Star Wars: X-Wing: Isard's Revenge (1999) Book Review

 Hey everyone, happy Friday! I'm back with another book review. This time I'm reviewing the eighth book in the Star Wars: X-Wing series, and the final Star Wars book that Stackpole wrote for Bantam Spectra, Isard's Revenge, which Bantam published in 1999, only two months after Solo Command came out. So let's get into it.

Isard's Revenge is basically the epilogue to the plot that Stackpole, and Allston told in the previous seven books, as well as the stuff that Stackpole did in the X-Wing: Rogue Squadron comics, AND his first person narrative novel, I, Jedi. This is also the last time Rogue Squadron is shown in the Bantam era in terms of publication order as Starfighters of Adumar, the next X-Wing book, and the last one to be published by Bantam Spectra, focuses on Wedge, Tycho, Hobbie, and Janson. It's also the only Bantam era novel that actually overlaps with another book. The book opens with the Battle of Bilbringi, which was the final fleet battle in the final book in Timothy Zahn's original Thrawn Trilogy, The Last Command, revealing that Tycho was Rogue Two in The Last Command, but being that aside from Wedge, Janson, and Hobbie, none of the Rogues had names in the Thrawn Trilogy, only going by their squadron callsigns, for example, Corran is Rogue Nine, Tycho is Rogue Two, etc. 

Isard's Revenge is really the only X-Wing book where you really have to have read the X-Wing comics, the previous seven X-Wing novels, I, Jedi, and the Thrawn Trilogy, to fully understand what's going on as this novel, more than any other, pulls heavily from the X-Wing comics that had been running concurrently with the novels. Even though Stackpole's prior X-Wing novels alluded to the comics, and utilized characters from those comics, such as Ysanne Isard and Tycho Celchu, those novels never actually relied on people already knowing the comics to be effective in conveying the plot. But, because Isard's Revenge is the epilogue to everything Stackpole had done in the Expanded Universe up to this point, it ends up wrapping all of that up kinda like how Solo Command wrapped up the story of the Wraiths.

I wonder if Stackpole actually didn't intend on bringing Isard back from the dead if he ever returned to the X-Wing novels, and Allston inadvertently planted the seeds of her return in Iron Fist when Face came up with his theory that she was actually alive, so Stackpole ran with it, or if that was his plan all along and Bantam simply asked Allston to lay the groundwork in Iron Fist given that Iron Fist came out six months before Isard's Revenge came out, so Stackpole was probably plotting out Isard's Revenge while Allston was writing Iron Fist, and was writing it when Iron Fist came out. It's just really hard to tell because there doesn't seem to be any indication that there was a true collaboration between Stackpole and Allston in the writing of this series, other than Myn Donos appearing in this book, but there's also no indication that there WASN'T beyond that either.

Star Wars publishing can be really confusing because there's a bunch of writers contributing to it, all at the same time, and outside of the planned series like The New Jedi Order, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi, the authors didn't necessarily have to use anything from the books that had come out previously. Alot of them did, but not all of them. This is especially true in the Bantam era because so many books came out between 1991 and 1999 and oftentimes one author would have a book coming out within a couple of weeks of another, and occasionally one book from another publisher, particularly with the Young Jedi Knights and Junior Jedi Knights young readers series coming out. Plus there were parts of the Thrawn Trilogy that had to be retconned or completely ignored in order to incorporate The Truce at Bakura, the X-Wing series, and The Courtship of Princess Leia into the timeline, because they all take place before Heir to the Empire. And just how collaborative the Bantam era was has never really been documented outside of the acknowledgements page in each book, as the other authors would be thanked if one of their characters was used in a particular book. For example, for this one Stackpole thanks Zahn and Allston because some of their characters, Talon Karrde, Borsk Fey'lya (I'll get to him in a moment), Aves, and the Noghri from Zahn, and Myn Donos from Allston, were used in this book. 

Speaking of Borsk, our favourite Bothan, is downright nasty in this book. I still don't get how he was allowed to retain his position of political power within the New Republic after what he pulled in the Thrawn Trilogy and this book, but he does and that results in us getting him as the Chief of State of the New Republic in the first half of The New Jedi Order, which started coming out only six months after this book was published. Which, again, is hard to figure out, but I wonder if Stackpole pushed Borsk in this book because he knew he was gonna be the Chief of State of the New Republic, being that Stackpole was most likely already planning out his trilogy within The New Jedi Order (that later became a duology, but again, we'll get there) and he knew what was coming up. It's hard to tell because timeline wise, Isard's Revenge takes place right after The Last Command, in 9 ABY (After Battle of Yavin) and Vector Prime takes place in 25 ABY, so there's a good 16 year gap between the end of this book and the beginning of Vector Prime. 

This book is also feels like it's filling in the gaps in the timeline, because it shows how and why Wedge got his promotion to the rank of general. Not only is he a general in the first book in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, Jedi Search, but he's also a general when we run into him in Star Wars: Dark Empire, published by Dark Horse Comics. this book bridges the gap between the Thrawn Trilogy in the novels, and Dark Empire in the comics, which actually started coming out between Heir to the Empire in 1991 and Dark Force Rising in 1992, and ended in late 1992, between Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. So not only did the early books had to contend with each other, but they had to contend with Dark Empire as well. 

 Like with Solo Command, I didn't get Isard's Revenge until sometime in the 2000s. But, unlike Solo Command I have a better idea of exactly when I got Isard's Revenge. I got it in the fall of 2001. It was November and Grandma had taken me out to buy my birthday and Christmas presents. Because I was still being tubefed at the time, Grandma couldn't take me out for dinner for my birthday, so she often took me to Chapters to buy books and movies (Chapters sold DVDs and VHS tapes back then), mainly books. I was home by the time an episode of Star Trek: Voyager came on TV on a channel I got in my room. I got the original orange logo cover edition, but there was a later printing where the Star Wars logo was white (cover above). I'm not sure when that version came out because I actually don't remember ever seeing it on the shelf at the bookstore. I know it exists because at least one person showed it off in a Legends book haul a few years ago, but I've just never come across it.

 Then sometime in the mid 2010s, a Legends banner edition was published. And like the other books in this series, I don't own the Legends banner edition for this book, so I have no way of actually finding out when that edition came out. I just know it was between 2014 and 2017 and that's it. I honestly don't have any issues with the Legends banner editions. I mean the only difference between the original paperbacks and the Legends banner editions are the covers (front, back, spines, and inside) and the copyright page, as well as updated book excerpts. The page layouts, the fonts, and the title pages are the same. As are the stories. There were no special editions of those novels. 

Overall I think Isard's Revenge is an okay book. It's well written, but it honestly feels like Stackpole was just rehashing plot points from his earlier X-Wing, while introducing new plot points from the Rogue Squadron comics. Krennel is from the comic, but he's not mentioned in any other novel and outside of the comic, he only ever shows up in this book. Even Isard felt a bit played out. Especially with the whole clone thing, which, in universe, we'd just dealt with with C'Baoth and his clone of Luke. So it felt repetitive. 

It would've been better if Stackpole had had more books to work the story out in. Like this book easily could've been three books. The problem though is that not only did Aaron Allston write the next book, but this was the last Stackpole Star Wars novel before the license shifted back to Del Rey and Stackpole started working on his books for The New Jedi Order. So we never see Asyr Sei'lar ever again, nor do we see Ooryl, Inyri Forge, and Myn Donos ever again. And there's just alot of stuff that we never go back to since Krennel and Isard are killed off at the end of the book and Rogue Squadron doesn't show up again until Stackpole's first New Jedi Order novel, Dark Tide I: Onslaught, though chronologically, they do show up in the first book of the Hand of Thrawn, Specter of the Past, by Timothy Zahn. 

That's it for me for this week my friends. I will be back next week with my first in a five part review series on the Home Alone franchise because I have the first five movies on DVD, and I'm refusing to do Home Sweet Home Alone. At least for this year. I have other posts coming out next week too. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.