Hero's Trial by
James Luceno offers us a refreshing change of pace in
The New Jedi Order, narrowing the focus from our galaxy-spanning cast of heroes to just one: Han Solo. Made inconspicuous by grief over the death of Chewbacca for the last two books, Han's four-month spasm of drunken denial comes to an end when a figure from his past appears with information on an old colleague turned traitor. Meanwhile a Yuuzhan Vong priestess stages a defection as part of a covert operation to assassinate Jedi, and the New Republic braces itself for the next round of conquest.
Hero's Trial gave me exactly what I was looking for after finishing
Ruin. After two books of multiple points of view compressed into too-few pages, Luceno lets things breathe a bit by shifting the narrative from a host of Jedi to just Han. In his freshman effort, he takes up the mantle of resuming the story of Han Solo and leaves me wanting more - more of wisecracking Droma, Han's new foil and emergent partner, more of the enigmatic Vergere, whose story began for me in
Outbound Flight, and more of Han rolling his way into situations on the back of a dice.
