Star Wars Legacy, Volume 3: Claws of the Dragon by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema

Cade Skywalker returns to Coruscant, having taken some more training at the Jedi temple, and with his old Masters. His job this time is to infiltrate the Sith Temple, built on the site of the former Jedi temple. There, he goes to try and free his comrades, Jariah Syn and Delilah Blue, both captives of the Sith. The Sith want to turn Cade to the Dark Side, and having a descendant of the hated Luke Skywalker on their side would be a tremendous boost in power, and prestige.

To save his former comrades, Cade is forced to heal them from infected Yuuzhan Vong coral seeds, and when he proves capable of doing so, he is offered entry into the Dark Side Sith, especially when Darth Krayt reveals to him that he is using the Dark Side to heal, tapping into his anger and rage. Darth Krayt also reveals to Cade that he, himself, was once a Jedi and knows that Cade is going through and revealing. As he tells Cade how he went from being a Jedi to a mercenary, and then to a Sith, Cade's friends and enemies are working to get him out of his imprisonment in the temple.

Syn and Blue are trying to get support from Coruscant's underworld, but are having little luck. The Imperials Grand Moff Venn and his lover Nyna Calixte are concerned about the Sith having too much power, and with Cade Skywalker in their hands, no longer needing Venn or Nyna. So, Venn hires Morrigan Corrde, unknown to all as Cade's mother, to break Cade out of Sith control.

Morrigan asks for several bugs she can use to infiltrate the temple... actual bugs, as it turns out, crafted in the shaping plants of the Yuuzhan Vong, and she joins up with Syn and Blue, revealing her connection to their friend to help allay their suspicions. For her plan to succeed, they must work together, and have patience. But neither Syn nor Blue is any great one for patience, and if they move too quickly, their plans will come to naught. The conspirators nearly come to blows before they can work out their differences.

Meanwhile, in the Sith temple, Dark Krayt and the other Sith teach Cade. But unlike the Jedi temple, their teaching is as much about backstabbing and treachery as the Dark Side of the Force. Darth Krayt reveals to one of his subordinates exactly why he wants Cade as a Sith, even though he knows Cade is just shamming right now: he is dying, and he needs Cade to heal him. But when he reveals this to Cade, Cade says he cannot heal Darth Krayt just yet. The way he sees injuries are as red lines, and when he untangles the lines, the person is healed. But Krayt's red lines are too tangled for him to know how to undo... yet.

Krayt tries to get Cade to work around it, but Cade is simply unable to, but when Cade later tries to escape, Darth Krayt attempts to send Cade firmly to the Dark Side by having him kill one of the last of the Jedi. Cade doesn't want to kill anyone. He's had enough of people dying because of him. But when Krayt tries to force him, the Sith ends up killing the Jedi himself. Cade is enraged, but recieves a vision of his father, Kol, telling him that which heals can also break.

Krayt has Cade's father's lightsaber encased in transparisteel as a trophy and a tribute to the Jedi whom Krayt slew. Cade's touch shatters the block of transparisteel and frees the lightsaber, fighting against the Sith, He resists the Dark Side because they *want* him to give into it, and he begins an escape that ties into the plans of his friends and his mother. But when he is trapped in the Jedi temple with only a drop of thousands of feet as an escape, will Cade sacrifice himself to keep the Sith from killing him? And can his friends save him from the drop and bring him home?

As the book ends, Nyna and Venn talk over how best to explain them pulling their Imperial Fighters away from the action at the temple, and we get to see a very personal reason why Nyna didn't want Cade to fall victim to the Sith. What does this mean for Cade, and his mother, Morrigan Corrde. What connection does Nyna Calixte have to their family? And will she save them or betray them in the end?

I liked this book. Cade is not what you'd think of as a hero. He's much too self-absorbed and self-pitying, blaming problems he made for himself as being due to his famous bloodline. But he's not a bad guy and it was so very interesting pretending to be a Sith while planning to spike them all in the end. It's as if he's a force for pure chaos that cannot be controlled unless he chooses to be controlled, and even then, he has a plan to get revenge on those who would force him to follow a path he hasn't chosen to follow on his own.

I cheered for Cade at the end, when he was fighting the Sith, even if I couldn't cheer for him through the earlier parts of the book. Since we aren't privy to his inner thoughts, we must take him at face value when he pretends to be joining the Sith, and that was a somewhat uncomfortable part of the book to read, as we can't tell whether or not he means it, except when the other Sith say he is trying to decieve them... and failing. I was also afraid that the ploys the Sith were using to try and control him would be successful.

This is a great graphic novel, and the very uncertainty about Cade and his motivations is what makes it so great to read. It keeps you on the edge of your seat wondering what is going on with him and if the Sith have enough guile to truly turn him. Not only did I like it, I am eagerly waiting to see more!