I think there was something in there that justifies the infamous number of Jedi in the various novels who survived the Empire's pogrom, and also the lampshades the impossibility of so many Jedi being assassinated successfully all at once with only Obi-Wan and Yoda surviving. According to book I read, Vader was all keen to hunt them down and wipe out every last Jedi, only for the Emperor to laugh it off and point out that THEY were in charge of the Galaxy and the Jedi were reduced to outlaws in hiding, so who cares if they managed to survive. The Sith philosophy or something mandated them proving themselves against any Jedi who stuck their necks out to challenge their rule, and beyond that, they got to win and gloat about it. This kind of fits with the usual tropes about villains who delay the hero's execution so they can gloat, because the Sith are pretty much a religion of Evil, and thus it makes sense that they would need to allow their enemies to survive in squalor somewhere to increase their anguish.

I love explanations of stuff like this, because it seems like the two main purposes of the internet are porn and proving that the average fan is smarter than George Lucas, by way of triumphantly pointing out plot holes, most of which center around how stupid the Empire/Sith were in hindsight. My contrarian streak motivates me to defend a bunch of highly entertaining movies, which were targeted mainly for CHILDREN. No one complains about the plotholes of Disney movies, despite far more blatant efforts on their parts to throw in wink-wink adult-accessible stuff, so why does Star Wars get so much grief when Lucas isn't even trying to make an airtight mythology, just tell fairy tales in space?

Sure explanations like Luceno's aren't necessarily the answers that Lucas would give if he gave enough of a crap about the fans to try justifying his creation, but the point is, he made it sold enough to engage the imaginations of people who are capable of seeing how and why there are reasonable explanations for the supposed holes.

I have this book, and it is a couple down on my reading list, so this review makes me all the more eager to get to it (and since so many of the books ahead of it are political/economic, and I'm a bit tapped after CPAC, I might just skip them for some recreational reading).