Cover Artist: Tom Jung

After Grand Admiral Thrawn is stopped at Sluis Van and the New Republic forces have had a chance to regroup and take stock of everything, everyone has new missions to go out on. Leia is off to meet up at Endor with the Noghri assassin that had tried to kill her and Han travels with Lando to New Cov, intending to find out what Borsk Fey'lya is trying to protect there. Luke goes with them, but when everything falls apart and Han and Lando are taken to meet a hidden Rebel Commander Luke decides to go to Jomark to meet with Joruus C'baoth. After several close calls, Talon Karrde is finally captured by Thrawn and Mara Jade decides to recruit Luke Skywalker to help her rescue him. In the meantime, Leia is on the Noghri home planet Honoghr trying to find a way to break them away from their Imperial service. While there she discovers that the damage done to their planet should only take 8 years to reverse but the repair has been underway since the end of the Clone Wars. This convinces the Noghri that the Empire no longer has their best interests at heart. Events elsewhere come to a head as the Imperial and Republic forces race to be the first to recover the fable Dark Force, a collection of 200 Old Republic Dreadnaughts.

As the middle book in a series of three, Dark Force Rising succeeds in ending on a mostly negative note. Most of the plots and stories end with an Imperial success as opposed to a Republic success which leads us to feel that there is no way our heroes can take a victory. On the other hand, there are one or two small successes that give us hope for a happy ending. This gives us a reason to want to keep reading to see what will eventually happen.