My honest, humble, and not-objective-at-all opinion

Opinions are like butts, are you here to smell mine ?

[tortuerex]

My honest, humble, and not-objective-at-all opinion about LORDS OF THE SITH

LORDS OF THE SITH by Paul S. Kemp, published in 2015 (canon)

Real quick plot summary : The Free Ryloth Movement, led by Chad Syndulla, attempts a massive attack on the imperial forces, in hope of killing Darth Vader and the Emperor and strike a fatal blow to the Empire. Things didn't exactly go as planned.

I've FINALLY managed to finished the book, started weeks (months?) ago. Actually, I finished it less than 15 minutes ago. And I really enjoyed it. So why did it took me so long ? I'll go back to that point later.

First of all, let me tell you I didn't exactly found in this book what I expected to find. And in a good way. Judging by the cover and the resume, I was prepared for a book mostly about the Emperor and Vader, but I'd say approximatively half the book is about them directly. (I mean, with the exterior narrator talking about them.) The rest of the book is about Cham and his movement, the Twi'lek rebels, and his relationship with Isval. And Isval was my favorite character in the book, she was really well written and her story is so interesting. Kemp managed to bring so more life in all these secondary characters.

I'll try to be cohesive because since I've just finished the book but begun it long ago, I have to go back to my notes about the first half.

I've loved learning things about the Twi'lek's history and traditions. I finally know why some male twi'leks have sharpen teeth and not female ! (In case you don't know, well, that's tradition. But Isval sharpened hers to show she's a hunter too.)

The whole passage of the book with Isval going downtown to literaly hunt imperials and save prostitutes Twi'leks gave me goosebumps. Definitively not a thing I was expecting in a « Sith Lords » book, but it was awesome, so dark, so shady, I was feeling the unhealthy atmosphere of the district. First I was thinking « Ok, he's suggesting she's a former sexual slave and that this is the kind of district these things happen in. » And then I was like « Ok that's not suggested anymore, that's pretty explicit right now. » I didn't expect a Star Wars book to talk to me about sexual abuse and prostitution, but boy it was so strong and hard to read.

And to be honest, I'm really thankful to Kemp for not being patronizing about it. Isval is not a broken little thing, she's a warrior, she had a really bad time in her life, and now she's fighting to help other girls, and she's fueled by hate.

And about Isval, her relationship with Cham was really touching as well. We kinda see it grows before our eyes, not invading the mission nor polluting their discussions, but slowly showing more and more, from chief to subordinate, friend to friend, freedom fighter to freedom fighter, and finally acknowledging that from the very beginning, they were more than that but never had the opportunity to take their chance.

We'll talk a bit about the Sith side of the book too. It was very enjoyable. Exploring the relation between Vader and the Emperor felt like a force hand tightening your chest. The Emperor is perpetually testing Vader (and everyone else). Everything he does, everything he says, has a purpose. This man isn't tied by the mortal rules of luck and probability. Everything is planned and calculated. And Vader knows it. Every word the Emperor speak has a reason, and Vader is like « What did he mean ? » and then « Ok, that's what he meant. »

Vader having flashes of his past life, his former friends, the Clone Wars, Padmé... Every one was heartbreaking and the Emperor KNOWS it. He used them, to keep Vader hateful, to constantly remind him he's a tool of a greater force, and every sentences he said could have been finished by « So... who's the boss ? ».

He's the boss.

You can feel how strong and inflexible they are, there is so many good descriptions of their strenght and determination.

A bit about the secondary characters : I liked Belkor, he was interesting. I liked seeing how he slowly turn insane through the book, ending up talking to a corpse. He's the opposite of the Emperor, having to constantly change his plans depending on other people or just because of misfortune, being manipulated and mocked, and finally snapping out of his mind because of pressure.

Moff Mors was cool too. I would have love to learn more about her, about her past life, but the little we know about her explains perfectly who she is. I felt a little frustrated by never knowing what happen to her at the end, because I personnaly doubt the Emperor will forgive years of non-interference and laziness (damn she was supposed to handle Ryloth!). It's implicitly said she's redeeming herself, but seriously, Palps, do you even redeem bro ?

My biggest problem with this book can be resumed in one word : LYLEKS. The passage with the Emperor and Vader fighting Lyleks was way way way way too loooooooong. I really felt it like a break in the momentum. And speaking of break, I had mine at this point. Bad luck, but hard weeks of work happened at this moment in my life, I had to put the book down while reading this passage, and it was hard coming back to it. Everytime I was reopening the book and seing the Lyleks everywhere I was like « Nobody got time fo' that ». It was a real let down.

To be honest, it almost felt like this whole passage was added in the book completely artificially. Like Kemp has finished his book and the editor said « Hey man that's a cool book you wrote, but what about more Sith kung-fu fighting ? Like, maybe, 40 pages of it ? »

It felf so weird and useless compared to the rest of the book. So unnatural. And it's the only part of the book where I've found severe incoherences. Vader deigniting his lightsaber two times on the same page (without having turning it on in the meantime), and few pages later the same thing but this time with igniting it. Like this passage was rushed and hadn't been seriously reread and corrected.

This was a serious problem because as soon as I've finished the Lyleks passage, and Vader and Palps were running into the young Twi'lek girl in the forest and then heading toward her village, the tension was back again, the apprehension of what was going to happen next, and everything then come one after another very smoothly and I was trapped again in the suspense.

So WHY ? Why would you stop this so effective momentum with an endless fight when we all know the outcome of the fight ?

This being said, what would be my opinion on Lords of the Sith ?

PRO :

- So much characterization. Every character is unique, even the secondary ones. Every motivation, backstory, personnality is understandable and relatable. That's for me the strongest force of the book.

- A good story. That may sound stupid but it's not. Writing a original story in a so vast universe isn't easy. You can't just repeat things that have aleady been told in another Star Wars media, you have to be creative. In this book the stakes are high for the heroes, but may seems lower on the scale of the galaxy. The whole point is... will it be the case ?

- The suspense. Like I've already said, having appealing secondary characters is a licensed book is super important to keep the suspense. Sure, Palps, Vader and Cham won't die. But you don't know about the other ones. And you care about them. You've learnt to know them, to love them.

CON :

THE LYLEEEEEEEEKS

TO CONLUDE :

A very important book to read. Don't expect to see crazy sith things all the time like you may think you will because of the cover. You'll see some sith shits (like Vader boarding a enemy ship alone in deep space), but that's not what important (yet that's impressive, to say the least). You'll learn about Vader, how he feels, his anger, his neverending pain, you'll learn about life on Ryloth, slavery, humiliation of having your planet under imperial jurisdiction. You'll learn about imperials too, human being working for the Empire, how they feel too, their backstory, how they are not just bad guys in uniform blindly following orders.

That's a very deep book for so many reasons (except Lyleks.)

I hoped you liked this review, I'm sorry about the time it took me to write it down. I may take a break because the next book I'll read won't be a Star Wars book (but a book lended to me by a friend so I have to finished it to give it back).

With the hot days slowly returning I have hope to read more seriously in the times to come, because one thing I enjoy is reading in the sun, but as always I won't make any promises I can't keep. I still have to write some reviews for old books I've read (Dark disciple, Wrath of Darth Maul, Ahsoka...) and still got new books to read (including Bloodline), but they will come in time.

As always, take care of yourself, of your surroundings, and enjoy :) Tagging @maulpunk !

[tortuerex]

My honest, humble, and not-objective-at-all opinion about THE CLONE WARS : STORIES OF LIGHT AND DARK

THE CLONE WARS : STORIES OF LIGHT AND DARK by various authors, published in 2020 (canon)

To be really honest, this book wasn't supposed to be the next on my « to-do » list. I'm currently reading Lords of the Sith and enjoying it, and was willing to make my next review about it, but the last two weeks has been a rough time and I couldn't manage to read a single page.

So instead of making you wait longer, I'll use the Clone Wars book as a filler, because I think I can be quick on this one (I think ? Let's see how many pages I'm going to write then).

In case you're not aware, Stories and Light and Dark (let's just call it SLD) is a short stories collection about the Clone Wars, each different story being about a set of Clone Wars episodes you already know about, but from a different point of view, focusing on one character being the narrator.

If you haven't seen the Clone Wars TV show yet, this book will probably be very confusing most of the time, because clearly what's at stakes isn't the story itself but what's going on in the head of a certain character. You'll probably end up thinking « yea that was cool I learnt about what was thinking Kenobi at this point but I haven't had any idea what was going on. »

Since every story is independant and was written by a different author, I can't give you a summary of the whole book. I'll give my opinion on the book at the end of the ticket but I'll take a bit of time to say what I thought about each story first.

Get your seatbelt on because we're going to start the SLD rollercoaster now :)

SHARING THE SAME FACE by Jason Fey

Not bad but no overly interesting. The whole point is to tell us how Yoda feel about the Clones, but to be honest we don't learn really much more in the story than in the episode.

I liked how Yoda compare the Clones to children and how different from each others he make them feel, reassuring them that they are all different and they all matter for him. That was nice.

Not much more to say about it.

DOOKU CAPTURED by Lou Anders

Probably the most goofy story of the book, based of some of the goofiest episodes on the show. It's telling us from Dooku's point of view the story of how he was captured by Hondo Ohnaka and had to team up with Obi-Wan and Anakin to escape.

It was really funny to read but also really awkward (faithful to the show...), and in my head I was constantly thinking « there's no way he's going to tell all of this stuff to his master without being slowy burned by his own shame ». At the end of the story, when Dooku changes his mind and decides to delete his holorecording and never tells his master about this whole story, I was like « yas boy I would have done the same, just keep it to yourself ».

That's the kind of story that put a smile on your face but leaves you with a bit of « wtf did i just read »

HOSTAGE CRISIS by Preeti Chhibber

This story suffers from what will a major problem in others stories : telling us something we already know without sounding redundant. It's the whole «Cade Bane and his crew taking the Senate hostage » but from Anakin's pow, and... the show was already mostly on Anakin.

It wasn't bad, not gonna lie, I liked reading how Anakin was feeling about Padmé, their relationship and her job. But it was only the first pages of the story. Once the hostage-taking has begun, it's just about describing us Anakin trying to save the day (and I've seen the show, I know how it goes) and not much about how Anakin feels. Yet it could have been interesting, Anakin being under the urge of saving his wife, the stress and the anger against Bane... but I didn't feel any of that. Just a Jedi doing Jedi stuff and being the hero at the end of the day.

To me, this story is a missed opportunity to show us how the Dark Side of the Force is strong in this one.

PURSUIT OF PEACE by Anna Ursu

Before reading this story I wasn't sure about how I felt about this whole book. This was the first one allowing me to make my mind and to think I was glad I bought it.

Unpopular opinion (depending on how you feel, of course) : I'm not a fan of Padmé. I liked her in The Phantom Menace, because she's a young, fierce, and powerful girl trying to make her way as the queen of Naboo. In Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, I feel like she has been switched from « young powerful woman » to « Anakin's love interest in need of being saved ». I know that's not completely true and I know she can still make her way with a lasergun, but like a lot of female characters in stories, once she is completing her role as a love-interest, there's not much left for her except waiting for her husband at home and making children.

That being said, that's not her fault if her character was poorly written in the AotC and RotS. I feel like The Clone Wars is trying to correct it and make her a stronger character, even leading some episodes of the show.

And because this review is already longer that the other ones, I'll try to make the rest of it short : I can say I loved this story. It's about Padmé meeting her separatist friend Mina Bonteri with Ahsoka, and how she tries to stop the war.

We see how strong and determined she is, how aware she is of the mask she has to wear in public as a senator, how far she's ready to go to stop the slaughter. How hard it is to be a female senator wanting peace.

I liked that, like the matching episodes, this story isn't all black and white with bad separatists and good republicans. I liked having a glimpse at Star Wars politic too (not-so-unpopular opinion : I'm not a fan of politics either).

Over all the rest, I loved that this story made me appreciate Padmé more that before.

Big thumb up.

THE SHADOW OF UMBARA by Yoon Ha Lee

As you could guess, this is the Umbara quadrilogy episodes, and it's from Rex's pow. And my biggest disappointment of the book. I loved The Umbara quadrilogy, even though I feel like it could have been a trilogy instead because sometimes it's a bit repetitive, but I loved it.

This story is nothing more that the description of the TV show. I'd love to say « no more no less » but it won't be true, since in the show we can see the sacrifice of Hardcase. The only bit you'll get is « Rex wanted to mourn Hardcase properly, but there was no time. » That's all, case closed, move along.

Oh, and when Clones realise they were shooting each others and were fooled by Krell ? « Rex clenched his hand as Waxer took his last breath. » Not a SINGLE word about how he FEELS.

The episodes was more effective in showing us Rex's dilemma with facial expressions than this story is with words.

So this story would be better called « No more than the Umbara quadrilogy, only less ».

It made me really angry because so more could have been said. I still wonder how this story passed the quality test to make it to the final book.

BANE'S STORY by Tom Angleberger

Or, as I like to call it, « Bane's story, by Bane, with Bane as the hero »

This was sooo fun and good to read. Bane is one of my favorite Clone Wars characters and I really felt like Bane was the one telling me the story. A breath of fresh air after the Umbara failure.

It's about these episodes when Obi-Wan disguise himself as Hardeen, a bounty hunter, to foil Dooku's plan to capture Palpatine, but all from Bane's pow. And he's so sassy about it.

I could hear Bane talking directly to me, with his words and his personality. Some of my favorite sentences of the book are in this story.

When they get chased by Anakin and Ahsoka and he tells us « I always heard Jedi were supposed to be in control of their feelings, but the two crazies on our tail sure weren't in control. » and « She had two lightsabers and was swinging them around to much I thought she was going to cut off her own horns. »

Or when he met Dooku : « I hope he wasn't expecting me to kneel like Eval. That's one thing I won't do. Another is call some old man my lord just because he's got a long beard and a big house. »

And a last one that made me laugh so hard, when they're about to abduct Palpatine during his speech on Naboo : « If you ask me, listening to that old bag of wrinkles run his mount ain't no festival. If we could kidnap him before he started, the Naboolians or whatever they're called would probably give us a medal ».

That's what I wanted from this book. Episodes I already knew about but told from a new perspective. And it was such a pleasure.

THE LOST NIGHTSISTER by Zoraida Córdova

Another bet won for SLD. It's about Ventress joining the Boba crew to earn some money, by protecting a certain box on a certain train (you know what I'm talking about if you saw the Clone Wars).

Maybe not as insightful as Bane's Story (definitively not as fun, but clearly it wasn't the point), but really intersting too. It takes us into Ventress's mind after the Dathomir massacre and the despair is palpable. And while the show leaves us uncertain about why Ventress is saving Pluma, the story is very clear about it and gives us some introspection about Ventress, her sisters, her family.

It could have been a little further, but still it was really good to read. I honestly don't have much to say about it, not my favorite but I genuinely liked it.

DARK VENGEANCE by Rebecca Roanhorse

or The true story of Darth Maul and his revenge against the Jedi known as Obi-Wan Kenobi

(just to be clear, this subtitle isn't by me, it really is in the book :D )

I hated to admit it, but it was a liiiitle bit of a disappointment too, but that's just because I expected so much from it (in case that's not clear by now, Maul is my absolute favorite and I got his face tattooed on my leg okay?).

I'll focused first of what I loved from that story. Maul talking directly to the reader, as if he was talking to a child. That gives a strong feeling of power from him, good characterisation. He apologizes when his description are too bloody, justifies his slaughter of innocents, really talking like he was relating what was going on in his mind, sometimes interrupting or correcting himself. That was good. Like Bane's story, I felt like the character was adressing to me directly.

So, why the mitigated opinion, why the disappointment, you'll ask ? Maybe because the story was uneven. Sometimes I really was into Maul's mind, but sometimes it was just plain descriptions of the episodes I already saw. I may be hard on this one. I liked Maul's reactions to Kenobi teasing, how he want to crush him and make him swallow back his words.

I liked the fact that Maul sincerely, deeply, thinks the Jedi are liars and hypocrites.

I didn't really like the fact that sometimes Maul was sounding just like he was complaining. Like, you know, in Clone Wars, when someone is like « Hey Maul, how are you today ? » and he's like « MY PATH HAS BEEN SO DARK ».

… well, after all I guess it's faithful to the show :o

Don't believe everything I wrote before. This story was good, it's about Maul. Go read it.

ALMOST A JEDI by Sarah Beth Durst

About how a bunch of kids and Ahsoka escape pirates, then Grievous.

Another usually unpopular opinion : I don't like kids in stories or TV shows (nor in real life). I always feel like kids are supposed to be the comic relieves, or the cute factor, making you say « aaaw look how adorable and naive and dumb that little kid is » and I'm always rolling my eyes and thinking « get your shit together kiddo, that's an adult story and you're ruining it ». (I might be a little excessive on this one, I'm not always doing it).

In the quadrilogy about the young apprentices and Ahsoka, most of the kids were going on my nerves, and I'm glad I didn't felt this way about Alsmot a Jedi. I'm so glad Katooni was chosen to be the narrative instead of Petro.

Overall it was a good story. Katooni's insecurities were touching, her admiration for Ahsoka was too. Like in this passage, « I wanted to scream. But I didn't, because Ahsoka wasn't screaming ». She's so afraid, so petrified to be unworthy. I really cared for her. And her relationship with Hondo is great too. (And Hondo is great, what did you expect?)

That was cool and refreshing to read.

KENOBI'S SHADOW by Greg Van Eekhout

This. This is my favorite story from the whole book. It was so dark, so growling with sadness and anger and pain.

I don't think I can describe how it was to read it. That is how I wanted to feel. I wanted to know how Obi-Wan felt when Maul murdered Satine before his eyes. Now I know and I want to hide in a hole and not mess with that Jedi, ever.

Obi-Wan is usually used as a fun character in Clone Wars, with his deadpan sens of humour. It was heartbreaking to see him in the Mandalorian episodes, and reading it... well it was heartbreaking but frightening too.

An absolut must-read. Believe me. I was shocked.

BUG by E. Anne Convery

Bug is a original story, not an adaptation of a Clone Wars episode, thus it can't be treated like the other stories.

Real real quick plot summary ? Bug is about a little girl called, well... Bug, living with her parents, running an inn on a planetoid, near an abandoned military relay tower. One day a witch from Dathomir comes to the inn and wants to use the tower in hope of finding tracks of her disappeared daughter.

It was good.

Ok that's the end of that review, thanks for reading and nah I'm kidding.

Why was Bug good ? First of all, because it was the only original story of the book. And even though some of them were really really good, it didn't bring the curiosity of discovering something new. You lack suspens and surprises. Bug brings them back. I wanted to learn so much more about this young girl and the witch ! And Falta's story was hypnotizing. Litteraly. Hooray for learning more about Dathomir, about their culture, their history and the relation between the witches's clans. (Not hooray for learning that loving for the sake of love and not power is unthinkable for Talzin. I wouldn't have wanted her as a mother if you see what I mean.)

I hope so much that we'll see more of Bug and Falta in the future. This was too interesting to be left apart as a one-short story.

So, if I had to FINALLY resume my opinion on The Clone Wars : Stories of Light and Dark ?

PRO :

- getting involved inside the mind of characters in situations I already knew about

- some really fun, dark and/or insightful stories

CON :

- an overall mixed feeling about the books because some stories are not up to the rest.

- you'll have to get through some passages that are just formal descriptions of what happened in the TV show

TO CONCLUDE :

This took way more time than I expected and I should definitively not have called that review « a filler ».

As I aleady said, SLD is an rollercoaster. You'll get stunned and you'll get disappointed, and go through all the emotions between.

Was the book worth the money ? Well, the hardcover is pretty and some illustrations are cool, but the quality is irregular.

If you're short on time or money, I'll suggest you find a way to read only the stories that are really interesting you, based on any review you'll find on the internet.

Cheers to everyone reading me, thanks so much for all the notes, follow and reblog. It means a lot. Take care of you and your relatives during these hard times.

Tagging @maulpunk <3

[tortuerex]

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 ;)

[maulish]

I pretty much agree. I think what Shadow Hunter outlines painfully, is that every single one of these novels is written by a different author. There is no consistency. And I think the biggest problem with Legends and why they also invalidated a lot of good works along with the rest of them is that they got to be too many to manage. There are so many consistency errors, and there were always multiple things in the works simultaneously that were written by authors with totally different understandings of the characters, their motivations and awareness of different narratives unraveling at the same time.

Also I think it’s just a very juvenile book. It’s not particularly enjoyable to read. It was a bit difficult to get through because I kept forgetting about it. As you pointed out, it doesn’t tell the reader much significant about Maul. It feels like a bit of a marketing gimmick to even state that it’s about him. 

[tortuerex]

Another thing I didn’t thought about while writing my review but might be significant is the year of publication : 2001 was only two years after The Phantom Menace went out in theaters, and by this time I don’t think so many contents about Maul had been published. He wasn’t the character we know now, with all his background story. For sure I can’t know which instructions the autor was given by LucasArt at this point, but it might have been as simple as “write something cool about this cool character because fans want to see more of him”, and he did what he could with what was given to him, without getting too involved in the backstory.

I can’t really blame him for that, but I agree that switching autors between books doesn’t help them getting involved with a specific character.

[tortuerex]

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 ;)

[tortuerex]

My honest, humble, and not-objective-at-all opinion about MAUL : LOCKDOWN

MAUL : LOCKDOWN by Joe Schreiber, published in 2014 (Legends)

Real quick plot summary : Darth Maul is sent by Darth Sidious on a secret mission in the high security prison called Cog Hive Seven where each day, two prisonners have to fight to death.

Why start my reviews by this book ? Because it's one of my personal favorite.

One of the thing I like so much in this book is the duality in Maul's character.

He's hugely powerful, fight creatures twice his side (without use of the Force), he's highly intelligent and manages to escape a certain death, but still the autor manages to show us his weaknesses. He's sometimes hesitant, try to do his best but has no clue if it's the right thing to do, he's afraid of failure but can be overconfident too.

And for that matter, we can learn that a lot of the respect he has for Sidious is fueled by fear, fear of failing and fear of retaliation if he fails.

And, oh damn, the blood shed in this book ! If I remember correctly this was my first Star Wars novel so I didn't knew exactly what to expect. The first pages are so gory and it goes on during the whole book. I knew the clean side of Star Wars, with guns going all « pew pew » and lightsabber cutting people without a single drop of blood. The first chapter of Lockdown describes Maul gutting a alien alive with his bare hands and boy that was rad and I wasn't prepared for that.

So, yeah, Maul is a big plus when it comes to that book but he's not the only one. The other characters are pretty cool too, the other inmates, the wardens... I would have loved to learn more about them. No characters is rushed, all their motives are very clear and their stories are credible.

The atmosphere in Cog Hive Seven is really well writen too, oppresive, shady, you can almost smell the blood, sweat and rust of the prison.

And damn the Syrox was disgusting. Every apparition of the beast is nightmare-fueling.

The gambling system between the prisonners is a awesome idea and adds up to the surrounding violence of the place, violence orchestrated by the runners of the prison.

Another thing that is really good in this book, and that's something really hard to do when you write licensed books, it's the suspense. Let things be clear : the story is happening before The Phantom Menace, I know my Star Wars history line, so I know Maul isn't going to die.

But still, in this book, you'll quake for him. You know he's going to get out of this mess, but you don't know how. You don't know how much he will suffer. And you have no clue what's going to happen to the other characters. The author manages to get us hooked on the plot even knowing the main character can't die.

The humour is a plus too. Don't get me wrong, that's not a comedy book. But Maul can be really sassy even if that's not what he intended, and there's a lot of situation comedy or delisiously sarcastic dialogues between characters. Believe me, if that's your kind of humour, you'll often have a smile on your face while devoring the pages.

And the last page, the final sentences... I'm trying not to spoil the whole book, but we feel Maul is dying for something else, another life, but he's so afraid of Sidious and of what can happen to him if he fails his master, that he don't even dare dreaming of it. Kinda sad to be honest.

So, if I had to resume, what would be my opinion on Maul : Lockdown ?

PRO :

- Maul. Maul described as a « normal living being », with fears, doubts (and a lot of anger of course), and not only as a killing machine (I'm looking at you Maul:Shadow Hunter, we'll talk about you later)

- The atmosphere

- The gore (if you're into it) and the dark humour

CON :

- One very personal con : the non-canonical anymore Star Wars characters. I don't know much about Star Wars legends and I have a lot to learn about it, so the intervention of Komari Vosa of the Bando Gora left me a little lost. And I'm know very little about Darth Plagueis in Legends so it may have prevented me from fully appreciating the moments these characters were there.

TO CONCLUDE :

I would say it's a must have if you're a Maul fan, aren't scared of ultraviolence and mutilation, and don't mind reading not-canon books. (And for what I know of Legend vs Canon stories, this book might as well be canon if you cut off the scenes with Plagueis).

The power of this novel resides in strong characterization, an effective atmosphere and a suspense that will leave you begging for more.

I hope you like this first review, don't hesitate to tell me what you think of it, what was your opinion on the book or if I made you want to discover it, and tell me if I made any mistake or if my review need some additions ! I haven't read the book since a few months so I might forget some important things.

Sorry if it was a bit messy, every feedback is welcome !

Huge, huge thanks to the amazing @maulieber for giving me the motivation to start my own tumblr :)

[tortuerex]

Oh hello there

I suck at writing intros so i'm just going to dive into the subject : i'm here to give you my honest, humble, and not-objective-at-all opinion about some Star Wars stuff.

I love to read Star Wars books and comics (although I haven't read that much), and I love to overthink about why I loved or didn't liked a story, what bothers me and what thrilled me.

So why not share it ? I'll be happy to know some people feel the same about some books, and if you don't feel the same, I'll be happy to hear your point of view !

If I can convince you to read a new book or read again a old book, that'll be my pleasure.

My biggest disclaimer is that I'm not an native english speaker so forgive any mistake I could make and feel free to correct me (as long as you keep it polite ;) )