YMMV / Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

• Complete Monster: Lord Cronal, aka "Shadowspawn" or "Blackhole", fanatically believed the only true power was that of destruction and even participated in the rape of his own daughter alongside the Prophets of the Dark Side out of fury for her using her powers of creation. Plotting to overthrow Emperor Palpatine while serving under him, Cronal declared himself the New Galactic Emperor following the latter's death and waged war on the New Republic. Embarking on a campaign of death and destruction, Cronal also kidnapped, lobotomized and mind-controlled force users to serve as backup bodies should his own fail him, seeking to do the same to Luke or Leia Skywalker. When his attempt to take Luke or Leia failed, Cronal used the kill switches implanted in his forces to send them on suicide runs while he escaped, resulting in the death of all 50,000. Cronal's nihilism set him on a campaign of death, with his goal as Emperor being to end all of existence.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Go here.
• Ho Yay: A little bit between Wes and Hobbie, of the cliché "Your lips say no, but your eyes say yes." variety. Actually, ever since a Yaoi Fangirl gave the idea to Aaron Allston (the writer who gave them the most development as characters), Wes and Hobbie have been designated as Ambiguously Gay.
• Moral Event Horizon: "Answer me this: Why is the armor of my stormtroopers black? I'll give you a hint: It's not just paint."
  • To elaborate, Cronal's troops's armor was made from meltmassif, a substance which Cronal used as a transmitter to make all his troops do a Suicide Attack on New Republic's force, which Luke had to stop.
• Nightmare Fuel: Everything associated with Shadowspawn, with the notable exception of Shadowspawn himself- but he's just a pawn anyway
• Squick: After Blackhole's plan to steal Luke's body fails, he decides to do the same thing to Leia instead
• The Woobie: Luke, particularly in the Book Ends. In that first one he's hiring an investigator to build a case of war crimes to indict him with - it horrifies him that people don't see his actions as murder, but as heroic. All through the book he does various things while telling Nick that this "isn't my best trick", and at the end he relates to Geptun that his companion had asked what that best trick was.
  "You know what I told him? I told him he'd just seen it."
  Skywalker lifted his face from his hands, and his eyes were dark. Wounded. Haunted by shadows. "My best trick is to do one thing - to make one small move, even a simple choice - and kill thousands of people. Thousands."

---