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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was capital-D-Dark (I have NEVER used this many trigger warning tags), but the clarity it lends to Mace Windu’s mentality is essential reading for prequels fans. His reluctance to give an inch to Jedi who tend to bend the rules (cough cough our heroes cough cough) makes so much more sense once you live in his head for a few hundred pages. I love the chance to see a Jedi interacting with their home planet/ancestral roots (like Ahsoka does in the Kadavo arc of TCW). The new characters are well-incorporated and the world building is incredible. The writing was disorienting by nature, but it took me a while to catch onto that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, Colonisation, War
Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Hate crime, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Excrement, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Genocide, Rape
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Mixed feelings here...
- Good: I read the Stover RotS novelization at like 10 and so his style of prose is very near and dear to my heart and I was really happy to get to come back to it.
- Good: Such a good premise. I came in with only a vague idea of what the book was about and was IMMEDIATELY extremely invested in Mace's quest to save (...from a certain point of few) his pseudo-daugher, possibly evil and/or insane, former Padawan. Soo tasty to meeee.
- Bad: I don't think the premise was very well executed...or maybe I missed something. I found Depa's whole deal baffling and underwhelming--the book spends a long while aimlessly flip flopping between "she's evil!!!", "she's fine actually!!", and "~maybe she's a hallucination~". It does finally, center in on an idea
Depa is tortured and evil-ish "because of war". but personally I thought it was uhh underdeveloped and kind of stupid. I wish we had gotten way WAY more time with Depa. Maybe they could have cut out one of the ten extended action sequences and put her on screen for a while. - ????: I'm very scared of what I am meant to take away from this book. The surface level read is something along the lines of: "Savage jungle people--they're just like us!" Big fan of the "just like us" part of the book (every Star War rightfully wants to have a critical take on the Jedi and some do it better than others; I like of most of what this book had to say). For obvious reasons the scary uncivilized jungle people (I WISH I was exaggerating the language here) bit is...uhhhhhhhhhh...
- (cont'd) I think it's extraordinarily generous to assume high levels of subtlety and implementation of an unreliable narrator in a Star Wars spinoff novel but maybe this is how it's supposed to be read: Mace Windu is a fucking bad person. This is the interpretation I went with because I like it and because it means I did not just read a book about the evils of savage jungle people. He's arrogant and judgemental and myopic and can't wrap his mind around other ways of being. He comes back to his homeworld and spends days/weeks with the culture he's from, sees firsthand their struggle against colonialism, encounters a similarly gifted warrior among them who is *literally* from his own family, and then...uses them all as pawns so that he can beat the Separatists out of the system and go back to his Republic flagship and take a shower. Don't get me wrong I think Mace Windu fucking rules and I love to see him but many signs in many other star war corroborate "he sucks".
TLDR I enjoyed this book a lot and I will think about it forever and probably reread it many times. Star Wars at its best: questionable politics, underdeveloped premises, nevertheless endlessly compelling.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
oh BUDDY I was not prepared to be body-slammed with emotions while reading this book but it absolutely drove me bonkers in the best way. I loved the conversations had about the Jedi's position in war and what it means for them as peacekeepers. It had so many interesting things to say and Mace always being right on the line of giving in to darkness as he had to rely on it more and more. It was also a lot of fun to see Mace away from the Jedi Council, as that is how we get so much of him through the movies and Clone Wars. To see him on the front line of a conflict and in the field was delightful. And his relationship with Depa and Nick!! Argh, so good.
adventurous
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Easily blows every other Star Wars book I've read out of the water. Great insights into the Jedi and everything between Mace, Nick, Depa and Kar is kino af. The very Star Wars-y resolution to the larger Haruun Kal conflict was a little disappointing after the nihilistic realism of the first half, but I'll take it.
Maybe the best SW novel – especially the last page. Vaapad kicks A. Good dialogue, good descriptions of violence, good Jedi philosophy. I’d pay good money to see this one filmed, too.
An amazing book. This book deals with the hard realities of war and what it can do to the people and the planets involved.
Maybe one of the best Star Wars books I've read in my short time catching up with the EU. They usually run from cheesy to melodramatic, to fun and interesting to dull and plodding. I love the Star Wars universe and look forward to continuing to find gems like this in the haystack.
Maybe one of the best Star Wars books I've read in my short time catching up with the EU. They usually run from cheesy to melodramatic, to fun and interesting to dull and plodding. I love the Star Wars universe and look forward to continuing to find gems like this in the haystack.
Stover knows how to WRITE. He really expanded on the small bits we got about Windu in the RoTS novelization and it was so interesting. Things felt a little weird when it came to Depa Billaba, I just wasn’t so sold on the main conflict of the story. And I wasn’t a huge fan of the journal recording sections, the tone sometimes did not feel like speech and didn’t feel much different from the regular parts of the book. But the character work really made up for it for me!
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes