanded Universe for me. Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston have done good jobs writing the stories, and the characters have been memorable. However, Isard’s Revenge does not come up to the level of the previous books. It is still fun to read, but not as much as it could have been.

We have most of the same characters from the earlier books, i.e., Wedge Antilles and his band of Rogue Squadron pilots, Admiral Ackbar, Iella Wessiri of Republic Intelligence, Booster Terrik, and Mirax Terrik. The book actually begins at the Battle of Bilbringi where we had ended up at the end of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy. I like the characters. I pull for them, and I am sad if they don’t make it. We also have a major surprise with the reappearance of Ysanne Isard. It turns out that she was not killed earlier in the series after all. Of course, she immediately becomes the villain of the piece, but she is not the only bad person. We also have Warlord Admiral Krennel with his ambition to take over the galaxy and assume the position of the deceased Emperor Palpatine.

The plot of the book is best described as overly complicated, and that is the primary reason that I only gave the book three stars. Much of the plot involves political manipulation and Machiavellian intrigue, and we are also introduced to an Isard clone that is a little hard to accept. The battle scenes involving Rogue Squadron and their efforts to free the remaining prisoners who were with Corran Horn on the Lusankya make for excellent reading. We just needed more of that.

The book does have one of my favorite chapters in all of Star Wars. Two droids – Gate (Wedge’s R5 unit) and Whistler (Corran’s R2 unit) - are imprisoned on an Imperial vessel with restraining bolts in place. They manage to power up, deftly escape from the vessel, and make their way to find help for the Rogue Squadron pilots who are also being held by Isard. Watching the droids make all the right moves is just excellent fun.