All right, Mary Sue may not be the right designation given the fact that he ultimately does biff it pretty hard. But I found it pretty obnoxious that Stackpole’s original character, who up to that point didn’t show up anywhere outside his own books except for a pretty minor role in Zahn’s Hand of Thrawn, is painted as this all-around cool guy who rules the school on Yavin, is best friends with Luke Skywalker (seemingly out of nowhere if you haven’t read Stackpole’s other stuff), has comebacks and zingers snappier than Han’s, and is the one who takes on the high stakes single combat at the end. These were my first Stackpole books, and not being terribly familiar with the character, my constant thought was “who the hell is this guy that this book clearly thinks I care deeply about already for some reason?”. It felt like Stackpole derailed the whole thing just to make it about his guy.