The Truce at Bakura

Yesterday, the Death Star was destroyed, and Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader slain... But today is business as usual, and the Rebels have business helping the Empire. Endor is, unfortunately, the closest inhabited system to the Bakura system, which is under attack by a previously-unknown alien race called the Ssi-ruuk. Whilst there, Luke falls in love with a girl who considers him, as a user of the Force, an abomination.

Holds the distinction of being the tenth EU novel published by Bantam, being published months after The Thrawn Trilogy and The Glove of Darth Vader. It's the first set after Return of the Jedi. Along with The Thrawn Trilogy, The Truce at Bakura is often cited as being one of the best starting points for readers who want to get into the Star Wars Expanded Universe.


 * An Officer and a Gentleman: Commander Thanas.
 * Author Appeal: Kathy Tyers was raised in a fundamentalist background, so she knows about religious conflicts, such as the one between Luke and Gaeriel.
 * Balance Between Good and Evil: Gaeri's religion deals with this primarily. They believe that Force-users are evil because they aggregate too much power. (With Palpatine and Vader as examples, the Straw Man Has a Point.)
 * Distressed Pilot: ...Wedge has to be saved by Luke a lot, doesn't he?
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him: Dev Sibwarra, Luke's first almost-padawan.
 * Enemy Mine: the whole point of the Truce at Bakura is an Imperial world being threatened by alien invaders.
 * Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: The Ssi-ruuk are an Expy of raptors.
 * Fantastic Racism:
 * Bakurans hate all nonhumans, mistaking Mon Calamari for Ssi-ruuk infiltrators.
 * They also despise droids for historical reasons (malfunctioning droids on an early colony led to deaths) meaning the Ssi-ruuk entechment is particularly loathsome to them.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: Entechment.
 * Faux Action Girl: Gaeriel, who has no combat training.
 * Heel Face Revolving Door: From hating the Rebels to mistrusting them but working together to betraying them.
 * Mismatched Eyes: Gaeriel has one green eye and one brown eye.
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: Luke is able to communicate with parasitic lung worms and get them to crawl out of him.
 * Powered by a Forsaken Child: most Ssi-ruuvi tech uses Life Energy as a Power Source, which needs to be extracted from sentient creatures via the "entechment" process. (Humans provide more energy.)
 * Raised By Ssi-ruuk: Dev Sibwarra.
 * Reality Ensues: as this novel starts about 24 hours after Return of the Jedi ends, it's the first story to deal with Han and Leia's Relationship Upgrade. The road is bumpy.
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Ssi-ruuk.
 * Retcon: No doubt there will be one for why Anakin looks like Sebastian Shaw and not Hayden Christensen.
 * What's kind of funny is that the lines actually feel more natural coming from Christensen's mouth.
 * Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Ssi-ruuk are the first major example of this in the EU- but what's really scary is that horrible as they are, they aren't the scariest or most dogmatic...
 * Space Is Cold: When Wedge is hanging in space with his hand crushed, he's suffering from both blood loss and advancing hypothermia/frostbite. Of course, he was out there for some time. Long enough for Luke to dress, jump in his X-Wing, and get into orbit, at least.
 * Spell My Name with an "S": Singular: Ssi-ruu. Plural: Ssi-ruuk. Genitive: Ssi-ruuvi. Different authors get it wrong.
 * Well Done Daughter Girl: Inverted. Leia is visited by her father's spirit. She's horrified. He wants her forgiveness. She won't give it.
 * Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Leia's attitude toward her father's ghost.