Books The Official Darth Plagueis Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Just finished it. Great book with some minor flaws, but nothing to bad. In terms of Luceno's other novels I still think Cloak of Deception and TUF are better, though it's hard to top those books. As usual I loved the references, especially to the video game Bounty Hunter and the Republic comic series, the latter of which I'm currently reading, so that was a nice treat for me. Cool to see the first meeting of Palpatine and Ronhar Kim actually adapted.

Though I do think that many of these references will go over the heads of most people, especially in part 3 which intertwines with Saboteur, the comic Darth Maul, Cloak of Deception, Shadow Hunter, and the Phantom Menace. And even the references to events from the comics such as Republic may be a bit much for those who haven't read them. Overall I don't think these references will ruin the reading experience of Darth Plagueis; in fact, they might encourage readers to find out more about these people and events mentioned.

I'll try to get up a full review in the next few days.

 

Just finished. I wanted to love it, I really did, but I'm afraid I can't. It's an enjoyable work, but I can't go wild in praise over it. I like the general use of continuity, and how well weaved together things were. But that's hardly a surprise at this point. So let's go on with the problems:

The ham-fisted real life references dragged me out of the story--a lot, and sometimes they didn't even fit. Luceno seems prone to doing this: Triad of Evil and Homeworld Security were wearisome in LoE: we have the Galactic Empire, based at least in part on the Nazis--is it really that difficult to make it look evil, or do we need unprofessionally transparent allusions to contemporary politics? I mean, Lucas may have based Palpatine in part on Richard Nixon, but he didn't have the man do the famous double victory sign either. He could have tried to be a little more allusive and a little less direct. It's distracting and it comes across as projection, which is inappropriate.

There was some of that here too. The IBC might well have been the IMF--low interest loans and favored world status in exchange for tax cuts and access to markets? Really? And we have Soj--excuse me, the Bohemian Grove--where the rich and well-connected feast away, and the Sith plot the New (world) Order--I'd not have been surprised if we learned that Sidious was really some sort of reptile. This is part of the Sith Grand Plan--enlightened rule by the elite? It had always made sense that this was what Palpatine did to win the Core to his side, as they had always basically felt as if they were better and ought to be running the galaxy. Making it part of a Sith conspiracy is... odd.

Then there's the stuff that isn't transparently pulled from real life, but is used mistakenly. Off the top of my head: the "liberals" in the Senate oppose free trade. Really? Why? Free trade zones don't seem to be typical, in which case you'd expect conservatives to oppose them, and liberals (who, you know, prefer liberalizing the markets--see the "Liberal Party" in any country ever aside from the USA) to support them. I don't know if the Wook had an American-centric writer on the "Core Faction" article or not, but if it were described as politically liberal in CoD then this'd be another instance of that problem. The GFFA is not contemporary America--most things are not contemporary America, and for Luceno to misuse political terms in that cast is very disappointing, especially for someone who's as familiar with the continuity as he is. In every possible sense of the term, the Core Worlders should be called politically conservative: they want to maintain their traditional place in the sun, and they want to maintain the prestige of the Republic. This was occasionally applied properly: Naboo, which apparently inherited a lot more from Grizmallt than I thought (a pleasant surprise, this!), is described as politically and culturally traditional.

Muun architecture is described as neoclassical, but so is Naboo's--yet they are placed as an antithesis. The use of the term neoclassical makes zero sense: it's a terrestrial term without meaning in SW, except insofar as classical refers to some sort of Republican Classic architecture--but that also doesn't make sense, because Muunilinst is also described as the antithesis to Coruscant. The term is thrown around recklessly, because it means something in RL. I also recall something about unadorned friezes and entablatures on Muunilinst, which also makes little sense--perhaps he meant pediments? Similarly, we hear that Plagueis's library contains books made from "tree trunk parchment," which is a bit like "appley orange" because parchment is emphatically not made from plants. I get it--he was trying to say "paper," but still.

And there's a lot more. It's really grating for a work that's otherwise pretty good--I just feel for a book like this, it should have tried to be near perfect. The mistakes in the above paragraph are blatant nitpicking on my part, I acknowledge, but the insistence on throwing American polit

 

Fine, then I'll thank VK for that, then.

Other issues I just remembered: if the name of state Amidala wasn't used prior to her coronation as queen, Jinn and Kenobi must have been supremely stupid not to know that the handmaiden named Padmé Naberrie was actually the queen. It was also curious to see that the Lake Country residence was the property of the Naberrie family, as SWG indicated that it belonged to the crown. Finally, I was surprised to see that Palpatine hated Naboo architecture, given that he designed his private retreat on Naboo using typical Naboo monumentality and eschewing anything overtly militaristic or Sithly.

Well, I don't know about that. Ars Dangor certainly gave a little spiel about rule by the elite, and his thinking is supposed to be 100% in line with his master's--I just don't think that Palpatine wanted any equals. It just bothered me that this philosophy was apparently Sith in nature, rather than a political move to more closely bind the existing galactic power structures into his imperium.

Eh, Damask was some filthy Rimkin alien. Palpatine was a human descended from Core Worlds royalty; he didn't deserve to be shackled to some thuggish peasant moneylender.

Well, Pfluegermeister's proposition in the other thread was that the fellow in the Legislative Youth Program with Palpatine (with whom he disagreed) was Dangor. It could work, and establishes their early contact--and nothing in the text explicitly forecloses Dangor's involvement, since Luceno took care to say "and others" whenever he mentioned Palpatine's coterie of advisers. So while all is not lost, it's still curious that Dangor isn't actually named, given his prominence in WEG.

Well, I still feel disquiet about it. I'd have preferred clone madness or something, but I can live with it. I'm not a particular fan of the Sithly aspects of his reign at any rate. I have to say that personally, it was the DESB that saved DE for me.

I don't think the comic had the Temple built over--he just used the High Council Chamber as his throne room, which is really creepy. But yeah, definitely wish we had something about that.

 

Well doesn't Palpatine consider building a new government headquarters building so his underlings, and I'm paraphrasing here, could feel important and such? If that's the case then the modern Imperial Palace may not have existed until after 32 BBY or so, or it looked drastically different as the Presidential Palace before it became the giant pyramidal monolith we all know and love.

 

Seems like he was talking about this, though. I had hopes that he meant the Palace, but he referred to a domed structure being created.

 

Ah, must have missed the mention of the dome. Yeah, it's probably that, then.

 

Ghost: You think the Jedi wouldn't, I don't know, read a newspaper on their way to a world where they're tasked to resolve a diplomatic crisis? Or do you think the Jedi follow the Herman Cain school of statecraft? "Which one of you is Queen Armadillo?"

Padmé said she went to the lake country, yes. It doesn't mean that her family owned the residence yet. (edit: doing further research, older sources confirm that it was in the family during her youth. I guess they must have given it to the crown at some point afterwards, then)

He was at the Retreat considerably, judging from SWG and the various events that go on while he's there. It's a highly fortified nerve center, where high-ranking commanders receive their orders from him. It's not a public building at all: so deception would serve no purpose. It'd be like decorating the throne room on the Death Star II as a PR stunt: it'd be senseless.

 

They were sent in order to reach a "settlement"--clearly they were intermediaries.

They can't read in hyperspace? They can't log into the HoloNet for a second before landing on the Federation ship? It's not like we're talking about an obscure official here, but hte name of the planet's queen.

Well, the Imperial Family has to be really distant cousins now, since the only survivors appear to be the "distaff line" that he mentioned, presumably the line that Volpau comes from. It's overkill, literally, I think.

All those propositions wouldn't make the Core Faction "liberal" anywhere but in the United States, though. Keep in mind that this discussion is before talk of taxes or a stronger government, but during the discussion of the establishment of free trade zones: the liberals would be the ones in favor of liberalizing trade restraints.

It's not vague. That is literally--literally what the IMF does. It's as vague and subtle as Homeworld Security (read: not). There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Luceno was being direct there, as he was in LoE.

Similarly, I'm not sure that the Sojourn stuff is coincidence. I will say that I have less to complain about it since it's not as direct and blatant, but it's still weird.

And I don't know why the Sith would buy into Core philosophy, since the Core upholds the Republican institutions. It makes sense in the context of a galactic takeover, but I have misgivings about the Grand Plan including anything but the basic goal of ruling the galaxy rather than containing, in advance, everything that the Empire just so happens to stand for. I mean, what was with Plagueis going on about how they'd also need to have superweapons? Really? What's next, "and we'll put a really old guy in charge that has the hots for a young redhead--this is essential to our plan!" It's not foreshadowing when you do it that way. It's clumsy. Is anything about the Empire not preordained in some thousand year old Sith plan? It makes the Imperial takeover so boooring if it's not original in the least (another complaint abotu the TOR era Sith too).