REVISED: 4/19/12When you think about Darth Vader, many things come to mind. Dark Lord of the Sith. Bane of the Jedi. Throat-Crusher Supreme.Emo?No.Of all my complaints about the new trilogy – and there are many – the biggest one has to do with how Anakin Skywalker was handled. I grew up loving Darth Vader. He was a vicious bastard, but by gods he was awesome about it. He was a hard-ass who inspired terror wherever he went, and he was a man who overcame insurmountable evils to ultimately redeem himself. From the moment we see him emerge from the smoke in A New Hope, we know that this is a man to be feared and reckoned with.He never said, “Yippee,” and he most certainly was never a mopey little emoboi. I despised the choice to make Anakin a whiny little brat who was turned to the Dark Side. And please note the passive voice there – “was turned.” He was manipulated and pushed and pulled, and finally when Palpatine said, “Go murder children,” Anakin just said, “Okay,” and did it. I never got the feeling that Anakin was making his own choices in these movies, or doing terrible things because he truly thought they were the right thing to do.The title of Darth Vader fit very, very poorly on this wet noodle of a Sith-wannabe, and that, more than anything else, made me very angry about the new trilogy.So, in comes James Luceno to clean things up.Set about a month after the events in Episode 3, this book starts Vader’s transformation from mopey to malicious.Despite the best efforts of the Clone Army, some Jedi survived the initial massacre of Order 66. One of those, a Jedi named Roan Shyne, is trying to lead his dead comrade’s padawan to safety, wherever safety may be found. He’s questioning his purpose now, in a world where evil has emerged victorious, and where the Jedi are no more. Should he make a stand and die defending the Idea, or should he obey Yoda’s last orders and go to ground?Sadly, he’s a principle character in a Star Wars novel, so the Force takes the choice out of his hands. He finds himself drawn ever closer into the mystery of the Empire and the Emperor. And Vader.Who, I might add, is having issues of his own. The first three pages of his first POV scene are about how uncomfortable the Suit is (Luceno talked to the folks at LucasArts to find out what it was like), and how miserable he is being a nubby lump of burned flesh inside a mobile life-support system. He can’t see properly, can’t hear normally, can’t move like he used to – hell, he can barely walk steady, much less wield a lightsaber like he used to.Palpatine, being the good mentor that he is, knows exactly how to cure Vader’s blues: give him a project, something to keep his mind off things. Like hunting people down and killing them.Luceno handles the transition from brat to demon very delicately and very smoothly. By the time the book is over, Vader still isn’t the avatar of evil that he will one day become, but he’s certainly over the hump. In addition, the advantage of writing a prequel story is that you can boost the power of events that happen later on, giving them much more significance. When Vader finally kills Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi, for example, the moment is a little richer and more powerful for having seen what Palpatine put Vader through in his early days. In this book, we get a good look at the Master-Disciple relationship of the Sith, and the precarious balance that it requires. The Master works his hardest to break and subjugate his disciple in order to make him strong enough so that he will one day exceed his master. The problem is that, traditionally, the disciple usually kills the master at that point, finds a new disciple of his own, and the cycle begins anew. Palpatine is looking to avoid that, if at all possible, and Vader is just itching for a chance. The key is that power is an end unto itself, and the cycle of murder is just a part of that.But at the end of Jedi, Vader kills his master for the benefit of another, something that is antithetical to the core philosophy of the Sith. Vader gained no power by killing Palpatine, at least not in the sense that he understood “power” up to that point.Star Wars purists might stay away from the novels, and that’s certainly their right. I think this one is worth reading, though. It’s an excellent move away from the horrorshow that was the new trilogy, and does a very good job at helping us rediscover the Darth Vader that we all came to know and love.-------------------------------“The old system is dead, senator. You would be wise to subscribe to the new one.”- Darth Vader
First of all, in no sense of the words is this horrible book a "must-read" (as the cover boldly states). Second of all, I bought this book years ago off the $2 rack at Half Price Books; I assume that price had more to do with its missing dust jacket and less to do with its wretched contents--if I'd been paying by content, I would've been overcharged. For two dollars, I could've bought some trash from a vending machine that would've tasted good while it lasted and been instantly forgotten when it was gone, but instead, I bought a terrible book that has left a sour taste long after I was done reading.James Luceno is the bar-none, absolute worst Star Wars writer to come on the scene of Star Wars novels since 1995. There have been other bad ones, but if I were composing a list of Bottom 5, he would be the bottomest. If one hundred monkeys had gotten into a food fight with a hundred boxes of Alphabet Cereal and a hundred cans of Alphabet Soup, the resulting mess could have been scraped into a better book than this trash. Do not read this book. Pace many of the comments from Goodreads (where this book enjoys a 3.94 star rating explicable only by the fact that Star Wars attracts young people willing to highly rate anything with the words Star Wars tattooed on it), this is not a necessary chapter in the history of Darth Vader, nor is it exciting or even terribly interesting. A Goodreads user named Michael summed it up best by observing that 1/3rd of the way through the book, all it has going for it are a "variety of uninteresting characters," guaranteed to be dead by the end. Chad, another sensible reader, astutely sums up: "A waste of time. It adds almost nothing to the Star Wars saga, and with the exception of a few pages, tells the story of a group of Jedi I'd never heard of. The character development is so poor that I could barely keep track of who was who, and I certainly didn't care about them. "There are many elements, strung together loosely and called a plot, and this stringing is done by Luceno without much regard to plausibility or possibility. The fact that he didn't even bother to do any research before starting the project is evidenced in the book's many errors (most glaringly, but certainly not alone, a bald statement that KDY did not make Venerator-class Destroyers). Enormous chunks of the book are dedicated to Darth Vader thinking about how horrible his prosthetic suit is. While it makes sense that Vader would have considered it uncomfortable (and see the epilogue to Stover's E3 novelization for a truly uncomfortable take on the breathing apparatus), I found it completely inappropriate that the omniscient voice of the "narrator" was constantly leveling charges against the suit as being poorly, improperly, or inefficiently made; this just makes no sense.This book is basically nothing but nonsense with a few insignificant details thrown in about what takes place between E3 and ANH. The epilogue between Obi-Wan and Ghost Qui-Gon was so badly done, it was all I could do to finish it without flinging the book away in frustration. I urge you not to waste your time, because that's all this is . . . an inflated 336 pages full of short, abrupt chapters (some not more than two paragraphs long), wide margins, shoddy character development, and a bunch of lifeless puppets for characters who mill around aimlessly wondering what crimes they committed to get them sentenced to spend eternity in this ridiculous book. Avoid. This review via the Rebel Librarian
What do You think about The Rise Of Darth Vader (2006)?
What was shaping up to be a really nice triolgy drops the ball with this final entry which seriously lacks any kind of scope or ambition. Rather than getting a sweeping, epic story of what happened to the Jedi post Revenge of the Sith and the seeds of the formation of the rebellion, instead we get a slight story about a rag tag band of Jedi who meet Darth Vader a couple of times and then run away.Darth vader is a central character in this story, as heought to be, but I found myself wishing that he wasn't. Luceno doesn't have the confidence to portray him in an interesting way and instead continues the whiny brat motif seen in Lucas' third movie (already effectively dispensed with by Stover in his novelisation). By the time Vader puts on that suit we want to see Vader with a firm grip, acting in ways that symbolise his pure evil, not whining about whether he's going to be strong like the emperor or caring either way what happened to Padme. The opportunity to make this novel a satisfying piece of fanwank, giving us more of the cool villain that we love, was totally squandered by Luceno who clearly didn't know what to do with the character either way.Not that Luceno is a terrible writer, he just doesn't have the material or the scope here and the little that we have falls very flat. Had this novel itself been a trilogy it could have been a fun post-prequel romp (an era I really want to see more of), but instead I just found it a slog to get through and too inconsequential to make it worth anyone's effort.
—Alex
Several Jedi, including Roan Shryne and Olee Starstone, are fighting a fierce battle on Murkhana when Order 66 arrives. Commander Climber, the clone leader amongst the Jedi, defies orders and allows the Jedi to leave. The three Jedi must then leave the planet and flee to safety, avoiding Darth Vader and his wrath.NOTE: Based on novel and audiobook.I Liked:I was surprised how much I actually enjoyed this novel. If you've read my review for [[ASIN:0345442970 Cloak of Deception]], you learned how disappointed I was, how I didn't like all the info-dumping and over-describing, and how I just wasn't very engaged. This book is completely different.The primary characters really stand out, namely Roan and Olee. Roan feels a little like Arwen Cohl from CoD, a little like Lorn Pavan, a little like Han, and a little of something else. He's a Jedi who has lost two apprentices during the war. He's not a super Jedi, but he's decent. Only problem is, he really struggles with what the Jedi should do next. I adored how he met his mother, how they imply Jedi stealing babies (Roan's mother did not want to give him up), and how awkward it was.Olee Starstone is completely different. She's a strong-willed woman, who wants to find other Jedi and regroup. She used to be a librarian, under the tutelage of Jocasta Nu before the war. Now, she's lost her master and is the unofficial Padawan of Roan.Darth Vader also appears quite prominently, though not as prominently as you would figure from a novel with his picture splashed on it. I really liked how Luceno tightened the gap from Anakin in the prequels to Vader in the sequels. Vader is lacking confidence, upset with his new body, and questioning everything. Also, his single-minded goal of exterminating the Jedi keeps interfering with his missions, making Palpatine wonder if Vader is such a good apprentice after all.The story is unique, as (especially at this time, before the Coruscant Nights books) we don't know what has happened to the few Jedi who escape Order 66. What many hoped to see in Karen Traviss' eponymous novel, we actually get to see here: Clones defying orders and saving Jedi, and what happens to them afterwards. It's touching and very neglected.And, being this is a Luceno novel, we get tons of EU references, from Garm Bel Iblis, to the outcome of Fang Zhar, to Tarkin, and more. If there is one thing Luceno can get, it's tying in EU and making it seem like it was meant to be that way.I Didn't Like:There are a billion other Jedi in this book and I couldn't keep their names straight or remember them for the life of me. There are six total on Murkhana, but I could only remember Olee, Roan, and the one Vader killed (and I can't even remember her name!). Then Olee and Roan meet a bunch more Jedi on a ship, and none of them are memorable. This may be in part because I am listening to an audiobook, but it's hard to be invested in characters when they pass through so transparently.For a book about Vader, there is stunningly little Vader. This was disappointing, even if Vader's development overall was good.I went directly from listening to Revenge of the Sith to reading this, and there is a distinct difference in writing style, one that comes as quite a shock. After the intimate, dark, and tortured writing style from RotS, Dark Lord comes off as bland, uninspired and emotionless.Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:Little to none.One smuggler makes eyes at Olee.Several Jedi die. Order 66 is enacted. Vader lightsaber duels several Jedi. There is a big, final battle on Kashyyyk that results in the Wookiees imprisonment.Overall:While not seeing more of Vader was a disappointment and the writing style a drastic change from RotS, this is a decent final novel to the unofficial trilogy (Labyrinth of Evil, Revenge of the Sith, and Dark Lord). We get to see the effects of Order 66 on two vastly different Jedi, Roan (pessimist) and Olee (optimist). We get to see Darth Vader overcome his confidence issues and get adjusted to his body. And we learn what happened to Fang Zhar, how the Wookiees are imprisoned, and if there are other Jedi. A more than decent novel, very enjoyable and recommended.
—Crystal Starr Light
La guerre des Clones est maintenant finie. Anakin Skywalker est maintenent devenu Darth Vader. Il est complètement soumis à son maître Sith, Darth Sidious. Vader est donc envoyé en mission par son maître pour éliminer les Jedi survivants et mater la rébellion des Wookies sur la planète Kashyyyk. Cependant, Vader rêve surtout de prendre sa revanche contre Obi-Wan. Ce roman reste dans la lignée des deux précédents, ils sont centrés sur Anakin et Vader. Le premier (Labyrinth of Evil) c'est Anakin lorsqu'il était un Jedi. Le second (Revenge of the sith), c'est lorsque tout bascule pour lui et qu'il prend des mauvais choix. Le dernier tome (The Rise of Darth Vader), ce sont les conséquences de ces choix. Vader doit apprendre à se servir correctement de ses nouvelles jambes et de ses nouveaux bras qui ne répondent pas aussi biens qu'à ses anciens membres biologiques.Ce livre, c'est l'histoire d'un gars qui essaie de réprimer le bien qu'il a en lui pour cacher sa douleur d'avoir perdu sa femme et son enfant de sa propre faute.
—Yves
