Star Wars Jedi Academy #2: Dark Apprentice

While the New  Republic struggles to decide what to do with the deadly  Sun Crusher -- a new doomsday weapon stolen from  the Empire by Han Solo -- the renegade Imperial  Admiral Daala uses her fleet of Star Destroyers to  conduct guerrilla warfare on peaceful planets.  And now she threatens the watery homeworld of  Admiral Ackbar. But as the battle for a planet rages,  an even greater danger emerges at Luke  Skywalker's Jedi academy. A brilliant student delves  dangerously into the dark side of the Force and  unleashes the spirit of an ancient master of the evil  order that warped Darth Vader himself. Working  together, they may become an enemy greater than the  New Republic has ever fought... more powerful than  even a Jedi Master can face.

Everyone is searching for Bornan Thul. Not only is he father to one of Jacen and Jaina's fellow students, he holds the key to a secret coalition gaining power in the New Republic. The young Jedi Knights race across the galaxy to find him--but they may be too late. For their true enemy is about to show its treacherous face. And it will be shockingly familiar. Original. (Young Adult)

As the New Republic takes devastating losses in  the ongoingwar with the scattered remnants of the  Empire, the galaxy's future depends on three small  children — among them the Jedi twins — born to  incredible powers and perils, as an extraordinary  new saga unfolds...

While the New  Republic struggles to decide what to do with the deadly  Sun Crusher — a new doomsday weapon stolen from  the Empire by Han Solo — the renegade Imperial  Admiral Daala uses her fleet of Star Destroyers to  conduct guerrilla warfare on peaceful planets.  And now she threatens the watery homeworld of  Admiral Ackbar. But as the battle for a planet rages,  an even greater danger emerges at Luke  Skywalker's Jedi academy. A brilliant student delves  dangerously into the dark side of the Force and  unleashes the spirit of an ancient master of the evil  order that warped Darth Vader himself. Working  together, they may become an enemy greater than the  New Republic has ever fought... more powerful than  even a Jedi Master can face.

Kirkus Reviews

Eighteen fantasy and SF stories by Anderson, a veteran novelizer and author with Doug Beason of several thrillers (Ignition, 1997, etc.). "A Whisper of the Caladan Seas," written with Frank Herbert's son Brian, carries on the Dune series with the first fiction about the planet since the master died. The story features much of the battle plans and weaponry in the original series, as the Harkonnen fight the Atreides, and turns on a mystical appearance of salt water on the desert planet. Though Scully and Mulder are not in the title piece, it was later used as the armature for Antibodies, one of Anderson's bestselling X-Files novelizations (he's done Stars Wars books too). "Dogged Persistence" concerns an immortal black Lab and the futuristic nannorepair units that, when injected, rebuild injured or diseased bodies forever. Anderson's "Prisoner of War" hangs from Harlan Ellison's teleplay "Soldier": Ellison posits future soldiers bred and trained to do nothing but fight from birth to death; Anderson suggests the horror of these same soldiers teetering on the abyss of peace when, taken prisoner in an underground paradise, Barto and Arviq find themselves disconcerted by food that doesn't taste like combat gruel and utterly disoriented by the absence of commands ringing in their heads. Rock fans will dig "Music Played on the Strings of Time," in which a failed musician goes to an alternate universe for five hours and finds that over there he had a hit record-before making Rolling Stone's obit page. In "Fondest of Memories," a man has his dead wife cloned and reprogrammed with only his fondest memories of her, then enters a kind of space hibernation for 30 years to await her maturity.Shining invention and talent and style.

Kevin J. Anderson

Jim Butcher is the author of the USA Today best-selling series "The Dresden Files" for Roc and the high fantasy series "The Codex Alera" for Ace. "The Dresden Files" is also a successful series of audio books; has been optioned for a television series by the SCI FI Channel; and is currently being developed into an online roleplaying game. A martial arts enthusiast and a skilled equestrian rider, Jim lives in Missouri with his wife and son.