In the one excerpt from this Salvatore's novel that we have seen floating about on the Internet, Mara is dealing with this strange illness in the same way she seems to deal with everything--alone, shutting out the people who for some reason care about her. She suffers and refuses to allow anyone to even speak about it to her. To some this might seem noble, but to us it's selfish. As readers we find ourselves saying "perhaps your husband is worried for you, Mara, and he needs to assure himself you're going to be okay. Did you think about that?" Of course not.

Oh, and let's not forget that Mara seems to now be Jaina's Jedi teacher. Did you read that sentence, people? HER JEDI TEACHER. The woman who was raised seeped in the evil teachings of Palpatine, the woman who has murdered and stolen and lord knows what else to further her master's twisted desires, the woman who tried time and again to kill her (now) husband . . . THIS is the woman who Leia is allowing to train her one and only daughter? Zahn explained Mara's past away haphazardly in Vision of the Future when Luke says to Mara:

"'The point is that all the time you were serving the Emperor, you were never doing so out of selfish motives....You were serving, even if it was Palpatine and his own selfish ends. And service to others is the essence of being a Jedi....Some of the things you did were certainly wrong; but because you weren't doing them for your own purposes, the acts themselves didn't open you to the dark side.'"