Books New Novel! Maul: Lockdown by Joe Schreiber

And the opening crawl does begin with "It is a period of civil war."

 

Forget all explanations–I like this one this one the best:

Sidious planned to call the Clone Wars "the Galactic Civil War," but when the Battle of Geonosis ended, Yoda said "begun the Clone War has," and that just caught on. Sidious, peeved that Yoda stole his thunder, decided again, as soon as the first rebel popped up, "finally! This is my chance to use my title for the war! No stupid green troll to usurp me this time!"

 

I was about to say that.

 

Thank you, Anakin.

 

^Amazing how Dooku can block all that with just one hand...

 

I'd like to thank Schrieber for rectifying one of Luceno's mistakes. We now have confirmation that the lion's share of Palpatine's rise to power was the product of Sidious and Sidious alone.

Palpatine only kept him abreast of broad and major developments.

 

Man Jabba doesn't hesitate when it comes to making small talk with the ladies.

 

Preorderd!

 

I believe the novel strongly implies this throughout, and its outright stated at the end before Palpatine slays his master.

 

PREORDERED.

I hope the Mysterious Scene-Stealer shows up. Somehow. Someway.

 

Arrrgggh, I was debating whether or not to post about this here after I linked to that article back in the Rebels discussion thread in the TV forum. You've stolen my thunder!

Fixed the highlighting for you. Before that I could totally make out the text if I increased the screen contrast high enough. Not anymore though, not unless I highlight.

Hmmmmm, small galaxy, huh? I wonder if Dooku would make a cameo given that Plagueis and Sidious play major roles in the novel. I wonder what insights the "Syrox Redemption" will offer.

 

The bar has been set. Palpatine must be planning the Galactic Civil War as a contingency if his plan for The Force Unleashed fails as it did, in this novel.

 

He needs to stop hiring Sam Witwer for these things.

Edit: Wait. He's also... nvm. Unintentional irony.

 

Dooku was a BAWS. People are always like "nuh uh, Anakin took him out", but they forget that the duel was "Obi-Wan and Anakin vs Dooku" and technically ended an even 1-1.

 

Would you call that nepotism?

 

I'm 95% sure he was expecting Sidious to jump in at any point, and was going easy on his orders, but that's just a personal supposition without proof..

 

I concur. He seemed genuinely shocked when Palps turned on him and didn't save him.

 

Dooku was going all out on Anakin because if Anakin couldn't handle it he was unworthy of joining them. And Dooku didn't want Anakin to join them anyway so he wasn't going to be upset if Anakin failed the test.

 

I suspect this stems from Schreiber becoming more comfortable working within the universe and having had more time to learn about what's out there. For Death Troopers it was probably his main concern to get the "feel" of Star Wars right, and not screw up Han and Chewie while telling a good story. With Red Harvest, he'd have a better idea of the feel and could start adding in other minor elements as he went. Now with a third book he probably has a better grasp of what to ask Leland or look up on wookieepedia or what have you.

Probably if we all compared an author's first EU book to their most recent output, we'd see a dramatic increase in how much other EU they were able to incorporate once they were familiar with the idea and had some practice (unless they were already a big EU fan before they started writing).

 

Mainly because his main forte outside Star Wars is horror. He hasn't quite left his comfort zone, if Lockdown is going to be as harsh as I see it being.

 

Honestly I'm not really enthusiastic about this. We've had a ton of stories, both pre- and post-resurrection, about Maul just going around brutally killing a bunch of bad guys. Maybe this one will be different or have something that really sets it apart, but so far none of the previews have given me any reason to expect it to be - and not to mention that as a novel, it doesn't even have the visual element that the comic Maul stories at least had.

I will say I'm interested in the Vong. Although part of me worries that it's just basically there to be a winking cameo for the EU fans and not actually be addressed as to why/how he got there at that time.