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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
fast-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
Book Review
Star Wars: Darth Maul – Shadow Hunter
By Michael Reaves
Setting: Coruscant
Timeframe: Days before the Blockade of Naboo (The Phantom Menace, Episode I)
Darth Maul is widely regarded as one of the most compelling figures in the Star Wars franchise. His brief but memorable appearance in The Phantom Menace introduced audiences to a fearsome Sith warrior wielding a double-bladed lightsaber and demonstrating mastery of the aggressive Form VII: Juyo combat style. Despite his striking visual presence and combat prowess, Maul’s character received limited development in the film, leaving audiences with more questions than answers.
Michael Reaves’ Star Wars: Darth Maul – Shadow Hunter fills this narrative gap, offering a deeper exploration of Maul’s motivations, methods, and inner conflict. Set on Coruscant in the final days leading up to the Blockade of Naboo, the novel centers on Maul’s pursuit of a Neimoidian informant who threatens to expose Darth Sidious’s plans to the Jedi Council. The story expands the larger political tensions that underpin The Phantom Menace, while also highlighting the strategic use of assassination and secrecy in Sith operations.
The novel introduces several new characters, most notably Jedi Padawan Darsha Assant, whose personal journey serves as a compelling counterpoint to Maul’s. Darsha, having failed an initial trial, is thrust into a mission that tests her resilience and deepens her connection to the Force. Her path is one of growth and self-realization, even as she confronts the dark and dangerous realities of life beyond the Jedi Temple.
Maul, in contrast, is portrayed as both ruthless and conflicted—eager to prove himself to his master, yet occasionally faltering under the pressure of fulfilling Sidious’s expectations. This characterization adds a layer of vulnerability to a figure typically seen as unyielding and mechanical in his devotion to the Sith.
Reaves succeeds in blending suspense, action, and psychological depth into a narrative that enriches the prequel-era canon. For readers interested in the inner workings of the Sith and the growing unrest within the galaxy prior to the Clone Wars, Shadow Hunter offers a thrilling and worthwhile addition to the Star Wars literary universe.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (Goodreads and StoryGraph)
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Étant donné que je suis un fan de Star Wars, j'ai décidé en 1998 de lire tous les livres de l'Univers Étendu. Maintenant que j'en ai lu beaucoup, il est temps de faire mon compte rendu et je vais essayer de la faire par ordre chronologique de la série. Ce livre se passe à l'an 33 avant Épisode IV, Un Nouvel Espace, quelques mois avant The Phantom Menace.
C'est un livre très différent de la plupart des autres de la série parce que l'histoire a comme héros un méchant (Darth Maul). C'est l'histoire d'un contrebandier qui obtient un holocron appartenant à la Trade Federation et qui veut le rendre au plus vite. Cependant, il sera poursuivit par l'abominable Darth Maul. Le contrebandier aura l'aided'une jeune Padawan et de son maître. à noter aussi l'apparition de Obi-Wan Kenobi qui est chargé par le conseil d'enquêter dur la disparition du Padawan et de son maître.
J'ai vraiment adoré l'histoire. L'action ne manque pas. J'ai aussi aimé découvrir un peu plus la cité planète de Coruscant où se passe tout l'histoire. Ce livre permet aussi de donner une image plus méchante et plus dure de Darth Maul. Pour ce qui est de la fin, elle m'a vraiment jeté par terre. Le livre permet de mettre en place l'histoire d'épisode 1.
C'est un livre très différent de la plupart des autres de la série parce que l'histoire a comme héros un méchant (Darth Maul). C'est l'histoire d'un contrebandier qui obtient un holocron appartenant à la Trade Federation et qui veut le rendre au plus vite. Cependant, il sera poursuivit par l'abominable Darth Maul. Le contrebandier aura l'aided'une jeune Padawan et de son maître. à noter aussi l'apparition de Obi-Wan Kenobi qui est chargé par le conseil d'enquêter dur la disparition du Padawan et de son maître.
J'ai vraiment adoré l'histoire. L'action ne manque pas. J'ai aussi aimé découvrir un peu plus la cité planète de Coruscant où se passe tout l'histoire. Ce livre permet aussi de donner une image plus méchante et plus dure de Darth Maul. Pour ce qui est de la fin, elle m'a vraiment jeté par terre. Le livre permet de mettre en place l'histoire d'épisode 1.
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I know that the scope of the plot is limited based off the movies but this mission was so boring. Not to mention the fact that a Jedi and Sith battled in the middle of a public street and no one seemed to notice that the Sith were back. Also inconsistencies including Qui Gon Jinn was somehow on the council even though he wasn’t supposed to be. Let’s also point out the fact of the forced “love” interest that occurred almost at the end of the novel between the padawan and Lorn. This book is better left in legends territory.
This book is fine. It’s not the most amazing thing I’ve ever read but it’s not horrible. Instead it sits on a very fine line between those two things.
I’ll start with the positives first so my entire review isn’t entirely negative:
I really enjoyed the characterization of Darth Maul in this book as it gave us the ability to know him as a character instead of just a scary Sith villain with cool tattoos who showed up in the Phantom Menace and had like barely 30 minutes of screen time and like 10 lines in total before getting immediately killed off by Obi-Wan. This book came out in 2001 if I am not mistaken, so this was well before we even knew that Darth Maul was actually still alive as was revealed over a decade later in an episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and also subsequently given actual depth as a character. I thought that his thoughts and actions in this book were perfect for him despite the author having almost the utmost bare minimum to work with.
I also really enjoyed the way that the author handled and explained the Jedi. I really loved the way that Darsha explained the Jedi Code during one of her parts in a chapter, and I will definitely be thinking about it for a long while. The Force in general was also handled pretty good well. Nobody was like stupidly over powered, and the explanation of how Darsha and Maul use the Force as light side and dark side wielders was phenomenal. Force tendrils are cool as hell.
The humour in this book was okay, but I will admit I did find parts of it particularly funny to the point where I did laugh out loud or react to it out loud. I-Five was honestly my favourite because of this as his interactions with Lorn were everything, they were essentially acting like an old married couple at times.
Also, this guy is SO good at creating atmosphere. The descriptions of the setting are awesome, especially in the lower levels of Coruscant and the sewer/tunnel areas. They felt gross and damp in my mind. Wonderful.
Now, onto the negative parts of this book and boy are there a lot:
First of all, this book is called Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, right? The cover of this book has Darth Maul on it, right? It opens with the point of view of Darth Maul, right? So then tell me why this book that is supposed to be focused on Darth Maul barely focuses on him or treats him as important. Most of this book, in my opinion, was bogged down by unnecessary characters all trying to do too many separate things in the name of “plot.” There was a HUGE focus on Darsha and Lorn despite the fact that they weren’t really the main characters of this book, like from what I understand Darth Maul is the main and they are secondary main characters. However, it seems that they all get plot armour (until they don’t) and seem to be able to get away from Darth Maul almost every single time! The first half of this book (which by the way, why on Earth was it thought to be a good idea to have this book split into two separate sections?) suffers from this SO much. You think “Oh, finally we’re going to get some epic battle of Jedi vs Sith with Darsha and Darth Maul” almost every time he catches up to them right? Wrong. Due to “plot” they manage to get away almost entirely unscathed multiple times making it seem like this is some Looney Tunes game of Cat and Mouse but it’s Star Wars. WHY!! I read this book specifically because it was supposed to be focused on Darth Maul, and I thought that Darsha and Lorn were going to just be the people that he is hunting down throughout the book and it would end in a climactic sort of battle between Darsha and Darth Maul with Lorn also helping. But I was apparently wrong as we spend 70% of the book running around the Crimson Corridor.
Darsha is also not my favourite. I think she just suffers from being a female character written by a male author in all honesty. She could’ve been so much but despite being written to be a woman, she comes off as an immature teenage girl. I know that her being a Padawan does not help this and I know that Padawans can have an age range of young children to adults in their 20’s but god. She’s sent off on her first solo mission in order to prove herself worthy of taking the trials to be a Jedi Knight right? Well she immediately fails this task as she is almost killed in the process of getting through this mission, and I feel like if she was going to become a Jedi Knight then surely she would’ve you know.. tried to plan in advance for emergency situations. Her master did help her out though and I did like him a lot, rip my guy. She seems so helpless in the beginning of the book, and then once she meets Lorn and I-Five she’s suddenly like the token girl of the group who clashes with Lorn. Also her character gets treated absolutely miserably when the author decide that men and women actually cannot exist as friends, like WHAT??! I knew this was like kind of coming but it had me pissed man! Darsha and Lorn actually having a sort of like “attraction” came out of left field because literally not even 100 pages ago by this point they still did not like each other and were begrudgingly helping one another. Kinda felt bad when she died but like not really because she was definitely getting on my nerves during the second half of the novel but alas I think that is mainly due to the author’s inability to write women who have agency and do not get destroyed by being designated as the male character’s love interest.
I never really like Lorn throughout the novel. He was very flat, and all his personality traits boiled down to: smug, I hate Jedi, and being poor. Like throughout the book it is drilled into your head how much Lorn HATES the Jedi, and then by the end of the book it’s like um actually he thinks this Jedi lady he actually hated is hot. Like it baffles me how much Lorn’s character was lowkey irrelevant but still focused on! I-Five was more interesting than Lorn’s whole “I hate the Jedi because they stole my son and fired me from the temple” little tragic backstory. That’s literally it to him. His entire character never really changed whatsoever other than “hmm maybe Jedi aren’t bad because I met one nice Jedi lady and she is hot and killed herself for me.” Like I was relieved when this cockroach of a man was killed by Maul, like I sighed in relief.
Obi-Wan also had absolutely no business or place being in this story. I understand why the author decided to add him because get it Phantom Menace reference!!11 But in all seriousness he added absolutely nothing to the story besides mourning Darsha and also finding her hot, and also setting up the transition for this book into The Phantom Menace’s story. I am an Obi-Wan Kenobi lover first and human second but come on, like I rolled my eyes whenever he was focused on in the book.
This book suffers from having too many characters doing too many different things happening at once. The multiple POV switches throughout a single chapter is actually horrible and the fact that the time frames each POV happen in does not sync up with others is the worst part. I did not need to have the POVs of: Sidious, the Trade Federation Nemoidians, Bounty Hunter lady, Darth Maul, Darsha Assant, Lorn Pavan, Hath Monchar, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that guy at the end that steals I-Five all happening simultaneously in separate chapters where they were supposedly “relevant.” Star Wars book authors apparently are addicted to this because I’ve read other books where this happens in. Please stop for the love of God it’s borderline unreadable.
I probably will read this again in 15 years time when I forget all the crimes committed against characters in this book. One star for Darth Maul, and one star for everything else positive I mentioned is all this book deserves. This is essentially an essay of a review but IDGAF it deserves it. (also why book description in german???)
I’ll start with the positives first so my entire review isn’t entirely negative:
I really enjoyed the characterization of Darth Maul in this book as it gave us the ability to know him as a character instead of just a scary Sith villain with cool tattoos who showed up in the Phantom Menace and had like barely 30 minutes of screen time and like 10 lines in total before getting immediately killed off by Obi-Wan. This book came out in 2001 if I am not mistaken, so this was well before we even knew that Darth Maul was actually still alive as was revealed over a decade later in an episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and also subsequently given actual depth as a character. I thought that his thoughts and actions in this book were perfect for him despite the author having almost the utmost bare minimum to work with.
I also really enjoyed the way that the author handled and explained the Jedi. I really loved the way that Darsha explained the Jedi Code during one of her parts in a chapter, and I will definitely be thinking about it for a long while. The Force in general was also handled pretty good well. Nobody was like stupidly over powered, and the explanation of how Darsha and Maul use the Force as light side and dark side wielders was phenomenal. Force tendrils are cool as hell.
The humour in this book was okay, but I will admit I did find parts of it particularly funny to the point where I did laugh out loud or react to it out loud. I-Five was honestly my favourite because of this as his interactions with Lorn were everything, they were essentially acting like an old married couple at times.
Also, this guy is SO good at creating atmosphere. The descriptions of the setting are awesome, especially in the lower levels of Coruscant and the sewer/tunnel areas. They felt gross and damp in my mind. Wonderful.
Now, onto the negative parts of this book and boy are there a lot:
First of all, this book is called Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, right? The cover of this book has Darth Maul on it, right? It opens with the point of view of Darth Maul, right? So then tell me why this book that is supposed to be focused on Darth Maul barely focuses on him or treats him as important. Most of this book, in my opinion, was bogged down by unnecessary characters all trying to do too many separate things in the name of “plot.” There was a HUGE focus on Darsha and Lorn despite the fact that they weren’t really the main characters of this book, like from what I understand Darth Maul is the main and they are secondary main characters. However, it seems that they all get plot armour (until they don’t) and seem to be able to get away from Darth Maul almost every single time! The first half of this book (which by the way, why on Earth was it thought to be a good idea to have this book split into two separate sections?) suffers from this SO much. You think “Oh, finally we’re going to get some epic battle of Jedi vs Sith with Darsha and Darth Maul” almost every time he catches up to them right? Wrong. Due to “plot” they manage to get away almost entirely unscathed multiple times making it seem like this is some Looney Tunes game of Cat and Mouse but it’s Star Wars. WHY!! I read this book specifically because it was supposed to be focused on Darth Maul, and I thought that Darsha and Lorn were going to just be the people that he is hunting down throughout the book and it would end in a climactic sort of battle between Darsha and Darth Maul with Lorn also helping. But I was apparently wrong as we spend 70% of the book running around the Crimson Corridor.
Darsha is also not my favourite. I think she just suffers from being a female character written by a male author in all honesty. She could’ve been so much but despite being written to be a woman, she comes off as an immature teenage girl. I know that her being a Padawan does not help this and I know that Padawans can have an age range of young children to adults in their 20’s but god. She’s sent off on her first solo mission in order to prove herself worthy of taking the trials to be a Jedi Knight right? Well she immediately fails this task as she is almost killed in the process of getting through this mission, and I feel like if she was going to become a Jedi Knight then surely she would’ve you know.. tried to plan in advance for emergency situations. Her master did help her out though and I did like him a lot, rip my guy. She seems so helpless in the beginning of the book, and then once she meets Lorn and I-Five she’s suddenly like the token girl of the group who clashes with Lorn. Also her character gets treated absolutely miserably when the author decide that men and women actually cannot exist as friends, like WHAT??! I knew this was like kind of coming but it had me pissed man! Darsha and Lorn actually having a sort of like “attraction” came out of left field because literally not even 100 pages ago by this point they still did not like each other and were begrudgingly helping one another. Kinda felt bad when she died but like not really because she was definitely getting on my nerves during the second half of the novel but alas I think that is mainly due to the author’s inability to write women who have agency and do not get destroyed by being designated as the male character’s love interest.
I never really like Lorn throughout the novel. He was very flat, and all his personality traits boiled down to: smug, I hate Jedi, and being poor. Like throughout the book it is drilled into your head how much Lorn HATES the Jedi, and then by the end of the book it’s like um actually he thinks this Jedi lady he actually hated is hot. Like it baffles me how much Lorn’s character was lowkey irrelevant but still focused on! I-Five was more interesting than Lorn’s whole “I hate the Jedi because they stole my son and fired me from the temple” little tragic backstory. That’s literally it to him. His entire character never really changed whatsoever other than “hmm maybe Jedi aren’t bad because I met one nice Jedi lady and she is hot and killed herself for me.” Like I was relieved when this cockroach of a man was killed by Maul, like I sighed in relief.
Obi-Wan also had absolutely no business or place being in this story. I understand why the author decided to add him because get it Phantom Menace reference!!11 But in all seriousness he added absolutely nothing to the story besides mourning Darsha and also finding her hot, and also setting up the transition for this book into The Phantom Menace’s story. I am an Obi-Wan Kenobi lover first and human second but come on, like I rolled my eyes whenever he was focused on in the book.
This book suffers from having too many characters doing too many different things happening at once. The multiple POV switches throughout a single chapter is actually horrible and the fact that the time frames each POV happen in does not sync up with others is the worst part. I did not need to have the POVs of: Sidious, the Trade Federation Nemoidians, Bounty Hunter lady, Darth Maul, Darsha Assant, Lorn Pavan, Hath Monchar, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that guy at the end that steals I-Five all happening simultaneously in separate chapters where they were supposedly “relevant.” Star Wars book authors apparently are addicted to this because I’ve read other books where this happens in. Please stop for the love of God it’s borderline unreadable.
I probably will read this again in 15 years time when I forget all the crimes committed against characters in this book. One star for Darth Maul, and one star for everything else positive I mentioned is all this book deserves. This is essentially an essay of a review but IDGAF it deserves it. (also why book description in german???)
One of my students recommended that I check out the audio versions of the Star Wars books and I'm glad he did. This is a really fun stand-alone story, and the music and sound design make for a great audiobook experience. Sam Witwer is a fantastic narrator naturally, and the narration adds a lot of pathos.
Listened to it on Audio book and wow it was great. The audio production was top class and it incorporated the music from the films. The voice actor was excellent and differentiating the characters. The story was a good intro to the Darth Mail character and his motivations. I enjoyed his descriptions and battles. Overall, I would recommend this audiobook to anyone looking for an exciting read.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Not a very deep story. The characters were well done but the plot was shallow. The way the story is shoe horned into the Star Wars timeline seemed too forced. It ended up having very little if any impact and therefore quickly became forgettable.