I've only read partway through Golden's second Voyager Relaunch novel so I can't really critique her writing.
I did want to put my two cents in about LOTF though. Mainly because my experience with LOTF will prevent me from buying Fate of the Jedi.
I liked the first five books of LOTF. I think those handled Jacen's fall pretty well and did a good job of fleshing out Ben and making him an interesting character. I didn't mind them killing off Mara, but I think that Jacen should've been a little more dominant in the fight. He barely won it. I also don't know where the name Caedus came from in-universe. I thought it would've been better for Lumiya to give him that name instead of him pulling it out of the ether.
Inferno was the turning point in the series. Though it had some great scenes-Luke v. Caedus, the burning of Kashyyk (sp), this is where Jacen's character arc took a downturn into Snidley Whiplash territory. The reason he turned in Betrayal was to prevent a future in which he kills Luke, but here he doesn't mind killing Luke at all. In the later books, he really becomes an inconsistent, deranged character that's not all that compelling or terrifying despite how much the writers tell us how dangerous and powerful he is. One of the main problems with Caedus was the writers spent too much time telling and not showing.
With Vader and Palpatine their evil was displayed by their actions. Caedus was supposed to be a great swordsman, more deadly than Vader but yet he gets handled by Luke twice, defeats Katarn (but the writers cheat and let him escape alive with a lightsaber chest wound), and several Jedi, but only kills one. In his fight with Jaina, he loses an arm in the first time and then she kills him in the second. He ended up being a joke.
Tahiri was also mishandled. In an earlier book, Jacen dismisses her as weak, but then turns around and makes her his apprentice? That didn't make sense. The reasons for her fall also were weak. She couldn't get over Anakin, but the man had been dead for over a decade by that point. I understand that sometimes people never get over loved ones, but I would've had her fall do more with her imprinted Yuuzhan Vong personality and her struggles to reconcile with it than making her look lovesick and some easily malleable.
We also didn't see much Sith training or anything beyond 'battle meditation' which I think the Jedi have too, and of course some Sith lightning.
I also think that the Solos gave up too quickly on him. Yes, in Invincible Denning did write of some reluctance on their part, but it just felt wrong to me that Luke, Leia, and Han would give up on Jacen despite all the things he had done. There should have at least been one of them willing to advocate redeeming him and not backed away from that.
The civil war was a retread of the Clone Wars, but less interesting, and largely pushed to the side. We didn't know what happened to Niathal and they put Daala in charge in a WTF decision at the end of Invincible. It just seemed careless and sloppy. Similar to Jacen's depiction. It was like they were going for a Sidious/Vader mix, instead of developing Jacen as a thoroughly interesting and chilling Sith Lord in his own right.
I also think the series erred in making it about Jacen's fall and not enough about Jaina taking on the mantle of Sword of the Jedi. She was pushed to the side in the first part of the series and then brought back to the forefront all of a sudden probably because the writers thought Ben was too young to kill Caedus. I think LOTF should've run a dual track, with Jacen and Jaina as the main characters, not Ben and Jacen.
The Mandalorians were injected into this series, at times painfully. Sometimes Traviss's books would just grind to a halt as I struggled to get past the Mandos. When Traviss spent the last 50 or 60 pages of the book on them instead of Jacen in Revelation-the big penultimate book about his reveal, you know some priorities were out of wack. Even how they handled his reveal was lame. He pretty much just told people, like Shevu as if he was looking for validation. It was pathetic.
I enjoyed the Darth Bane books, the NJO books I read, many of the Clone War novels, many of the comics, and half of the LOTF, but the series seemed to have lost its way far too quickly. Perhaps the rotating author thing was the problem, I don't know. I think they should've plotted it out better personally.
I'll be reading this series, despite the fact that it's all hardcovers.
