A SciFi Book Review: LORDS OF THE SITH

 **Warning Minor Spoilers**

I recently finished the newest Star Wars novel, LORDS OF THE SITH, written by Paul S. Kemp and found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable read.  Most of the Star Wars books I've read over the last few years have been pretty underwhelming and disappointing so I began reading this story without high expectations, but found myself pleasantly surprised by how much I really enjoyed this action packed novel.  I guess it takes a fellow Michigander like Paul S. Kemp to pen a quality story that will appeal to an adult audience of Star Wars fans like myself.  The novel starts out with an action packed space battle that reinforces why Darth Vader is a villain to be feared and wraps up with a jungle trek that shows why a menacing foe like Vader still bows down on one knee to Darth Sidious (aka Emperor Palpatine) as his Master.

LORDS OF THE SITH takes place a few years after the fall of the galactic republic and has Emperor Palpatine preserving order and allegiance to his imperial rule through military might.  The public, nor his military establishment,  realize that he is the powerful Darth Sidious and perceive Emperor Palpatine as an elderly and fragile politician.  On the other hand, Vader is not in the public eye but rather lurks in the shadows as an enforcer of the Emperor's most important mandates.  Rumors of Darth Vader's immortal feats are beginning to circulate throughout the galaxy adding a sense of fear to the public that the Emperor's minion is not one you want to cross.  The public doesn't really know if Darth Vader is fact or fiction until he is coming for them and by that time it is too late.  With this stage set, the Emperor finds himself with a firm grip of control over his Empire with only one person who could potentially challenge his dominion, Darth Vader.  So Darth Sidious sets out to test Vader's loyalty and demonstrate why the Emperor is the most dangerous and powerful of the two.

While the title would make you believe this is the principal storyline of the book, the relationship conflicts between the Lords of the Sith play a secondary role.  The main plot revolves around a character that was originally introduced in the Clone Wars animated television series named Cham Syndulla.  Cham appeared in two episodes of the Clone Wars leading a band of Twi'lek freedom fighters when their home planet Ryloth is invaded by the Separatist army during its battle with the Republic.  Now these freedom fighters are standing up against the Empire which has taken control of Ryloth and is abusing its population as a source of slave labor and depleting the planet's resources as the Imperials mine it for a mineral known as Ryll Spice which is a favorite narcotic used by many species throughout the galaxy.

Cham's efforts to bring down Imperial control of Ryloth are one of the first significant "rebel" challenges to the Empire's power and a spark for things to come in the Star Wars universe.  While no characters from the Star Wars: Rebels television show appear in this story, LORDS OF THE SITH does a great job of establishing a canonical bridge between that series and Clones Wars.  You see Cham's daughter is named Hera, who is one of the main characters in Star Wars: Rebels, and what transpires during LORDS OF THE SITH plays a big part in how Hera Syndulla gets to where she is at when the Rebels storyline begins.

You know Cham isn't going to win in the end of this story because it takes place well before the events of A New Hope ( aka the original Star Wars movie) but he provides a thrilling story that kept me enthused about finishing the book.  True Star Wars fans will appreciate  how this book lays a foundation for future events within the franchise and does a nice job of linking references from the prequel movies and Clone Wars tv series to the Star Wars: Rebels show and the original movies.

John Jackson Miller's book A New Dawn was supposed to be the setup book for Star Wars: Rebels, but because that novel really wasn't very interesting or well written I'd recommend skipping over that book if you haven't already read it and stick with Lords of the Sith as a bridge between the Clones Wars years and the Rebels time period.  Kemp really does a nice job of referencing other Star Wars events into the book, but it was also refreshing that he adds new characters, monsters, locals and scenarios into his book.  Too often authors writing Star Wars novels rely too much on the same established characters, creatures and settings that for me makes those stories uninspired and boring...I'm so sick of Rancors being used as monsters and stops on Tatooine - give us some new original monsters and locals please it is a big galaxy...and I was pleased that Kemp has done a nice job of using familiar but not over used elements while also putting his own original touches into the story.

So how does Cham and his band of Twi'lek freedom fighters get Darth Vader and the Emperor stranded in a dangerous alien jungle fighting against vicious Ryloth wild predators, treasonous Imperials, and Syndulla's forces hunting them down?  You'll have to read the book to find out!

LORDS OF THE SITH gets A Geek Daddy nod of approval because for casual Star Wars fans it provides a fun action packed SciFi adventure and for die hard fans it adds some great foundational elements to the canon of the franchise further tying together the movies and television series.  This book is suitable for tweens and up.

Star Wars: A New Dawn - a Novel by John Jackson Miller

 ** Warning Spoilers Below **

A NEW DAWN ushers in a new era of publishing for the Sci-Fi franchise being the first novel to be "officially" included in Disney's canon for its Star Wars Universe and serves as an introduction to the animated series Star Wars: Rebels.  This book is a decent romp of an adventure for the teen and young adult audience that the Star Wars: Rebels television show is being developed for and marketed to.  The tie-in to the Disney XD tv series and Star Wars universe is a great hook to get a young audience, that probably doesn't read literature as much as they should, to pick up and enjoy a book.  While the novel isn't designated as a Young Adult (YA) book [The Young Adult Library Service of the American Library Association defines the young adult genre as for ages twelve to eighteen although many publishers and authors market materials as either Teen Fiction for ten to fifteen year olds or Young Adult for sixteen to twenty-five year olds] that should be its key audience as it really is a flop when it comes to providing an enjoyable read for more mature adult Star Wars fans who may be more discerning readers. 

The story begins with a young fourteen year old Jedi in training (known as a Padawan) named Caleb Dume who escapes the Empire's purge of the Jedi Order and goes into hiding.  Ten years pass and Caleb has changed his ways and his identity to avoid detection from the bounty out on the heads of any remaining Jedi.  Hiding out in a backworld mining community far away from the heart of the Empire, he enjoys a lifestyle of drinking and carousing with the ladies when not performing menial labor to get by.  Caleb never uses the force or his real name to avoid any chance of being associated as a Jedi which would undoubtedly lead to his death at the hands of Imperial authorities.  The problem becomes that the mineral being exclusively mined where he is hiding out suddenly becomes a hot commodity being used to build the Empire's Star Destroyers (and probably the Death Star too) bringing with it the novel's villain and a lot of attention to the planet that Caleb, now known as Kannan Jarrus, doesn't want.

Kannan Jarrus is one of the primary characters of the Star Wars: Rebels animated series described as a Jedi in hiding from the Empire.  So anyone who has looked into the show in advance or watches any of its episodes will quickly pickup that Kannan Jarrus is Caleb Dume.  I suspected this about a page into when the Kannan Jarrus character was introduced but the author tries to spin this angle into a huge plot twist for the story.  Younger audiences may not connect the dots and appreciate this story angle but more sophisticated readers will find this angle overplayed and a rather boring element of the story that drags on way too long. 

John Jackson Miller originally became associated with the Star Wars universe by scripting  some pretty good stories for Dark Horse Comic Books which he parlayed into a gig as an author for Star Wars novels.  I've read all of his Star Wars books so far because their descriptions always sound interesting and I enjoy  Star Wars stories. A New Dawn though just really finally cemented for me that I'm not a fan of John Jackson Miller's novels which I find to be very simplistic and uninspiring.  I give him credit for having great story ideas but beyond delivering a decent outline for a novel's premise he just can't deliver a quality final product in my opinion.  Yet, I will say his work is probably good enough to amuse and entertain a younger reader so I would recommend A New Dawn to that demographic; but John Jackson Miller's writing just doesn't cut it for me when it comes to wanting to devote my valuable time towards enjoying a good book.  To be honest, if I wasn't reading A New Dawn for this review I probably would have stopped reading it halfway through the story. 

A New Dawn also introduces another major character from Star Wars: Rebels known as Hera Syndulla, but beyond introducing this mysterious Twi'lek as being "mysterious" that is about all we get about her.  We find out that she owns a space ship called the Ghost which is a big part of Rebels but don't learn anything about her past or present that really connects her to the television show.  I thought the book was supposed to be setting up the television series but telling the story of how Kannan and Hera meet before Rebels is about all the novel accomplishes.  Hera seems to have a lot of information and intel about the story's main villain and other Imperial activities but the story doesn't delve into how she acquired it, how she funds her secret agent type activities, who, if anyone, she is associated with, what is she actually doing traveling around the galaxy piloting an expensive starship, and so on.  The story actually goes out of its way to say there isn't a Rebellion yet...so what is Hera up to and what brought her to mingle in the Empire's affairs.  None of these issues is brought up and it just leaves you scratching your head.

Miller doesn't even do a nice job of creating a reason for Kannan and Hera to team up.  Essentially the author has Kannan lusting after Hera and offering to follow her and help her in whatever she wants him to do because he's fallen for this mysterious beauty? Really! that just seems a little naive and uncreative. Fortunately for readers incidents beyond the two of them bring Kannan and Hera together for a more rational reason to join forces rather than her being an attractive female that caught his eye.  In the end, the two of them fly off together into the sunset to do who knows what because John Jackson Miller doesn't elaborate anything about Hera other than she is a good fighter and pilot who hates the Empire.

The best part of the story is probably the villain who is sort of a parallel Darth Vader.  While Darth Vader went from being a healthy and powerful person that was crippled into a robotic cyborg form, Count Vidian was a sickly and weak individual that became physically and professionally powerful when he transformed his body into a mechanical cyborg.  Count Vidian was a worthwhile adversary and featured the best plot elements and twists in the story.  I appreciated how he demonstrates the corruption and abuses of the Empire from a business perspective versus the military viewpoint that is the normal perspective in Star Wars novels.  Unfortunately in the end, the reader isn't invested enough within the story and its characters to really care if County Vidian succeeds with his villainous scheme or not but rather is just curious to find out how the story will wrap up.

For this being the first book to be included in the canon for the overall Star Wars storyline and the introduction to the highly anticipated Rebels, I have to say it was disappointing that the novel didn't contribute anything memorable to either.