My honest, humble, and not-objective-at-all opinion about DARTH MAUL : SHADOW HUNTER
DARTH MAUL : SHADOW HUNTER by Michael Reaves, published in 2001 (Legends)
Real quick plot summary : Darth Maul has to hunt a padawan and a man through Coruscant before they can tell anyone what they learnt about the Siths.
I'll start with a little digression to explain how I feel with canon/legend books because I pretty much agree with what @morannon said on my first review. I don't really care if a book is legend but I know for experience some people new to Star Wars books are reluctant to dive into legends because they don't want to get lost in different timelines, and that's fine to me.
Unless a book scream to me « I'M NOT CANON ANYMOOOORE » (like, you know, Leia and Han having a son named Anakin), I'll still consider it being canon.
That's the case of Shadow Hunter, it might as well be canon.
That being said, what did I thought of Shadow Hunter ? I won't keep the suspense 'till the end of the review : I didn't like it as I liked Lockdown. To be honest, I haven't read it since a while and it didn't left me a vivid memory. It was kind of a let down because after reading Lockdown, I was hoping for another book about Maul and cleary that's not what it's about.
You'll have some Maul's points of view, but they won't be as interesting as they were in Lockdown, not as equivoval. He's the bad guy, he's cold, angry, inflexible and... that's pretty much all you'll see of him.
The story is more about the padawan, Darsha Assant, and the man she's going to be fleeing with, Lorn Pavan. It might not be a problem for some people, you might enjoy the book more than I did, that's just not what I expected from a book advertised on Maul.
The book has still interesting things to tell us. I loved exploring the dark alleys and the slums of Coruscant, that's not something we see a lot in the more popular Star Wars contents (and by that I mean the films and the series).
Lorn's point of view is really unusual too : at least we get to know what's in the mind of someone whose child was taken away by the Jedi ! (spoiler alert I guess?) A man whose only option to see his son again was to work in the Jedi temple as a janitor. He's bitter and his relation with the padawan Darsha is one of the big plus of the story. His droid was kinda fun too, maybe one of the only sources of humour in the book.
But sometimes the book seemed almost... goofy to me ? Darsha's master, a seasoned Jedi is killed by... birds ? He just fall to his death after being attacked by some birds ?
And the way Darsha and Lorn keep escaping Maul's attempts to kill them are, by the end of the book, too repetitive. The book is 332 pages long and I can't help but thing it's, like, 80 pages longer than it should have be ? Maybe even 100 ? At the end I was just « Uggh, kill them already ! »
And that brings me to the biggest problem I had with the book. In my last review I talked about the importance of keeping suspense in a licensed book. Shadow Hunter didn't managed to keep it, in my opinion. It might just be me, but I knew that, by the end of the book, Darsha and Lorn would be dead and their secret burried with them, simply because it was the only way The Phantom Menace could be what is it, that is « The revelation that the Sith still exist and are menacing the peace in the galaxy ».
Hence the constant feeling that everything the heroes are doing is pointless.
Darsha wasn't a really intersting character to me. I can't even say why because I don't remember, but don't remembering it means I didn't really care.
So, if I had to resume my not-so-good opinion on Maul : Shadow Hunter ?
PRO :
- learning what it feels like to have your kid taken away by the Jedi
- visiting some of the darkest places of Coruscant
CON :
- no suspense causing no implication in the main characters's stories
- not learning anything really new about Maul (damn, his name is in the title and his face of the cover!)
TO CONCLUDE :
Not a bad Star Wars book overall, not badly written, but not as interesting as I was hoping it would be. Not a waste of time but definitevely skippable if you have little time to read and want to focus on the best books.
I might have been a little harsh on Shadow Hunter but after reading Lockdown I had really high expectations and that's probably what killed the book for me so... that's a really biased and, you know it, not-objective-at-all opinion.
I might read it again in the following months if I find time, I'll let you know if my opinion changed, now that I know what to expect from it :)
Oh, because it has to be said : I'm sorry in advance but don't expect me to publish super often or regulary. I'm an easily stressed person and this blog is just to have fun so I don't want it to become an obligation. I don't write reviews on sudden impulses, I keep them in my head during a few days, nurturing them, then I write them a first time, get a bit through the book to see if something pop into my mind, think about them at least one day more to make sure I said what I had to, and read them a last time before publishing it. That's a slow process and I don't want it to be rushed.
But be sure I'm very grateful for all your reactions and comments, and always open to criticism :)
Tagging @Maulieber because, well, Maul ;)