Lit Books Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith Novel by Adam Christopher

I really wasn't expecting

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Shriv

to be such a constant in multiple EU projects when

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Battlefront II

came out. I mean, I get the appeal, but still.

 

I'll be ordering Sunday - no luck in town today. Hopefully Amazon UK will have it in stock then.

 

Gannet.

 

Nope, that's new!

 

You do, you don't even chew it over.

 

I'm only 8 chapters in and have been loving the book so far. It's made me enjoy the Sequel Trilogy more than I ever thought possible. I really wish this book at had come out before hand, but oh well.

 

Stang, I was feeling like they should give Mark a TV series with teen Ben Solo.

I'm only up to chapter 7 and I'm like "they took the interesting interludes from Aftermath and did this!" I always thought the interludes were the best part of those books.

 

Aftermath continues to be both the most referenced piece of NEU lit and possibly the most overwritten. Aftermath set up the post Endor universe and put forth many ideas that would be seen in future books, games , and movies.
However after the changes to the Warlords, Boba's Armor, and Wedge not flying with Rogue Squadron it seemed like the idea was keeping the major overarching parts of the story but fudging the smaller stuff for the sake of future stories.

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Well Shadows of the Sith has done it for the fourth time and in a way that is a lot less debateable than the stuff with Free Town or even Wedge's injury. But just like the change to Wedge its for the sake of a better story (BTW SotS is 10/10. I won't say 7 years without a luke book was worth it but man it was nearly worth it)
So for those who haven't read Empire's End in a while at the end of that book Norra has chased Rax, Hux (JR and SR) and Tashu to one of Palpatine's observatories on Jakku where a giant hole had been drilled down into the core of the planet. Rax drapes Tashu in Sith relics and pushes him down the hole which causes a planet shattering kaboom (or would have if Norra didn't press the eject button which shunted it...somewhere..the book isn't very clear on it.) Either way Yupe Tashu fell down a hole and was blown up like Palps in EP VI.
In SotS however its stated twice, once by a former acolyte of the beyond then by Kiza herself, that she had killed both her lover and Yupe where in Empires End she had just killed her lover.
I'll share the scenes below.
Aftermath: Kiza kills her lover
>It happens fast, but feels slow. She jams the unignited blade against Remi’s temple. His eyes are round and suddenly afraid.
>The red blade spears through his skull. His eyelids strain open. The eyes themselves cook and go red before burning to cinder.
>He drops.
Kiza stands, adjusting her mask.
>Then she lets the anger take her anew, and she resumes her assault. Soon, the outpost falls. Soon, the Acolytes claim triumph.
Aftermath: Yupe Tashu's Death
>“Then come, let us pray.” He interrupts Tashu because if he does not, the man will continue to gabble for minutes, hours, perhaps until both of them have died of old age and gone to dust. Gallius Rax leads Tashu the way a parent leads a child, by the hand. Together they go to the well.
>As they approach, a narrow platform extends out, as if sensing their presence. It drifts out over the well: a plank they must walk.
>They go out together. Out here, the air is somehow both hot and cold. Warm breath interspersed with wisps of ice.
>“Palpatine will be pleased by you,” Rax says.
>“Yes. He will. And by you, too. We have done it. We have punished the undeservers. We have activated the Contingency. Let us speak a prayer to the darkness, a prayer to all the things that wait—”
>“First, my brother, I’d like to ask you something.”
>“Yes, little Galli?”
>“What will you say to him when you see our Master again?”
>“I—”
>Rax gives him no chance to answer. He pushes Tashu.
>The man cartwheels through the mist and the light, spinning, screaming—his body hits the side and slams against the rock, silencing his cries. The body goes and goes until Rax cannot see it anymore.
>A few beats of quiet and stillness. One. Two. Three…
>The world shudders. A fierce growl grumbles up through the bore, and the orange light glows suddenly red—the blue threads of mist turn black. Palpatine was right. The artifacts contain a great deal of energy.
>And now they have dropped into the core of this world. With the well open, that energy will vent. So begins the chain reaction that will destroy everything. The planet will soon begin to crack. It shall break apart. It’ll swallow the Empire and the New Republic fleets and soldiers whole. When it does, it will leave this galaxy to the scavengers and the scum, rotting like a fruit lying forgotten in the dirt. Though an idle thought troubles him: All fruit, no matter how rotten, can leave behind seeds…
So that is from Empire's End however Shadows of the Sith changes it to where instead of that second scene happening Kiza kills both her lover and Yupe while on Corellia.
SotS: Komat's POV
>“This lightsaber,” said Komat, “like the mask, was mentioned only in legend. But if the mask existed, then it was possible that so, too, did such a weapon as that ancient blade.” She turned back to Lando. “Kiza and Yupe Tashu returned, but Kiza had great difficulty in recognizing people she had previously known well. It was then that I realized the plans of Yupe Tashu, and that Kiza would soon become lost to the mask of Viceroy Exim Panshard forever. When Yupe Tashu was not present, I attempted to take the mask from her, and we engaged in a great battle. It was during this that Yupe Tashu returned, and was killed by Kiza. She fled with the mask and was not seen again.
Kiza's POV:
> “I can’t stop it,” she said, quietly. Her voice still echoed from behind the mask, but the deep resonance was different. This wasn’t Exim Panshard speaking. It was Kiza, the kid from Pantora who had stolen a lightsaber so many years ago, who had been used by Yupe Tashu for his own sinister ends, who had killed first her lover Remi and then Yupe Tashu himself as she succumbed to the power of a relic she couldn’t control and the curse of a future she’d never wanted.
So we have not only a account from the person themselves but from a eye witness. Now one thing that should be mentioned about this book is that it is chocked full of references to legends and canon (Darth Noctyss curved lightsaber is even mentioned and I just thought that was cover art for the short story) and Aftermath its self. So it seems like this would be something that would be hard to be missed when Tashu's death is at the climax of Empire's End.
Now I know the first response will be "Well Komat and Kiza are wrong and just thought he was dead" but at this point we've used "They are wrong/They miss remembered X important moment in their life" how many times? Sure its possible that Yupe faked his death in some ganatros chess gambit and went off to Jakku. But the easier answer is that Kiza killed him and Aftermath has been changed once more in favor of a more interesting story.
So TLDR: Aftermath was changed again. Guy who was killed as part of the climax of the book was really killed off much earlier by the main badguy of SotS.
Ohh also just want to mention that their is a really cool part with Luke flying a ship with the force and deflecting a starfighters blasterbolts with his saber just like some THR jedi did, his dad did, and himself did in legends. Luke is super cool in this book.

 

A little over a third of the way through now and I’m turning into the Bruce Dickinson - yes, the Bruce Dickinson - of Dathan chapters. I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more Sheev Jr. For a book with such a well-written version of Lando running around that's extremely impressive.

Speaking of which (circa Chapter 20ish):

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Is the technical Strand-Cast definition new or is that based on an older source? It feels kind of like an eat your cake and have it too thing on the clone versus son front.

 

I liked how mutch of a bafoon Ochi of Bestoon is lol.

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I liked the flashback with him trying to kill Depa Billaba, and Mace Windu cameo stopping him during the clone wars. He says he is very old in this book. He says he is a jedi hunter, wonder when he started.

 

I like how interconnected this book is with the canon.

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Luke's school is so mutch then we thought. Earlier adventures of Luke and Lor San Tekka.

 

Just finished chapter 5. So that’s where the dagger came from…

 

Prepare Base Delta Zero enforcement measures.

And a Contingency.

Definitely a Contingency.

 

That dagger

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Really wasn't expecting it to be Storm-goddamn-bringer but in a way that's all I ever really want from bladed weapons.

 

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Wow. That ending to Ch 12 & all of Ch 13!

Found it neat how Anakin’s ghost briefly turns into his older version of himself for just a second (or at least it could have been a brief vision Luke had, as the book says). Wonder what the point was of that?
Thought Ch 14 did a really good job of getting the point across of how difficult it is for Force ghosts to appear. As Anakin says it took all of his will just to save Luke from his vision & to appear to him.

Enjoying this! Onto Chapter 14!

 

The more I think of it, and I'm only up to chapter 15, this basically should have been episode 7.

I wish it was a TV series. Would love it to be the first novel adapted for a Disney+ series, because the Force knows Mark Hamill deserves to portray Luke at this time. Hayden also deserves to have an onscreen meeting with Mark.