Lightsiders impose their will on the Force all the time. As Ben says in ANH, it obeys your commands. Though an EU author agrees, Lucas does not. If the sides of the Force don't matter, there is no incentive for Anakin to go to the dark side in order to obtain a Force power needed to save his wife. And if the sides of the Force didn't matter, this fact would have been known to the Jedi, who would have explained it to their students. It is fundamental to the plot of ROTS that the sides of the Force do matter and that the Jedi, including Anakin, are aware of this fact. Also, it is said that Dooku's use of lightning identifies him as a darksider. If lightning was not exclusive to the dark side its appearance would not be able to identify its user as a darksider. But midichlorians and alignment are traits of the Force user. Even if there are no limitations on the Force, there may be limitations on the Force user. Even if the Force is infinite, the Force user is not infinite.
The Brotherhood members should have killed each other off, not get tricked into committing suicide by Bane.
Well you already know I don't agree. Arawn_Fenn then if I didn't make it clear before, I agree with the EU author over Lucas. Won't be the first time and i'm sure there are plenty of others who don't agree with everything George lays down. Nothing else you said really disproves it in my opinion.
The logic behind the Rule of Two is that the Sith can't understand Enlightened Self-Interest. That's a rather cartoonish view of it, IMHO.
I'm saying the logic of the Rule of Two being, "Get three Sith together and two will kill the other" doesn't work for me any more than "diluting the Dark Side."
The books are simplistic, juvenile trash, lowest-common-denominator attempts at storytelling by a third-rate writer with no power to tell an original story; he is limited entirely to recycling impossibly generic cliches in the manner of a twelve-year-old who has read lots of books and thinks, "Yeah, I can do that!" Karpyshyn has never met an idea he cannot sap of all interest or uniqueness (and appears incapable of considering writing outside the perspective of RPG mechanics), and the Bane books reflect that to perfection. They are the nadir of genre tie-in garbage, badly-written, boring, and utterly generic. Any enjoyment of them should be immediately followed by crippling shame.
Out of the entire EU....in STAR WARS, you single these books out that way? I respectfully disagree. I enjoyed Path of Destruction for being a breath of fresh air in the Expanded Universe, at least at the time. It's a Villain's Journey that starts us off in very familiar today of a poor boy in the Outer Rim territories with an exceptional connection to the Force before taking him to join the military then to learn the ways of the magical knights, only for him to discover and achieve his destiny. I love how subversive the book is in the context of SW because it has Darth Bane repeatedly try to win our sympathies by being the bookish go-getter (despite looking like Vin Disel) only to slowly corrupt him ever deeper to an absolute moral blackhole. The Darth Bane who emerges from the Sith Academy on Korriban is a monster and proceeds to smash through all opposition only to lay claim to the mantle of Dark Lord--all by SEIZING IT. The very fact they're amongst the only books in the canon where the villain is the protagonist and WINS would win them points for uniqueness. Also, it's ridiculous that people harp on Bane for stealing from the KOTOR games when other books get praised for their use of continuity. I, Jedi managed to provide a different perspective on the Jedi Academy books and I consider POD no different.
With all the crap we've been subjected to over the years how is it that the Bane Trilogy could possibly be at the bottom of the list? I see people complain about the simplistic writing style often enough, and I don't even disagree, but why exactly is it an unforgivable thing? Not every writer has to be, or can be Stover after all. I think there's a lot to be said for a simplistic style that makes it easy for everyone to understand, but isn't redundant or bordering on idiocy. In terms of the story being original, it really couldn't be too original when you consider that it was basically adapting previous works, but new elements were added that fleshed out the characters of Darth Bane and Darth Zannah far more than they had been before. The entire trilogy is a story about villains and it never shirks from that. There are qualities in the characters one can admire, but they're never portrayed as anything less than monsters once they've grown into full fledged Sith Lords, and I for one appreciate that.
Don't forget that, despite being centered around villains, it manages to introduce Jedi that are not super-powered but are still fun characters to read (like Johun Othone). Despite the fact that every one of them dies...
I agree with those who say that it would've been better if Bane swiped the idea of the RoT from Exar Kun instead of Revan. I still assert that the Rule of Two is one of the most brilliant but misunderstood explorations of "supervillain psychology" ever conceived.
I wouldn't have minded having Exar Kun and Revan swapped, but I quite enjoyed Revan's appearance, too. Exar Kun probably would've meant nothing to me when I read it, since I hadn't read TOTJ at that time, but I'd played KOTOR so seeing Revan (and Lehon, and the Sith Academy) was quite enjoyable for me.
Very true, and he even had his own mini story arc in ROT, along with Darovit, who until that novel I absolutely hated based on the Jedi vs Sith comic. Farfalla was also presented decently, and even Hoth was in POD. Dynasty of Evil then gave us Set Harth, who in my opinion was/is easily interesting enough to deserve his own standalone novel. Yeah, for me, I don't even have a problem with Revan being mentioned, but it just seems like he was given more importance than was needed, to cash in on the characters popularity. At this point, all of us had known about Exar and Uliq for years!!! And they predated Revan. How does it then end up that they aren't the inspiration for the idea instead of Revan? I'd chalk it up to Kun having had one of those large empires Bane was so dissatisfied with, but Revan had one too!
In addition, it seems that Kun and Ulic are the ones who inspired Revan and Malak! (see Wrath of Darth Maul)
Plus, Revan turned away from the dark side, so you'd think that most Sith would be like "kriff that guy!"
There's simple writing and then there's simplistic writing. Hemingway's writing style was simple. Karpyshyn is hung up on the difference between writing video games and writing novels. I mean compared to the typical media tie-in genre spinoff it's not like awful, but if Star Wars is the Applebee's of literature, the Bane books are like the McDonald's on the bad side of town.
I haven't actually read the books (don't much care for villain protagonists and books where they win, unless its on the level of Darth Plagueis), but even while browsing through Wookieepedia and I ran across the part about Bane basically getting the idea for his Rule of Two from a Darth Revan holocron just seemed... gratuitous. A major Bioware writer (well, former by now) throwing in Bioware's (former) golden boy into Bane's backstory as the inspiration for Bane's Rule of Two? Revan was always overpowered, but at least he was kept in the KotOR era, far away from the OT. If you were a major KotOR fanboy, guess the reference would only improve the book, but otherwise it seemed a bit odd. And as I like KotOR but don't quite love it that much, never much cared for how much KotOR copied from the prequels and then KotOR's influence is spread even further by adding Revan into Bane's backstory. Also, not entirely sure, but apparently that kid who survived Jedi vs. Sith (the boy who tried being Jedi and Sith and failed miserably at both) was apparently framed and used as a scapegoat/decoy by Bane and Zannah? Something like that? Jedi vs. Sith wasn't a happy story, but I liked his ending in that he just walked away, but for that to be overwritten sounds annoying too. At least I think that was how it went originally, my memory isn't that good, and not really interested in looking into it further for the depressing details.
I also agree that Revan was probably used to cash in a bit on his popularity rather than mentioning Ulic and Kun. Having said that I think it actually worked in OK in the novel, though I would have liked more of a mention of some other Sith lords as well. Overall I think it didn't pull me away from the story too much because the fact that Bane actually considered Revan's teaching, even though he turned away from the dark side, kind of lent a bit of credence to the idea that he was smarter than a lot of others who'd have dismissed Revan out of spite (well, I suppose like they dismissed the other archive information), never traveled to Lehon and found the holocron etc. I agree. I actually thought the deaths of the Jedi in the novels were one of those parts that would have been extremely difficult to write well. Particularly when your protagonist is a monster, your antagonist is someone who is kind in nature and you lead into the conflict with perspectives from both sides. Given all of that, though I wasn't joyous with the outcome, I actually didn't throw the book out the window or anything, so I consider that a decent effort at least, from DK.
This was probably my first real foray into the EU and having a dark side bias I was really drawn to this. I will admit that they didn't feel the best written but I still enjoyed them for the story and the fact that so much actually happens and over an extended period of time. They are written a little bit like Bane is some character in a computer game who is levelling up 'You found the orbelisk armour!' Dun dun Dan daaaan! But hey i personaly like a good 'level up' story, but then not everybody does.
