The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest

The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest is a Star Wars Legends novel written by Greg Keyes. It is the seventh volume of the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series, following The New Jedi Order: Balance Point (2000) and preceding The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory II: Rebirth (2001). It was first published in paperback by Del Rey on April 3, 2001. Both Edge of Victory novels were later compiled in a hardcover omnibus from the Science Fiction Book Club.
==Publisher's summary==
The dazzling Star Wars space adventure The New Jedi Order continues as Luke Skywalker, Anakin Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and others battle their deadliest enemy in a tale of nonstop action, shadowy evil, and spectacular triumph…
No longer content with the destruction the Yuuzhan Vong have already sown, Warmaster Tsavong Lah has demanded the heads of all the Jedi. Now the Jedi Knights are in terrible danger—and none more so than the young students at the Jedi academy on Yavin 4. Already the sympathizers known as the Peace Brigade are in the Yavin system—and a Yuuzhan Vong fleet is not far behind.
At Luke Skywalker's request, Talon Karrde mounts an expedition to rescue the young students. Anakin Solo has his own ideas. Impatient, and figuring that forgiveness is easier to come by than permission, he takes off for Yavin 4 in his X-wing.
When it comes to confidence, courage, and raw Force talent, Anakin has few peers. But when his friend Tahiri is separated from the other academy kids and captured by the Yuuzhan Vong, even Anakin may be in over his head. For the aliens have a different future in mind for Tahiri, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their horrific ends…
==Plot summary==
After Warmaster Tsavong Lah of the Yuuzhan Vong proclaims the Jedi to be captured to stop their invasion of the galaxy, Jedi are now being hunted down across the galaxy and are either killed or captured by the Vong, desperate citizens of the galaxy, and the Peace Brigade. On Coruscant, the New Republic figures out the Vong will be taking over Yavin 4, which is where the Jedi Praxeum is located. Anakin Solo disobeys both his uncle, Luke Skywalker, and the New Republic and goes to Yavin 4 to save the Jedi there. After fighting Peace Brigade forces stationed around the moon, Anakin reaches the praxeum and meets up with Master Ikrit and his friend Tahiri Veila. They and all the other Jedi, including Kam Solusar, Tionne Solusar, Valin Horn, and Sannah, have a brief reunion with Anakin's return. The Peace Brigade attacks the praxeum, killing Ikrit and capturing Tahiri while Anakin hijacks one of the Brigade vessels with Valin and Sannah. Later, the full Yuuzhan Vong force led by Tsaak Vootuh claim the moon, killing the Peace Brigade forces. Meanwhile, the rest of the Jedi are picked up by Talon Karrde's company, sent by Luke to save them. But with Anakin, Tahiri, Valin, and Sannah still on the surface, Karrde and his forces do not leave the Yavin system and decide to distract the occupying Vong forces long enough to get the four Jedi off the moon.
Anakin, vowing to save Tahiri, leaves Valin and Sannah with a captured Peace Brigade member, Remis Vehn, and a former Imperial TIE fighter pilot, Qorl. Anakin then begins a long trek back toward the praxeum. Meanwhile, the Yuuzhan Vong Shaper caste, lead by Master Shaper Mezhan Kwaad and her aide, Nen Yim, decide to begin shaping Tahiri and the whole jungle moon of Yavin 4 themselves, both mentally and physically for Tahiri, into making her think she is a Yuuzhan Vong. Back with Anakin, his long trek takes him into a fight with Vong forces that destroys the crystal in his lightsaber and his weapon becomes useless to him. Another confrontation with Vong forces nearly kills him had it not been for a rogue Vong who saved him and tended his wounds.
As the New Republic figures out about Anakin's presence and intentions on Yavin 4, the rogue Yuuzhan Vong reveals he is Vua Rapuung. Rapuung tells Anakin that the only reason he saved him was because the Vong warrior's body chemistry had been physically altered by a Yuuzhan Vong shaper to Shame Rapuung by deforming him, turning him into the Yuuzhan Vong's outcast Shamed Ones society, and he needs Anakin's help to get to the praxeum and shame the shaper further. Since the Jedi praxeum is Anakin's destination anyway, the young Jedi agrees and travels with the Shamed Vong warrior, and along the way, the two develop an uneasy relationship because of their cultural differences that neither finds appealing toward the other (for example, Anakin finds Rapuung's cold-blooded murder of a fellow Shamed One, Qe'u, to be horribly reprehensible, while Rapuung found it be necessary). When Anakin and Rapuung finally arrive to the praxeum, Anakin is disguised as a slave for Rapuung and the young Jedi begins to understand the ways of the Vong in his false services to them. Along the way, Anakin discovers a lambent crystal that he puts into his lightsaber as a new blade. And not only does he become one with his old weapon again, but his connection with the lambent makes him able to detect the Yuuzhan Vong in a non-Force sense, albeit as unclear presences.
When the Yuuzhan Vong find out that Mezhan Kwaad has been Shaping Tahiri using heretical practices, Tsaak Vootuh and his warriors attempt to take Kwaad, Yim and Tahiri off of Yavin 4 for execution on the count of heresy. Anakin and Rapuung soon find out about this, stop the Vong, and force her reveal to all Vong present about the heresy she committed onto Rapuung because he rejected her love for him. Instead of doing so, she proclaims that there are no gods, thus proclaiming her to be a heretical atheist in her kind, which is forbidden in Vong culture. This fulfills Rapuung's revenge, but Kwaad attacks Anakin and Rapuung, as well as killing her captors, and mortally wounds Rapuung. But the Shaped Tahiri decapitates Kwaad with her lightsaber in her guise as the Yuuzhan Vong warrior Riina Kwaad, but Anakin reminds Tahiri about who she really is and how much Anakin loves her. Tahiri is reminded about who she is but her Vong knowledge stays with her.
The Vong of the praxeum proceed to attack Anakin and Tahiri, but Rapuung states that as long he lives, no one will touch Anakin, honoring the young Jedi as a warrior after he helped him. Then Vua Rapuung fights the Vong and dies in the battle, leaving Anakin and Tahiri on their own from the Vong as they steal the ship that was going to take Kwaad, Yim and Tahiri, and escape the praxeum with all the other captured Jedi. They get shot down, but survive. They're chased on foot from the Vong, but they get saved by Talon Karrde and his forces. Corran Horn, returned from his self-imposed exile on Corellia since after the Battle of Ithor, and Booster Terrik also come along to help Karrde with saving Anakin, Tahiri, Valin and Sannah, as well as Remis Vehn and Qorl. Along with Valin, Sannah and Vehn, all the protagonists get saved from the Vong and return home.
In the aftermath, Anakin and Tahiri become valuable assets in the Yuuzhan Vong War because of Anakin's fuzzy sense of the Vong and Tahiri's knowledge of them in the aftermath of her shaping. The novel concludes with Nen Yim planning to do heresy of the Vong tradition to defeat the New Republic.
==Continuity==
The 2012 reference book The Essential Reader's Companion dates the events of The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest to 26 ABY, placing it after the novella The New Jedi Order: Recovery and before the novel The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory II: Rebirth.
On page 126, Mara Jade-Skywalker is referred to erroneously as Shada during a conversation involving the discussion of Shada D'ukal.
==Media==
===Editions===
*; April 3, 2001; Del Rey; US paperback
*; June 28, 2011; Del Rey; US eBook 
===Cover gallery===
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