Review: Lords of the Sith

Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This isn't the worst Star Wars book to come out of the new canon, but that's only because "Heir to the Jedi" exists. The story is one (or maybe two connected) large action sequence(s). Palpatine and Vader get wind of a large Twi'lek resistance movement that is actually causing some problems for the Empire, so they decide to visit in order to draw the resistance out and make them expend all of their resources before they can get any more problematic. And that's exactly what happens. V+E show up, the Twi'lek try (pretty successfully, actually) to destroy their Star Destroyer, but V+E survive and land on the surface of Ryloth, the Twi'lek homeworld, where they are chased by both the resistance and a swarm of giant, man-eating bugs. Spoiler alert: Vader and the Emperor both live.

Things I really didn't like:
The whole tension of the book was "will Vader and Palpatine live?" and the answer, from the beginning, is OF COURSE THEY FUCKING WILL, because this is set prior to Return of the Jedi. There is never any doubt at all that they will win.

The leader of the Twi'lek resistance is the father of Hera from Star Wars: Rebels. Because, again, of course he is. Star Wars has always been about marketing their merchandise, but at this point, they're sacrificing quality for name-dropping.

All of the characters were pretty damn forgettable. There's like half a dozen Twi'lek rebels and I can't remember a single one's name. Two (Mr. Hera's Dad and his angry second-in-command lady) have kind of memorable character traits.

The pacing is awful. Two chapters of introduction to the situation and the Twi'lek characters, then like 8 chapters of space battle, another chapter or two of "okay so what's the situation now" then another 8 chapters of ground chase and battle.

Things that were actually kind of okay:
Paul Kemp did a pretty good job of salvaging a few characters. Every scene that wasn't part of the interminable battle sequences was interesting. The main female Twi'lek has a scene in a city on Ryloth where she rescues an enslaved Twi'lek woman, which was cool because it showed us more about her character and more about the world. There are a few decent scenes where Vader is kind of conflicted about his identity and starts remembering what it was like to be Anakin (though again, it seemed like these existed largely to name-drop characters from The Clone Wars). But it was a realistic conflict, since Anakin did a lot of freedom fighting in his day, and because he's on the front lines, flying ships and fighting a war, for the first time since becoming Vader.

Moff Mors, the first LGBT character in the new canon (and like the third in Star Wars ever), isn't totally sucky. Her main characteristic is that she's terrible at her job, but it's conveniently explained about halfway through the book that it's because she became despondent and spice-addicted when her wife died. It's pretty okay representation, and hopefully it will get better.

That's basically my feelings on this whole book: it's pretty okay, and hopefully all of this new stuff will get better. Because if it stays this bad I'm gonna have to just stop entirely.

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