Star Wars: Darth Plagueis

Darth Plagueis focuses a lot more on politics and conversation than action, and while not my kinda read, it is written well enough to still impress me.

It especially becomes entertaining as Plagueis and Palpatine begin shaping everything up for the prequel films, and the longer the book goes on, the better it gets.

Tenebrous, Plagueis, Palpatine, Maul, Dooku, Anakin, it's a fascinating dive into the Sith and their history, and also their rise to power.

If you like the political intrigue from Star Wars episodes I-II-III this book is for you. It tells how Palpatine ascended to power in detail and it's quite great to know how he became a Sith Lord. He is not a mastermind alone: he's following his Master's steps, Darth Plagueis. The book is well written and it feels you're seeing the prequel trilogy from behind the scenes. Several important questions are answered in this installment. Darth Plagueis is a great character in this grand scheme of the Revenge of the Sith, although the book is misleading. Although the book is called Darth Plagueis, the character is practically secondary to his apprentice, Darth Sidious.

My problem with this title is that it's quite exemplary of how bad old SW Expanded Universe has become in its final days (I'm not saying that the Disney Cannon is better either; I still prefer the old EU). It shows this unnecessary (and quite annoying) urge to connect all the dots between movies, previous books, videogames and comic books as well. I was constantly thinking about the huge library research Luceno did to “fill all the gaps” just to fulfill the LucasBooks Licensing editorial demands. Sometimes it seems it was more important to know when and where this or that came from than the story itself (ie. if you want to know why Count Dooku uses his well tailored cape, you will find the answer here; what that matters to the main plot Is the big question).

What do Dooku, Tatooine, Kamino, Jabba, the Hutt and those beautiful chrome-nosed Nubian starfighters of Naboo have in common? Apparently everything, and that is the problem. I have this feeling that Star Wars galaxy is amazingly small because everyone knows everyone and everyone lives and/or goes to the same places because of this unjustified need to connect all previous publications. I still don't understand why they have to be at Tatooine all the time (I don't know what's so appealing with that huge dust ball) or even to meet Jabba the Hutt just because he's an iconic character.

Anyway, if you're looking to take a different look at what happened before the prequel trilogy and you really dig the political schemes from episodes I-II-III, it's a must read.

Set before the events of Episode one, Darth Plagueis takes the reader through the behind the scenes setup that foreshadows the prequel movies. In it we see Plagueis, Palpatine's master, rise to power, the training of Palpatine, and ultimately the rise of Palpatine to the position of power and influence that we see in Episode 1.

Darth Plagueis did two things that I didn't thing the EU could do, and it does them well.

First, while it does not redeem all of aspects of the prequel movies, it does tie many of the desperate elements together. Through the eyes of Plagueis and Palpatine we see the events unfold and answer many of the unasked/unanswered questions from the movies themselves and the EU as a whole. How was Palpatine trained, Who was Darth Maul, How was the Old Republic engineered fall, How does the Rule of Two affect the Sith through the thousand years from Bane to Palpatine? These and many more are revealed and explained within this novel.

Second, and most starlings, the novel uses the dreaded plot device (midichlorians) in a way that doesn't make me hate it. [This will likely be a hot topic for diehard fans, but my recommendation is that they read the book before unleashing hate for the topic.] In the novel, Plagueis is Sith Sorcerer working on methods of extending his own life indefinitely through the force. Through well written experimentation and revelation the reader is given a much more palatable explanation for the relationship between midichlorians and the Force, and possible alternate causes for Anakin's “miraculous” conception through the Force.
For all these reasons and more I recommend Darth Plagueis

**As a side note I got my copy of Darth Plagueis through a GoodReads contest for preview/review copies. So thanks to GoodReads for facilitating my enjoyment of this novel.