Star Wars:LOTF:Invincible: Was Jacen/Caedus irredeemable?

[JediKnightButler]

I'm behind as usual when catching up with Star Wars books but I just finished the LOTF series this past week. I thought that the ending was pretty good but I feel somewhat conflicted about how Denning handled the final duel between Jaina and Jacen/Caedus and his subsequent death. On the one hand, there is no doubt that he had blood on his hands-LOTS of it- by the end of the series. There is also no doubt that the Jedi needed to do something to stop him-I actually thought that they should've been more proactive MUCH earlier in the series but it really wasn't until after Mara died confronting him that Luke, et. al realized just how dangerous Jacen/Caedus had become and that they needed to actually do something about him other than endlessly ruminating about him.
However, by the time that we finally get down to the epic showdown between him and Jaina, Jacen/Caedus actually seems rather disinterested in the whole conflict because he is instead focused on SAVING Tenel Ka (or at least Allana) from death from the Moff's nanokillers that they have, against his orders, slipped onboard her ship. So, clearly, despite everything that he had done up to that point and despite how far Jacen had clearly fallen to the dark side, Jacen still actually cared what happened to Allana and, in fact, so much so that he ended up sacrificing himself at the end to attempt to save Allana instead of defending himself from Jaina's death blow. Even Jaina herself recognizes that, just before he died, she felt Caedus *become* Jacen again. Given the resolution of their duel, I am left to wonder if Jaina, et. al were wrong and that Jacen could have been brought back to the light had Jaina not killed him and if Jacen was, in fact, redeemed (somewhat) through his sacrifice to save Allana.
I'm wondering too if Jaina perhaps had become too obsessed with bringing Caedus down that she fell a little to the dark side herself. She seemed to have become so obsessed with killing Caedus that she wasn't even willing to believe that Caedus might have been telling the truth when he told her that he was trying to save Allana and seemed to be avoiding fighting her. I don't really blame Jaina too much for her actions because of everything that had happened before and Caedus was certainly still a serious threat to the Jedi (and pretty much everybody else). I just pose this because it seems like, in some ways, an unnecessarily tragic ending.
What was everybody else's reactions to the resolution of the storyline and what do you think about Jacen's sacrifice?

 

[Trent Roman]

I don't think Legacy of the Force is redeemable.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Jono]

Jacen was a sick dog that needed to be put down.

 

[Silent_Bob]

Jacen was a sick dog that needed to be put down.

Unfortunately i have to agree. The Yuuzhan Vong war destroyed him mentally, everything past that point was a spiral down into eventual madness. Looking back at his actions after the war you can see a familiar pattern to his reasoning- he wants more power and knowledge, to protect the people he cared about. He goes off on his journey for 5 years, to gain more knowledge, he turns Sith for more knowledge and power and to protect the people he loved.

He was obsessed and that obsession led him into madness eventually. By the end of LOTF he reasoning he had in the first place for turning Sith - protecting Tenal Ka, preventing the death of Luke Skywalker, protecting his daughter - had all been abandoned in favour of gaining revenge against those who couldnt see he was right.

His fall parallels Anakin's but unlike Anakin, when a loved one offered Caedus a way back he rejected it utterly, because he believed everything he had done was right. Anakin at least knew on some level that his actions were wrong, he had doubts about the Emperor, doubts which let Luke reach him.
Everything that was once Jacen had been destroyed when he chose to become Caedus. There was nothing left of him to save.

 

[Mr Light]

I really liked LOTF but I hated the final book. Extremely anti-climactic and ignored the entire storyline just to focus on Jaina vs. Jacen. I thought Jacen's descent was handled very well (better than Anakin Skywalker's!) and by the end I'd say he was irredeemable. Sure he still loved his daughter but Hitler painted landscapes. He led this entire horrible unnecessary war.

 

[JediKnightButler]

I really liked LOTF but I hated the final book. Extremely anti-climactic and ignored the entire storyline just to focus on Jaina vs. Jacen.

I kind of felt the same way about it too, particularly the "off-screen" resolution of the war, which I'm not sure was even explained (although I listened to the book on CD so I don't know if it was just because of the abridgement). Anybody here read "Outcast" yet and if so, do they go into more detail about the end of the war? All they pretty much said at the end of the book was that the war was over and Daala(?) had been made Chief-of-State of the GA. By the end of the series, the only thing that I could figure out about "the war" is that pretty much everybody- the Corellian Confederacy, the "Jedi Coalition", and Niathal's GA loyalists- was fighting against Jacen and the part of the Imperial remnant that he and the Moffs whom supported him controlled. However, the resolution to the Correlian insurrection that started the whole civil war in the first place seems totally forgotten at least by the end of "Fury" when Centerpoint Station gets totally wiped out because of Dr. Seyah's sabotage. It seems to me that simply allowing Corellia a little more freedom/independence (or at least not harrassing them with attempts to abduct members of their government, occupying one of their worlds, and finally, establishing a blockade) might've prevented the whole conflict in the first place. I'm not saying that people don't sometimes make bad decisions that lead to stupid and unnecessary wars but the whole conflict just seemed somewhat contrived for the purpose of creating conflict.

 

[Mr Light]

^^ Unfortunately you didn't miss anything it's just a brief off-screen mention of the war ending. EXTREMELY unacceptable! I've actually just started reading "Outcast" last night and it opens with negotiations between the different parties from the war (which is funny because this is TWO YEARS after the war ended!). So it looks like we will finally get a resolution to the storyline... in the next book series... two years later on the timeline...

 

[DarKush]

I liked the first half of LOTF. After Sacrifice my enjoyment started to decline. Invincible was okay, but it didn't feel epic enough and it left far too many loose ends untied.

I don't think that Caedus was irredeemable, despite his actions. His desire to protect/possess Allana earlier, his agonizing over whether to kill Ben if he couldn't be turned earlier in the series, and his last ditch effort to save Tenel Ka and Allana were proof of that. Of course this was contrasted to the cackling one-note villain he really started becoming after Sacrifice, now that cardboard character was less worthy of a reprieve.

I thought it would've been better if he had been redeemed and had to live to face the consequences of his actions, of going from the hero of the Yuuzhan Vong War to a mass murdering monster. I think that would've been an interesting character study. At the very least if they had to kill him off, I just wished that his family hadn't agreed so easily that he had to die.

I just finished reading Star by Star and Denning handled Leia and Han's grief pretty well. After that horrendous experience, I don't see either of them being as okay with Jacen dying, and at Jaina's hand no less than the writers of LOTF did.

I think the final battle between Caedus and Jaina was also disappointing because Jaina couldn't defeat Caedus on her own-Luke was helping, which weakens the whole Sword of the Jedi thing. Plus, Caedus, after being called more powerful than Vader, proved pretty easy to beat. In their first battle, Jaina/Luke chopped off his arm and in their second, Jaina/Luke killed him. It also would've been nice if there had been some cool backgrounds/backdrops for their battles, and they should've been taken up more page space.

I still don't buy how Daala was a consensus choice to lead the GA, or why the civil war against the Confederation wasn't wrapped up, or what happened to Niathal. I also thought the Antilles family storylines from the earlier books was left unresolved. LOTF had a lot of promise, but it devolved into a mess, a faux Clone Wars. I had hoped that if they were going to retread the Clone Wars they would create a more believable romance than Anakin-Padme, and a more well thought out fall, but they actually did worse. Especially in comparison to the excellent Republic comics and the Clone Wars animated series.

 

[Mr Light]

My favorite books of LOTF were the middle set, starting with "Sacrifice" and ending with the last one before the last two. They were pretty epic and cool. Like when Jacen sets Kashyyk on fire and then Luke comes aboard his Star Destroyer to whup his ass? Hell yeah.

 

[JediKnightButler]

I liked pretty much the entire series. The last two were the weakest entries IMHO although I loved Pelleon's quip at the beginning of "Revelation" about not wanting to let Jacen "play with my ships". If I had a major complaint about the series, other than the lack of a resolution to the Civil War arc at the end of "Invincible", it was the shoehorning of Boba Fett into at least half of three of the books. I didn't really mind him being in "Bloodlines" but did Traviss have to devote so much space to him in "Sacrifice" and include him in the storyline in such a prominent way in "Revelation"? It would've been better for Traviss to simply write a separate novel or chronicle of Boba Fett's adventures during the second Galactic Civil War. I feel like opportunities were missed to really focus on the main characters and storyline because of Traviss' inclusion of Fett/Mandalore in so much of the storyline, particularly in "Sacrifice" where his storyline had little or nothing to do with the main story arc of the series.

 

[Stevil2001]

I don't think Legacy of the Force is redeemable.

Damnit Trent, you beat me to it.

Discussing Caedus's "redeemability" implies his character was written with enough depth or consistency to be discussed on a serious level.

 

[Mr Light]

Yeah the vast majority of people here disliked the Traviss books for their unreasonable emphasis on Mandalorians and Boba Fett and how amazing and invincible they are and how they can easily defeat Jacen at the height of his power but choose not to because they're too cool for school.