Reviews

This might for real be the best Star Wars novel I have ever read. None of the major characters, no problem. This novel is perfectly paced action adventure with strong characters that set up characters for novels Reaves wrote down the line.

Star Noirs really... Reaves did such a great job they brought him back to do a trilogy of Coruscant nights noir novels set against the dark times after the fall of the empire. He also used some of these characters in the Med star Clone Wars novels I am intending to read.

Must for serious SW nerds.

xyranys's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

jan_santanius's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

Darth Maul - Der Schattenjäger ist ein netter kleiner Roman, welcher 2001 als direkte Vorgeschichte zu dem Bösewicht aus Episode 1, Darth Maul, erschien. Maul wird von seinem Meister auf eine Mission geschickt und gerät im laufe dieser Mission in Kontakt mit der Unterwelt von Coruscant und hat die ein oder andere Begegnung mit einer Jedi-Padawan.
Der Roman ist sehr unterhaltsam und ich empfehle diesen sehr. Vor allem werden Elemente aus diesem Roman in späteren Star Wars Büchern: Medstar, Coruscant Nights und Die Macht des Todessterns von Michael Reaves aufgegriffen und weiter fortgeführt, daher wenn euch diese anderen Bücher Interessieren sollten bildet dieses Buch einen tollen Anfang für einige dieser Charaktere. Und Selbstverständlich wird die Handlung auch wieder in Darth Plagueis aufgegriffen, also auch wenn Ihr Plagueis gelesen habt oder lesen wollt lohnt sich Darth Maul der Schattenjäger.

mistbornpete's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

evilpansy's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

housedesignerking's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark mysterious 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

4.0

Spoiler

This is the third Star Wars Legends book that I've read. I've been reading these with my fiancé because our goal is to read all of the legends novels. All 300+ of them. This will probably take awhile...

This is a very curiously-titled book. It's got "Darth Maul" in the title, but he's not the only person of which this story tells the perspective. The book starts out with Darth Sidious speaking to three Neimodians. Nute Gunray speaking for them all, he tells Sidious that their fourth member, Hath Monchar, is not feeling well after eating some food that didn't agree with him. They already know he's probably on Coruscant. Sidious calls on his apprentice, Darth Maul, to track down Moncahr because he already knows that Nute was lying to him.

In chapter two, Lorn Pavan, a Han Solo-esque character with a droid named I-Five, makes his first appearance. He's attempting to make a sale, but because of his own mouth, the sale does not go through, and they end up getting robbed instead. Before long, Hath is told by a bartnender, a Baragwin, that the type of person he's looking for would be Lorn Pavan. A little later in the book, Maul shows up and the same bartender gives him Lorn's description and helps narrow the search down by mentioning that Lorn has a droid.

In chapter three, Darsha Assant, a Jedi apprentice/Padawan, is introduced. The Jedi Council gives her a mission. She's at the end of her Jedi trials; it's usually a mission that you are given when it is your first mission alone. Her mission is to get to the Zi-Kree sector known as the Crimson Corridor to rescue a Fondorian named Oolth. Her master, Anoon Bondara, is a bit worried that the mission may be too much for a Padawan.

In chapter four, the idea of hiring a bounty hunter to search for Monchar is introduced to Nute by Rune Haako, another Neimodian. Mahwi Linn is that bounty hunter. She had been one for about ten years before she got hired by the Neimodians. She gets pretty much the same assignment as Maul, with the difference being that her orders aren't to kill him.

I will not be giving a chapter by chapter synopsis, but i do have notes. On page 59 when the Baragwin bartender is describing Lorn Pavan to Darth Maul, the Baragwin says Lorn has "filamentous cilia" on his scalp, but none on his face. I looked that up and couldn't believe the bartender was just talking about eyebrows. 20 dollar words... smh. The bartender is obviously a homophobe because he tells Maul that only female humans would find Lorn handsome. Oy!

I was not too crazy about some of the wording on page 74. Maul, finally, is back to being the main character. From his POV, the reader sees that "if Darth Sidious knew [Maul] was having such doubts, the Sith Lord would severely punish him, such as he had not been punished since he was a child." This honestly gave me the brief impression that Sidious was going to give Maul a spanking if he failed his mission. That may be hot for some people, but I'm fairly certain that wouldn't fit the story lol. Obviously, this is not the case. In reality, he could've been electrocuted by Sidious's signature Force Lightning or had some of his bones cracked. However, the sentence I've quoted in this paragraph doesn't really imply that with its wording.

There's no way any one person could know every single word in the English language; at least it seems impossible. I can honestly say that when I started page 105, I was a bit nonplussed to see the word "tergiversator." I had no idea its meaning was "a person who has defected." I have honestly never even heard this word before, and it's more like a $50 word than a $20 one.

There's a sentence that begins on page 105 and ends on page 106 that uses two words: "whorls" and "verticils." That sentence is: "Only one trained to sense the whorls and verticils of the Force would get a sense of the dark storm that raged within [Maul.]" They mean the exact same thing, and make the sentence redundant. This first time, it could be deemed passable because they are at least different words, and neither appear in the definition of the other (at least not where I looked). However, on page 109, I couldn't believe the level of redundancy that my eyes fell upon. A sentence has the words "various" and "sundry" in it. That sentence being: "Pedestrians of various and sundry species passed them, paying little to no attention to the altercation." The definition of "sundry" is "various." The definition of the former is literally the latter. Reaves literally put in here that "pedestrians of various and various species passed them...," and this is the fastest and most head-scratching form of redundancy that I have ever read.

There was an incorrect characterization on page 132. Reaves referred to a droid as a "he." This is incorrect. Robots are things, not people. Therefore, I-Five is an "it." Despite this fact, this was not the only place in which Reaves referred to the robot as if it had a gender. He also described it as a 'he' on page 172 and a couple others that I didn't bother to note.

On pages 137-139, I was met with the realization that Darsha was sometimes an idiot (Insert Captain Hook yelling 'idjit' here). Judging from what I know about Episode 1, I can't imagine how she couldn't be in this situation. Darth Maul obviously survives this entire book because this takes place before 'The Phantom Menace.' I knew that before opening this book (I doubt that's surprising).

At the start of part II, "Labyrinth," on page 145, the Neimodian named Rune Haako calls Nute Gunray on Star Wars' version of FaceTime. Haako is described as not looking happy, but it didn't mean very much. I laughed out loud as I read that this was because Neimodian's rarely look happy. I also laughed on page 147. Reaves' decision to add humor to a moment with bad news actually helped keep the moment light. Gunray, while dealing with a bunch of crap that seemed to originate from Lord Sidious' first appearance, keeps fantasizing about being a mulch farmer back on the planet Neimodia. Hilarious!

Nice! At the beginning of this book, Lorn Pavan gives off Han Solo vibes, and then on page 157, there's a reference to 'The Empire Strikes Back.' Context is irrelevant and spoiler-filled, but there's a mention about being frozen in carbonite.

By page 166, I realized that Reaves and James Luceno had something in common. Word obsession. Luceno, in "Darth Plagueis," was obsessed with midi-chlorians and the InterGalactic Banking Clan. Reaves seemed to be obsessed with the words "subterfuge" and "ferrocrete" at the time of writing this. I read the word “subterfuge" about 8 times, and "ferrocrete" about 6 times. I will say that I noticed a nod on this same page to "Maul: Lockdown" by Joe Schreiber. Reaves decided to reference the Wampa that Maul fought in Cog Hive Seven (depending how you read this series, this book either comes directly after Schreiber's book, or is book 2 following "Darth Maul: Saboteur." (Since the latter is an e-book, I won't be reading it). The reference was kind of nice even though 'Maul: Lockdown' only got one star from me and my fiancé.

On page 171, as Reaves was describing the Cthons, I got the impression from "two vertical slits for nostrils" that I could have pictured Voldemort. Speaking of darkness, apparently "tenebrous" means dark; shadowy or obscure. That means Darth Tenebrous was pretty much named Darth Dark or Darth Shadow. This came to my attention thanks to the start of chapter 27 on page 229. Characters emerge into a tenebrous shadow. Basically they emerged into a shadowy shadow. :p LoL, I'll let it slide because it could also mean 'dark shadow.'

I was a bit confused by Reaves' decision to stop telling the story at the start of chapter 28 and started giving us a random backstory about how the Sith and Darth Maul make their lightsabers versus how the Jedi do. I mean, that's good information, but somewhat unnecessary filler... Random addition, if you ask me. However, his story got more interesting when he wrote something to get the reader to think about 'The Empire Strikes back again by having I-Five talk about cryostasis.

On page 291, I found myself thinking something that ended up in my review of Luceno's "Darth Plageuis." Some words in the English language are just extra posh. The word 'egress' appears on this page, and it means something that makes me wonder why its even a word when its definition would suffice by itself. That definition is: "the action of going out of or leaving a place." Wow...

These notes are not meant to imply that I was having a hard time enjoying this book. Far from it. I enjoyed this more than the first two books I've read. This is one of those books that can really only end with certain things happening or not happening. This is where we get to the part that made me hide the entire review because of spoilers. You kind of know going into this book that there's no way that I-Five can make it through this book without having his memory wiped, and that Lorn and Darsha can't really survive unless they suddenly take a vow of silence (which just wouldn't be very believable and would have made me give this book a 1 star rating). Darsha's character not making it out of this book alive is admittedly a disappointment, as is Lorn not making it, but the book would've ended up sticking out like a sore thumb with its impossibilities given the events of Episode 1, which it would be contradicting. In that sense, this book is a bit predictable. This isn't a 'how will it end' book. Reaves's mission was to write a 'how do we get to that obvious ending' type story, and I would say that he delivered. I didn’t expect the Monchar storyline to end when it did. I thought it was going to take up most of the book. I wasn’t sure where Reave was going to go with the rest of it, but the rest of it made sense, was good, and not contradictory to Episode 1.

Because of some of the issues that I mentioned, I will not give this 5 stars, but instead

4 stars. Next is the Jedi Apprentice series of 20 books, mostly written by Jude Watson (although book 1 was written by Dave Wolverton), which can actually be read before this book (at least some of them). I wish the timeline I’d read had mentioned that. Well, onto the next one.

More...