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This week I decided to review Star Wars: Lords of the Sith
by Paul S. Kemp.
The story begins with Cham Syndulla, former leader of the
resistance against the Separatist occupation of Ryloth and current leader of
the Free Ryloth movement which seeks to liberate the planet from the Empire, aboard
an armed freighter waiting to meet an Imperial transport that has been captured
by the rebels.
But when the transport arrives its commander, one of Cham’s most
trusted lieutenants, sends a panicked message for Cham’s ship to flee the
system because an Imperial fighter force led by Darth Vader is in hot pursuit,
with a Star Destroyer not far behind. Unable to flee the system without being
detected, all Cham and those with him can do is listen as Vader disables then boards the transport and wipes out it crew.
Back on Coruscant, Vader meets with Emperor Palpatine where
the Emperor devises a plan to lure the Free Ryloth movement into a trap by
travelling to the world with Vader and leaking word of the trip to the Ryloth
senator’s staff which he is certain contains a rebel spy. Cham receives this
information, but fearing it might be a trap, he contacts Belkor Dray, a
disgruntled high-ranking Imperial officer who aids the rebels in an attempt to
discredit his superior Moff Delion Mors, who apparently spends almost all of
her time doing spice and indulging her other whims while doing very little work.
The
meeting leads Cham to believe that the visit is not a trap because Belkor doesn’t
know that Vader and Palpatine are coming. Based on this belief, the Free Ryloth Movement
prepares everything it has for its chance to decapitate the Empire by
eliminating Vader and Palpatine in one blow. They launch a fleet of salvaged
droid fighters to attack the Star Destroyer carrying the two Sith Lords, then
slip saboteur teams aboard the ship in craft sent to assist the warship, and
one infiltrator team steals an Imperial escort boat to pursue when Vader and
Palpatine.
Despite being misled by Belkor, who has them target both the shuttle
containing their targets and the one carrying Moff Mors, the rebels manage to
down both shuttles. But Vader and Palpatine, and some of the Imperial Royal
Guards with them, survive, as does the Moff. So Palpatine, Vader, and their few
soldiers must evade both the rebels and the hostile native wildlife while the
Moff struggles to evade those loyal to Belkor and rally forces to aid the
Emperor… The book also contains "Orientation," a short story focused on Vader’s
and Palpatine’s journey aboard an elderly training cruiser to meet the Star
Destroyer that carries them to Ryloth and the dangers they face on that trip.
I give this book 7 out of 10. It wasn’t bad but there were
several major flaws. First, knowing that Vader and Palpatine must survive
drained a lot of tension from the story. Second, the fates of almost all of the
characters not introduced in this story are known to those who keep up with
current Star Wars lore and not many of the new characters got enough
development for me to care what happened to them. This was particularly bad for
the Free Ryloth Movement, with only one of the newly introduced characters
getting much development. Third, there was one action Palpatine orders Vader to
commit during the story which I feel served no real purpose besides drilling in
the point that Vader and Palpatine are evil with a tissue-thin excuse given to
explain Palpatine’s motives.
Finally, there’s a lack of detail concerning most
of the spacecraft in the story with only those seen on screen being identified
by class, or even given decent descriptions, a flaw that carries over into
"Orientation" as readers receive no details about the cruiser the story takes place
on other than a little background history. A little more detail here would have
made visualizing the space scenes much easier in my opinion. Still, the character
combat scenes were well-done and the interactions between Vader and Palpatine
were mostly great other than the scene I mentioned above.
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