Tarkin

It was good for sure. There are some really intriguing aspects such as more lore on Tarkin (obviously!) but also on Vader-Tarkin relations, Vader-Palpatine relations and also more about Palpatine himself which was surprising. I also really liked the rebellion; Teller, Anora, Hask mainly. They were enjoyable characters to read and I found their dialogue to be better than the relatively dry and confusing dialogue of the Military and Naval Intelligence (I basically forgot who Rancit was by the time they revealed to him to be the Imperial traitor helping the rebels).

What lets me down on this book is the writing style. It's obvious that Luceno is a good writer but I just didn't like the way he wrote this story. It's also not the most engaging story; the most engaging aspects of the story for me was not the present day stuff but his flashbacks to the Carrion Plateau and his life before and during the Clone Wars. The whole story he told Vader about the Carrion Spike was really intriguing and interesting. I think if there was two books; one on his upbringing, the Carrion, the Clone Wars, etc and another book on the current affairs of the Empire it would be a better treatment.

Overall I'm happy I read it for lore reasons and for intriguing ideas (such as the idea of the Imperials being a far-right group within the Republic, of course never mentioned in the book but rather an idea that came to me while reading it).

I liked how this book covered Tarkin's younger years, it did a great job demonstrating how he became who he was, why he thinks how he did and how he got to be where he was.

The bulk of the book told a story of an incident where Tarkin worked with the emperor and Vader to track down a cell of rebels. There were moments of excitement, but I found it hard to really be engaged with the story. Perhaps I was just rooting for Tarkin's enemies and had a hard time engaging with the story of successes for the empire.

3.5

Man, I was a bit disappointed with this one.

This one does everything you'd expect it does - give more insights into Tarkin as a character, his relation to the Emperor and Darth Vader (the latter which I find the most interesting aspect of it, because people generally have no idea who Vader is behind the mask, but Tarkin figures it out).

I find it just pretty boring overall. I had trouble getting myself to finish it even when I wasn't halfway the book yet, and I probably wouldn't have if this had had no relation to Star Wars.