Books The Official Darth Plagueis Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Well, alright, finally finished this one. I had devoured the first two sections pretty quickly upon release, but only had time to nibble my way through the final section due to RL time constraints. But, finally finished.

And, well, this is a damn masterpiece for the EU. I am amazed at how well it has brought together the various pre-TPM standalone stories into a singular plan/arc (and not just the obvious ones like COD & DM:SH, but even stuff like Acts of War). And, later in the book, it's awesome to not only get the other side of certain conversations and scenes, but also events that were off-screen/between the scenes in TPM itself.

From an EU perspective, you also get some delicious nerdgasms when you get the bearers of key names in the future Empire gathered in one place: Sienar, Tarkin, Pestage, Kinman, etc.

Developing history only suggested previously (such as Ronhar Kim) and tying in new stuff (the Yinchori as the original clone army candidates!)

Also, kinda fun that the book outrought uses the phrases "Phantom Menace" & "Revenge of the Sith" in dialogue.


The book also ties in old SW draft theories that were had for the prequels, such as Palpatine's first name being Cos (as in Cos Da****)- even though here it's actually his father's name, but, still, we ended up with Cos Palpatine.

Along those lines, towards the end, there was the comment "The rim faction will flock to you, in the hope of being able to manipulate you." which nicely evokes a concept in the prologue to the SW novelization.

Also interesting that Luceno effectively wrote the forging of the Seppie alliances here and in COD, but also wrote Mace Windu's dissessembly/investigation of them in LOE.

From the one interview, it's also funny that this book's cancellation was the result of the exact opposite of the reasons we suspected: we all thought it was because it was touching too much on Palpatine, yet in fact it was because it wasn't touching enough on Palpatine.


And, in that regard, as someone who was very much against developing Palpatine's backstory, I'm actually mostly pleased with what was done here: the vast majority of Palpatine's "screentime" is his political rise, which is in fitting with what we already knew.

I'm less enthusiastic about the whole House Palpatine familycide "I hate my father and my father hates me" subplot, which seems a little too simple/cliched. But, it's over fast enough, and leads to the far more interesting scenes of Plagueis and Palpatine discussing it's aftermath.


Other than that, I'm still baffled by Luceno's sudden thesaurus orgy- it's intersting at times, but since it's not tied to a specific POV, it feels a little out of place given how it connects with other works that don't go so far with their vocabulary, and I think that might be discouraging to some readers (particularly younger ones) and make a more difficult barrier for thme to overcome to experience this key entry in the EU.

It's not insurmountable but just a little overkill, I suppose.

Also, it has the odd future POV of the prose that speaks of events far beyond TPM which (when combined with the broad span of time it covers and the number of other stories it summarizes/spoils) adds up to a more confusing "where do I out it on the shelf" timeline question, as I brought up a few weeks ago earlier in this thread.

Still, wow.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot about that little tidbit. I thought it was a bit much, but clever at the same time.

 

A real shame he couldn't fit in the AOTC for the trifecta. I mean, if you're gonna do it, might as well go all the way, right?

 

No, they just need the dictionary app on their iphone/itouch to reference while reading .

 

I still can't get over the fact that there's a chapter named for a Doors song.