bashsbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
I've always been blown away by Palpatine's master manipulation skills, so it was cool to peer behind the curtain and see how he managed to manufacture a war for his own gain. Plagueis is an interesting character, and I liked his philosophizing on Sith principles - and how his arrogance was ultimately his downfall.
Lots and lots of galatic politics and economics, though. That aspect really made my head spin at times. Also, I constantly had to look up the species being described because I haven't read a ton of Star Wars books, so matching the names of the species to the visuals I know from the TV shows and movies was a bit harrowing at times.
Lots and lots of galatic politics and economics, though. That aspect really made my head spin at times. Also, I constantly had to look up the species being described because I haven't read a ton of Star Wars books, so matching the names of the species to the visuals I know from the TV shows and movies was a bit harrowing at times.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Racism, Xenophobia, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Violence
Moderate: Ableism, Gun violence, Slavery, War, Kidnapping, Misogyny, and Torture
Minor: Stalking, Trafficking, and Vomit
-Racism is of the fantasy kind (between all the alien races) rather than the real world variety.housedesignerking's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
This is the first non-canon Star Wars book, and first Star Wars book in general, that I've read. Technically, I have skipped 11 books. One in the pre-Republic era and ten in the Old Republic era. I didn't really read anything that appeared to be a spoiler, but who knows?
It has been a long time since I've seen the prequel and classic eras trilogies, it took me a minute to remember certain characters and certain things that happened. There's quite a few familiar and not familiar characters throughout this book. For not familiar, I don't remember Gardulla the Hutt appearing in any of the movies. However, Jabba of the same species makes a couple of appearances. This book spans years, decades even. There's Count Dooku, whom I'd completely forgotten was played by Christopher Lee. I mean, I knew Lee was in the the movies, but I didn't remember that he'd portrayed that character. For some reason, I was initially picturing some alien creature. There's also Darth Maul's beginnings, which can be gone into a lot more, I believe, in the next three books in the prequel era.
Plagueis, after murdering his Master, Tenebrous, seeks to become the greatest Sith Lord who ever lived, and the one who never died. He's a Muun from the planet Muunilinst, and seeks out young Palpatine on Naboo at what I assumed was this extended universe's version of a High School or some kind of early College. In time, Palpatine becomes Plagueis's apprentice.
The author had an obsession with midi-chlorians and the InterGalactic Banking Clan. I read both things so many times. It reminded me of Geraldine Ferraro’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2893842664">autobiography</a> in which I read the word “abortion” so many times, my rating got reduced. This book is not immune to that, either.
It reads like a history book for the most part as the story literally inches forward, sometimes with very little happening in a chapter. Most of a few of them are mostly information and I'm not sure if I'm going to remember most of it. A chunk of this is conversations with this politician or that lobbyist or some other person where it doesn’t always seem to be very relevant. It really seems to be akin to day to day activities at work.
I also reached for my phone to look up words in quite a few chapters. Sometimes the over-usage of words lead to an unnecessary wording of a sentence like when the author wrote about auditory organs when he could have just typed “ear drums.” The author also alternated between “11-4D” and “OneOne-FourDee.” I’m not sure why other than to alternate spellings.
Confusion struck me on page 94 in chapter 8 when Plagueis went from being with droid 11-4D to being on some other planet called Saleuscami watching some female on a stage on page 96. This was an instance where the mixture of story progression and story information did not flow very well. A better way to say it may be that every chapter was from points of Plagueis’s life and the author just decided to compile them together to see what the big picture looked like. Also, the murder that takes place in this chapter seems completely random and reminds me of Rob Zombie's Halloween 2. There's absolutely no character development for the murdered character and Plagueis's reasoning seems to just be that he wanted to kill someone.
I laughed out loud when I had to look up the definition of “farinaceous” after Consigna Palpatine (the future Emperor Palpatine's father) said it on pg 129. “Consisting of or containing starch.” Some existing words in the English language really seem too posh...
I think there was a typo on pg 149. It talks of Sidious/Palpatine being born of “hated and fear”... I think that was supposed to say “hatred and fear.”
In chapter 12, I was getting really into the story. This story didn’t really seem to begin until Plagueis met young Palpatine at school. As I said before, not everything in this story seemed completely relevant... I was hoping by chapter 13 that everything that lead up to the moment at school would come full circle and have a purpose.
Unfortunately, they only somewhat did. There was a massive time jump where Palpatine is revealed to have been installed in a political position. He’s an apprenticed Sith Lord and we don’t really get much about the past ten-ish years except that all the random conversations in the beginning of the story come full circle in one paragraph. It left me feeling briefly disenchanted. Since Luceno included the conversations and events that had nothing to do with Palpatine, shouldn’t he have used these side stories to an equal amount of ending as he did beginning?
Oy. By pg 219, I felt the story was dragging and a bit yawn-inducing with yet another mention of the InterGalactic Banking Clan...
Chapter 19 was pretty awesome. Not gonna lie.
Unfortunately, when I was 70% through the book (pg 266), I found myself thinking that this book was oddly titled. A vast chunk of this book is about Palpatine/Darth Sidious... perhaps “Darth Plagueis and Palpatine” or "Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious" would’ve been much more appropriate title options. In what is now canon, Claudia Gray may have noted this when naming her book about the same Sith Lords. Hers is called “Master and Apprentice" and apparently is the accepted version of this book. Basically. (EDIT 2/17/2020: I recently found out that the Claudia Gray book actually has to do with Qui-Gon and Obi Wan Kenobi. This is awkward...)
There was a hilarious conversation regarding a rare bird in chapter 24 that my fiancé and I laughed our butts off because of. This book gets an extra star for this, whatever the final rating. Poor Viceroy Gunray...
Regardless of any negative note I’ve added herein, I really have to give Luceno credit for creating a link between the past and the future. An interesting tie-in/parallel for this book and “A New Hope.”
In the end, I'm not exactly blown away by James' Luceno's addtion to the non-canon prequel era. The ending did have a decent climactic conclusion, although completely predictable since the author included that Plagueis does pass away. You definitely see it coming because of that. I will also say that it was a bit much to have two master's killed in two chapters that are right next to each other in the book. It's described how Darth Tenebrous killed his master in the prologue and then Darth Plagueis kills Tenebrous in chapter one.
It is also interesting that this book has parts that take place during the time of Episode 1. It felt like a somewhat behind the scenes extra in those chapters.
There was also a disturbing terrorist attack scene in this book with somewhat disturbing details that I could have lived without. As I said, I’ve read that every Star Wars book pre-2014 is now considered non-canon and dubbed as “Legends.” Judging by this book, despite the good parts within, that may be a good thing...
It has been a long time since I've seen the prequel and classic eras trilogies, it took me a minute to remember certain characters and certain things that happened. There's quite a few familiar and not familiar characters throughout this book. For not familiar, I don't remember Gardulla the Hutt appearing in any of the movies. However, Jabba of the same species makes a couple of appearances. This book spans years, decades even. There's Count Dooku, whom I'd completely forgotten was played by Christopher Lee. I mean, I knew Lee was in the the movies, but I didn't remember that he'd portrayed that character. For some reason, I was initially picturing some alien creature. There's also Darth Maul's beginnings, which can be gone into a lot more, I believe, in the next three books in the prequel era.
Plagueis, after murdering his Master, Tenebrous, seeks to become the greatest Sith Lord who ever lived, and the one who never died. He's a Muun from the planet Muunilinst, and seeks out young Palpatine on Naboo at what I assumed was this extended universe's version of a High School or some kind of early College. In time, Palpatine becomes Plagueis's apprentice.
The author had an obsession with midi-chlorians and the InterGalactic Banking Clan. I read both things so many times. It reminded me of Geraldine Ferraro’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2893842664">autobiography</a> in which I read the word “abortion” so many times, my rating got reduced. This book is not immune to that, either.
It reads like a history book for the most part as the story literally inches forward, sometimes with very little happening in a chapter. Most of a few of them are mostly information and I'm not sure if I'm going to remember most of it. A chunk of this is conversations with this politician or that lobbyist or some other person where it doesn’t always seem to be very relevant. It really seems to be akin to day to day activities at work.
I also reached for my phone to look up words in quite a few chapters. Sometimes the over-usage of words lead to an unnecessary wording of a sentence like when the author wrote about auditory organs when he could have just typed “ear drums.” The author also alternated between “11-4D” and “OneOne-FourDee.” I’m not sure why other than to alternate spellings.
Confusion struck me on page 94 in chapter 8 when Plagueis went from being with droid 11-4D to being on some other planet called Saleuscami watching some female on a stage on page 96. This was an instance where the mixture of story progression and story information did not flow very well. A better way to say it may be that every chapter was from points of Plagueis’s life and the author just decided to compile them together to see what the big picture looked like. Also, the murder that takes place in this chapter seems completely random and reminds me of Rob Zombie's Halloween 2. There's absolutely no character development for the murdered character and Plagueis's reasoning seems to just be that he wanted to kill someone.
I laughed out loud when I had to look up the definition of “farinaceous” after Consigna Palpatine (the future Emperor Palpatine's father) said it on pg 129. “Consisting of or containing starch.” Some existing words in the English language really seem too posh...
I think there was a typo on pg 149. It talks of Sidious/Palpatine being born of “hated and fear”... I think that was supposed to say “hatred and fear.”
In chapter 12, I was getting really into the story. This story didn’t really seem to begin until Plagueis met young Palpatine at school. As I said before, not everything in this story seemed completely relevant... I was hoping by chapter 13 that everything that lead up to the moment at school would come full circle and have a purpose.
Unfortunately, they only somewhat did. There was a massive time jump where Palpatine is revealed to have been installed in a political position. He’s an apprenticed Sith Lord and we don’t really get much about the past ten-ish years except that all the random conversations in the beginning of the story come full circle in one paragraph. It left me feeling briefly disenchanted. Since Luceno included the conversations and events that had nothing to do with Palpatine, shouldn’t he have used these side stories to an equal amount of ending as he did beginning?
Oy. By pg 219, I felt the story was dragging and a bit yawn-inducing with yet another mention of the InterGalactic Banking Clan...
Chapter 19 was pretty awesome. Not gonna lie.
Unfortunately, when I was 70% through the book (pg 266), I found myself thinking that this book was oddly titled. A vast chunk of this book is about Palpatine/Darth Sidious... perhaps “Darth Plagueis and Palpatine” or "Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious" would’ve been much more appropriate title options. In what is now canon, Claudia Gray may have noted this when naming her book about the same Sith Lords. Hers is called “Master and Apprentice" and apparently is the accepted version of this book. Basically. (EDIT 2/17/2020: I recently found out that the Claudia Gray book actually has to do with Qui-Gon and Obi Wan Kenobi. This is awkward...)
There was a hilarious conversation regarding a rare bird in chapter 24 that my fiancé and I laughed our butts off because of. This book gets an extra star for this, whatever the final rating. Poor Viceroy Gunray...
Regardless of any negative note I’ve added herein, I really have to give Luceno credit for creating a link between the past and the future. An interesting tie-in/parallel for this book and “A New Hope.”
In the end, I'm not exactly blown away by James' Luceno's addtion to the non-canon prequel era. The ending did have a decent climactic conclusion, although completely predictable since the author included that Plagueis does pass away. You definitely see it coming because of that. I will also say that it was a bit much to have two master's killed in two chapters that are right next to each other in the book. It's described how Darth Tenebrous killed his master in the prologue and then Darth Plagueis kills Tenebrous in chapter one.
It is also interesting that this book has parts that take place during the time of Episode 1. It felt like a somewhat behind the scenes extra in those chapters.
There was also a disturbing terrorist attack scene in this book with somewhat disturbing details that I could have lived without. As I said, I’ve read that every Star Wars book pre-2014 is now considered non-canon and dubbed as “Legends.” Judging by this book, despite the good parts within, that may be a good thing...
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Medical content, Murder, Death, and Violence
More...