Review: Minor New Jedi Order side story
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 15, 2012
With Ylesia, a novella originally published in e-book form, Walter Jon Williams gets an opportunity to insert further story into his novel Destiny's Way. The events of Ylesia take place midway through that book, so this is a good read to tackle immediately after finishing Destiny's Way. The novella follows a New Republic mission to the titular planet, which is serving as the capital of the traitorous Peace Brigade and houses their attempt at a Senate. The Peace Brigade promote capitulation to the Yuuzhan Vong and have served as a human counterpoint to the efforts of the Jedi and the more heroic members of the New Republic throughout the New Jedi Order. They are a logical part of the story but not one I've found terribly interesting, as we rarely get anything told from their point-of-view, making them rather cardboard as adversaries.Yleisa brings back Thracken Sal-Solo in an entertaining plotline which sees him forcibly installed as the President of the Peace Brigade. This doesn't fit well with Sal-Solo's plans to better his own galactic situation but he displays a knack for adaption and survival not unlike that of his famous cousin Han Solo. Ylesia itself, a major source of the drug spice in the Star Wars galaxy, will be familiar to readers of A. C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy, and it's nice to see it return.For the most part Yleisa doesn't advance the story of Destiny's Way much: primarily, it delivers some closure to the Peace Brigade subplot. Sal-Solo was the most memorable aspect, as some of the space battle and ground assault material following the New Republic's invasion of the system felt like material I've read an awful lot of times before.  Ylesia is a solid enough little story but I would only recommend it to someone going through the entire New Jedi Order and wanting a little more.