History Literature / Shatterpoint

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: As was established in ''Attack of the clones'', the Jedi's ability to use the Force remains diminished since the start of the Clone Wars. The Council still has not informed the Senate or Chancellor of this (and Yoda gets angry when Mace nearly reveals it out in the open while meeting with Palpatine).

* TooCleverByHalf: [[spoiler: Geptun. While he manipulates and outmaneuvers Mace for most of the novel, that same cleverness ends up biting him in the ass during the final assault on Pelek Baw. While issuing his ultimatum to Mace, Geptun allows the Jedi to 'trace' his signal to the nearby Ministry of Justice. It's most certainly a trap...and it doesn't work, because Mace by now has the measure of Geptun and his style. Mace correctly concludes he's being suckered -- and he likewise correctly deduces Geptun's ''real'' location based on facts the Colonel accidentally let slip during their first conversation weeks earlier.]]

-->--'''Mace Windu'''

* MotiveMisidentification: After bribing Colonel Geptun to cut him loose, Mace runs into a pack of mercenaries. When he tries to defend himself, he finds his lightsaber's running on empty. Mace thinks Geptun was trying to cover up the bribe by leaving him defenseless for the kill. [[spoiler: He doesn't realize until later that Geptun had no knowledge of the attack. The lightsaber being depleted was actually a result of his techs analyzing its energy signature -- thereby allowing Geptun to track Mace all the way to the ULF's base.]]

* OnceMoreWithClarity: An interesting variation occurs when Mace [[spoiler: activates his lightsaber at the Lorshan Pass. He's suddenly assaulted with Force images of shatterpoints. He follows the Force's threads, which take him back towards earlier events during the journey to the Lorshan Pass... and allows him (and the reader) to grasp the truth behind innocuous details that he didn't notice at the time.]]

* TooCleverByHalf: [[spoiler: Geptun. While he manipulates and outmaneuvers Mace for most of the novel, that same cleverness ends up biting him in the ass during the final assault on Pelek Baw. While issuing his ultimatum to Mace, Geptun allows the Jedi to 'trace' his signal to the nearby Ministry of Justice. It's most certainly a trap...and it doesn't work, because Mace by now has the measure of Geptun and his style. Mace correctly concludes he's being suckered -- and he likewise correcltly deduces Geptun's ''real'' location based on facts the Colonel accidentally let slip during their first conversation weeks earlier.]]

* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker: The Korunnai (except for Nick, who has a better grasp of Basic) place the subject of a sentence at the end. When speaking the native tongue, Mace does the same.

--->"His expression might have been a smile if there had been the faintest hint of warmth in his eyes."

* TheUnSmile: Smiling is not one of Mace's talents. He tries when Yoda starts talking about how skilled a Jedi Depa Billaba is.
--> "She'd better be." Mace tried to smile. "I trained her."\\

* StockShticks: The Pho Ph'eahian comedian tells a customs agent that "he'd just jumped in from Kashyyyk and boy, were his legs tired". Neither Mace nor the agent find him amusing.

* CurbStompBattle: At the beginning of the novel, two corrupt cops try to take on Mace hand to hand. It ends how you would expect.

* FullFrontalAssault: Mace is a Jedi and an incredibly experienced warrior, so he doesn't have hang-ups about being unclothed in public. He specifically notes that from a tactical standpoint, species acclimated to wearing clothes feel vulnerable when caught naked -- particularly humans. Two {{dirty cop}}s are taking advantage of this fact in the spaceport at Haruun Kal to rob travelers, and end up BullyingADragon in Mace.

* CurbStompBattle: Windu versus Vastor in the novel's climax. Kar is younger, faster, and stronger and has already beaten Mace once in a straight fight while Mace is exhausted, badly wounded, and devastated by the day's events. [[spoiler:He beats Kar in a matter of seconds by Force gripping and throwing a discarded vibroshield and letting Kar's instinctive defense against that attack work against him.]]

* BodyHorror: Fever wasps, which reproduce by infesting the central nervous systems of chordates with their larvae via a sting no more noticeable than a mosquito bite. That is, until they hatch and start slowly chewing their way through all that tender nerve tissue, causing violent dementia and ultimately death. They only leave the body when there's no more nerves to eat, leaving the skull as empty as an eggshell. The treatment isn't much better; a powerful enough Force user can persuade them to burrow ''out'' of a victim's spine with minimal damage, but then you've got about half a kilo of flesh-eating worms to dispose of. This is why a Force user native to Haruun Kal is desirable; a pure Light Side user would be unable to kill them, a Dark Side user would likely just kill the patient, while a nature-driven native in sync with the HungryJungle's cycle of life and death can just direct the nasty little things to crawl into a fire.

* IAmWhatIAm: Mace makes a breakthrough of this sort during the climax. [[spoiler:He realizes that excessive wariness of the Dark Side of the Force is ''also'' a dangerous kind of fear: true mastery of the Light Side of the Force and especially his own Vaapad fighting style requires him to ''accept'' his own imperfections as part of the package of being human, rather than fearing failure or that he might fall to the Dark Side.]]

* AcceptableProfessionalTargets: Mace has a very low opinion of politicians, and once tells a DirtyCop that the officer would have made a good Republic senator.

** Reading the ULF squad through the Force lets Mace see their deeper personailty traits, like Nick's devil-may-care attitude and cavalier regard for his comrades' lives being a defense mechanism to minimize the pain when they inevitably die.