The Official The Old Republic: Deceived Discussion Thread

I finished reading through it at the bookstore today and... it wasn't bad. I'd actually almost call it good. Its definitely the best hardcover Star Wars novel I've read in the last year, with the possible exception of Fatal Alliance (although considering that mainly covers FotJ and Red Harvest, that's not saying much).

Major spoilers follow, as well as a general summary (I don't think anyone else has posted a summary? Hope I didn't miss it it, otherwise the following post would be a waste of time)- Not sure I got all the details right, as even after my somewhat favorable impression of the book, its still not really my favorite kind of story, and definitely not at hardcover prices (even discounted).

There are basically three major characters around which the novel revolves- Darth Malgus, Aryn Leneer and Zeerid Korr. Aryn Leneer, an empath, was Ven Zallow's student, and she senses his death by Darth Malgus and so sets out to get revenge, and decides to enlist Zeerid's help. Zeerid is a former Republic soldier who left the military after his wife was killed in an accident to look after his crippled daughter (from her injuries in the same accident), and at one point Aryn and his squad fought together. To pay for the medical bills, he's stuck working for the Exchange running various items, though not spice. After a botched drop-off, he's then "offered" a job to run engspice (specially engineered spice that gets people addicted to that particular spice only) to Imperial-blockaded Coruscant, as the dealer there has run out of engspice, and if they don't get more fast, the addicts go through withdrawal and then afterward won't need spice anymore. Despite his moral qualms, for the chance to clear his slate with the Exchange he accepts it, even as he's being followed by Vrath Xizor (a human, so no relation to the more famous one, its just a fake name), former Imperial sniper who's working for the Hutts. And then Aryn shows up, who coincidentally also wants to go to Coruscant right now to find out who killed Master Zallow as she is obsessed now, although she also abandoned the negotiations at Alderaan, not that she was needed much as Dar'nala was leading the delegation and after the Sacking of Coruscant, the Republic doesn't have any leverage left anyway.

Darth Malgus is proud after he wrecks the Jedi Temple (his troops personally set bombs to blow it up rather than just having it blasted by some random Imp bomber), and actually goes back to the wreckage to watch the razing of Coruscant personally. And he waits and waits and waits, until finally he calls up his ship and demands to know where's the fire and destruction. Apparently no one told him the plan was just to hold Coruscant as leverage for the negotiations, rather than actually lay waste to the planet, since long-term occupation is out of the question. He's really angry and disillusioned after that, as he believes conflict is the best way to get in touch with the Force, and that the Sith Empire and its war against the Republic was the best way of serving the Force (although he's just an evil, crazy guy too since he apparently killed his family's Twi'lek serving woman as a child). He goes to Darth Angral to complain, but he can't really do anything and politics isn't his strongpoint. Also he's distracted as apparently Angral sent his injured Twi'lek lover Eleena away from the Imperial medical ship Steadfast down to a random Republic medical center, with Angral "hinting" that she's a weakness. He picks her up, and then he's basically stuck on traffic duty on his cruiser, Valor (odd name for a Sith ship).

Zeerid and Aryn make it off Vulta in Zeerid's ship the Fatman, a Corellian XS freighter (though took them a while to name the class, I think, just glad they're clear on that point, unlike with Jet Nebula's ship), and head for Coruscant, trying to sneak in by attaching themselves to a convoy (which I think is like what the Falcon did in ESB, so nice homage). The Republic figured this trick out a while ago, but Zeerid figured the Sith won't know ab

 

Thanks Nobody, your review just made my day.

 

So...

It's 250 pages in length...

Darth Malgus, who features on the front cover, isn't even the main character, or main focus, and shares it with two other characters...

And, according to the post which i just read, irregardless of all the spoilers, i am apparently not missing out on much! Well that just sucks. Hell, i was actually hoping for a book where it would be about Malgus, as opposed to being divided between the lives of himself and two other main characters.

Still going to buy it though. Am going to add it to my collection of SW books.

 

Having just finished, I can't see how it lacks for having Zeerid and Aryn share equal page time with Malgus. I thought the book was very focused and quite good.

 

Okay, its several days now and most poeple should have either gotten the book or read most of it.

With this in mind, I will say that the EU writes better jedi and sith than GL does, no pun intended.

This book, specifically what Aryn did really takes AOTC down the tubes, and to an extent TFU 2.

Aryn with her lightsaber, cuts a swath on the ship thats falling planetside, grabs ahold of the other guy, mind you the both have masks, no jet packs, or rocket packets, or rocket boosters, or gliders or anything of the sort, and jump out of the falling ship into the higher atmosphere with the dude in tow. They should die for all purposes right? Well, not only don't they die, they land. Maybe a bit rough but they survied. In the EU we know its possible becuase Luke in COP levitates all the way down after his w-wing explodes due to sabatoge, but in the movies, they die, and that inclused the clone wars cartoon series.

Nothing wrong with that right? Nothing like a HALO type jump with no protective gear, towing another body. Becasue if you remember TFU 2, when both Starkiller and General Kota are falling, Starkiller tells Kota that he can't fly. In AOTC, Obi-Wan was hangng on to that droid in Coruscant and when the droid was shot down he began falling. In that fall, according to the novel, it stated that he had no force reportire to stop his fall, with the ground 500 stories down.

So here you have two powerful force useres, Kota and Starkiller and they can't stop their fall. They get a last minute resuce from the freighter. Then you have another powerful jedi that can't stop his fall and gets saved by Anakin.

Now we go back to Aryn, the force empath. She has no jet pack, no parachute, no glider, yet with the force, both she and the other dude, survive a 50 kilometer fall through coruscant. Thats 31 miles in the air, with nothing else. Yeah she was losing it at the end, but what the crap. If Starkiller couldn't do it, what makes her so specuial? Also, I can see why GL dosen't just add everything into his world, beucase in his world, both jedi and sith can't do all this stuff. Look at Malgus, standing right their next to the Temple, and having the xcharges go off. He suppsedly puts his hands up and creates a wall of portective force energy around him so that the rubble don't crush him. When in the movies or the animated series were the jedi or sith suppose to do that. Anakin Sidious, Yoda, Dooku, or Venress can't do that.

 

See: The Courtship of Princess Leia, where Luke levitates himself AND Prince Isolder's fighter down after his X-wing is shot out from under him in the upper atmosphere.

In other words, that sort of thing is old news for Luke.

Blacked out my reply in order to not give away the spoiler I was replying to, even by inference.

 

Avoiding the spoilers as much as I can but... daaaayyyymmm... that sounds kriffing awesome!

I guess that's what they meant by "Empath" then. I hope that's not just a one-off for Deceived but will be a big part of TOR's story.

 

Let's set the record straight: Malgus features prominently in every plot line in the book except the very brief peace negotiation scenes on Alderaan and Zeerid Korr's story (which, eventually intersects Aaryn Leneer's, so Malgus sort of figures into Zeerid's story, too, by association). We learn tons about his motivations and his character undergoes at least as much development as anyone else's in the book. From the sacking of the Jedi Temple, to the typical Sithly conflict within the Sith of the era, to Aaryn's quest, to the resolution of his own "weakness", Malgus is at the center of practically everything in the book. I feel like I know Darth Malgus better after 250-something pages than I know Kerra Holt after 350+ pages of Knight Errant.

Is the book a short, quick read? Yes. Does it suffer a little from being a MMORPG tie-in? Yeah, the faction/class/sub-class system is there. But it is a good, short, quick, MMORPG tie-in read. I enjoyed it and I don't feel ripped off or short-changed in any way.

 

I really enjoyed this one - a lot more than Knight Errant. Plenty of action and pretty good main characters. If I had any quibble it would be that it seemed about half the character names started with 'A' (Aryn, Arra, Adraas, Angral) and sounded similar. There's 25 other letters that would make things a bit less confusing!

 

Damn. I'd actually pick it up if I wasn't budgeting for Choices of One, Conviction and Ascension. I really haven't heard anything bad about the book but even with a $10 credit on my Amazon account $16 feels like too much right now to spend on this one. It's too bad. I'm jonzing for a SW book right now and I hate audiobooks which is mostly what my library ends up with.

 

I've rather liked the more recent audiobooks personally.

The FOTJ ones are narrated rather well (in contrast to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which I listened to a couple of months back and... good lord... the android in that audiobook was the bloody narrator... dear god was his voice dull). While I wasn't overly interested in Red Harvest, I loved the audiobook, the sound effects really added to the zombie movie cliché, which made it rather entertaining.

The older audibooks though? Eugh... they're up there with Androids. I tried listening to the X-Wing books a few years back... no, just no. It was utterly impossible to follow, as the narrator puts absolutely no effort into the characters, making dialogue all blur together, leaving you totally unable to follow when a different speaker has started talking. A massive shame, as I'd really love to listen to the X-Wing books, since I've just never been able to find the time to actually read them.

EDIT: Oooh... I had been going to say that I didn't think there was a Deceived audibook anyway... but... I've just checked and I find they added one a couple of days ago. Sweet. Annoying they still haven't done one for Knight Errant yet though. I appreciate they can hardly record the Issue #1 insert, but the audiobooks don't include any of the preview material at the back either, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Might get a hold of this though... that way I can finally get started on Knight Errant and listen to this at the same time. (Well, not literally, but, well, you know what I mean. ) Holy molly though... I see even the audiobook is expensive. Usually the price of those is tied into the length of the recording (i.e. 3 hours = cheap; 6-10 hours = normal; 15-20 hours = expensive). Oh well... I've got a bunch of Audible credits I need to use up anyway.

 

It's not that I don't like the production values in the SW audiobooks. All of the unabridged books have been really well done. Marc Thomson is pretty good. I do like giving characters my own idea of how they'd sound though. A problem I tend to have is I retain very little that I'm not reading. So I'll be listing to an audiobook and my mind will wander to my shopping or some other distraction and I'll have to to wind my ipod back. That doesn't happen with books. Also, I find it hard listening to audiobooks at home. I fall asleep constantly. I don't mean it in a bad way. Marc Thompson has a calming voice.

 

True, I have that problem myself too.

I really liked Red Harvest but... I won't for a second claim I can remember the story very well.

I gave the Deceived one a start last night (at like 2am since I couldn't get to sleep - like you, I find the audiobooks a good way to doze off ). I was surprised by how he pronounces Malgus. I'd expected it to be "Mal" like Mal-ak or Mal-eficent, but he says Maul-gus like Darth Maul. Curious now if that'll be the case in the game itself.

I'd grown attached to Mal-gus. Need to adjust to Maul-gus now.

 

I just finished the audiobook(I love audiobooks, they help work go by so much faster!) and am listening to it a second time!

I like Gus! He's pretty cool. I thought he was boing to b Vader lite, but now I don't think so. I think the issue with Aleema(?) made him complex. Here he loves her, but cannot show it bc it is perceived as weakness & that will b used against him. I expected his "solution" to this problem, but it still surprised me when it came. Though I wish her character could've been fleshed out more.

The ending leads to the possibility for a sequel.

I also looked the issue Aryn was going through. Basically tap-dancing on the line between Light & Dark.

For me, the best part of course is the destruction of the Temple.

The pacing was good, & I like that the fights were just the right length as compared to other novels. I thought that fight between Kenth & Saba was waaaaay to long.

I did get tired of the Force cushion power, and found that whole free-fall sequence & survival by Force cushion too sill, so I'll fast forward through it.

 

Looks like Vader, sounds like Maul.
Tank.


If there ever was one.

 

Absolutely the best EU SW book I have read in many years. Paul Kemp is in my eyes the best writer as of the present. I have to say Darth Malgus is my favorite character now in the EU. Totally awesome power and personality. I hope there is an sequel to this book. I hope Malgus confronts Angral and defeats him and flys off in the sunset. LOL. This was far better written and much more like the original SW trilogy than Knight Errant, which was a total joke in my opinion. The sith are actually sith like and show great powers and the Jedi fight like Jedi. Can't wait for Pauls next book. Like I said totally enjoyed this book, may even read it again.

 

I'm someone who is highly looking forward to TOR, but haven't gotten around to checking out the novels or comics yet. I notice this comes before Fatal Alliance. Do those novels tie into each other in any way?

 

Not really, other than a character or two appearing in both. I reread Fatal Alliance before reading Deceived but there really wasn't any need.

 

Just finished this book last night on my Kindle, and I must say I enjoyed this book alot! For all those who are worried about Darth Malgus not being the main character, let me reassure you he is one of the main characters. But the book isn't all about him, and I'm actually glad that it is not. Zeerid and Aryn, the other two main characters are more interesting than Malgus in my opinion. Especially the Z-man. Mr. Kemp is an outstanding writer. Like Crosscurrent, his book is a breath of fresh air for Star Wars. He probably is the best at describing fight scenes in any Star Wars book that I have read. The fight between Zeerid and Vrath actually had me cringing as if I were watching it. I think the reason Kemp's book for Star Wars work is because the man knows something about pacing. The scenes in the book are never too slow or too fast -- they are the perfect length, leaving me wishing for more and making it hard to put down. The man knows how to write. The only thing that bothered me about the book was the fact that it took place within the span of three days. The fact that Zeerid was on Ord Mantell, then Vulta (a Mid-Rim planet), awaiting a Imperial convey in an unknown system, and then in Coruscant in the span of a day kinda bothered me a tad bit. The Fatman must be the fastest ship in the galaxy. But thats just because of my geeky mind. It doesn't take away from the story itself.

I recommend this book for sure.

PS. Reading a Star Wars book just feels right on a Kindle. I'm a big Stephen King fan and I usually can get through his monster books through a week, but for some reason on a Kindle I have trouble getting through them in the same amount of time. With Star Wars however, I go as fast as the Fatman does between planets. I love my Kindle. I recommend one of those too.

 

Not a problem given the similar very fast hyperspace times depicted in the films.

 

It's a problem in the EU.

I think myself though that criminal syndicates and their employees might have known at this era some fast hyperspace routes that could have later been forgotten or become unusable?

 

I'm only about halfway through but is there a JC Lit Rbiews Thread yet?

 

I am pretty sure that there isn't and if there is, noone has posted anything yet for a review.

 

Which is weird. Havac is usually on top of the review threads.

So, just incase there never is an actual review thread, I'll give a review right here:

Deceived is strikingly similar to the Darth Bane books in tone and feel. Kemp has a more complex prose style but they kinda felt similar. Simple. Which can be a very good thing in EU writing. The story was breezy and fun. There was an adequate balance of action and character development. Gus for all intents and purposes is Bane. He has the same sensibilities as Bane. He resents his fellow Sith the same as Bane did and he is a hulking bald monster just like Bane. The difference is Malgus has a dangerous streak of sentimentality. This makes him slightly interesting. Darth Gus in love was interesting cause I think it answered the question, what would have happened if Padme had lived?

I think I like Kemp as an EU writer so far. This was far more fun than Crosscurrent which was a competent novel if not a bit dark and dry. This was a better entry. It even felt better than some of the post NJO novels. One problem though. There was a repetition of thoughts at times. Aryn, the Jedi empath, going over and over her vow of revenge. For such a short book I found it lazy to read the same insights and obsessional thoughts more than a few times.

For a book that has to give up so much game exposition, it's digestible stuff. It's far more subtle than Sean Williams. But it was just too short to charge full hardcover price. What ever happened to charging what TCW movie novelization cost? That was just over $20 and I paid for it without gritting my teeth. I didn't buy this book. I borrowed it. I'd also like to say that it isn't out of order for tie-ins to run just over 200 pages. They just never come out in hardcover.

Somewhere above 7 but below 7.5 for Deceived

 

I liked it on my first read, but I should read it again for detail