Lords of the Sith Review

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Surprise, the Star Wars universe has another book out! Actually, by the time I finished reading Lords of the Sith, they came out with yet another book. Today I'll be focusing on three things: how good a book is it; how important it is in the Star Wars universe; and how important it is as a cultural artefact.

So, is it a good book? I enjoyed it! It had a logical plot of events, and remained focused around them. I never felt like the book was dragging on. The book switched perspectives throughout, showing the events from the point of view of all of the major characters. This was both a blessing and a curse: I found it refreshing to get in the minds of so many characters, but as a result there were almost zero surprises or plot twists.

One aspect that was a mild surprise was the fact that we finally get to see Darth Vader exercising the full extent of his power. I've always felt like Vader was overrated in pop culture, because we've never really seen him do anything really impressive. This book along with the ongoing Darth Vader comic book has rectified that issue. On the other hand, I have now come to the conclusion that Vader never got over his melodramatic teenager phase. Seriously, look at this sentence about how he felt being attacked by a predator: "None penetrated his armor, and what little pain they managed to inflict could not surpass the pain he carried always within him." And Vader isn't the only one; at one point the Emperor chooses aliases for himself and Vader, and "other than the Emperor, only Vader knew the false names were ancient Sith words that meant 'death' and 'fate.'"

My biggest criticism of the book is that it gets very repetitive in its wording. Kemp uses the same phrases multiple times to describe similar situations. For example, during a single battle scene we might get three or four instances of "Vader fell more deeply into the force." Or when describing interactions between Twi'lek, he talks about their lekku twitching in excitement or their skin darkening in embarrassment.

Another issue I had was that some of the information about events seemed inconsistent. This included things like a character being ordered to do something, but on the next page she was doing something else and a different character was doing what she had been ordered to do. Another example was the body count in Darth Vader's group. I became very confused when there was suddenly one more character alive than I expected.

On the other hand, there were some very clever moments in the book. In particular I enjoyed an insult I had never heard before: "you speak as though all your words had a serif." It's a good insult, but it's also hilariously hypocritical.


Those were all things that a general audience would care about in a book. But what about the dedicated Star Wars fan? Well, Lords of the Sith does fill in some of the large gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, showing us a resistance movement that existed before the rebellion really got started. It seems like this is a similar purpose to that of Star Wars Rebels, though the Free Ryloth movement in Lords of the Sith seems to operate on a much larger scale. I don't want to spoil anything, but they accomplish something that according to one character had never happened before. That being said, nothing that happens in this book are huge, galaxy-changing events. Think of them as B-level events.

Kemp ties things in nicely to other pieces of Star Wars lore. Cham Syndulla is a major character in Lords of the Sith; he first appeared in The Clone Wars, and his daughter Hera is one of the main characters in Rebels and A New Dawn. Darth Vader also does a lot of reflecting on his past, which we all know about very well. I appreciate these references, because they give a greater sense that all these works exist in the same universe.


And finally, how does Lords of the Sith hold up as a cultural artefact? What are the values it promotes? It is significant in that it is the first time that we get an official LGBTQ character in Star Wars canon. The presentation of this in the book was exactly as I would hope: it wasn't even presented as an issue. None of the characters in the book thought it was odd, and she was even an Imperial Moff, so we know that it isn't a controversial subject in the Star Wars universe.

Cham Syndulla is a great example of a fighter whose principles guide his actions. Far too often we see situations presented with such high stakes that everyone accepts that the ends justify the means. Sometimes they bring up the issue of "if we do this, we're as bad as the enemy!" but usually in those cases another solution presents itself. Here, Cham has to do the best with what he has. I'm really happy to see this. Next I want to see pacifism portrayed in a positive light in Star Wars.


As I said, I really enjoyed Lords of the Sith. It was funny at times, some awesome feats were performed by Vader and the Emperor, and it moves the Star Wars franchise forward in the social progressive front. It has its flaws, certainly, but the book moves fast enough that you will quickly leave any subpar sections behind for more exciting things.

Tarkin Review

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You know what they say about villains- nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy. And then they go and throw a character at us who is willing to blow up an entire planet. A planet that has no weapons and had been a member of the Empire and formerly the Republic since its inception. Seemingly for no other reason than he was interrogating the senator from that planet, and it was a convenient target. How can someone like that not think of themselves as a bad guy? Read Tarkin and find out.

It is amazing how Luceno manages to take everything that Tarkin does, all his motivations and rationales, and makes them seem perfectly reasonable. I had never thought much about the character before. In A New Hope he simply struck me as an overconfident monster. Now he is one of my favorite characters in Star Wars, and it is all thanks to this book.

Part of it is that I always reading stories from the perspective of tactical geniuses (Grand Admiral Thrawn, anyone?) and part of it was learning about Tarkin's childhood through flashbacks. Not only are battles fun to experience from his perspective, but the wider mystery that they were attempting to solve throughout the book had me trying to think ahead and figure out what was going to happen. The flashbacks were extremely important in shaping who Tarkin is and how he reacts to various situations. The final flashback was hinted at throughout the book as something to look forward to, and it paid off satisfactorily.

As it turns out, Tarkin is a classy and polite individual. I remember him having a total of one argument in the entire book, and that was because the other person was getting in the way of Tarkin doing his job. Look, now even I am making excuses for him. But seriously, he was even polite to his enemies. Oh, and have I mentioned that the very first conversation in the book was about Imperial military fashion? Yeah, it includes this gem: "There is a marked difference between a uniform that 'fits' and a uniform that suits the wearer."

It was great getting to see Tarkin and Vader working together before they knew each other well. There were references to events in The Clone Wars (which I have not watched yet) but it did not affect my ability to appreciate their working relationship. In fact, it made me more interested in finishing that show.

Much more than A New Dawn, this is a book that I can recommend even to people who are not diehard Star Wars fans. If you have at least watched the movies you will appreciate this look inside the mind of one of the series' more iconic villains.

A New Dawn: Star Wars Review

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This first paragraph is a bit of a rant about Star Wars Legends. Skip it if you only want to know my thoughts on A New Dawn.

April 25th, 2014 was a surprisingly important day in my life. On that day the Lucasfilm story group changed the definition of what is canon and what is not in the Star Wars universe for good. I was extremely unhappy with the announcement, in ways that would seem irrational to most people. You have to understand, though, that a huge portion of my childhood has revolved around reading as many Star Wars novels as I could get my hands on. My brothers and I can talk for hours and hours about all of the things we have read in the Expanded Universe. Before April 25th, 2014 if you asked me who my favorite Star Wars character was, I would have immediately said "Grand Admiral Thrawn." Now I don't know. None of the characters that appeared in the movies even came close. Imagine a historian who dedicated their life to learning all they could about a particular area of the world in a particular period of time. They are one of the world's foremost experts on the subject. Suddenly a document is uncovered that reveals almost all of the materials they studied up to that point are false. How would you feel as that historian? I suppose there is a bright side to this whole situation: for the first time in my life I actually have a chance of catching up on everything that officially happened in the Star Wars universe. Because of that motivation, A New Dawn is the first Star Wars novel I have read in years. So let's get into it.

Efficiency is a prominent theme in A New Dawn, and this extends to the book itself as well. It uses its time well: the story never gets bogged down by unnecessary details, all of the characters introduced have important parts to play, and all of the events that occur are there to move the plot forward. It was refreshing to read a book that took this approach, but there are a few side effects as well. For example, knowing that everything is important allows the reader to know several characters' secret identities well before their "big reveal". Or any time something seems like a strange coincidence, it most assuredly is not a coincidence.

The cast was fairly diverse, and most of them were interesting characters. Among the four main protagonists, half were female (in total it was a little less, five women to eight men), half were not human, and one was an amputee. I was quite pleased with Hera, a strong female lead who had her own goals and agenda and saved Kanan at least as many times as he saved her. I was significantly less impressed with Kanan: haven't we seen enough ladies' men with a penchant for drinking who pretend not to care about anyone in Star Wars?

I am having a hard time figuring out what age group this book is meant for. The supposed mysteries that were so easy to figure out point towards a younger teen audience. But then Miller goes and uses words like "coruscating" and "perdition" which I have never seen before. There is a very silly notion of what falling in love entails (Kanan hears Hera's voice and immediately his only goal in life is to find out who that lovely voice belongs to). But then there is the savage violence displayed by Count Vidian. I suppose I was reading more intense stuff at that age, but maybe I should not have been.

Should you read A New Dawn? That entirely depends on how much you care about Star Wars. It is a good book, but not really a must-read for those who do not care about keeping up with everything going on in the galaxy. It is meant as a setup for the Rebels show that just started, though I doubt you will be lost if you just start watching the show without reading.

Dream: I Am (Almost) Iron Man

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At the beginning of this dream I was basically a pilot in Titanfall: I could run endlessly, double jump, wall run, and generally just be awesome. The only thing missing was a weapon.

As I ran around it became pretty obvious that I was being chased, so I tried to speed up a bit. Unfortunately it wasn't enough, and someone grabbed me from behind. I tumbled to the ground as he landed on his feet in front of me. Luckily I suddenly realized that I had Jango Fett's jetpack on as well as the jump pack. I lined myself up and activated the jetpack, slamming into the guy and carrying him up a ways before dropping him.

I knew that there were still others chasing me, so I kept going along the path I had been following before (it looked suspiciously like a linear video game map.) To conserve fuel I used the jetpack sparingly and started gliding with the wingsuit I was apparently wearing. I think I even had small jets attached to my feet to make navigational adjustments. Then a voice started talking to me, which turned out to be the wingsuit's artificial intelligence. At that point I was basically Iron Man without the iron, but I woke up before I got that far.

LEGO Star Wars Memories

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My brothers +Caleb Buck and +Jonas Buck and I have a lot of Legos that we have accumulated over the years of our collective childhoods. Most of those are Star Wars Legos, and we had a pretty intricate story going for our Lego universe. We managed to incorporate almost every other Lego theme that we have as well- Alpha Team, Bionicle, Mars Mission, Exo-Force, and more than a few ships that Caleb came up with himself. Now that our sisters have started getting into Legos hardcore, it has made us look back at all of the adventures we sent our minifigures on over the course of the last 14+ years. We went on such a huge nostalgia ride this evening that we typed up as much as we could remember. The early stuff is pretty vague, but the more recent events get more specific. So here it is (note that the numbers are footnotes, but Blogger's text editor is really limited so they look pretty bad.)

In the beginning, there were two mighty empires. Well, one was much mightier than the other. But whatever. Each was led by an identical Emperor. Nobody knows how they came to power, or why they looked exactly the same; all we know is that their Empires have been locked in a terrible bloody conflict for as long as anyone can remember. Except maybe Yoda. But whatever.

Over time the Empire led by the Elder Emperor gained the upper hand 1. Their final epic battle took place on Coruscant and it was there that the Elder came out on top. He knew, however, that he would never be able to fully extinguish the Younger Emperor’s influence from the galaxy. Therefore he made an offer that the Younger could not refuse. They joined their Empires into one, with the Elder Emperor taking control of Imperial City and the Younger Emperor taking control of the spaceport 2.

There was peace for a time. The Empire prospered and the people were happy. There were some, however, whose livelihood depended on conflict. You see, the Empire was so efficient at stamping out crime that the Bounty Hunters were out of a job 3. Inevitably they joined together under the leadership of Zam Wesell and declared war on the Empire.

It was clear that the bounty hunters were at a distinct disadvantage in terms of military force. However, Zam Wesell proved to be a very convincing and charismatic leader and it wasn’t long before she drew the commanders of the droid army (General Grievous) and the corporate leader of Sentai Inc (Caker Baker 4) to her side. Together they slowly began to push the Empire back until eventually they took Coruscant and the Emperor 5 was forced into hiding on one of the last planets under his control: Mata Nui.

Mata Nui is a primitive world inhabited by gigantic beings known as Bionicles. The Empire had set up bases in each of the separate biomes: their spaceport was located up on the mountain, the Emperor’s main bunker was in the rocky area, and they maintained a presence in the other biomes to keep the bounty hunters on their toes.

Most of the Empire’s remaining forces managed to arrive on Mata Nui without being tracked by the bounty hunters. However, there was one Jedi starfighter (pilot unknown) that the bounty hunters managed to attach a tracking device to. After sending a Death Shadow to investigate, the bounty hunters attacked in force.

The Battle of Mata Nui was chaotic and epic. It consisted of many separate smaller conflicts that determined the overall state of the battle. Eventually the only stronghold of the Empire’s was the bunker where the Emperor was being protected. And this is where things got interesting.

Time for a little backstory on the internal politics of each faction. The Empire was mostly completely cohesive; the exception to this was the fact that the Jedi were growing increasingly suspicious of the Emperor’s government. However they were unable to do anything about it because of the huge conflict with the bounty hunters. The Emperor in turn knew that having a group of powerful force users that were not directly part of the government could be a serious problem down the road.

Most of the members of the Bounty Hunter army were loyal to Zam Wesell. The exception to this was the Sentai forces. Sentai Inc was a front for a much larger army that hailed from the planet Kichi. The heads of this army were Mr. Black and Mr. White who were the only remaining survivors of their species, the Sosen. All Sosen were force-sensitive, and they had developed a comprehensive set of martial arts. The rest of the army was made up of humans who lived on Kichi. They were completely loyal to Mr. Black and Mr. White. Sentai Inc was created in order to distribute their weapons and technology across the galaxy in preparation for the day when they would seize control.

The Battle of Mata Nui was nearing its end; the Imperial forces were on the verge of being overrun when Mr. Black and Mr. White gave the order to turn on the other Bounty Hunter forces. This timing was chosen to take advantage of the weakened state of the other factions and to maximize confusion and chaos. The rest of the Bounty Hunters were caught off-guard. Caker Baker was the most confused because he had thought that he was in charge of the Sentai forces. He remained loyal to Zam Wessel because they were madly in love with each other 6. This confused things even more for General Grievous, who decided that nobody outside of his droid network could be trusted. Thus the Bounty Hunters ended up splitting into three factions: Sentai, Droids, and the Diversity Alliance.

Mr. Black and Mr. White had underestimated the strength of the Imperial forces. With the Bounty Hunters in disarray, the Empire started to push back. It was then that the Emperor decided to initiate Order 66 7. Most of the Jedi were taken out right away (only one of each character survived; that is, we eliminated all Lukes except for one, etc) but a few managed to escape into the forest. A group of them including Yoda found the Millennium Falcon. Han Solo was a smuggler currently hired by the Bounty Hunters to move ordinance. One of the Sentai turrets had damaged the Falcon as he attempted to flee when the Sentai coup took place. As Han and Chewy made repairs to the Falcon under the watchful gaze of the Jedi, Senator Leia Organa stumbled into the clearing chased by a couple of infantry tanks. She had gotten separated from the rest of the Imperial Army and her personal guard was dead. After dispatching the infantry tanks, the Jedi decided that they couldn’t trust her not to reveal the fact that they were escaping from the Jedi Purge, so they took her prisoner. These Jedi along with a couple of others who managed to liberate their starfighters decided to head to the coordinates of a planet that the Jedi had discovered but had not had time to visit and explore yet. As it just so happens this planet is Kichi.

The Jedi were in for quite a surprise when they came out of hyperspace to find a large fleet of Sentai ships; their surprise was only rivaled by that of the Sentai pilots. They were quickly surrounded and forced to land on the surface of the planet. There they were taken into custody. 8

Meanwhile Sentai’s coup occurred on every Bounty Hunter controlled planet. In many cases Sentai managed to take complete control of those planets, but there are many that remain under Droid control (usually heavily industrial planets). The Diversity Alliance has become more of a terrorist group, operating with small teams of highly-skilled insurgents. In fact the overall warfare will likely depend less on having huge vehicles than it used to because the resources of each faction are spread pretty thin.

1 Because Ian was older and got more LEGOs for birthdays and holidays. Plus Caleb traded a bunch of his Star Wars sets to Ian for all of Ian’s Bionicles.
2 We realize that this is a shit deal, but we made this up when we were really young.
3 The criminals weren’t happy either.
4 He’s not actually the leader of Sentai, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
5 By this time there was only one Emperor and the other one was his decoy.
6 You can tell that they are in love by the pet names they have for each other: “Cakey Bakey” and “Zammy Wammy.” Yeah, we had no idea how love worked back then.
7 And if you don’t know what that is, get out now.
8 Eventually we are planning on having the Jedi joining Sentai after Yoda discovers Mr. Black and Mr. White.

So that is the state of the galaxy right now. We had acquired a nice map of the Star Wars galaxy with lots of planets labeled, and we figured out which faction controlled which planets. But that was several computers ago and the only version we have is really pixelated and you can't read it anymore. Not to worry, we will soon have a nice version that you can read.

We are also planning on starting up a nice site with pages for each vehicle, character, planet, faction, etc all nicely organized so you can find everything. As we continue our story I will post updates on developments and whatnot.

Never grow up!