Star Wars: Dark Lord - Rise of Darth Vader

James Luceno
Ballantine Books
0-345-47732-4

At the height of the Clone Wars, as Jedi are betrayed and the Emperor’s dark new order rises from the ashes of the Galactic Republic, Jedi Master Roan Shryne and his companions manage to escape the clone troopers seeking their deaths and go on the run. But there is one thing they could never account for – the Emperor’s sinister right-hand man, Darth Vader, assigned to hunt down those few Jedi to escape the massacre. Yet that mysterious black-armoured warrior, once the brightest star of the Jedi Order, finds himself struggling not only with the task at hand and the crippling injuries sustained in his last battle with his former master, but also with the burden of guilt at the betrayal of his friends and colleagues.

Unfortunately Anakin Skywalker was no less petulant and self-pitying at the end of Revenge of the Sith than he was at the beginning. Where was Star Wars’ malevolent, implacable crusher of throats? If ever there was a character in need of a good smack around the back of the head it was Anakin, and for all its melodrama Revenge just didn’t deliver. James Luceno’s unenviable task, then, was to polyfilla over the gaping plot holes George Lucas left and give those few Star Wars fans not yet choking to death on their own bile a decent emotional through-line. The mutilated, snivelling manchild still had to become Darth Vader, dammit!

And to give Luceno credit, he does an adequate job. The self-pity that Anakin wallows in at the novel’s opening quickly dwindles in the face of the Emperor’s emotional manipulations, and the decapitated heads of Jedi mark the excision of each scrap of humanity like morbid milestones. Vader’s hunt for the fugitive Roan Shryne is interspersed with periods of emotional self-interrogation which show quite effectively, if a little heavy-handedly, how the headstrong boy grew into a monster.

Just about the most interesting part of Dark Lord is the way Luceno balances Vader’s emotional development with that of his nominal hero, Roan Shryne. Vader’s star might be rising, but at the novel opens Shryne doesn’t even have one. He’s lost his faith in the Force, and feels inadequate to the task of training the bright-eyed Padawan he’s inheriting from a dead friend. The near-extermination of the Jedi order is just another crushing weight on his shoulders, but Luceno develops him with just the right lightness of touch. And the way the fortunes of Vader and Shryne seem to intertwine, their emotions and decisions forcing the other character off in new and unexpected directions, makes for an interesting and dramatically narrative – and a surprisingly tense climax, considering the inevitable survival of one participant.

For those looking for something a little more space-opera and a little less introspective, there’s all the usual furniture of a Star Wars novel – sleazy space-bars, heroic smugglers, unnecessarily complex sub-plots, exotically themed planets and the cross-eyed marksmanship of stormtroopers. It’s decent enough diversion, and the description of the Wookie homeworld is powerful enough to almost redeem the fact that it allows bloody Chewbacca to be shoe-horned into yet another Star Wars novel. All the standard parts are present and correct, and trotted out with the regularity of somebody running their way down a checklist. Yet I feel I’m missing something…

Ah, of course. The lightsaber battles. Well, there are lots of them.

But the problem with swordfights, particularly ones involving improbable laser-based weaponry, is that they look better on screen than on the page. Without a first-rate writer to make something fresh of the action, it’s about as interesting as reading a kendo manual. So it is in the case of Dark Lord – dry description of slashes and parries doesn’t mean very much unless you can visualise what’s happening. It’s a knack, and James Luceno doesn’t really have it. Instead he’s made the common mistake of confusing dramatic conflict with physical violence, the result of which was me skim-reading over the fight scenes in search of something more substantial.

While there is meat on these bones, particularly in the parallel development of Vader and Shryne, overall Dark Lord isn’t the richest of feasts. It’s a diverting few hours, but that’s time which could be better spent. Read Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelisation instead, if you haven’t already; James Luceno’s offering just isn’t quite convincing enough to lift it off my ‘Star Wars by the numbers’ shelf.


This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com

Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil

James Luceno
Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-47572-0

The Clone Wars have spread across the galaxy, the Republic’s Jedi-led army in constant conflict with the druids of the Separatist forces. After countless battles and the loss of hundreds of Jedi, the war is finally turning. The homeworld of the Trade Federation is invaded and the Jedi heroes Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are there to hunt down the Federation’s Viceroy, Nute Gunray. One of the Separatist figureheads and the being responsible for the Invasion of Naboo thirteen years before, Gunray is high on the Republic’s wanted list, but when he stops to loot his most treasured possessions before fleeing he leaves behind a clue that could lead to the man behind the war: the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious.

As the war rages and the extent of Sidious’ machinations becomes clear, Kenobi and Skywalker must find their way through the maze of deception. Can they uncover the Sith Lord’s true identity before becoming trapped in his web?

As the book leading into the opening scene of a movie entitled ‘Revenge of the Sith’, chances are that the answer is no. ‘Labyrinth of Evil’ is hampered by the fact that all of its surprises and intrigues are pre-empted by the existence of the film to follow. Only a reader with total ignorance of Episode III’s content will get much from ‘Labyrinth of Evil’ and it seems likely that the reader of a Star Wars novel would have anything but. As it is, this novel is a placeholder, designed to fill in the gaps for the sake of completeness.

Still, other similar works have managed to overcome these hefty disadvantages and achieve some level of merit. ‘Labyrinth of Evil’, unfortunately, lets the side down. It is a shallow, dull example of style over substance, a Hollywood action movie in literary form. It reads like a screenplay for Episode Two-And-A-Half, lacking the visual element that makes blockbusters entertaining. The gunfire and explosions never stop long enough for the reader to develop an understanding of the characters, while the constant danger in which our heroes are placed has a numbing effect. Even if the reader did manage to overcome paper-thin characterisation and come to care about Luceno’s versions of Anakin and Obi-Wan, there’s only so much one can take.

The result is a novel that fails to engage the reader on any significant level, the fictional equivalent of white noise in your speakers; you can listen to it, but in the end it doesn’t really mean anything. ‘Labyrinth of Evil’ never rises above filler material, and so I condemn it to my ‘Star Wars Completists only’ shelf.


This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com