Cover Artist: Drew Struzan

Aboard the Teljkon vagabond, Lando Calrissian and his team are slowly coming to understand how the ship works. They are no longer trapped in the ductwork of the ships weapons systems, instead they are in a series of rooms that appear to be teaching them the history of the people who built the ship. When they enter one room that demonstrates a historical point using fire, they discover that the ship has now provided them with a breathable atmosphere. Unfortunately, the ship is currently sitting in Imperial held space, and the ships representing the Empire want it for themselves. At the same time, Luke Skywalker is traveling from planet to planet with the Fallanassi woman Akanah, hoping that he can learn something more about his mother. He begins to grow suspicious of her when he discovers some inconsistencies between her stories and the truth that he can discover. She decides to come clean and reveal some of the truth to him, and they decide to continue their journey to J't'p'tan, which just happens to lay in the Koornacht Cluster. Meanwhile, Princess Leia is trying to deal with the threat posed by the Yevethan people, lead by Nil Spaar. With some measure of her confidence restored, she sends Etahn A'baht and the Fifth Fleet out to represent a warning that she won't be pushed around. When the full measure of the Yevethan brutality is revealed to the Senate, she manages to raise enough support to send a message to Nil Spaar by blockading one of the planets stolen by the Yevethan forces. Everything is going well with the blockade until the Yevethan strike back. As a psychological tactic, the Yevethan commander decides to broadcast over all Republic channels the voices of many apparent prisoners pleading with the blockading forces to not attack as their lives would be forfeit. Suffering a heavy defeat, the republic sends a number of recon craft to each of the known systems controlled by Nil Spaar. Learning the strength of the forces arrayed against them, the Senate decides to reinforce the Fifth fleet, and sends Han Solo out to command them. Senator Tig Peramis discovers this and reports his finding to Nil Spaar, with the result that the small convoy transporting Han to the fleet is interdicted and Han is taken captive. The senate then demands that Leia step down voluntarily or face being removed, because they don't believe that she can remain objective in the current situation.

Many of my complaints from the first book in this series seem to have been at least partially resolved by this book. Specifically, I feel that Leia and Luke are both behaving a lot more like I think they should. Luke manages to recover some of his natural born skepticism and as a result he learns a lot more about the person he is traveling with than he knew before. It also appears that Leia is no longer as arrogant as she was in the previous book, which helps her to make more rational decisions and decide what is best. While this is still not one of my favorite books, I enjoyed reading it all the same.