Reviews Books The Lit Forum Reviews Special: LORDS OF THE SITH (spoilers)

I'm not crazy about slapping an arbitrary number on an experience, but I'd give LotS an 8! Here's why:

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/review-star-wars-lords-sith-blog-entry-1.2201665

 

5 of 10 from me

 

It had a good beat and I could dance to it, except for the ending which was so abrupt that I actually wondered if the publisher left out a couple chapters by mistake. If there's ever an "author's cut" that adds a chapter or two to actually wrap up all the subplots, I'd be happy to bump up my score, but as it stands, 7 out of 10 from me.

 

I'd probably give it a 7/10. Enjoyed it overall but there were a few small things that bugged me.

 

9/10 for me.

Reasons being:

Someone actually gave some serious thought to how to take out a Star Destroyer with bugger all resources and, even then, it takes all of it and is still intact!

A truly sick master-student relationship between Sidious and Vader.

That the plot is revealed as everyone acting according to the Design of Sheev. Even when they're off-page, Sidious and Vader still dictate or influence everybody else's moves and actions.

A willingness to pose hard questions while knowing there is little in the way of easy answers to them.

 

8/10. For a one shot where you know the outcome this was probably the best a writer can do. Random points of interest as I'm too lazy ramble on. .

I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the three "master/apprentice" relationships: the titular characters, Dray/Mors, and Cham/Isval. Nice seeing the two apprentices fail in their subversions of the master compared to Vader in ROTJ.

Mors was a complex enough queer character for the nEU. Glad to know I'm not the only non-hetero who has gained weight as I've aged and feel those pings in the morning.

I like Kemp's writing. Good mix for Star Wars. Nice to see someone remember that writing for entertainment is not writing for crap.

 

6 out of 10

Not the Palpatine/Vader Sith-centric novel I was really hoping it to be!!

Palpatine seemed Aloft and more cryptic then normal.
The Twileaks really weighted the book down and I really didn't give 2 Sheeves about them!!!




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The details are slipping my mind, which is not a good sign.

I'm a fan of Kemp's SW books, so I was expecting it to be better.

But it was good. I thought the second half much better.

7.5/10

 

57.5/8 = ~7.2

 

I liked this book a lot, enjoyed the badassery by Vader and Palpatine, but to my surprise I actually enjoyed more the parts with the Ryloth freedom fighters. I like Kemps' writing style as well.

8.5/10

 

8/10

The spider thing was too long.

Other than that, great read!

 

8/10.

Like Spicer, the proto-Rebel freedom fighters were my favorite part. Syndulla's moment where he turns the tables on Belkor was freaking awesome, reminded me of Gil Bastra and Kirtan Loor at the beginning of Rogue Squadron. They were a gem throughout the rest of the book as well. And exactly what I like to imagine the early groups that would eventually become the Rebel Alliance would be. I hope the group comes back.

 

8/10.

Like Spicer, the proto-Rebel freedom fighters were my favorite part. Syndulla's moment where he turns the tables on Belkor was freaking awesome, reminded me of Gil Bastra and Kirtan Loor at the beginning of Rogue Squadron. They were a gem throughout the rest of the book as well. And exactly what I like to imagine the early groups that would eventually become the Rebel Alliance would be. I hope the group comes back.

 

My long review post is here, so I won't repeat myself. I'll just add a numerical value to my review: I give this book 8.5/10. Points deducted for the overlong lylek scenes and for the occasionally distracting writing.

 

Definitely not what I expected, but a solid read nonetheless. Kemp hasn't always been the strongest Star Wars author, but I feel like here he has his best effort. There's balance in the story, not only focusing on Vader and Palpatine, but a number of factions involved in what becomes a chaotic day and pitched battle. Unlike some of his past efforts, none of the characters with POVs feel superfluous, even when they initially seem they might be so, and each gives a widely varying perspective on the plot and on the universe in general.

Vader and the Emperor are, of course, the most familiar and there could have been little new we get from their scenes, all seen through Vader's masked eyes. There are some fascinating insights, though, as Vader struggles to suppress his past and focus on his anger and hatred, all while dealing with his seemingly omniscient master. There's a well done relationship here, where the two Sith Lords are at once a team on a level greater than all of existence around them as well as a leader and his subordinate. Whereas in the past, Palpatine too often seemed to be simply using and exploiting his damaged apprentice, forever disappointed that he failed to reach his potential, here we have more of that twisted teacher and student relationship, with Palpatine perhaps believing his apprentice could one day challenge him, even as he clearly has a great advantage. One of the strengths of their chapters is Vader's musings on just how much Palpatine knows and how much he may continue to manipulate Vader, whether the apprentice realizes it or not.

It seems that most of our Sith-centric books require not quite as abominable protagonists, and in that regard Cham and Isval bring their own strengths to the story. Cham is very much what we remember, the leader and revolutionary fighting for his planet's freedom, though he's given new layers with his extortion of his Imperial contact and his repeated "freedom fighters, not terrorists" mantra. He's very much a good guy, though, and though the question isn't whether he'll succeed, I did enjoy seeing how much damage he would do, how close he would get to success, and just how far he might go.

Which brings us to Isval, Cham's deadly, bitter right-hand woman and in some ways his darker reflection. With her we see someone who might just be willing to eliminate innocents to wipe out her targets, target medical personnel for being Imperial, and whose reason for doing so are at least understandable if not necessarily justifiable. She and Cham complement each other well, with the place they end up and journey to get there working for me with both of them.

Belkor and Mors, too, have strong arcs heading on opposite trajectories, surprisingly but gratifyingly so in the latter's case.

The book has issues, of course. The lylek scene went on a bit too long, particularly for a sequence we know isn't going to have any real lasting impact. There are long stretches where Vader and Palpatine aren't in the book that made me wonder why I'd signed up at all. Overall it's a strong read, but not necessarily a great one. There were times where knowing that ultimately the driving force behind the plot had to fail made the experience feel unnecessary, much more than previous books with similar foreknowledge (Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, for example).

Not perfect, but pretty good. 7/10

 

And this one:

105.5/14 = 7.54

 

8/10

By far my fave book in the so called "new canon." But I wished they did more chapters on Vader and Palpy.

 

I think you counted Ackbar's Fishsticks' double-post, but with Davak24's post, 105.5/14 = 7.54 is the new average.

 

Oops

 

10/10 For the Vader scenes

HOWEVER

Knocking 5 points off for the annoying rebel scenes that take up much of the book

Final Score 5/10

 

5/10

Parts of the books were strong but I don't feel like the book lived up to what it promised which was a story of Vader and the Emperor alone in enemy territory and having to survive by depending on each other and that Vader would question his place and taking over. Vader only thinks twice about letting Sidious die but dismisses the thoughts within seconds of thinking of it and admits so to his Master.

I didn't care for the other character POVs and was frustrated by Cham's fall in intelligence. He went from being really smart and careful but he seems to lose it worse than Belkor did when his men and nature can't seem to kill two people. He seemed to also struggle with the mortality of what he was doing since he keeps telling himself he isn't a terrorist but a freedom fighter which was interesting. But there was one unforgivable bit: the fact that Hera isn't mentioned until practically the very end Cham never once thinks of how he's trying to free Ryloth so girls like Hera can be free.

Mors's about face was hard to understand especially if she was in a Spice induced haze most of the time and how clear her head seemed to be. Belkor's descent into madness was fast and a little confusing.

However the action scenes featuring Vader and later Sidious were interesting and easily the best parts of the book.

 

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel, quite possibly because I read it (well, listened to the unabridged audio book) right after Tarkin. That was a novel that...did everything it needed to in a dry, sort of perfunctory way, but never really pulled together for me. Here we have a novel that's essentially doing the same thing - an early rebellion vs Vader novel, except this time it's the leader of the Rebels (Cham) that we have past history with instead of someone on Vader's side (Tarkin).

But this novel? It's not my favourite, the characters aren't my favourite characters and I guess I just wasn't desperately looking for a novel that tackled this. Despite that I consistently found myself more interested in the characters and development of the plot than I thought I would be. I started the story leery of Mors, suspecting her to be a caricature, only to be pleasantly surprised by the way her story - and Dray's - took a much less predictable turn. She did not become likable or decent but she became interesting and something far more than a stereotype. Likewise, Dray's downward spiral was fascinating in an awful kind of way; I honestly wasn't sure how long he'd fall or for how far. As has been noted, the relationship is one of a number of morally complicated Master/Apprentice relationships throughout the novel - this one particularly interesting because neither party is what you could call a "good" human being. Mors probably comes out best as she is at least not turning traitor, but Dray's betrayal is in part motivated by her absolutely disgraceful prior behaviour.

On the other hand, the line the Twi'lek rebels try to walk is...pretty well-drawn. Isval's behaviour is understandable but at times uncomfortable. She undoubtedly takes pleasure in others' pain, she acts out of revenge and Cham loves her but doesn't really know how to help. It's also interesting to watch Cham go from a position of assurance and confidence (a partial act on his part, but still how we, as readers, are introduced to him) when blackmailing Dray, to slowly questioning the depths of resources he's committed to this gambit.

Finally, the action. I honestly found the structure fairly original. The way the entire novel was really structured around one single, extended battle, stretched from space engagement to atmospheric, to ground combat, to one-on-one confrontations, shedding resources on both sides, gave a real sense of scope and gravity to the endeavour. Even though it was clear, from the start, the rebels couldn't succeed, there was an element of exhilaration, or perhaps anxiety, in waiting to see how close they'd get.

Yeah. It was a pretty cool book.

8/10.

 

6/10. Given we knew all along both the title characters were guaranteed to survive it was nothing more than a study in failure by poor old Cham. And whilst it was pretty interesting seeing a Sith Apprenticeship actually operate I don't know if it really merited a whole novel whereby very little of ongoing significance actually happened.