The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force

The Unifying Force is the final novel of the New Jedi Order series. Its hardcover version was released on November 4, 2003. A CD-ROM was included with the hardcover release, which contained the eBook version of Vector Prime. The paperback included the Star Wars: New Jedi Order Round-Robin Interview.

Editions

 * ISBN 0345428528; November 4, 2003, Del Rey, 529-page hardcover
 * ISBN 0553713701; November 4, 2003, Random House Audio, Abridged CD
 * ISBN 0345428536; August 3, 2004, Del Rey, 576-page paperback
 * ISBN 8324124276; Amber, 596-page Polish paperback
 * ISBN 0099410524; 2004, Arrow Books Ltd., 576-page UK paperback

Back cover
'''Triumph or obliteration? For the New Jedi Order and the unrelenting Yuuzhan Vong, it will be the last, epic battle&mdash;the ultimate fight that will decide the fate of the universe...'''

Internal flap
''The Galactic Alliance's hard-won success in combating the extragalactic Yuuzhan Vong has proven all too brief&mdash;and the tide has turned again to the invader's advantage. The Yuuzhan Vong, having overcome the strategies of the Jedi and their allies, have pushed deeper into the galaxy and conquered more worlds. Coruscant has been remade into the capital of the extragalactic aliens and renamed Yuuzhan'tar. The remaining defenders of the galaxy are struggling to form a united front. Luke, Mara and Jacen are missing in action. Clearly the stage is set for endgame.''

''While Han and Leia receive the horrifying news that hundreds of high-ranking Alliance prisoners face death in a sacrifice to the alien invader's bloodthirsty gods, Luke and his team try to persuade Zonama Sekot to help in the war effort. Yet as they speak, the Alliance capital world Mon Calamari is under attack.''

''At the same time, the Jedi's alliances throughout the galaxy are being tested and the chances of an Alliance victory are being jeopardized by rogue factions determined to deploy the lethal Alpha Red that will exterminate the entire Yuuzhan Vong species. Also among the Yuuzhan Vong, there is a threat of revolt by the oppressed lower classes of their society. Oppressed Shamed Ones and high-ranking officials alike fear that their Supreme Overlord Shimrra's actions will provoke the wrath of their gods. Ultimately, for both opposing forces, too much has been sacrificed and too much is at stake. And now, the final battle between the Yuuzhan Vong and the Galactic Alliance.''

Paperback
In the spectacular finale of the New Jedi Order series, Luke, Han, and Leia rally for their last stand against the enemy that threatens not only the galaxy but the Force itself.

''The Galactic Alliance's hard-won success in countering the extragalactic Yuuzhan Vong onslaught has proven all too brief&mdash;and the tide has turned more to the invaders' advantage. The marauding aliens have pushed deeper into the galaxy in their ruthless quest for domination. The remnants of the resistance are struggling to form a united front. Clearly the stage is set for endgame.''

''Now, as Luke and his team try desperately to convince the living world of Zonama Sekot to join the Jedi's final campaign against the Yuuzhan Vong, a lone space station is all that stands between Alliance headquarters and ferocious enemy forces, which are poised to wage their most decisive assault. For both sides, too much has been sacrificed&mdash;and too much is at stake&mdash;to ever turn back. And now nothing can stand in the way of seizing victory...or facing annihilation.''

Plot summary
Prior to the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar that occurs in the novel, a series of events and other battles lead up to Supreme Overlord Shimrra's ultimate downfall, such as the Battle of Selvaris, the Battle of Caluula, the Battle of Corulag and the Battle of Dac. And as for the characters whom are on the living planet of Zonama Sekot since the events of the previous novel, which is still in transit in hyperspace, they recover Harrar, who was thought to be dead in his fight with the treacherous Nom Anor. They also realize that Zonama Sekot is actually the seed of the Yuuzhan Vong home planet, the original Yuuzhan'tar. When the Yuuzhan Vong's violent ways came to notice of their home planet, they were stripped of their Force sensitivity so they would never be detected or be able to contact the Force ever again. This was among one of the reasons that the Yuuzhan Vong had held pain in such high regard to their religion, because, when they were cut off off from the Force, they realized that the only other form of symbiosis that they could achieve was an embrace of pain and death. Meanwhile, Nom Anor is accepted back into Vong society and is promoted to the rank of Prefect, his ultimate goal in life, by Shimrra under the mistaken belief that Anor had killed Zonama Sekot.

Eventually, Sekot arrives in the Coruscant system, coinciding with Nom Anor's false prophecy to the Shamed Ones' Jedi heresy as it appears in the Vong capital's skies. This not only distorts the Yuuzhan Vong social hierarchy and causes joy in the Shamed Ones for bringing their rulers down, but it causes Shimrra to go insane, as Nom Anor sees. Realizing that Shimrra and his order will be brought down, Anor returns to his guise as Yu'shaa and fights alongside the Shamed Ones against those who are still loyal to Shimrra as the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar begins. And while the Galactic Alliance forces battle the Yuuzhan Vong in space, on Yuuzhan'tar and at Zonama Sekot, Harrar, Han and Leia Organa Solo lead a mission to either convince the World Brain to cease its efforts of trying to destroy Yuuzhan'tar, as ordered by Shimrra, or kill it. But they are then captured by High Prefect Drathul and his forces take Han, Leia, Harrar, C-3PO, R2-D2, Cakhmaim and Meewalh to be executed at the World Brain itself as a sacrifice. Meanwhile, Mara Jade Skywalker, Kenth Hamner and Tahiri Veila fight alongside the Shamed Ones against Shimrra's forces, and Tahiri comes into contact with Nom Anor. She captures him and holds him for Mara to come over so that Mara can see it her way as to how he should be punished for all of the wrong he has done throughout the war. However, Anor evades Tahiri's grasp and tries to escape, but Mara chases him down to an abandoned building. After a brief fight between Mara and Anor, Mara defeats him and nearly kills him for giving her the coomb spore virus years earlier and for all the other misdeeds he has given the Jedi and the late New Republic during the war. But Anor pleads for mercy, and though Mara doesn't believe his claims that he has changed since he became Yu'shaa, she spares him for other people to decide his fate after the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar. He also tells her that Shimrra has ordered an Alpha Red-infected Vong ship, transferred from Caluula, to Zonama Sekot, because since Sekot's biology is closely related to the Vong's own biology, it can kill the living planet. So they ally with the Shamed Ones to save Han, Leia and Harrar from being executed and subsequently try to warn Galactic Alliance forces about the Yuuzhan Vong's attempts at destroying Sekot. Drathul's forces are overwhelmed, even by traditional warriors whom have seen the error of Shimrra's ways, while Drathul himself is strangled to death by Anor, being that they were personal enemies. The World Brain is convinced to cease its functions of causing anomolies on Yuuzhan'tar by Jacen Solo's telepathic connection to it, after he had beaten back Shimrra's own commands over the World Brain.

While the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar still rages, Luke Skywalker, Jacen and his sister enter Shimrra's Citadel to kill him and bring the end of the war with his death on the Galactic Alliance's victory. Shimrra is joined with several genetically modified warriors called Slayers, whom were created for the sole purpose of killing Jedi, to duel Luke, Jacen and Jaina. But in the end, the Slayers are all killed and after Shimrra poisons Luke with his amphistaff, Luke decapitates him with both his lightsaber and the lightsaber of his late nephew, Anakin, which Shimrra tried to use against Luke. But, as Jaina follows Shimrra's Shamed familiar, Onimi, into Shimrra's evacuation ship, he knocks her out and chains her up in between statues of Vong deities, revealing that he was actually the real Supreme Overlord of the Yuuzhan Vong. He explains that he was once a Shaper who tried to fuse himself with a yammosk after discovering that there was no eighth cortex, and became a Shamed One. However, he found that he could touch the Force, and used it to manipulate Shimrra via hypnotization into becoming Supreme Overlord of the Yuuzhan Vong from the Intendent caste.

As the ship leaves, Jacen, Han, Leia and Nom Anor board the ship as well. Jacen confronts Onimi and they battle using the Force, with Jacen emerging as the victor and realizing that the voice who told him to "stand firm" on Duro was that of his late grandfather, Anakin Skywalker. When Han, Leia and Nom Anor see Jacen's victory, they find that he has aged much older by five years, erasing any trace of his childhood and Onimi has been shapen properly again. But then he dies off from his duel with Jacen, and disappears as a pool of foul hydrocarbons. This is because when Jacen cured Onimi of being Shamed in his defeat, he could not handle the toxic poisons that he tried to use as weapons inside his own body against Jacen, which the latter easily repelled because of his achieving oneness with the Force, making him too powerful for Onimi to counter. This heralds Onimi's end, the death of the real Supreme Overlord of the Yuuzhan Vong, as the yorik coral deck of the ship simply absorbs his liquid remnants into itself. After Jacen saves Jaina, Nom Anor tries to kill the Solos for the misdeeds they've given him by tricking them into going into a garbage chute, making them think, initially, it was an escape pod, but because of Jacen's Vongsense, he detects Anor's treachery and prevents the deaths of his family and of himself by providing this information to all those present. Anor desperately tries one last attempt to escape them by using his plaeryin bol to shoot poison out at Jacen and use a device, disguised as a finger, to escape. But Jacen uses a Force technique taught to him by the late Vergere on rendering Nom Anor's poison barren in terms of its intended effects to transform it into water, thereby saving himself. Leia also cuts off the hand from which Anor pulled the device with her lightsaber, and he is defeated. After Jacen tells him that it didn't have to be this with way, Anor proclaims that it did, because he fit in neither the native galactic society for his manipulation and treachery or the Yuuzhan Vong for his cowardice and selfishness against them. Regardless, he is offered, by Han, to escape the dying ship when the Solos reach the real escape pod, as the ship has been weakening since Onimi's death thanks to the connection that he had with it. But Anor finds that the Yuuzhan Vong have lost the war and he doesn't want to have any part of what is to come, considering that the proclamation he made after getting his hand cut off by Leia, and that he and Onimi were similar in that they were both heretics. So he pushes Han aboard the escape pod with his family, and Anor leaves himself aboard the dying evacuation ship as it explodes above Yuuzhan'tar, ending his life as the Solos survive in the pod, shooting back towards the Millennium Falcon that already has the dying Luke and Mara aboard. Jacen uses his tears to heal Luke and he recovers from Shimrra's amphistaff poison. The Solos and Skywalkers reunite in a bittersweet embrace, glad that the war is finally over while C-3PO and R2-D2 watch on in envy over what joy living beings must feel in times like this.

Following Shimrra's death, Harrar announced to the Shamed Ones that the Overlord is dead, enhancing their joy and triumph in toppling Shimrra's order. Meanwhile, when Warmaster Nas Choka saw Shimrra's evacuation ship explode above Yuuzhan'tar, he knew that the Supreme Overlord died with it (which is technically true, since Onimi was the one who really lead the Vong into the war). Seeing that the Vong have lost, under the belief that the Vong have lost Shimrra as the species' conduit to their gods and that their deities have turned against them, Choka orders all forces in the galaxy to either surrender to the Galactic Alliance or commit suicide, officially heralding the war's end. As for the Alpha Red-infected ship, Zonama Sekot manages to destroy it before the ship could even touch the surface of the living world, similar to the fate of the rest of Alpha Red as the Galactic Alliance destroys all remaining samples, considering that it is no longer needed. And after the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar, Choka makes a deal with the Galactic Alliance in the Sekot Accords; they will be spared, despite the invasion they caused that resulted in 365 trillion deaths, and be brought to Zonama Sekot, the seed of the original Yuuzhan'tar, when Choka and his remaining obedient forces agree to collect all other remaining Vong forces in the galaxy for Sekot, especially those who haven't heeded Choka's announcement that the war has ended. When that is done, the living planet travels into hyperspace with the Vong, and disappears back into the Unknown Regions so that the Vong will be safe from the vengeful Bothans, who still have their ar'krai declared against the Yuuzhan Vong. On Sekot, the Vong will learn the meaning of peace and regain their connection to the Force. Joining Sekot and the Yuuzhan Vong are Danni Quee and Tahiri as well as others. Luke then announces that coinciding with the war's end is the beginning of the New Jedi Order's newfound belief that the Jedi's best way to serve the Force is to act accordingly to their consciences, as is under Zonama Sekot's belief of the Potentium, or the Unifying Force, and stay out of the affairs of the Galactic Alliance in the post-war galaxy. Their new Temple will be located on Ossus to prove that point. Jacen, in the aftermath of achieving oneness with the Force in his duel with Onimi, decides to go off on a journey of self-discovery through the galaxy to study numerous beliefs and theories about the Force, train under them and find out which Force belief will be the most appropriate for him to follow now that the war is over. Imperial Remnant Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, as a token of his gratitude for the Galactic Alliance helping the Remnant defeat the Yuuzhan Vong, gives Han and Leia the Alderaan painting Killik Twilight, which Han and Leia lost to Grand Admiral Thrawn years earlier when they were on a mission to Tatooine. Jaina is forced to finish her relationship with Jagged Fel because of Jagged's duties to the Chiss and Jaina's duties to the rest of the galaxy, though Jag promises that whenever he can, he will visit Jaina. The book, and the series, finishes with many of the characters, including Jacen before he leaves for his journey, going back to Kashyyyk to honour the sacrifices of many whom have died in the war, including Chewbacca and Anakin Solo, and having a feast and celebration afterward.

Behind the scenes
Nom Anor was identified as an executor in Dramatis Personae, despite the fact that he was already a prefect at the beginning of the book.

Pash Cracken was identified as a Major, while in The Final Prophecy, mere months earlier, he was identified as a General.

Harrar was identified as a High Priest, while he always held the rank Priest in previous books.

Commander Czulkang Lah was retconned as a Supreme Commander.

The Jedi Masters were referred to as members of the Galactic Alliance Advisory Council, while they should be the members of the High Council.

Boba Fett returned and fought side by side with Han Solo for the first time.

Gilad Pellaeon mentioned that the Bastion Accords were signed five years earlier, while in fact the event had been ten years earlier.

Leia's Killik Twilight made its first real-world appearance since Tatooine Ghost.

There are several references to Shakespeare's "Macbeth." Two notable references are when Shimrra refers to three women as "black midnight hags" and when Onimi asks Nom Anor if he thought "we three would meet again."

A reference is made to one of Mark Twain's famous quotes near the end of chapter 13 when Nom Anor is on his way to speak to the heretics. He reassures the Shamed Ones that, "The rumours of my death were greatly exaggerated."

Ebaq 9 is sometimes referred to as "Ebaq Nine"

There is a reference to Dewlannamapia being at Chewbacca's funeral, but she had died over 30 years before.

Soron Hegerty is markedly absent, even though she was present on Zonama Sekot at the time of its jump to hyperspace and should have been trapped on the planet with the rest of the group.

Cover gallery
This is a gallery of the different cover variations of The Unifying Force.