Note: While the below text represents a brief review of this specific Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear entry, a greater retrospective on the entire series, complete with images and footnotes, can be found here on my site, dendrobibliography.

Army of Terror wraps up the six-novella Project Starscream story arc -- and goes to some of the series' darkest places in the process.

The whole story feels climactic. John Whitman goes out all on the cameos, bringing both the original gang -- Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie -- and Darth Vader back for the whole ride. (It's fun to have some of the most popular and recognizable characters around, but in such a short story, their parts are still largely recognizable one-liners and attitudes.) After heroes Tash, Zak, Hoole, and DV-9 foiled five of the major Project Starscream experiments, Hoole takes us to Project Starscream's homebase.

Project Starscream was conceived on a barren wasteland: A once-prosperous planet whose entire living populations were wiped out by the Empire long before the Death Star met Alderaan. It's nothing but solid igneous rock now, and a few facilities devoted to Boborygmus Gog's experiments.

Planetary defenses lead Hoole and his family on a crash course, and what they find on the planet's surface surprises everyone: A mass of writhing, screaming shadows -- all that's left of the planet's original inhabitants --, a baby boy named Eppon that's aging at an alarming rate, and the secrets to Hoole's past.

Hoole was once part of the Empire's scientific research department and worked alongside Boborygmus Gog, to the extent that he was even partially responsible for wiping out every living thing on the planet they're currently on. The inhabitants' agonized shadows exist only for retribution; even Tash and Zak are hesitant to rescue Hoole, wondering if he deserves to die. It's a shockingly dark turn for the series.

## Neither of them spoke. Neither of them wanted to admit the horrible truth going through both their minds: they weren't sure they wanted to save Hoole.

Eppon is really the final stage of Project Starscream; a hybrid combination of all five previous experiments from the five preceding books. (Except, it turns out, the force experiment of Ghost of the Jedi, which failed utterly at harnessing force power.) On top of Eppon, Darth Vader, an army of imperial forces, and Boborygmus Gog have all converged on the planet to stop the lovable rebels and harness Starscream's remnants for greater uses.

It's non-stop action start to finish, with some of the series' strongest character development coming to fruition. (Tash finally uses her force powers for more than just having premonitions!) The writing carries holes and sloppy editing, two negative trademarks for the series, but I still feel like the devotion to growing the characters over these six books has been really well-done. With the Project Starscream plot complete, and the evil scientist Boborygmus Gog finally out of the series -- and his death is absolutely horrific -- I only wonder if the next six books will lose focus without the overarching plot, or be better for it. In all honestly, Project Starscream and its goals never really made much sense.

John Whitman's Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear (1997–1998):
#5 Ghost of the Jedi | #7 The Brain Spiders ( )

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