Action & Adventure
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The Krytos Trap: Star Wars Legends (Rogue Squadron) (Star Wars: Rogue Squadron- Legends)
The brave pilots of Rogue Squadron face the impossible as the sinister Ysanne Isard wreaks havoc on a fragile Coruscant.
The Rebels have taken the Imperial headquarters world of Coruscant, but their problems are far from over.
A killer virus called Krytos is spreading among the population and fomenting a counterrevolution at the heart of the New Republic. At the same time, Rebel hero Tycho Celchu is on trial for treason, accused of murdering his comrade and fellow pilot Corran Horn.
Corran, however, is still alive, trapped in the secret, inescapable prison of Ysanne Isard, the imperial officer whose reputation for torture and cruelty have earned her the moniker Iceheart. As he fights for his freedom, the pilot discovers an extraordinary power in himself-the power of the Force!
The Rebels have taken the Imperial headquarters world of Coruscant, but their problems are far from over.
A killer virus called Krytos is spreading among the population and fomenting a counterrevolution at the heart of the New Republic. At the same time, Rebel hero Tycho Celchu is on trial for treason, accused of murdering his comrade and fellow pilot Corran Horn.
Corran, however, is still alive, trapped in the secret, inescapable prison of Ysanne Isard, the imperial officer whose reputation for torture and cruelty have earned her the moniker Iceheart. As he fights for his freedom, the pilot discovers an extraordinary power in himself-the power of the Force!
Readers Top Reviews
Kindle Nathan Mjohn
Of the X-Wing series this one has both some of the most important moments and is the slowest to progress. This book brings forth all the things that make the next books exciting, but at the same time is slow and often tedious, and two of the main plot lines actually end with "and we knew all along it wasn't you!" This book is a bridge between the Taking of Coruscant arc and the Warlords of the Empire arc, therefore necessary for the series, but it takes some determination to keep your interest.
Michael E. FarrellJe
Standard entry by Stackpole in the Rogue Squadron Series. Even allowing for Corran Horn's latent talent in the force, his escape from Lusankya seemd easier than it should have. Corran's discovery of his family's Jedi heritage seems like a set up for future adventures in the Corran Horn story line. The rest of the story seems mostly a set up for the next book, The Bacta War, which I am acually looking forward to, based on the first 2 books of the story.
SomeGuyOn
I'm roughly two-thirds done with the book, and as with Rogue Squadron and Wedge's Gamble, the book has been enjoyable. During the dogfights, I find that Mr. Stackpole gets a little too much into the technical details of describing the fights, but at the same time, it's somewhat required of those sorts of scenes. The most disappointing thing when reading this book is that I'm reading the Kindle version and the OCR scan (optical character recognition) was not run through any sort of spell check or editing process. There were a few in the first two books of the series, but this one is just loaded down, really burdened by them, taking me out of the story to try and decipher what was originally written. I'm sure it's too late now for the publisher to spend the time and money on such a thing, but it's something that should be done for any future Kindle releases of books originally produced prior to eReaders.
SomeGuyOn Michael
I am reading the X-Wing series in order and "Krytos Trap" is easily the best of the series so far. It is a huge improvement over "Rogue Squadron" and much better than "Wedge's Gamble." Dogfights take a back seat as plot development becomes more central. Here, we finally see more character development, a more believable storyline, better dialogue. I spent most of the book wondering what would happen to Tycho and how was Corran going to escape . . . and I cared! I still don't understand why people think Kirtan Loor is such a villain. He's more a buffoon now than ever before -- motivated only by self-preservation, not by some grand, evil scheme. In such a role, he plays it well. Although I've been told this book is part of a tetrology, "Krytos Trap" could easily be the end of a trilogy. I am not left dangling off a ledge, but there is more left that could be told. If "Rogue Squadron" did not impress you, hang in there! It does get better.
Short Excerpt Teaser
High up in a tower suite, up above the surface of Imperial Center, Kirtan Loor allowed himself a smile. At the tower's pinnacle, the only companions were hawk-bats safe in their shadowed roosts and Special Intelligence operatives who were menacing despite their lack of stormtrooper armor or bulk. He felt alone and aloof, but those sensations came naturally with his sense of superiority. At the top of the world, he had been given all he could see to command and dominate.
And destroy.
Ysanne Isard had given him the job of creating and leading a Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front. He knew she did not expect grand success from him. He had been given ample resources to make himself a nuisance. He could disrupt the functioning of the New Republic. He could slow their takeover of Coruscant and hamper their ability to master the mechanisms of galactic administration. A bother, minor but vexatious, is what Ysanne Isard had intended he become.
Kirtan Loor knew he had to become more. Years before, when he started working as an Imperial liaison officer with the Corellian Security Force on Corellia, he never would have dreamed of finding himself rising so far and playing so deadly a game. Even so, he had always been ambitious, and supremely confident in himself and his abilities. His chief asset was his memory, which allowed him to recall a plethora of facts, no matter how obscure. Once he had seen or read or heard something he could draw it from his memory, and this ability gave him a gross advantage over the criminals and bureaucrats with whom he dealt.
His reliance on his memory had also hobbled him. His prodigious feats of recall so overawed his enemies that they would naturally assume he had processed the information he possessed and had drawn the logical conclusions from it. Since they assumed he already knew what only they knew, they would tell him what he had not bothered to figure out for himself. They made it unnecessary for him to truly think, and that skill had begun to atrophy in him.
Ysanne Isard, when she summoned him to Imperial Center, had made it abundantly clear that learning to think and not to assume was the key to his continued existence. Her supervision made up in severity what it lacked in duration, putting him through a grueling regimen that rehabilitated his cognitive abilities. By the time she fled Imperial Center, Isard had clearly been confident in his ability to annoy and confound the Rebels.
More importantly, Kirtan Loor had become certain that he could do all she wanted and yet more.
From his vantage point he looked down on the distant blob of dignitaries and mourners gathered at the memorial for Corran Horn. While he despised them all for their politics, he joined them in mourning Horn's loss. Corran Horn had been Loor's nemesis. They had hated each other on Corellia, and Loor had spent a year and a half trying to hunt Corran down after he fled from Corellia. The hunt had ended when Ysanne Isard brought Loor to Imperial Center, but he had anticipated a renewal of his private little war with Horn when given the assignment to remain on Coruscant.
Of course, Corran's demise hardly made a dent in the legion of enemies Loor had on Imperial Center. Foremost among them was General Airen Cracken, the director of Alliance Intelligence. Cracken's network of spies and operatives had ultimately made the conquest of the Imperial capital possible, and his security precautions had given Imperial counterintelligence agents fits for years. Cracken--or Kraken, as some of Loor's people had taken to calling the Rebel--would be a difficult foe with whom to grapple.
Loor knew he had some other enemies who would pursue him as part of a personal vendetta. The whole of Rogue Squadron, from Antilles to the new recruits, would gladly hunt him down and kill him--including the spy in their midst since Loor presented a security risk for the spy. Even if they could not connect him with Corran's death directly, the mere fact that Corran hated him would be a burden they'd gladly accept and a debt they would attempt to discharge.
Della Wessiri was the last of the CorSec personnel Loor had hunted, and her presence on Imperial Center gave him pause. She had never been as relentless as Corran Horn in her pursuit of criminals, but that had always seemed to Loor to be because she was more thorough than Horn. Whereas Corran might muscle his way through an investigation, Della picked up on small clues and accomplished with élan what Corran did with brute strength. In the shadow game in which Loor was engaged, this meant she was a foe he might not see coming, and that made her the most dangerous of all.
Loor backed away from the window ...
And destroy.
Ysanne Isard had given him the job of creating and leading a Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front. He knew she did not expect grand success from him. He had been given ample resources to make himself a nuisance. He could disrupt the functioning of the New Republic. He could slow their takeover of Coruscant and hamper their ability to master the mechanisms of galactic administration. A bother, minor but vexatious, is what Ysanne Isard had intended he become.
Kirtan Loor knew he had to become more. Years before, when he started working as an Imperial liaison officer with the Corellian Security Force on Corellia, he never would have dreamed of finding himself rising so far and playing so deadly a game. Even so, he had always been ambitious, and supremely confident in himself and his abilities. His chief asset was his memory, which allowed him to recall a plethora of facts, no matter how obscure. Once he had seen or read or heard something he could draw it from his memory, and this ability gave him a gross advantage over the criminals and bureaucrats with whom he dealt.
His reliance on his memory had also hobbled him. His prodigious feats of recall so overawed his enemies that they would naturally assume he had processed the information he possessed and had drawn the logical conclusions from it. Since they assumed he already knew what only they knew, they would tell him what he had not bothered to figure out for himself. They made it unnecessary for him to truly think, and that skill had begun to atrophy in him.
Ysanne Isard, when she summoned him to Imperial Center, had made it abundantly clear that learning to think and not to assume was the key to his continued existence. Her supervision made up in severity what it lacked in duration, putting him through a grueling regimen that rehabilitated his cognitive abilities. By the time she fled Imperial Center, Isard had clearly been confident in his ability to annoy and confound the Rebels.
More importantly, Kirtan Loor had become certain that he could do all she wanted and yet more.
From his vantage point he looked down on the distant blob of dignitaries and mourners gathered at the memorial for Corran Horn. While he despised them all for their politics, he joined them in mourning Horn's loss. Corran Horn had been Loor's nemesis. They had hated each other on Corellia, and Loor had spent a year and a half trying to hunt Corran down after he fled from Corellia. The hunt had ended when Ysanne Isard brought Loor to Imperial Center, but he had anticipated a renewal of his private little war with Horn when given the assignment to remain on Coruscant.
Of course, Corran's demise hardly made a dent in the legion of enemies Loor had on Imperial Center. Foremost among them was General Airen Cracken, the director of Alliance Intelligence. Cracken's network of spies and operatives had ultimately made the conquest of the Imperial capital possible, and his security precautions had given Imperial counterintelligence agents fits for years. Cracken--or Kraken, as some of Loor's people had taken to calling the Rebel--would be a difficult foe with whom to grapple.
Loor knew he had some other enemies who would pursue him as part of a personal vendetta. The whole of Rogue Squadron, from Antilles to the new recruits, would gladly hunt him down and kill him--including the spy in their midst since Loor presented a security risk for the spy. Even if they could not connect him with Corran's death directly, the mere fact that Corran hated him would be a burden they'd gladly accept and a debt they would attempt to discharge.
Della Wessiri was the last of the CorSec personnel Loor had hunted, and her presence on Imperial Center gave him pause. She had never been as relentless as Corran Horn in her pursuit of criminals, but that had always seemed to Loor to be because she was more thorough than Horn. Whereas Corran might muscle his way through an investigation, Della picked up on small clues and accomplished with élan what Corran did with brute strength. In the shadow game in which Loor was engaged, this meant she was a foe he might not see coming, and that made her the most dangerous of all.
Loor backed away from the window ...
