Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Star Wars: Darth Maul - Sabotuer by James Luceno

Spoiler Rating: Medium

And now, with the Sith Era books completed, I move forward into the Prequel Era...

It's one thousand years after Darth Maul has established his Rule of Two, and the current two Sith are Darth Sidious and his apprentice, Darth Maul.  But of course, we all already know that.

Darth Sidious has decided to send Darth Maul on his first solo mission:  to sabotage two mining companies that are already doing a pretty good job of sabotaging each other.  But Maul's goal is in manipulating the situation to suit the Sith's needs, and in doing so, we see Darth Sidious put another game piece in place for his rise to power.

This is an ebook, so it's fairly short.  It doesn't go into depth on Darth Maul's history at all, although it does give us a good look inside his mind, and serves as the lead-in for the first full-length novel of the Prequel era, Luceno's Cloak of Deception.  As such, I think it would have made the most sense if it had been reprinted with Cloak of Deception, but the powers that be chose to include it with Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter instead.

I enjoyed Luceno's writing style, as I always do.  He has a great way of describing the visuals that really bring home the cinematics of watching a Star Wars movie, and this book serves as good introduction to the current Sith Lords, even if it doesn't go into much depth about them.  But then again, it really can't; having been written between the release of Episode I and Episode II, that ball was still very much in George Lucas's court.  But it still gives us a taste, and works as a great prelude to Cloak of Deception.

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